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The 
Theosophical Quarterly 



VOLUME XVIII 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 

BROOKLYN, N. Y. 




The Theosophical Quarterly 



Subscription price, $1.00 per annum ; single copies, 25 cents 

Published by The Theosophical Society at 

159 Warren Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

July; October; January; April 

In Europe, 5s. Single copies may be obtained from, and subscriptions 
sent to, Dr. Archibald Keightley, 46, Brook Street, London, W. 1, England 



Entered July 17, 1905, at Brooklyn, N. Y., as second-class matter, 
under Act of Congress of July 16, 1894 

Copyright, 1920, by The Theosophical Society 





JULY, 1920 

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 MODERN PROBLEMS 1 

I THINK that all the members of the audience realize that this 
lecture is a part of the Theosophical Convention, the annual 
Convention of The Theosophical Society. I remember President 
Hadley's saying once that he thought the function of a University 
was to establish and to maintain standards of education. One view of 
The Theosophical Society is that its purpose is to establish and to 
maintain standards of spiritual and moral life ; not generalities or vague, 
wide statements, but principles which shall be entirely practical, whether 
for the organization of religions or nations, or for the conduct of daily 
life the daily life of the individual, whether it be typesetting or house- 
keeping or anything else to establish a spiritual standard which must 
be conformed to, if those great or small tasks are to be rightly done. 
As to the more particular topic of this afternoon Theosophy and 
Modern Problems let me explain just how it came to be chosen. Some 
of us were discussing the debates in a legislative body concerning a 
subject then very much in the public mind let us say it was the 
Parliament of the Chinese Republic. We came to the conclusion that 
the participants in that legislative discussion might be divided into two 
groups : those who were quite clearly and palpably supporting the wrong 
side, and those who were supporting right things for entirely wrong 
reasons. They were united by the fact that there was practically a 
complete absence of moral principle in them all. (In some ways I am 
very fond of China, so I will tell you the truth, that this body was not 
Chinese.) There was that flagrant fact not a particle of moral principle 
in the whole thing from beginning to end. One asks oneself, very natu* 
rally, where do we find moral principle in public life to-day. What 
policies can we indicate, what movements can we name, which are quite 
consciously resting on a clear moral principle which is absolutely sound ; 

1 Notes of a lecture by Charles Johnston, on April 25, 1920, on the occasion of the Con- 
vention of The Theosophical Society. 



4 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

or where are we to find a statesman, or the leaders or the organizers 
of some undertaking, who are consciously seeking the fundamental moral 
principle implied, and founding themselves on that? You then realize, 
I think, that there is an appalling absence of moral principle in the world 
at this time. I think that is the great modern problem. 

I am going to try to elucidate that statement, but the elucidations 
are not at all so important as the fact itself, the crying need for a 
recognition of moral principles to begin with, then a clear understanding 
of these moral principles, and lastly a firm determination to carry them 
out in action. 

I am going to take an illustration somewhat far away, because it is 
not expedient that anyone speaking to a representative audience on 
Theosophy, and as a part of the Theosophical Convention, should take 
examples so close at hand as to be suspected of partisanship. So while 
taking a distant example, I ask you not to infer that there are no examples 
closer at hand. There is no lack of them. But I cannot do them justice, 
for the reason already given. 

So we shall begin a good many miles away, in Bolshevik Russia. 
I think we realize very clearly that the theories and motives of Bolshevik 
Russia came from German Socialism. In reality they go back much 
further. The Socialism of Karl Marx has a fundamental moral defect 
and a fundamental scientific defect. The moral defect is that it is the 
expression of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. I think one 
might say that its fundamental scientific defect is that all its theories are 
wrong; and one reason for that is that the man who founded them had 
not a glimmer of an idea of evolution. He published his most notorious 
book in 1850, nine years before Darwin made public his first discoveries. 
The system of Marx is the deadest thing from that point of view that 
could be conceived of. It has no conception of evolution. This false 
philosophy is the origin of the Russian movement. Lenine I believe 
his real name is Ulianoff; he is of an old Russian family and ought to 
know better came by way of Berlin, from Switzerland, to go to Russia. 
I will not say anything about the Russia to which he came or the first 
revolution which had taken place before he arrived, in July, 1917, to be 
welcomed by the moderate Socialists. I am not going back at any great 
length to the breaches of principle of which they had been guilty in their 
absolute disloyalty to their sovereign and to the Allied cause, and to the 
flood of lies they put into circulation, to the effect that the Emperor 
was going to conclude peace with Germany, and that therefore they 
ought to have a revolution. There had been, in all this, a grave breach 
of moral principle. 

And this is a point on which I wish to lay stress : a breach of moral 
principle is invariably two things, a piece of moral treachery to begin 
with; second, in the result it is invariably calamitous. The working out 
of that law may not always be immediately evident, but I am quite sure 
that moral compromise means first moral treachery and then physical 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 5 

disaster. The moral compromise of the first Russian Revolution was 
moral treachery, which came nigh to bringing defeat to the French, 
British and Belgian Armies in France, and which brought complete 
disaster to the first Russian revolutionists. 

To come to the second revolutionary group, the Bolshevist group: 
they founded themselves on the principle of tyranny, and of murder as 
a means to tyranny (principles which come straight from hell, and I 
presume will thither return with their votaries) ; tyranny of the most 
infamous kind, domination of the worst over the best, of the lowest 
over the highest, with murder as a means to tyranny. So far as Russia 
is concerned, the wheel has not yet run the full circle. But mean- 
while I am going to speak on another aspect of that matter, as it concerns 
the relation of other nations with the Bolshevist Government. There is 
once more the point of moral compromise and moral treachery. Is it a 
desire to get certain raw materials let us say wheat, and platinum, and 
flax, and what not which is the real cause of this extraordinary 
inclination to recognize the Soviet Government? Surely people who 
advocate that, ought to read the mediaeval legends about those who make 
compacts with the devil. It is very easy to see how retribution will come. 
It requires no second-sight or gift of prophecy to see what must follow, 
if this supreme folly is persisted in. If we recognize that detestable 
tyranny as a legal government, we do two things : we are guilty of moral 
baseness, and we come under the legal obligation to recognize the Bolshe- 
vist representatives, to receive them here and to give them diplomatic 
immunity. The so-called envoy of Soviet Russia, who is a dyed-in-the- 
wool German, has already shown what the envoy of a Soviet government 
is prepared to do. To receive Bolshevist representatives is, of course, 
putting dynamite under our own government and under everything decent 
in this and other countries. If we recognize them, and receive their 
representatives, we give them a free hand. Personally, I am not going 
to underwrite any fire insurance to cover that liability. If we do it, we 
shall get just what we deserve, and we shall learn that moral compromise 
is moral treachery on the one hand, and physical disaster on the other. 
I think perhaps things will move somewhat rapidly to give us that 
valuable lesson, if we commit that extreme act of folly. 

Now comes the question : if it be our duty to establish and maintain 
moral standards, not in the abstract, but standards which shall be work- 
able in the smallest details of human life, how are we to reach these 
moral standards; how are we to formulate them? Precisely for that 
purpose our work as members of The Theosophical Society exists. This 
is what we have in view in our discussions, debates and studies ; precisely 
to reach the fundamental moral principles of life. And recognizing, as 
we do, that there are fashions in that, just as there are in other things, 
subject to just as rapid changes, and desiring not to be at the mercy of 
temporary fashions, we carry our thought over long periods of time and 
try to include the best thought of the best thinkers of all nations through 



6 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

all time. That is the meaning of the second object of the Society, to 
study the religions and sciences of all times and all nations, and to demon- 
strate the importance of that study its importance for our purpose. 
We have no vague indefinite views, and we are not enamoured of glit- 
tering generalities. We want something that we can make work ; there- 
fore we are seeking in the religions and philosophies of the world the 
fundamental principles of human life in order to put them into action. 

Perhaps I have told some of you the story of the Chinese politician 
who was a candidate for office. A delegation came to him to find out 
where he stood on some such question as the League of Mongols. Our 
candidate was in the embarrassing position of not knowing whether it 
was a delegation of the Yellows or the party of the Greens. He asked 
the delegation to be seated. They said, "Mr. Candidate, we should like 
to hear about your principles." The candidate was greatly embarrassed, 
because he did not know which party the delegation came from. If he 
said he was for a high tariff on the Tibetan frontier, he was in bad 
favour with the one party. If he advocated the Mongol League, he 
offended the other. So he said : "Gentlemen, I have principles, but they 
can be changed !" Now I think he had a very decided advantage over 
many contemporary politicians who have no principles though they can 
be changed, also. To have no moral principles is pretty bad, but there 
is one thing which has been exemplified, let us say within a hundred years, 
which is that to have a lot of principles, not one of which is really true, 
may be fully as calamitous. The emotional lower nature catches reflec- 
tions from the spiritual world, and these reflections flash and flicker over 
the lower mind; all kinds of topsy-turvy reflections of moral principles, 
sprinkled about on the surface of the emotional waves. This makes up 
much of what is called the new idealism. The psychic reflection of a 
principle is about as safe to stand upon as, let us say, the reflection of 
a bridge in the water. There is your real bridge, which is the spiritual 
principle, and there is the water the psychic nature and in the water 
is the reflected bridge. People who try to found their action on these 
pseudo-principles, which look like real principles, are exactly as we should 
be if we tried to cross that picture bridge in the water, and were not very 
good swimmers. That is a danger which is a very real danger, a depend- 
ence on things that look like moral principles and are not real principles 
at all. It is a part of our work as students of Theosophy, to distinguish 
the true principles, eliminating the bias of the day, all personal and 
national bias; trying to take the spiritual testimony of all time and 
deduce the principles from that. 

What are some of the fundamental principles that we do find? Let 
us say that we take, going back through the ages, works like the 
Autobiography of St. Teresa, or the Imitation, or the writings of St. 
Francis, St. Thomas a Kempis, or the best of the Church Fathers; or 
going behind these, to their sources in the Gospels ; or back to the ages 
before, to the Tao-Teh-King, back to the far off Scriptures of India, to 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 7 

the Upanishads. There we have a wide and sufficient basis from which 
to extract principles not coloured by personality, time, or national bias. 
What principles do we find? What is the supreme principle? That 
everything exists for spiritual life, which is destined to be everlasting. 
Not only our human life, but the whole palpable and visible universe 
exists for purposes of the soul, for spiritual life. Everything else is 
to be subordinated to the spiritual principle, both in our understanding 
and inspiration, and in our action. 

There is a universal statement of the application of that principle 
by an Indian Master of Life, in the letters in the Occult World and 
Esoteric Buddhism, where that Master speaks of the vast progression of 
humanity from the ages in the past to the ages in the future, and where 
he indicates that the effort of the Masters through all ages is directed 
towards one critical problem namely, to the dead point, if you like, of 
the curve between materialism and spirituality ; to the problem of whether 
the human race, or the majority of it, shall pass that dead point and 
ascend the curve which leads to spirituality. The effort of Masters for 
ages past has been directed to that one problem : that humanity shall pass 
the dead line from materialism and more dangerous psychism, to enter 
the spiritual path. That is the application of our principle to all 
humanity. Life exists that mankind may become spiritual and open the 
way for the Kingdom of Heaven. 

One can come to the other pole and apply the matter to the individual 
at any moment, in any act, and test both act and situation by the same 
principle. A man will act in some particular in one of two ways. 
Which is the way that makes for spiritual life in him? Which is the 
way that makes against spiritual life in him ? There is no other question. 
Does the way in which he is going to act make for spiritual life, the 
eternal life, the One Life, in him, or does it bar the way to that life and 
make for darkness and death? All ethics, all morals are summed up 
in that one question. 

Let us express it a little differently and put it in terms of conscious- 
ness. Will he, as a result of his action, be more conscious of the divine 
Spirit, more conscious of the life which the Masters represent, or will 
he be less conscious? In the first case, his act is right, his consciousness 
is deepened, enriched, and perfected ; in the second case his act is wrong, 
he is on the downward path. Will he enter more fully into the life and 
spirit of the Masters, as the result of his action, or will he enter less 
fully? There are the two poles, the destiny of all humanity and the 
individual act, measured by the same standard : that all things exist for 
eternal life, for the divine life. 

Let me try to apply some of the workings-out of this principle in 
another direction, which has been very much the fashion in this country 
for several months I mean the recrudescence of spiritualism. The 
second object of the Society, I have already spoken of : the study of 
religions, philosophies and sciences of all nations and over all time. We 



8 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

have a third object, which is not of obligation, but which is nevertheless 
in the Constitution. That is to study the hidden laws of nature and the 
psychical powers latent in man. When that object was formulated, in 
1875, the word psychical covered a multitude of planes. Everything that 
was not physical in those days was called psychical. To modernize the 
wording of that object, we should have to say the psychical and spiritual 
powers latent in man. 

I think that many students of Theosophy are familiar with every- 
thing of note that has been done in that field for a generation back. 
Members of our Society have studied the Psychical Research Society's 
proceedings since the first; they may have heard its speakers, met its 
leaders. 

Much should be said, I think, on the positive side. That is to say, 
these seekers into psychical things have amassed a very remarkable body 
of knowledge, of opinion, of fact, touching unseen worlds and planes. 
To begin with the matter with which they themselves began : the trans- 
ference of thought, telepathy. Students of Theosophy know that thought 
transference is a fact. We do not doubt in the least the fact of telepathy, 
the transference of thoughts, feelings, sensations from one person to 
another. The next step of the Psychical Research Society was to investi- 
gate the transfer of thought, independent of the body and brain. Sir 
Oliver Lodge indicated that that transference was not carried by brain 
waves or any kind of etheric waves, because thought transference was 
not subject to the law of diminishing intensity which governs all wave 
motions. He went on to say that the transference is not so much from 
brain to brain as from mind to mind, or soul to soul, using soul in the 
general sense. If two souls which happen to be embodied at the time 
can communicate in this way, irrespective of ether waves, is it equally 
possible that there should be communication with a soul that does not 
happen to have a body? Can we communicate with such souls? Can 
we communicate with the dead? He answered in the affirmative and 
adduced much evidence, as in his book containing communications from 
his son Raymond, which has been so widely read. 

What attitude is a student of Theosophy, generally speaking, justified 
in taking toward that situation ? On the one hand, there are very evident 
facts, which, moreover, clearly illustrate many of our own ideas and 
thoughts and views. For instance, we have held for a long time that we 
make our own future; our own after-death setting and furniture and so 
forth, we make ourselves. It is worked out in what is called the doc- 
trine of Devachan, or the state of bliss ; that paradise is not a universal 
monochrome, but depends upon the amount and colour of spiritual life 
in the individual in each case. The outstanding fact in all this body of 
psychic communications from the dead, is the demonstration that we are 
right in holding that view. Each of these excarnate individuals is going 
on doing just what he was doing in ordinary life, and each says the 
spiritual world consists in just that kind of thing. If he were a tinker, 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 9 

he will say the spiritual life, the life after death, consists in tinkering, 
in other words, the forces that he handled in material life continue after 
death. This appears to be well supported by a mass of sound psychical 
research. Therefore we do not, broadly speaking, quarrel with the con- 
clusions of psychical research. But do we endorse the moral principle 
of this research ? Do these seekers begin by asking themselves : is this 
morally right, this communication with the dead? Is it morally right? 
That is the fundamental question. Until you have answered that 
question, you have no right to take another step. We hold that it is, 
broadly speaking, morally wrong, and for many reasons. 

The first fact that we see is this : let us say that Sir Oliver Lodge or 
one of his colleagues seeks to investigate the spiritual planes of life 
the plane, let us say, of paradise. Is there any claim on their part that 
they open within themselves the spiritual eye to see those planes, that 
they view what they study with their own spiritual vision? Not in the 
least. How do they get it ? Through mediums, of whom Mrs. Piper was 
perhaps the best known, though she was only one of a score. These 
mediums, for the most part, are morbid pathological specimens. Do 
these mediums claim that they themselves have the spiritual vision which 
enables them to see into the world of paradise of which we are speaking? 
So far as I know and I have studied the thing for many years not at 
all. The medium is in a comatose condition, and something else or some 
one else is speaking or writing through the medium. After the session 
is over, the medium has no understanding of what really went on. The 
medium was comatose in the full sense of the word unconscious, or 
conscious in some lower physical way, but spiritually conscious not at all. 

Now there are a number of points one might pick up. To begin with, 
what about this question of the medium, already pathological, already 
morbid, opening the doors of his or her inner nature to whatever happens 
to come ? Would you open the doors of your house or your rooms in the 
same way? Is it not clearly prudent to find out first what sort of things 
might come in ? It might be angels, it might be the opposite. How is the 
comatose medium going to tell? Have they made any study of the 
denizens of these innumerable unseen planes? Have they any information 
about them? We have an idea that there are a great many kinds of 
things, clean and unclean, and that it is, to say the least, unwise to open 
the door and go to sleep, leaving the door open. 

There is a fundamental objection that we have to that kind of 
research : it does not demand the spiritual growth, spiritual unfoldment, 
spiritual vision in the investigator, which we believe to be essential on 
moral and practical grounds. We believe that this is one meaning of the 
old saying : "He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but 
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." In other 
words, the true door of spiritual life is the door of aspiration and 
spiritual growth. He who tries to enter the spiritual world, to get 



10 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

knowledge by another way, is a thief and a robber. That is the moral 
principle. 

The practical principle is that he will not know, in the least, of what 
value his material is; gold dust, nuggets or dross will be all the same. 
And surely it is unsatisfactory, from the standpoint of science, not to 
know what your results are when you have got them. The moral point 
is that there is no demand for previous spiritual growth and sacrifice, 
no demand that the lower nature shall be purified. 

We believe that a moral and spiritual compromise is made by 
approaching the spiritual world in that way. The right way is that of 
spiritual development, sacrifice and growth; of illumination. And 
because it is a moral compromise a breach of moral rectitude to go 
that way, we believe it will be highly dangerous in its results. You will 
remember Portia said the quality of mercy is blessed in both him who 
gives and who receives. In that same way, we hold that spiritualistic 
research of that kind is highly dangerous both to those who communicate 
the so-called spirits and to those who are communicated with the 
investigators. Let me speak of the danger to the latter first. It seems 
to me that as a result of Sir Oliver Lodge's investigations and the mass 
of material that goes with them, there is established in people's minds 
generally, a vision of false immortality that is, an immortality which is 
gained simply by "passing over" (we call it dying), irrespective of moral 
character and moral accomplishment. The result of that is quite evident 
in the lowering of the whole view of immortal life. The scriptures of the 
world which we study and try to understand, are unanimous on one point 
amongst others : namely, that real immortality comes through sacrifice 
and holiness, and in no other way. The Upanishads are as emphatic and 
clear cut on that as are the Gospels. The door of holiness, the path of 
sacrifice, is the only means to real immortality. He that loveth his life 
shall lose it; he that hateth his life that is to say, offers his life as a 
sacrifice shall keep it unto life eternal. Our feeling about the body of 
psychic research regarding those who have passed over, is that it has 
degraded and vulgarized the whole field of immortality. Here is the 
penalty, on the one side : the degrading of the whole idea of immortality 
for the seekers. 

On the other hand, we have certain views as to what takes place in 
those who die. How do we get these views ? From those who have real 
vision, gained by real and most arduous sacrifice, lasting through ages ; 
who have real holiness, real aspiration, a real life in the eternal and spir- 
itual world, who look down on these things from above, instead of feeling 
for them blindfolded, from below. What are certain of the fundamental 
facts which they give? That the whole purpose and importance of this 
present life depends upon and consists in what it can give to the soul. 
The soul is the undying immortal, who stands above this life, and the last 
life, and the next life. What can that life yield to the immortal ? It is a 
part of the teaching that, when a human being dies, he enters into what 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 11 

one might call a stage of gestation, in which there is a solution of the 
materials of his nature (using "materials" in the larger sense) a period 
in which is sifted out that which belongs to the immortal and is to be 
handed over to the immortal, and that which belongs to time and is not to 
be assimilated by the immortal. That is a period of gestation. I use the 
word advisedly, to indicate what a precarious condition it is; every 
injurious influence must be warded off. There must be silence and 
stillness, in order that the aspiration which is in that soul may awake; 
that the finer part of the nature may be drawn upward to the immortal ; in 
order that all that can be given may be given to the true owner, the 
undying soul. But what can be more fatal to the personality than to 
have this stillness broken, as if by the ringing and clanging of telephone 
bells, calling it to come back to this world ? The din and whirl and clang 
and clatter of physical life is brought once more to the ears of the soul, 
in that sensitive condition of gestation; the geese cackling, as Portia 
says, and the whole whirl of physical thoughts, desires, appetites, 
revived once more. It is likely to be an abortive soul-birth, with all the 
calamity that that implies. The person concerned may know nothing of 
it. It is unfortunately true of this world that when we are in the direst 
danger, we often think we are quite safe. And in the same way, those 
"spirits" may think they are safe, when they are in great danger and on 
their way to dissolution. They are no judges, and though they may be 
exultant, and delighted with the happy hunting grounds in which they 
find themselves, it does not for a moment follow that this is the right 
thing for them to do ; that it is well for them to do this, or well for us to 
encourage it. 

I am not going to expand that, because I do not wish to enforce a 
conclusion, or even to lay great stress upon the conclusion. What I do 
wish to repeat is : moral compromise is doubly fatal because it is a moral 
betrayal and certain to end in physical disaster. That is the text which 
I do wish you to carry away and to think over, to see for yourselves 
whether it is true. Try it. Use it as a standard in one case after 
another. Keep that principle rather than the illustrations. 
******* 

In conclusion, this : we have our clear spiritual and moral standards. 
We seek always to clarify them, to make them more sure ; to test them ; 
to try them ; to live by them. And because the world is in such a whirl- 
wind of moral confusion, it is of utmost importance that members of 
the Society, students of Theosophy, should have very clear moral 
principles and should carry them out in action. It is of the utmost 
importance, the one solid ground in a world of confusion, in a broken 
mass of shifting ice such as Peary described near the pole. 

If we succeed and are able to establish our standards, not merely to 
carry them out ourselves, but gradually to win to them, finally, a working 
majority of mankind, what will be the fruit? Our first great principle 
is that everything is for spiritual life; that all that we see, all that we 



12 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

are, makes for spiritual being, for ourselves and for others, in a unity 
of life of spiritual life destined to be everlasting ; a life not untenanted 
now, but already occupied by the Masters, the lords of spiritual life, 
who have attained, who are now what we look for as the ultimate fruit, 
as the realization of just that principle, just that spiritualizing of the 
majority, and perhaps of all mankind, in ages to come. 

We work for the drawing of mankind into that spiritual life; the 
drawing of that spiritual life into mankind, so that these lords of spiritual 
life, the Masters, who at present are checked and thwarted at every 
point where they try to help us; who are met with resistance of mind, 
of heart, of every part of our nature, shall, on the contrary, be welcomed 
with humility and the greatest gratitude, to take the greatest possible part 
in the guidance of our lives; that the lords of spiritual life shall come 
amongst men, and help us to live our lives, shall guide our powers, and 
lead us in their wisdom and mercy, in their grace and love, along the 
path that they themselves have already trodden to our home, our ever- 
lasting home in the Eternal. 



Lord, how often shall I resign myself, and wherein shall I forsake 
myself? 

Always, yea, every hour; as well in small things as in great. 
THOMAS A KEMPIS. 



FRAGMENTS 



THE roses were blooming in the garden, and the tall lilies rocked 
gently to and fro, scattering their incense on the air. The 
golden sunshine lay caressingly across the grass and hid in the 
shadows of the leaves. So blue the sky, where the soft, white clouds 
were sailing, serene in their heavenly atmosphere! I stood in the 
midst, and wondered and gave thanks. Then the Master's voice came, 
and the garden hushed itself to listen. As always it was clear and even, 
but behind it was a rain of tears. 

"In my garden the flowers are fading," he said ; "some of them are 
dead. I water and tend, but the burning sun is drying it up. Pray that 
the clouds may gather again and save my garden." 

And so we prayed and prayed, the flowers prayed, and the sunshine 
prayed, and the breezes prayed, and the very stones cried aloud. And 
still we are praying : 

Great Lord of all, let not the sun of this material life scorch with 
fierce heat the seedlings of thy love. Send the rain of thy mercy upon 
us, and the sweet dew of thy grace; if need be, thy lightnings and thy 
thunders, and the downpours of an opened heaven. Grant us the blessed 
gifts of tears and of repentance. Draw us to the cool silences of 
reflection, that we may see the real from the false, the eternal from the 
evanescent ; and choose, as in such vision we must choose. For his dear 
sake who watered this garden with his blood. Amen. 



Yesterday I met again the angels that I saw a year ago and more, 
whose eyes were red with weeping. They spend their days upon the 
battle-fields, burying the dead. 

One said: we buried few in the early years of this war, for we 
carried them to heaven, where shortly they awoke, strengthened and 
rejoicing. Now so many die; and infrequent are the flights to heaven. 

In a world of reflections, that which we call life is death, and dying, 
living. He that saveth his life shall lose it, wrapping his talent in the 
napkin of self, and hiding it in the earth ; later, he shall be cast into outer 
darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth, in the day of the coming 
of the Son of Man. 



13 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY AND 
PRE-EXISTENCE 



FOR many years the Eastern teaching of reincarnation could find 
scant hearing in the West, save from the open platform of The 
Theosophical Society. Even to-day, when it has become a 
common theme for the story-teller and novelist as something 
pregnant with the fascination of the mysterious, and so opening the door 
of dreams to prosaic minds and lives it is still very rare to come upon 
a clear presentation and intelligent, philosophical advocacy of its tenets 
from the pen of a Western scholar. In a little volume of 120 pages, 
however, members of the Society may see the fulfilment of the old 
proverb, "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after 
many days" ; for here the doctrine is returned to us, no longer in foreign 
guise and in terms borrowed from an older race, but as the native product 
of modern thought. The title of the book is that of this article, Human 
Immortality and Pre-existence, published by Longmans, Green & Co. 
The author, Dr. J. Ellis M'Taggart, is not a member of the Society, nor 
does he refer to Theosophy as such. Fellow and Lecturer in Trinity 
College, Cambridge, the recipient of honorary degrees from both Cam- 
bridge and St. Andrews, he is best known as a student of Hegel, and 
for his scholarly comments on Hegel's cosmology and logic, this book 
being, indeed, but a part of a larger work, Some Dogmas of Religion. 
Brief though it is, it must be ranked as one of the most valuable and 
stimulating studies of the philosophy of immortality that have appeared 
in recent years. The style is clear and easy, and free from technicalities. 
The argument is cogent ; and the fact that it does not assume the ordinary 
premises of Theosophy makes the theosophical nature of its conclusions 
the more striking. 

Rightly believing that a lengthy and difficult incursion into meta- 
physics would be out of place in a popular treatise, Dr. M'Taggart makes 
no attempt to establish those positive arguments for immortality which 
only a thorough-going consideration of the fundamental nature of reality 
can be made to yield ; but confines the first part of his volume to clearing 
away the materialistic presuppositions which are usually urged against 
man's continued existence after death, and devotes the second half to 
showing that any valid logical argument for a future life must point 
equally to pre-existence. It is the latter part of the book which is thus 
of special interest to students of Theosophy; but the two chapters are 
so intimately related, and Dr. M'Taggart's method of attack so skilfully 
direct and free from technical abstractions, that it will be well to give 

14 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 15 

a brief outline of the earlier discussion, whose argument has corollaries 
that are of vital moment to us all. 

Dr. M'Taggart proposes three questions which the first chapter is to 
answer. "(1) Is my self an activity of my body? (2) Is my present 
body an essential condition of the existence of my self? (3) Is there 
any reason to suppose that my self does not share the transitory character 
which I recognize in all the material objects around me?" 

The first question necessitates a somewhat lengthier discussion than 
the other two, for which it clears the way, and must be read to be appre- 
ciated. Dr. M'Taggart touches on the hypothesis that the body and the 
self, matter and spirit, may be co-ordinate and independent realities, 
whose interaction constitutes human life on earth. But though this view 
may, in his opinion, be held consistently, he deems it less simple, and 
therefore less satisfactory, than a monism which attributes fundamental 
reality to only one of the two. When led thus to a choice, he shows the 
self-contradictions that inevitably appear in every attempt to make matter 
fundamental, and argues with much skill that, "So far is this from being 
the case that ... we have no reason to suppose that matter exists at 
all, and to talk of matter existing without consciousness is absurd. 
Matter is so far from being the sole reality, of which the self is only 
an activity, that, taken by itself, it is not a reality at all. . . . 

"The bearing of this discussion on the question of our immortality 
is that it disproves a hypothesis which would render immortality incred- 
ible. If the self was an activity of the body, it would be impossible that 
it should continue to exist when the body had ceased to exist. We might 
as well suppose, in that case, that the digestion survived the body as that 
the self did." 

Though the self cannot be merely an activity of the body, it might 
yet be possible that it was dependent for its existence upon the body. 
"If A, whenever it exists, is necessarily accompanied by B, then the 
cessation of B is a sure sign of the cessation of A." This introduces the 
second question. 

"What evidence is there in favor of such a view ? In the first place, 
while we have plenty of experience of selves who possess bodies, we 
have no indubitable experience of selves who exist without bodies, or 
after their bodies have ceased to exist. Besides this, the existence of a 
self seems to involve the experience of sensations. Without them, the 
self would have no material for thought, will or feeling, and it is only 
in these that the self exists. Now there seems good reason to suppose 
that sensations never occur in our minds at present without some corre- 
sponding modifications of the body. This is certainly the case with 
normal sensations. And, even if the evidence for clairvoyance and 
thought transference were beyond dispute, it could never prove the possi- 
bility of sensation without bodily accompaniments. For it could not 
exclude indeed, it seems rather to suggest the existence of bodily 
accompaniments of an obscure and unusual kind. 



16 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"But, after all, these considerations would, at the most, go to show 
that some body was necessary to my self, and not that its present body 
was necessary. Have we, after the results already reached, any reason 
to suppose that the death of the body must indicate anything more than 
that the self had transferred its manifestations to a new body, and had, 
therefore, passed from the knowledge of the survivors, who had only 
known it through the old body? . . . The most that a body can be is 
an essential accompaniment of the self. And then the supposition that 
the self has another body would fit the facts quite as well as the suppo- 
sition that the self has ceased to exist. 

"There seems no reason why such a change should not be instan- 
taneous. But even if it were not so, no additional difficulty would be 
created. If a body is essential to the action of a self, the self would 
be in a state of suspended animation in the interval between its possession 
of two bodies a state which we might almost call one of temporary non- 
existence. But this is nothing more than what happens, so far as we can 
observe, in every case of dreamless sleep. During such a sleep the self, 
so far as we know, is unconscious as unconscious as it could be without 
a body. Yet this does not prevent its being the same man who went 
asleep and who woke up again. Why should the difficulty be greater 
in a change of bodies? 

"And then, have we any reason, after all, to suppose that a body 
is essential to a self ? It seems to me that the facts only support a very 
different proposition namely, that while a self has a body, that body 
is essentially connected with the self's mental life. 

"For example, no self can be conceived as conscious unless it has 
sufficient data for its mental activity. This material is only given, so far 
as our observations can go, in the form of sensations, and sensations 
again, so far as our observations can go, seem invariably connected with 
changes in a body. But it does not follow, because a self which has a 
body cannot get its data except in connexion with that body, that it would 
be impossible for a self without a body to get data in some other way. 
It may be just the existence of the body which makes these other ways 
impossible at present. If a man is shut up in a house, the transparency 
of the windows is an essential condition of his seeing the sky. But it 
would not be prudent to infer that, if he walked out of the house, he 
could not see the sky because there was no longer any glass through 
which he might see it." 

Dr. M'Taggart considers, also, the possible bearing of ghost stories 
and the phenomena of spiritualism upon the question of the survival of 
the self. He attaches, however, little importance to them ; and it will be 
seen how closely the clear common-sense of his discussion fits into the 
theosophical view that such phenomena where genuine more fre- 
quently evidence the temporary survival of the Kama-Rupa than any 
manifestation of the real individuality, or self. 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 17 

"Much of the evidence offered on this subject is doubtless utterly 
untrustworthy. But there is a good deal which investigation has failed 
to break down. And there is much to be said in support of the view that, 
after all deductions have been made for fraud, error and coincidence, 
there is still a sufficient residuum to justify the belief that such appari- 
tions are in some cases caused by the dead man whose body they 
represent. 

"But the mere proof that there was this causal connexion between 
the dead man and the apparition would not suffice to prove that the dead 
man had survived his death. A chain of effects may exist long after its 
original cause is destroyed. . . . And, so far as I know, all stories of 
apparitions would be equally well explained by the theory that a man 
might, before his death, initiate a chain of circumstances which would 
cause his body to appear, after his death, under certain conditions, to 
men still alive. In this case, nothing would be proved about his existence 
after death." 

To answer his third question, "Is there any reason to suppose that 
my self does not share the transitory character which I recognize in all 
the material objects around me?" Dr. MTaggart points out that what 
perishes does so only through being resolved again into the separate parts 
which compose it. Forms of energy cease to be, as one form passes into 
another; but science holds that the energy itself is neither destroyed nor 
diminished. Though the self is complex, it is not, in Dr. MTaggart's 
view, a compound; and so could not be destroyed, as a brick wall might 
be, by removing and scattering its elements without those elements them- 
selves being destroyed. "If it did cease to exist, it could only be by 
annihilation. It is not only the form that would have changed, but that 
the form and content alike would have perished." And for this there 
is no analogy in science. 

Dr. MTaggart acknowledges, at once, that this is very far from 
showing that the self must be immortal though he reaffirms his con- 
viction that a thorough metaphysical discussion of the nature of reality 
must indubitably support such a conclusion. But the argument, as given, 
does at least tend to suggest that so far as the self is one thing and not 
many, a unit and not a mere congeries that is, so far as a man's life 
and will is the expression of a single coherent purpose it is not subject 
to the transitoriness which experience shows us is the fate of compounds, 
but which science does not ascribe either to universal energy or to what 
it views as irreducible into parts. 

We close this first chapter, therefore, with the feeling that Dr. 
MTaggart has fulfilled the purpose he set himself in it. He has shown 
us the unconscious materialism of common thought as the self-created, 
illogical veil of illusion which it in fact is, and he has made us more eager 
than before to penetrate that veil, and to examine anew the reality 
beneath. What is that reality? What is the truth of our own being and 
of the life about us? What is the self, of whose immortality we speak? 



18 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Our mind turns back, in review of the path along which we have been 
led, to the initial statements and questions from which we started. 

"It is better," Dr. M'Taggart told us in his opening paragraphs, 
"to speak of the immortality of the self, or of men, than of the immor- 
tality of the soul. The latter phrase suggests untenable views. For in 
speaking of the identity of a man during different periods of his bodily 
life, we do not usually say he is the same soul, but the same self, or the 
same man. And to use a different word when we are discussing the 
prolongation of that identity after death, calls up the idea of an identity 
less perfect than that which lasts through a bodily life. The form in 
which the question is put thus suggests that the answer is to be in some 
degree negative that a man is not as much himself after death as he 
is before it, even if something escapes from complete destruction. 

"Moreover, it is customary, unfortunately, to say that a man has a 
soul, not that he is one. Now if our question is put in the form 'Has 
man an immortal soul?' an affirmative answer would be absurd. So far 
as it would mean anything it would mean that the man himself was the 
body, or something which died with the body at any rate was not 
immortal and that something, not himself, which he owned during life, 
was set free at his death to continue existing on its own account. For 
these reasons it seems better not to speak of the soul, and to put our 
question in the form 'Are men immortal ?' ' 

As we reflect upon these paragraphs, it is clear that the mere sur- 
vival, after death, of some abstract essence of our being the mere 
continuity of the life principle which animates us now would be very 
far from giving us the immortality we desire. What we crave, if not 
for ourselves yet certainly for those we love, is a personal immortality 
which shall preserve even the subtile, indefinable but unmistakable, per- 
sonal traits, which now stamp thought and speech and act with the hall- 
mark of their individuality. What promise does Dr. M'Taggart's argu- 
ment give us that such an immortality will be ours? And how perfect 
is the "identity" which lasts even through one bodily life? 

We look back over the years we have lived to what we were in youth. 
We are the same, yet not the same. Some who were then our friends 
are such no longer. They say of us, "He has changed; he is not the 
man he was" : and when this is repeated to us, we know that it is true, 
and are, on the whole, glad that it is true. We have put away some 
of the toys of childhood, and the touch of reality has transformed us. 
We would not have it otherwise. We would not now change places with 
those erstwhile friends who are still, at fifty, essentially the same as they 
were at fifteen still playing at dolls in the nursery, still living in a world 
of their own fancy, still without eyes or nerves for the great drama of 
real life, still ignorant of reality's vibrant touch on naked heart and soul, 
still feeding their poor, starved emotions on the counterfeit presentment 
of fiction and the stage. What they are still, we were once; but we 
would not wish that what then constituted our identity in our own eyes, 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 19 

no less than in theirs had remained unchanged and "perfect." We are 
grateful that that self was not immortal. Not to have changed would 
have been not to have lived. It is immortal life we seek; not undying 
death. 

Looking at our life thus, we see that to live is to die. It is doubtful 
if we can ever know the self, or find its permanent identity, in any single 
cross section of our being. It inheres, rather, in those dynamic, deep- 
hidden loyalties, whose unchanging purposes compel the change we suffer. 
In obedience to them, we see, with St. Paul, that we "die daily," and the 
passing of each moment leaves us other than we were. The tragedy of 
death, if it be tragedy, is not confined to the final act of dissolution 
of the body, but is inherent in every act; and every moment shows us 
the mystery of outer change in obedience to an inner permanence. 

If this be true, it would appear that we have more data than we 
have believed for the study of death and immortality. We may examine 
them, in little, as familiar facts of experience ; and instead of only being 
able to look forward to a unique and unknown change, of which we can 
form no more than a prior e judgments from our present standpoint, we 
can also look back upon changes, essentially similar in kind, however 
less in degree, and thus gain an analogy for death more as it may appear 
to one who has died. 

From this new viewpoint the tragedy of change takes on a different 
aspect. What we most regret is not that so much of what we were has 
passed away, but that we were so little of what we could wish to have 
endure : not that the waste products of the years have been left behind, 
but that the years were wasted, and that we have not now the permanent 
possessions we might have gained from them. Our true loss is not in 
the severing of youthful friendships which were never real, but that so 
many of our real friendships have been only of our maturity, and so are 
not enriched by the common memories of love and hope and labour, 
shared in youth. The closer the tie of recent years, the more we miss 
in it the past it does not hold. But where true friendship has long per- 
sisted, the past lives on in the present. At a word, a look, a trick of 
speech or gesture, the man who is my friend stands before me as the boy 
who was my friend. It does not matter that he is old and grey; he is 
also the child ; also in his prime. And the reason is simply this : child- 
hood and prime and age have alike been given to the unchanged current 
of our common love and common purpose. By its permanence all that 
was given to it has become permanent too. 

May it be that this familiar characteristic of long friendships is but 
one manifestation of a far deeper principle, upon which the personal 
immortality we crave in fact depends? That there is a contagion of 
permanence a divine river of immortal reality that imparts immortality 
to all immersed in it as well as a contagion of corruption and decay? 
That what is of itself mortal may become immortal as it is given to 
immortal purposes? If there is not some such principle in life as this 



20 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

making valid the statement that whoso giveth his life, for his Master's 
sake, shall keep it unto life eternal it is difficult to see that Dr. 
M'Taggart's arguments can prove more than the immortality of some 
spiritual principle within us, which may have little likeness to what we 
are to-day in our own eyes and the eyes of our friends. If the leaving 
behind us of the environment and interests, that once absorbed our 
thought and desires, works such changes as we have ourselves experi- 
enced in this one bodily life, will not the falling away, at death, of all 
that is dependent upon the body, of necessity work a far greater change 
upon all that has not been taken up and absorbed in loyalties, desires and 
purposes that are independent of the body, and which death, therefore, 
cannot touch? Do not the very questions Dr. M'Taggart propounds, the 
very arguments he uses, suggest that personal immortality, as distinct 
from the immortality of the soul, is something that must depend, not 
upon the nature of pure spirit, but upon the nature of the individual 
personality; that personal immortality is not something that is assured, 
but something that must be won? 

What part of what I am to-day is but an activity of my body, 
depending solely upon it ? What part of the thought, desire and will that 
make up my personal consciousness, and constitute my personality, are 
concerned only with bodily things? What part could persist unchanged 
when death takes my body from me ? To what extent is my life a single 
coherent whole, animated by an eternal, indivisible principle or purpose ; 
or to what extent is it a mere congeries and compound of conflicting or 
incongruous elements? These are the central questions in Dr. M'Tag- 
gart's discussion of immortality ; and they return to us, no longer abstract 
or metaphysical, but as of immediate and intimate application to our- 
selves. They are questions for heart-searching self-examination, and as 
such we commend them to all readers of his work. 

HENRY BEDINGER MITCHELL. 
(To be continued} 



MOULDINGS 






The more the marble wastes 
The more the statue grows. 



ONCE I was painting a plaster angel, a dear little creature, modelled 
by some deft Italian hand, guided by a heart urging it to seek 
for something of the smooth clear sweetness that is the birthright 
of little angels. Through some miscalculated gesture the tiny 
face became irreparably injured it is so minute that the least marring 
destroys all human, or rather, angelic semblance. Ruin stared me in my 
own face, too, for I needed the figure for the redemption of a promise 
and there was no time to replace it. The only solution was to procure 
some plaster and try to repair damages. It was with a jumping heart, 
and armed only with a potato knife and some sandpaper, that I started to 
model for the first time in my life. I had heard that a sculptor was a 
man who makes faces and busts, and I felt sure it was true. To begin 
with, there was only the indistinguishable mass of fresh plaster, and the 
potato knife, and infinite space, and me. I said to myself, "Hidden 
under this grotesqueness there lurks a little creature of God and it is up 
to me to find her," and at once went to meet a wonderful experience, 
epochal, fruitful in spiritual lessons. The first lesson was that a most 
fastidious patience was of the essence of the job. One slip, one 
thousandth of a thousandth of an inch, and you slip backwards through 
the aeons. Angels are not made as quickly as Rome was built. As I 
scratched and chipped and smoothed, something emerged something not 
human, but living, animal, uncanny. Were the biological processes of 
time's beginnings to be enacted before my shuddering gaze? I tried 
again, and a human being showed itself a blood-curdling horror of a 
human being, a thousand years old, seamed with nameless evil, icily 
malignant; I chipped off some more and achieved Hindenburg with a 
thyroid enlargement not prepossessing but encouraging, as indicating 
that I might be approaching the laggards of the Fourth Race. It was 
impossible to linger there ; my next creation was a portly and pompous 
elderly lady, you could positively hear her say "Can you recommend a 
cook ?" A few strokes reduced her to youth, but she was a young woman 
who once caused me grave annoyance at a glove counter. How sculptors 
ever dodge a high spiritual insight baffles me, for they live with an arc 
light turned on the Divine scheme. Let them but take a tool and a lump 
of plaster, and deep mysteries unfold for them cosmic processes, rein- 
carnations, recessions, ascensions ! They may pass in an hour through 
the dark abysses of time to the dawn of light, from the dawn of light to 

21 



22 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

the glory of high noon. I wish I could tell you that by-and-by my little 
angel smiled upon me but no! My best result was a quite presentable 
young person who had rehearsed for an angel's part in some performance 
or other, but in the meantime a deal of sculping had been done on me. 

With the hope that my failure was due to lack of proper tools and 
that I was perchance a sculptor manque after all, I asked a real sculptor 
to tell me the names of his various instruments, thinking at least to make 
this paper sound more knowing. To my astonishment he did not know 
them and did not care. He said indifferently, "Oh, I know what I want 
and I just pick it up." "But," I protested indignantly, "I have only a 
kitchen knife and some sandpaper." "Excellent tools," was the reply, 
"if you also have a hand and an eye," and his "if" was concentrated 
essence of scepticism. 

His words gave me to think. Those Who are forming us "know just 
the tools they want and pick them up." But Who are forming us? 
Those who work in darkness or those who work in light? And what 
raw material do we offer them? Here, Galatea chooses her Pygmalion. 
Pygmalions either for good or ill, cannot sculp in warm butter or in 
feather pillows, but granted normally workable raw material, and who 
shall do our shaping? For the Will of man is free. Here Satan waits, 
past master of the art, his studio the kingdoms of this world, his tools 
superbly fashioned for their purpose. He and the chelas of his atelier 
flood the world with specimens of their prowess. Precisely as you pause 
before a canvas and say, "That is surely a da Vinci," so may you pause 
before a human and say, "That is surely a Satan ;" and you don't need a 
lorgnette either. If you cannot believe it, board a street car, go to a 
moving picture show, walk a block, and see what the genius of darkness 
can do with humanity, given the etching tools of vanity, greed, animality, 
ignorance, boredom; given the viscid plasticity of indifference, sloth, 
credulity. Then turn to art, which is but a reflection of the human. A 
few weeks ago one of the principal Fifth Avenue art shops had an 
exhibition of figurines that were marvels of faultless modelling wasted 
on the production of a lot of little obscene semi-human beasts, done with 
such deftness, such certainty of wrist, such sureness of line and curve, 
that people walked round them laughing with pleasure at the mere stunt 
of it, and the town was hugely taken with these little masterpieces of 
rottenness. 

A world that rebels against discipline and thinks to get away with it, 
is going to be disgusted by-and-by, when it meets the mirrors and sees 
itself modelled back into an ugliness that it will take generations to 
smooth out again. Someone said, "Those children are beautiful because 
they look so well whipped," and it is true that in a group of children 
you can unerringly separate the spoilt ones from the trained, by the quiet 
eyes and contented mouths of the latter. Love's chastisements may be 
dodged for a long while, but the face grows hard and empty in the 
process. A summer was once spent on a shore that prophesied of 






MOULDINGS 23 

Paradise, but where a hundred people were kept in a state of exasperated 
wretchedness by the children of a family in which was being tried out 
some uncanny cult or other, the firmest tenets of which seemed to be 
that small children could be safely left to bring themselves up, and that 
the moral judgment was fostered best in an atmosphere of turbulent 
rebellion. The eldest child was a boy of eight years, and the cult was 
going strong as far as he was concerned. When he set fire to the stable 
and pushed a small sister in to see if it hurt, we christened him Nero. 
Nero strode the bluffs leaving anguish and devastation in his wake. He 
was followed at a safe distance by a nervously prostrated governess, who 
had orders to keep him in sight but not to interfere with him. The 
former she did when it was physically possible, but the latter the wealth 
of Asia could not have bribed her to. It was awful to watch day by day 
the lines of evil forming and deepening and masking that baby face. 
Had he been as big as he was bad, we must all have packed our baggage 
and fled the scene. The terrible thought was that he soon would be. As 
we watched him refusing to bathe at bathing time ; marching into the sea 
fully clothed at meal times; kicking the shins of heroic protestants; 
clutching, bawling, swaggering, terrorizing, we could only say, "God pity 
his future wife and family ; God punish his silly parents." 

There is perhaps a touch of spoilt child in the best of us. They may 
keep us in sight if They don't interfere with us. Did I say "the best of 
us?" No not in those few, so few, in whom docility has grown to an 
ardour of rapt co-operation, who lend themselves with a still passion to the 
gentle modelling of Those who would have them lovely. Weal and woe, 
joy and sorrow, storm and calm "Sunshine we give you today, but to- 
morrow, dear little angel of becoming, pass into the shadow, and when 
that has done its work, you shall emerge once more with just the look we 
want, and the impatient ones who watch shall begin to suspect the 
meaning of sunshine and shadow." And how we hate the sandpaper! 
"Weal or woe," "Bane or blessing," these are fine mouth-filling phrases. 
We protest, "I can stand the big sorrows. I know they must come, but 
it is these little fretting things that kill me." As if the little fretting 
things were outside the plan. My little angel would never have looked 
even decent without sandpaper. The most minute changes could be 
brought about by it that yet made all the difference. Used lightly and 
persistently, and where the faults were, curves grew disciplined and 
acquiescent ; she appeared then like a little person who might "sweep a 
room unto the Lord and make that and the action fine." She rose from 
plane to plane by sandpaper. 

A deep-lurking spiritual instinct tells the striving race of man that 
beauty is its most profound obligation. It is asked of us ; the gods wait 
for it ; the whole creation groaneth and travaileth until it is made evident. 
Pigments are nothing, words are nothing, marble and stone are nothing, 
the flesh is nothing raw material all of it, but in it hides the loveliness 
that is our quest. "That Which overshadows us" whispers incessantly 



24 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

of beauty. The saint and the artist know this, and in their several ways 
they count the world well lost, they touch the garment's hem and are 
transfigured. Beauty from within out, is a shining of slow growth. 
Again and again the hasty world thinks to snatch and apply it without 
the travail, but that may not be. The meanest little lithograph or vase 
of paper flowers is the expression of an aching need ; the tattooing of the 
savage is a stumbling reach for it; the haunters of beauty parlors are 
driven by the urge 

For oh ! the gold in Helen's hair, 

And how she cried when that departed! 

But Beauty smilingly eludes all hands save those that will be scarred for 
her; she withdraws from flesh for the sake of spirit; she gives and she 
takes away again ; blessed be her Name. 

Slow grows the perfect pattern that He plans 
His wistful hands between; 

and surely it is our own fault that the emphasis should ever be upon the 
"slow." If we would only be still, only be plastic in His Hands, the 
whole business is done with one tool, and its name is Love. When we 
act like bad children at face-washing time, twisting about and refusing 
to take the impress, we force Them reluctantly to reach for that cruel- 
looking, sharp-edged sorrow, that subduing pain, that corroding disap- 
pointment and their name too is Love. There is a curve of the lips 
that only discipline lovingly accepted will bring ; there is a gentle brilliance 
in eyes that have looked and understood why sorrow is; there is a radiance 
of aspect born of the discovery that Chastener and Lover are one. Let 
us make haste, for They have the patterns of us there before them, and 
oh my brothers, but we are beautiful! 

S. 



THE LOGOS DOCTRINE 



MANY of us believe that in every cycle some aspects of the 
Wisdom Religion are made manifest to the outer world, and 
that the present theosophical movement represents such an 
unfolding of inner truth. But it is so difficult, when one is in 
the midst of being changed, to reflect at all on that into which one is 
being changed. Indeed, we cannot be expected to have a definite idea 
of the goal which the Law has set for us, because how can we know that 
which we have not seen? We can help the Law, however, to guide us 
to our appointed ends, if we sense the direction in which we are going, 
if we anticipate a little to-day what may be expected of us to-morrow, if 
we see ahead to the next bend in the stream. 

We may find much help in our effort to co-operate with the Law, if 
we study the modes of revelation of the Wisdom Religion in the past. 
For, though the content of one revelation may differ from another, the 
purpose underlying all revelations is one and the same, expressing itself 
ever more fully according to a rhythmic law. Every successive mani- 
festation of the Logos, from this point of view, is only a clearer mani- 
festation of what has already been. 

The history of the Logos Doctrine, as modified by Greek philosophy 
and by the life of Christ, is the history of an older Theosophical Move- 
ment, which realized its purpose and so far as could be was complete. 
Can that history cast any light on the meanings latent in the present 
movement, still so far from complete? 

Heraclitus of Ephesus (576-480 B.C.) seems to have been the first 
to use the Greek word, "Logos," to denote the "Word" or "Mind" of 
God. The idea, which he thus expressed, came to him most probably 
from the Egyptian Lodge. But, whether he knew the fuller implications 
of the Logos Doctrine or not, Heraclitus limited severely his public 
revelation of it. The Greeks of his time needed a moral and intellectual 
control, and to the redoubtable task of supplying this, the early sages set 
themselves. That age, so different outwardly from the modern world, 
was not so different inwardly as one might imagine. Religion had ceased 
to operate as a check on men's passions, for what sanction could self- 
control find from the "gods" of Olympus? The Greeks were developing 
physically and mentally, but deteriorating morally. 

Addressing the intellects of their hearers, the sages informed them 
of a Law, above gods and men, which judged the activities of all creatures 
and ruled supreme, giving to all things their dues. From this Law pro- 
ceeded the creation, order, processes and death of the world, both in its 
entirety and in its minutest part. The study of the Law, in relation to 
things, was called physics ; in relation to men's actions, that study was 
called ethics, and the Law itself was named Nemesis. 



26 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

It appears that there was an increasing consciousness of the reality 
of the all-controlling Law, during that time, and that this consciousness 
took one form in the adoration of the beautiful. It was through the love 
of form and beauty, that a mould was prepared to receive a new revelation 
and a new appeal. Pythagoras and Plato showed, behind the mortal and 
imperfect forms of earthly beauty, a world of immortal and absolute 
loveliness. The effort of man to realize the beautiful on earth was in 
reality the effort of the soul to disentangle itself from the matter of 
illusion and to return to the real world, from which it had fallen in the 
beginning. Thus, to the aspect of Law, which the first sages had revealed 
as pertaining to the Logos, was added the aspect of Beauty, of Perfection, 
as of the Model, to which the universe of souls should conform. 

But was there any possible reconciliation between the two Aspects? 
Is the nature of things one with their proper goal? Does Providence 
exist ? 

It is the contribution of Philo Judseus (20 B.C.-54 A.D.) that he 
answered those questions affirmatively and more clearly than his prede- 
cessors; so that, when St. Paul undertook to illumine the life of Christ, 
he found an adequate intellectual atmosphere prepared for him. Philo 
said that Life was the reconciling term, that the Logos was not merely 
the impersonal Law and Model for life, but was Itself alive in the souls 
of all beings. By aspiration the soul could set in movement all the force 
of the Law to bring it to realize the ideal set for it high in the heavens ; 
nay, more, the Law itself existed only to awaken in the soul that 
aspiration, which is the birth into the greater Life. 

Christ, the Master, lived what Philo taught. The Logos made itself 
manifest at last, not through philosophy or art or science, but through a 
living man, born mortal and imperfect, who achieved immortality and 
perfection. 

But the early Christians lost sight too soon of this crown of the 
Doctrine, that above all other attributes it was a life. The sophistries 
of the dying Grseco-Roman world were too contagious. Theologians 
turned to the intellectual background and lost sight of the central figure 
of the living Master standing before them. Thus, instead of subjecting 
the intellect to the life, they enthroned the intellect and denied the life. 
They made the fundamental error of trying to separate the foundation- 
stones of the temple from the temple itself, with the result that at last 
the whole building fell upon their heads. 

Once more divine hands are helping to rebuild the temple. They 
must use the same stones the minds and souls of men. But what is 
of the greatest significance in the present connection they are placing 
the stones, I think, one upon another in the same order as of old. To a 
world whose religion had become stale and whose intellectual power was 
in unchecked momentum, the Lodge, through The Theosophical Society, 
offered a philosophy teaching the omnipresence of a spiritual Law, 
supreme above all the laws of nature, and operative in the human or 



THE LOGOS DOCTRINE 27 

moral sphere quite as surely as in the physical. The clouds were lifted 
long enough from the divine reality above and around us, for us to 
glimpse a little of the splendour and power of the Masters, the Models 
which human souls are destined to become. The way to realize that des- 
tiny has been shown through the life of devotion and aspiration and love. 
Success or failure rests with us. We must not allow the intellectual 
mise en scene to fascinate us, for all this exists only to help us to learn 
to live the life of discipleship. When once more an Avatar will fulfil 
his mission among men, let it not be said of him that his work had to be 
done by him all alone ! Let us commence to work for him now. 

STANLEY V. LADow. 



There is a wide difference between that sweetness of devotion which 
we desire because it is agreeable, and that resolution of heart which we 
ought to desire because it renders us true servants of God. SPIRITUAL 
LETTERS OF S. FRANCIS DE SALES. 



BY THE MASTER 

ISHA UPANISHAD 



TRANSLATED FROM THE SANSKRIT WITH AN INTERPRETATION 

III 

By a veil as of gold, the face of the Real is hidden. thou 
Shepherd of the flock, Lord of the sun, lift up that veil, for the vision 
of the law of the Real! 

THIS is the veil of Maya, the world illusion, the world glamour. 
What in essence is that veil? 
Let us begin with simple illustrations. We have used the 
word "glamour," which is the old English name of the power 
used by a sorcerer or witch, whether for self-concealment or to 
deceive in other ways; the power thus defined by the dictionary: "A 
magical deception of the eyes, making things appear different from what 
they are." 

This is the power commonly known in our day as hypnotism, 
whereby the subject of hypnotic influence, for example, sees an onion as 
an apple, or takes vinegar for wine. All exercises of hypnotic power 
are dependent on glamour, and are, therefore, forms of sorcery and 
witchcraft. Our self-styled scientific age has simply changed the name, 
while using the same power. 

This leads one naturally to self-hypnotism, which our age recognizes 
as a reality, though it is far indeed from realizing its scope. Self- 
hypnotism through the influence of desire is, indeed, fairly well under- 
stood, at least when it is operative in others; but the far more subtle 
self-hypnotism through the lower mind has a reach which is still almost 
unsuspected. 

In these interpretations, we have spoken of Bergson, and of his 
penetrating analysis of the lower mind, as the instrument which the 
Life has called into being and developed, in order to deal with the 
material world; and the most valuable part of Bergson's work is the 
detailed description of the way in which the mind-machine distorts 
reality, in order thus to deal with it practically. Over against the mind- 
machine Bergson sets intuition, the power which, being a part of the Life 
itself, directly lays hold of the Life, and apprehends the Life as it is. 

But, as we have suggested before, Bergson seems not to get at the 
heart of the matter, because he is inclined to consider rather the mental 
operation of the lower nature, without going deeply into its moral 
operation. 

28 



BY THE MASTER 29 

The mind-machine is, it is true, moulded and adapted to dealing 
with material facts, with the whole order of the material world. But 
Bergson passes lightly over the force, the impulse which has forced the 
Life in this direction, and has kept it thus bent upon the material world : 
the force of desire, the force called by the Buddhists "thirst," or "lust," 
in the general sense, as in the phrase "the lust of the eyes." 

Speaking generally, then, the impelling force is the desire of the 
personal self, the personality, for all those things which gratify its thirst. 
And all these desires ultimately rest upon the lower self's desire of life, 
the desire to be keenly and vividly conscious of its own separate exist- 
ence ; a brute instinct, unreasoning, headstrong, for its own perpetuation. 

And this strong brute instinct continues, having, in a sense, an exist- 
ence of its own, even after considerable development of the better and 
more humane, because more spiritual, nature has been attained. Besides 
the man's truer and deeper consciousness, with its aspiration and com- 
passion, there lingers this submerged life, desperately fighting for its 
own perpetuation; alert, tricky, fruitful in expedients, endlessly 
resourceful, and quite determined to thwart any change or development 
which threatens its own lease of life. This is the passional element in 
the lower nature, which Bergson might have analyzed and set forth to 
view, had he been less exclusively interested in the mental and theoretical 
view of life, and more interested in the practical and spiritual. 

The lower personal life, the egotism, that which is often called the 
"personality," though this word later comes to have a better and higher 
meaning, has a powerful life and obstinate purposes of its own; it is, in 
a sense, an invader, a traitor in the camp, or, quite literally, an obsessing 
force, an evil spirit, to use the term of an older and simpler day. 

But it is a part of the resourceful and subtle strategy of this 
obsessing egotism, that it largely keeps itself in hiding; lurking, as it 
were, below the margin of ordinary consciousness, and, from this hiding 
place, warping both understanding and will, for its own purposes for 
the perpetuation of that low order of life and consciousness in which it 
can luxuriate and grow fat. 

Two things, which are in reality but two aspects of the same thing, 
namely, spiritual vision and sacrifice, directly cut at the root of the 
egotism's life, threatening to draw the Life upward beyond the low level 
on which the egotism flourishes. Therefore the egotism is ceaselessly at 
war with these two things. It is the deadly enemy of spiritual vision, 
and of the aspiration which foreshadows spiritual vision; and therefore 
it ceaselessly seeks to drug and benumb the mental powers, in order to 
blind them to spiritual reality. 

All doctrines of materialism, without any exception whatever, are 
due to the wakeful activity of this skilful stage-manager, who sets the 
scenery while himself keeping out of sight. 

These doctrines of the negation of spiritual things have their ulti- 
mate root, not in some mental shortcoming or even perversity, but rather 



30 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

in a certain moral obliquity, in the prompting of the hidden demon who 
lurks in the darkness, until he is finally dragged forth into the light. 
Then begins a life and death struggle, which is the real drama of the 
soul, the theme of all mystical and religious books. 

It is just because they are righting an enemy now fully seen, that 
the saints recognize themselves to be "the chief of sinners." They have, 
through aspiration and sacrifice, stripped off the veil of this evil power; 
they see it in its hideousness, as it really is. And seeing, they know 
that they must fight to the death, overcoming, lest they be overcome. 
And they also know that no power or resource within the limits of their 
own personalities can give them the victory ; nothing but the divine power 
of the Spirit itself, the Saviour, the Redeemer. 

The saints speak with horror and loathing of this demoniac power, 
so long hidden but at last revealed, because they clearly see that its 
purpose is the death of every element of spiritual life. It seeks, quite 
literally, to "kill the soul," in the words of this Upanishad. And they 
likewise know how powerful it is, how subtle; its subtlety shown most 
of all in the way in which it remains concealed. Though obsessing the 
greater part of human life, it remains largely unsuspected, frankly dis- 
believed in by most people, and itself prompting that disbelief. It is well 
said that the devil's greatest triumph is to persuade people that there 
is no devil. Be it noted, by the way, that he generally persuades the 
same people that there is no God either, in the practical sense of a King 
requiring sacrifice and obedience. 

The personality, in the sense we have given it, is "the veil of Maya" ; 
that which conceals Truth, as with the lure of gold. 

Who, then, is he who is to raise the veil? The name given in this 
Drama of the Mysteries is that of a Vedic deity, who is both a Shepherd 
of flocks and a Sun divinity, a Lord and Giver of Light. 

The Good Shepherd, the Lord and Giver of Light the symbolism is 
universal and old as life itself. That Lord and Shepherd is the Master 
who initiates the disciple, leading the disciple, by painful ways of sacrifice 
and purification, out of darkness into light, from beneath the yoke of evil 
into the liberty of the sons of God. 

This intensely practical task is the essence and subject matter of all 
religion. When it is undertaken with full understanding and conscious- 
ness, it leads to full discipleship, and, in due time, to the Great Initiation, 
which is the subject of this Upanishad. 

Therefore the Good Shepherd, the Lord and Giver of Light, is 
invoked, to lift the glistering veil, to give the vision of the Eternal. 

Shepherd and Lord of Light, thou Only Seer, Lord of Death, Light- 
Giver, Son of the Lord of Life, send forth thy rays and bring them 
together! 

That radiance of thine, thy form most beautiful I behold; the 
Spiritual Man in the real world. That am I! 



BY THE MASTER 31 

This marks the consummation of the Great Initiation, the full vision 
of Divinity, wherein the consciousness of the disciple becomes one with 
the consciousness of the Master, and of that Master's Master and the 
whole ascending chain of Spiritual Life, up to and including the supreme 
Nirvana. 

Then follows the transformation spoken of in that most mystical 
tract, The Elixir of Life, which is thus indicated in this Upanishad : 

My Spirit enters the Spirit, the Immortal. And this body has its 
end in ashes. 

There remain only the closing words, addressed to the new-born 
spiritual man: 

O Sacrifice, remember! Remember what has been done! O Sacri- 
fice, remember! Remember what has been done! 

O Divine Fire, lead us by the good path to Victory! Bright One, 
thou who knowest all wisdoms! 

Give us victory over our consuming sin! To Thee we offer the 
highest word of praise ! 



Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power to acquiesce in thy 
present condition, and to behave justly to those who are about thee. 
MARCUS ANTONINUS. 






THE PRINCIPAL PROBLEM 



THERE is a problem in life a marvellous and most important 
one which seekers of truth ought to contemplate daily, not only 
till it is fairly well understood, but till it has made them eagerly 
anxious to make the wisdom it unveils to them a living power 
in their lives. In "The Two Paths" this problem is mentioned in the 
following way: "Alas, Alas, that all men should possess Alaya, be one 
with the Great Soul, and that possessing it, Alaya should so little avail 
them." 

From a Christian point of view I venture to phrase this clause thus : 
"Alas, Alas, that all men should possess the Spirit of God, be one with 
the omnipresent Deity, and that possessing it, God should avail them so 
little." 

This complaint reverberates through all nature. It is secretly ex- 
pressed in every sound, in every movement of things that move, nay even 
in the stern silence of the immovable rock. Why is it that the omnipresent 
Deity is not felt in the heart of man ? God must be there, since no place, 
no spot, not a single atom can be without that which is omnipresent. 
The reason is that He is there as a latent potency only, as a power at 
rest. He is there in His own state of being, unrevealed as before the 
beginning of the present period of cosmic activity ; and in that state man 
knows Him not, in spite of all that has been said, heard, read, or learned 
by heart about Him. We are unconscious of that which is not manifest, 
and what we are unconscious of, is non-existent to us. God is a thought- 
form only, used as an ornament in our lives, and when we are praying 
to God we are but praying to this ornament, unless the Deity has been 
brought to reveal Itself in our heart, to some extent, thus making it 
possible for us to have some rare glimpses of Its glorious nature. 

But God must be manifest in man. This is, in fact, the purpose of 
life. 

In what way, then, can this be done? Is it something that occurs 
spontaneously without our co-operation or will? If so, then the gift of 
free will is not a blessing, but a malignant trap only, set up by an evil 
spirit for the purpose of tormenting man. 

But fortunately it is not so. Man has free will as a remedy for 
his salvation. It is the only remedy that can further his development 
from his original animal state to that of a self-conscious human being, 
and then to a divine being that has become one with the Father in Heaven. 
In order to become a God, he must learn to discern between good and 
evil, between morality and immorality, between the immortal and the 
mortal. And he must learn to choose, of his own free will, between 
these two opposite sides of life. His free will puts him on a higher level 
than the animal, which acts according to natural instinct and without 

32 



THE PRINCIPAL PROBLEM 33 

discernment between good and evil. On the scale of evolution man 
stands between God and the animal, and of his own free will he can 
raise himself or sink, raise himself to the Kingdom of God, or sink 
back into the animal kingdom for an Eternity; in due time (in another 
evolutionary period) to scale again the steep ladder that leads from the 
animal state to the human state, and then to the blessed state of the 
immortal. 

Man has got free will for his birthright, but the power to discern 
right and wrong must be developed and made perfect. If he chooses 
right he becomes a co-worker with nature and the law of evolution, and 
he will reap strength, happiness and peace. If he makes mistakes the 
Law will oppose him and put him to rights. It will be the school- 
master that brings him to Christ. And the Law is a teacher whose 
instruction is based on right principles. Therefore, man, the pupil, is 
brought to learn with his own brain, of his own experience, that which 
is to be learnt. He must raise his whole nature with an effort of his 
own. This does not mean that man, as he generally thinks himself to 
be, viz., a being that is under the authority of his brain-consciousness, 
can do this, because this authority is the mind governed by desire and 
therefore weak, unstable and not reliable. But there is a higher authority 
in man than the consciousness of the brain. There is the soul that is 
a spark of the Universal Soul, the Father in Heaven. And through his 
soul man is a child of this Father, and as long as he has not forfeited 
his sonship, he can appeal to his Father for help. And help is never 
denied him that worships in spirit and in truth. 

In what way, then, can man be a co-worker with the evolutionary 
law in order to develop his nature from its present low state to the state 
of a divine being, thus making God manifest in his life? Or to put it 
differently: How must he direct his aspiration and effort, and use his 
will, in order to raise himself to the Kingdom of God and become con- 
scious of his union with the Father in Heaven? 

In the excellent scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, this question is 
answered to such an extent that the possibility of being doubtful seems 
precluded. But as Christians we ought to find an answer in our own 
religion, in the Gospel of Love brought to the Western people by our 
Master, Jesus the Christ. A few quotations from the sayings of this 
Master will suffice. He said : "I am the way," . . . "No man can come 
to the Father except by the Son." From this it is evident that access to 
the Father and His Kingdom can only be obtained by being a follower of 
Christ, or by becoming His disciple. Christ is the way for the Christian, 
as Krishna is the way for many Hindus. The essential thing is, there- 
fore, to find out what discipleship means, what its rules are, and then 
to comply with them. On this head the Master has spoken very clearly. 
These are His words : "Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come 
after me, cannot be my disciple," .... "If ye continue in my word 
then are ye my disciples indeed," .... "I have given an example," 



34 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

. . . . "Be ye therefore perfect as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect." These are plain words. Discipleship means that we must 
bear our cross, and accept our circumstances in this world without com- 
plaint or reluctance, always striving to keep His word, to follow His 
example, to learn from Him to be meek and lowly in heart, and to be 
perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. This means an entire change 
of life, not a change of circumstances, or to run away from our duty here 
and now, but a change of our inner attitude to the things of this world, 
and to things divine as well. We must learn to meet the circumstances 
and events of this life as something sent us from above for our school- 
ing, and as a help in our efforts to raise ourselves from our present low 
state as mortals to the divine state of immortals. And we must learn to 
pray with a cheerful mind: "Not my will but thine," knowing that 
nothing can happen against the will of the heavenly Father, and that all 
must be for the best, since it is the eternal Law of Compassion and 
Righteousness that governs our lives both in this world and the next. It 
is only our ignorance about the great need of our souls, and our lack of 
faith and love, that make us accept so many of the blessings of our 
heavenly Father with bad grace and even with obstinacy. We must 
learn obedience, and obedience will strengthen our love. If only we will 
study life, as it is, we shall see that there can be no true love without 
obedience, or the will to give one's life for the beloved one, and to serve 
and defend him. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay 
down his life for his friends," said the Christian Master. And this is 
not an obedience forced upon us ; nor do we obey from fear, or reluctantly 
as a slave, but of free will governed by love. We are, in truth, obedient 
to the highest biddings of our own hearts. We are following the example 
of the Master who gave his life for all, and whose meat it was to do the 
will of the Father. We are bearing our cross, continuing in the Master's 
words, and striving to be perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect. 
Then we shall have become disciples or true followers of Christ. 

Another distinctive feature of the disciple's life must be mentioned, 
because true discipleship is impossible without it. He must acquire the 
power of continual meditation. The meaning of this has often been 
expounded in a most explicit way. At the present time, however, when 
discipleship has become the most vital thing in the life of a Christian, it 
seems wise again and again to point out the real meaning of it. 

Continual meditation is a life not made up of scattered moments of life, 
but a life that is unbroken in its continuity. And human life is conscious- 
ness combined with reason and will. And since it is only when we are 
conscious of a thing that it really exists for us, it is evident that if we 
are not conscious of the presence of God in our inner life, then He has 
no reality for us, though He abides there as He does everywhere else. 
We may talk of God because we have been taught so much about Him. 
We may think that we know much about Him from what we see in the 
nature of the world and read in its history. But this is intellectual knowl- 



THE PRINCIPAL PROBLEM 35 

edge only. Many of us may firmly believe in His existence, because to 
us He is a logical necessity, and because so many have borne strong wit- 
ness about Him. But this is not the same as being conscious of Him. 
To us He is still but a thought-form, a fine ornament. Christ is still an 
outer ideal and not an inner reality, which He must be. It is only when 
we begin to be conscious of His presence in our inner life that He 
gradually becomes something real to us. It is only then that Christ and 
the Father have come and made their abode with us. And here some 
quotations from the sayings of St. Paul and St. John may be helpful: 
"If any man hath not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his/' "Know 
ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you ?" Thus speaks 
St. Paul, and St. John says : "And he that keepeth his commandments 
abideth in him, and he in him. He that saith I know him, and keepeth 
not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." Therefore, 
as long as we do not keep the commandments of God, we cannot in truth 
say that God is in us as an active power, though He is there as a power 
at rest, or, let us hope, as the power in the little leaven that in time will 
leaven our whole inner and outer lives. 

How, then, shall we gain this consciousness of God? 

We must begin to practise the presence of God, which means to 
practise the presence of Christ, our Master; for Christ has said: 
"Neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son and he to whom the 
Son will reveal him." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 
And this must be taken literally. Not that we shall see Him with our 
physical eyes, but with the eyes of the developed spiritual man. We must 
try to feel that the Master is present in our inner life, not only for short 
intervals when we are absorbed in prayer or meditation, but continually. 
We must imagine Him to be there always, taking part in our doings, 
always watching, guiding, repairing, that He upholds us every minute 
with His tender love and compassion. 

To begin with, we must hold this attitude of mind at certain times 
a day, for instance, when rising in the morning, in the middle of the 
day, and before going to bed at night. And on certain days, especially on 
Sundays in church or at home, we must try to make this time for 
prayer and meditation longer and more effective by giving ourselves to 
the Master with profound thankfulness and devotion. At first we shall 
find this practice very difficult, and it will claim all our strength and 
resoluteness to carry it out to some small extent only. We shall find 
that we fail continually, and we may feel discouraged and lose faith in 
ourselves ; and perhaps shortly all is given up, and we rush back to the 
world and are again shackled with the chains that had already begun to 
loosen, or were partly fallen. But if we really desire to be disciples of the 
Master, we shall persevere even if our efforts seem utterly in vain. And 
it will not be long before we shall experience the blessing of the practice. 
What at first seemed so difficult, and so objectionable to our lower 
nature, will gradually become easy and pleasant. This practice will 



36 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

grow into a habit, and we shall come to love it; and what we love we 
are always going back to in our thought and feelings. We shall find 
ourselves able to extend our consciousness of the Master's presence, 
first, to frequently recurring times, then to every hour, to every minute 
and while doing all kinds of work. We shall come to think of Him as 
always standing by, controlling and inspiring us to do the will of the 
Father. And finally we shall recognize Him in our inner life, not only 
as a vague idea, but as an ever-present reality. Then we have found 
our Master, have become one with Him, and He will bring us to the 
Father. Then the principal problem of life has been solved. 

There is no reason for us to feel discouraged, or to fear that we 
shall fall short of the goal. The Divine Law of evolution will in time 
bring us there. But it depends on us whether our journey along the 
evolutionary stream, from our present stage onward, shall be short and 
pleasant, or long, wearisome and full of pain. But it must be remem- 
bered that the conscious presence of the Master is the life of the new 
man which, according to St. Paul, "after God, hath been created in 
righteousness and holiness of truth." And it must also be remembered 
that the new man has his foetal state, and develops in a similar way to 
that of a physical embryo from within without, although on a higher 
scale of evolution. And after the foetal state comes the childhood. From 
a spiritual point of view few people are yet above the state of childhood, 
and how many are even born again, or have left the foetal state? And 
as the physical embryo, as well as the physical child, can die when 
unfavourable circumstances set in, so adverse circumstances can bring 
the new man to perish in his foetal state, or later, when still a child. And 
we are creating adverse circumstances whenever our free will jars 
against the will of God, though, as a rule, not unfavourable enough to 
kill, fortunately. But if they kill, then that personality is thrown off 
from the evolutionary stream as waste for an eternity, or until another 
period of cosmic activity. 

As the life of the animal man must be kept up and strengthened with 
proper food and exercise, so the man of the second birth, must be 
nourished and trained properly. Christ has pointed out the proper food 
when saying : "My meat is to do the will of the Father." Thus, when- 
ever we are doing the will of the Father, we are feeding the man who is 
to be the perfect man. And in order to attain to this state, we have to 
be trained and taught by the Master while we are in the physical world, 
the boarding-school of the new man in his younger days, or till he has 
attained "unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
fullness of Christ," as St. Paul has said. When this is accomplished, the 
purpose of life has been fulfilled, and man has become more than man. 

THOMAS H. KNOFF. 



SUFIISM 



II 

EMERSON speaks of the poet as one who "sees and handles that 
which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, 
and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power 
to receive and to impart." These words, particularly the last 
phrase, seem applicable with regard to the Sufi poets of Persia, for, after 
the lapse of centuries and the accompanying decline of Sufiism, there is 
nothing to-day so representative of the teaching, nor so much a power to 
impart it, as the work of certain of the great Persian poets. A number 
of the greatest among these were Sufis, and it naturally follows that some 
of the finest expressions of Sufiism were in verse. So far as they are 
accessible then for translations are comparatively few the work of 
these poets may afford a fairly complete understanding of what Sufiism 
really was and of what it stood for. 

For this purpose, no better example could be found than Jalalu'd- 
Din-Rumi, who has been termed the greatest mystical poet of any age. 
Jalal was born at Balkh, in Persia, in 1207. At that period in Europe, 
Innocent III was conducting the numerous Crusades against the infidel 
abroad and the heretic at home, and Saint Francis of Assisi was calling 
his people to a new love of God though these facts, since the cyclic law 
in the orient probably operates differently from our own, need convey no 
special significance, serving merely to link less familiar with more familiar 
events. The father of the poet was a professor and a preacher, a man 
of great learning, who for political reasons moved to Bagdad shortly 
after the birth of his son and just before the destruction of Balkh by 
Genghis Khan who, with his Mongol hordes, was then laying waste all 
Asia. For a considerable time the family moved from place to place, 
remaining several years in Mecca, Damascus and elsewhere, and finally 
settling in Iconium. Here, on the death of his father, Jalal succeeded 
to his professorial duties. He had possessed unusual ability from early 
youth, was a man of brilliant attainments, and drew pupils from far and 
near, having about four hundred in attendance on his instruction. 

Such was his life when, in 1244, there appeared a dervish, Sham- 
su'ddin or Shamsi Tabriz a great Sufi teacher sent in turn, according 
to some accounts, by his teacher, to seek out Jalal who, it had been 
revealed to him, would be a great Sufi. Partly, no doubt, because of lack 
of accurate information and partly because of the oriental flavour the 
atmosphere that we are all familiar with in the Arabian Nights 
Shamsu'ddin is represented as a weird and mysterious figure clad in 
black felt and wearing a peculiar cap the subject of numerous though 
rather vague legendary accounts. By some he has been compared to 
Socrates, chiefly because, while more or less illiterate himself, he had the 
power to draw to him men of rare gifts, even of genius, through whom 

37 



38 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

his message could be given to the world. He was a man of great power, 
eloquence and magnetism; also a man of great spirituality. Jalal was 
quick to recognize his spiritual greatness ; at once gave himself completely 
to his teaching, and the two withdrew for a time to the solitude of the 
desert. 

Curiously enough, Jalal's response to his master's call roused no 
kindred feeling among his friends and pupils, but inspired in them 
perhaps because of certain antagonistic qualities in the master, perhaps 
for other reasons only wrath and resentment. Their teacher they 
regarded as mad, for a time, and their ill treatment, either actual or 
threatened, of Shamsu'ddin, resulted in his sudden flight to Tabriz. Jalal 
immediately followed and brought him back. A repetition of the expres- 
sions of ill-will which was shared by the populace as well, caused a second 
flight and, this time, a two years' sojourn in Damascus. Again he was 
induced to return. But he was not to dwell in Iconium unmolested, and 
in a short time he died a violent death, long and deeply mourned by 
Jalal, who wrote in his honour one of his most exquisite lyrical poems, 
and instituted the dance of the Order of Mevlevi dervishes. 

Probably the most noted of the works of Jalal is his Masnavi, an 
epic poem which has been styled the "sacred book of Sufiism." Trans- 
lators of Persian poems warn the reader of the difficulty, almost the 
impossibility of preserving in their work the true flavour of the original. 
We all know how much may be lost, what a pale reflection may result, in 
making a simple translation say from French into English. In an oriental 
tongue the difficulty is infinitely greater. The orient deals with a world 
of ideas with which the occidental mind is wholly unfamiliar ; modes of 
thought, laws of esthetics, rules of rhetoric, all may be totally different 
from ours, or, if similar, then employed with a different significance. 
The poetic value and beauty of the Masnavi in the original are attested 
beyond all question, but it is one of the works in which the difficulties of 
translation are obvious. It is enigmatic and ambiguous ; full of subtleties 
of thought and obscurities of expression. It is not, as might be expected, 
a treatise on Sufiism. Instead, it is a collection of ethical teachings, 
allegories, interpretations of Koranic texts, wise counsels given in various 
forms and all strung loosely together, without any methodical progression 
of thought. Yet, with all its peculiarities of style and form, there is not 
a page that does not repay whatever effort the reading may involve, for 
its truths are universal. The author is a student of life, and the lessons 
he teaches are lessons that each reader, oriental and occidental alike, can 
apply with profit to his own everyday difficulties. The absurdity and the 
evil of servile imitation ; the necessity of rooting up bad habits while they 
are new ; the futility of seeking in mere outer form the "fruit and produce 
of the tree of spirituality" ; the need of finding a touchstone to distinguish 
the counterfeit from the true gold in daily life, where we, every one of 
us, are seekers after gold, these and many another truth are taught in 
simple allegory, often in the current phraseology of the day. 

One such story may be given, not merely as an illustration, but also 



SUFIISM 39 

because of the aptness of its lesson. A shepherd was praising God in his 
simple way, saying, "O God, O God ! Where are you that I may become 
your servant ; . . . that I may kiss your little hands, and rub your 
little feet, and when the time of sleeping comes I may sweep out your 
little room, O You for whom all my goats be sacrificed !" Moses, who 
stood nearby, was stern in his rebuke, declaring that such blasphemy had 
"turned the brocade of religion into old rags." And the shepherd tore 
his garments and departed, repenting, into the desert. But God was 
displeased with Moses and said : 

"You have separated my slave from me. 

"Have you been sent in order to unite, or have you been sent in 
order to separate ? . . . 

"I have put in every one a particular character; I have given to 
every one a particular mode of expression. 

"From him it is praise, but from you it would be blame ; from him 
it is honey, but from you it would be poison. . . . 

"I do not become pure through their ascription of praise ; it is they 
who become pure and scatterers of pearls. 

"I do not look at the tongue or speech; I look at the soul and 
condition. 

"I inspect the heart as to whether it be humble ; though the speak- 
ing of the words be not humble. . 

"Enough of these words, conceptions, and figurative expressions! 
I wish for ardour, ardour ! Content yourself with this ardour ! 

"Light up the fire of love in your soul, and burn entirely thought 
and expression." 

Following close, however, on the simplicity of lines like these, may 
come obscurities such as the following: "Do not flee to the six-sides, 
because in sides there is the station of the six valleys, and that station is 
check-mate, check-mate." Or, "Dust be on the head of the bone which 
prevents the dog from hunting the rational soul." 

The first of these means, briefly, that the material world should be 
abandoned for the spiritual world; and the second concerns the Sufi 
teaching of the "carnal soul" (here termed the dog), which may incline 
toward earthly things, the things of the body (the bone) or, by discipline 
and religious exercise, may lift itself up and become one with the "rational 
soul." 

Again there are occasional lines which show the author in his true 
guise of mystical poet, and in his 

"Except at night the Moon has no effulgence. Seek not the 
Heart's Desire except through heart's pain," 

we have the oriental counterpart of the Christian mystic's certainty that 
there can be no love without suffering and that the Master draws nearest 
in the dark hour of trial. 

Lines like these suggest that lyric already mentioned, for which the 
poet is justly noted, namely, the Divani Shamsi Tabriz, written partly in 



40 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

memory of the teacher, and altogether as a tribute to him. "In the 
Divani," says one commentator, "we have the poet with his singing robes 
about him." Truly we have that and much more, for the poem is an 
exquisite expression of the message of Sufiism, written in the language 
of love of the lover and the Beloved. It is the speech of one who has 
tasted of communion and would call others to that joy. 

"I cried out at midnight, 'Who is in this house of the heart?' 
He said, ' Tis I, by whose countenance moon and sun are shamed.' 
He said, Why is this house of the heart filled with diverse images ?' 
Said I, 'They are the reflection of thee, O thou whose face is a 

candle of Chigil.' 

He said, 'What is this other image, bedabbled with heart's blood?' 
Said I, 'This is the image of me, heartsore and with feet in the mire.' 
I bound the neck of my soul and brought it to him as a token : 
'It is the confidant of love ; do not sacrifice thine own confidant.' " 

To quote at too great length would, of course, be a mistake, yet how, 
but in his own words, give the urge of his plea that we leave the "world 
of severance" where the "earthly flame has entrapped us" and, listening 
to the voice of Love, seek the world of union : 

"Oh how long shall we, like children, in the earthly sphere 
Fill our lap with dust and stones and sherds? 
Let us give up the earth and fly heavenwards, 
Let us flee from childhood to the banquet of men. . . . 
A voice came to the spirit, 'Spirit thee away to the Unseen, 
Take the gain and the treasure and lament the pain no more/ " 

This, perhaps, is the message of Sufiism, take the gain and the 
treasure, and lament the pain no more. And it is a message not only for 
the men of an earlier day, but for each and every one in our own day, 
who can hear and comprehend. As compared with the commonplace 
world of care and weariness, loneliness and misunderstanding in which 
the vast majority now live, what a new world it opens up. What perfec- 
tion of understanding and sympathy, what intimacy of devotion, what 
generous outpouring of love, love given and love received the complete 
fulfilment of all that many a human heart so longs for. And the Beloved, 
the Master, is calling his children now, as he has called through the 
centuries, 

"Come, come, for you will not find another friend like me. 

Where indeed is a beloved like me in all the world. 

Come, come, and do not spend your life in wandering to and fro, 

Since there is no market elsewhere for your money. 

You are as a dry valley and I as the rain, 

You are as a ruined city and I as the architect. 

Except my service, which is joy's sunrise, 

Man never has felt and never will feel an impression of joy." 

J.C. ' 



STUDYING LIGHT ON THE PATH 

JN OUR Branch we had not read Light on the Path together for a 
great many years. Of course we studied it individually, but some 
of us had had experiences with its uncompromising revelations and 
demands which made us wary of any united effort to probe into its 
teachings. Here is a typical case. Several of us were reading and dis- 
cussing the book ; we were all new students, all trying to orient ourselves, 
and not in the least confident, at any moment, whether we were standing in 
the shoals of the "ocean of Theosophy," or rapidly being carried out to sea 
by its unseen currents, of which, if the truth were told, we were all 
secretly much afraid. 

With all those conflicting notions shut up, out of sight, in some very 
stupid, commonplace looking exteriors, a few of us took up Light on the 
Path, because of the promise held out by its title. The text itself seemed 
to us an odd way of stating the facts of life, as we had come to know 
them we wished, some of us, that we could invite the author of the 
book to attend one of our little gatherings; his point of view was so 
original that we should have liked to hear his phrasing of the more 
modern problems with which we each had to deal. 

Suddenly one day, the most interesting and constructive member of 
our coterie announced that he did not care to go on with the reading, but 
that he would be delighted to join us later when we took up some other 
book, especially if it were some modern treatise on philosophy. There 
was consternation, because this man's reading of our text had been so 
discriminating, had shown such insight, that we were all greatly indebted 
to him ; we felt that we could not afford to lose his contributions to our 
discussions. Pressed for some account of his sudden loss of interest, 
he first fenced, and then said, bluntly, "This is all for me ; I have had 
enough. The teaching is plain do this and that, and you will get access 
to more light. It is, I am convinced, the light for which I have been 
looking, but the fact is that I am not willing to pay the price indicated ; 
there are other things that I want to enjoy. I find that I cannot 
reconcile myself to doing without them, just yet. Later, I hope I shall 
strike this road again, but as long as I want what lies in the fields beside 
it there is no use in continuing to think about what is down the road, for 
I am not going there." The rest of us either thought he was giving a 
clever description of how it feels to be bored, or else envied his vision 
of what was demanded in order to get light. To us it was by no means 
clear what the price might be ; we wanted to find out. Yet somehow that 
episode broke up our impromptu gatherings ; and later some of us began 
to wonder whether he who had rejected the truth had not understood it 
better, had not really paid it higher tribute, than the rest of us who went 
blundering on, working at it now and then, trying half-heartedly to 
understand what it was all about. 



42 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

It was years later one dislikes to count up their number that we 
again felt an inner urging to get below the surface of the same little 
book. Our friend had not yet exhausted the allurements of the worldly 
life to which he had given himself, but it had become "dust and ashes," 
and we were beginning to look for his return. Where would he find 
us? What had we learned? We decided to find out. We read three 
or four pages, slowly, taking a number of evenings for it, and we had a 
good time together, bringing to the common store what we could from 
our reading and living. At the close of the evening we were often left 
with a very pleasant sense of having listened, and perhaps made some 
slight contribution to, interpretations of the text that went far below its 
surface and made connections with our everyday problems which we had 
not before suspected. Really we seemed to be making progress in finding 
out what the author meant us to learn from it. 

Imagine our surprise when, in response to a kindly question from 
our Branch President about the progress of our studies, we heard one of 
our number say: "We are having such interesting meetings but I come 
away from them with a heavy heart." [A strange report to make, but 
we registered the intention to pay more heed to this member's comments 
or questions, and so to be more helpful in the future.] "Heavy with 
so much learning?" was our President's chaffing response. "Do they," 
glancing at the rest of us, "give you no chance to unload any of it?" 
"Yes, every chance," our comrade replied, "and a great deal is said that 
I should never have dug out for myself ; still, my heart is heavy. I 
suppose I had expected to get more than I was prepared to try to give. 
There is hardly a phrase in section one that I have not stood before, 
asked its meaning, and turned away with little more than the assurance 
that there was something very definite and practical for me behind it, 
something that I ought to be doing about it. Yes, there was more; the 
conviction that I should find the key that would unlock that treasure. 
And now we have gone past scores of those treasure carriers, and, 
grateful as I am for all the others have helped me to understand, I am in 
worse case than before I have not found a single one of those desired 
keys, that is, I have not recognized them. My complaint is of my own 
stupidity, not of lack of help, which my fellows have always so generously 
given. Why, even the four unnumbered rules on page one I might as 
well be wholly frank are as much of a puzzle to me as they were the 
day I first read them. I do not yet know what the author, He from 
whose dictation they were 'written down,' meant me to take from them !" 

That had been a long speech for this usually silent member, called out 
by a real desire. A plea for help was its undertone, and a response to 
it began to rise in our hearts, also. Yes, after all, what did those rules 
mean? A question from one or another of us started the President to 
thinking, then to an occasional provocative counter question we were 
off ! there was evidently going to be some real talk. That hope became a 
certainty when some of our other officers, who had been occupied with 



STUDYING LIGHT ON THE PATH 43 

special duties, felt the pull of the desire which was being expressed and 
joined in the conversation. 

There was no one there to make such an accounting as the Recorder 
gives in 'The Screen," of live conversations about real topics. Most of 
the things that were said will have their one and only chance for life 
and for creative potency in the hearts of the very small handful of 
students on whose ears, all too dull of hearing, they fell. Strange the 
prodigality in the spiritual world which far outdoes the so-called 
prodigality of nature the profusion of seed sown, lavishly, upon the miry 
clay of minds too absorbed in self even to welcome the seed, and to try, 
as the responsive earth always does, to give it a chance to grow. Much 
was explained, much suggested, as the result of long and devoted study 
of Light on the Path. It was given in brilliant conversation, not in 
didactic monologue, but that is the only form in which it seems possible 
to attempt even a partial transcription of what one of the students carried 
away from that memorable "chance" conversation: 

You are wondering about the "real meaning" of the first unnumbered 
rule "Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears." Do you 
not think it is always better, especially when reading a book that deals 
with real things, to make it one's first object to pay due heed to what the 
author says, to follow the unfoldment of his thought with as much 
attention and understanding as one can command? Too often when we 
read books we simply use what the writer has said to confirm our own 
views or misconceptions, paying him the scant courtesy of passing over 
what he has wished to communicate, and fastening our thought only on the 
support that some statements of his, often quite incidental to his main 
theme, may appear to give to theories of our own. So we come away from 
the reading of him poorer than before, not richer, because we took noth- 
ing except chaff with which to feed our vanity and our opinionatedness. 

This is not a book to be read in that way. The older members of 
the T.S. had one great advantage. In the beginning there were few 
books and magazines to read, and we had to dig deep into those given us. 
We studied, we worked over them desperately, determined to extract 
their truth ; for there was upon us the constant sense that we must get 
our clues, must find the way and traverse it steadily, or we should 
certainly be left behind, stranded. In those days we could not afford to 
read a sentence several times, wishing we knew what it meant, and then 
pass on to the next and the next. Some of us found it helpful to 
memorize the text, word for word, so that we had it at hand for constant 
reference and brooding. When our minds were thus filled with its 
phrases, in their setting, it often happened that one phrase of it would 
rush into view, throwing a flood of illumination upon the particular 
sentence over which we might be working at that time. Our anxiety to 
get to the heart of it was so great that we had to go at it steadily, wringing 
each phrase dry before passing on to the next for who knew in which 
one our own special clue might not be lurking? 



44 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

A friend who wished to take no chances of missing the way, gave 
months to the study of each rule not a few hours every month to 
wondering what it meant or wishing for a revelation about it, but practical, 
experimental study, putting to the test of everyday life conclusions as to 
the meaning of the sentence selected ; in other words, conducting life by 
that particular rule. It was applied, so far as understood, to the first 
incidents that occurred in the day. Perhaps they did not work out as was 
apparently intended. Why? What was faulty in the application of the 
maxim? What other meaning had it in this case, which should have 
been recognized ? Maybe one was even in doubt as to whether a particu- 
lar rule pointed in one direction or in the exact opposite though that 
could seldom happen to one who was genuinely searching for guidance, 
since the spirit of the book is so clear that it could not frequently come 
to one to lose completely the sense of direction. However, even such 
perplexity would not long baffle a student who was earnestly pursuing 
the experimental method; his motto was Try it out. Of course that 
student made mistakes ; if he was very energetic he might have numberless 
mishaps and minor explosions ; but he learned by each one. After each 
he performed a quick calculation as to where his reading of instructions 
had been wrong, made the evident corrections, and started again, not in 
the least disheartened by the fact that he had at last learned something, 
and not too much impressed by the resultant bruises. 

You ask for an application of this principle of study to the first 
unnumbered rule. But we should have to go back of that, for it is not 
fair to assume that the first sentence of the text has been taken to heart, 
"These rules are written for all disciples. Attend you to them." As 
Cave recently* made so clear for us, one use of these rules is to teach us 
what discipleship means, what the life of a disciple is like. Let us apply 
that clue to the first unnumbered rule. Evidently we may assume that 
the disciple sees things which are not seen by the ordinary man. What 
are those things? Surely not spooks and shadowy half-beings that as 
yet have no foothold in either world. No, for we know that the closer 
the approach to the things of the inner world the more real they become. 
We are then going away from the world of illusion, of dense shadow, 
toward the concrete, toward a world where the acme of what we usually 
call common-sense is demanded ; the furthest possible remove from senti- 
mental vapourizing over interpretations of cloud effects. 

Let us take as a working hypothesis the supposition that the disciple 
sees life as it really is, or to put that in other terms, sees it, so far as 
his rank permits, in the light of the Lodge. Do we see things that way? 
If we did, should we be in such constant perplexity as to what we ought 
to do in this or that case, even when we cannot discover within us any 
unwillingness to take whatever course of action would further the 
interests of that Brotherhood to which we are pledged? Why is our sleep 
so broken with the sickening fear that we shall have to give up something 



July, 1919 QUARTERLY, pages 78-80. 



STUDYING LIGHT ON THE PATH 45 

we prize, in order to take the next step forward on our road? Is that 
the way the Lodge sees life? And if we really wish to exchange such 
astigmatic vision as we now have for the clear sight of the disciple, we 
are told that our eyes must become incapable of tears. We hardly need 
to pause to ask whether this term "tears" is to be taken literally ; experi- 
ence has taught us that physical tears, like laughter, often only mask 
instead of expressing the inner state. The friend who most readily weeps 
over your misfortune has sometimes proved in the end the most unfeeling 
toward you. Evidently tears should be taken figuratively; let us see 
whether one meaning may not apply to the whole set of emotions that 
centre around self ; that brood which includes self-will ; self-love ; self- 
pity ; self-depreciation ; self-reference. Take an everyday occurrence, and 
we shall see how this interpretation might be worked out. 

It comes at the end of a trying day, when a man has been dealing 
with many perplexing problems, some of them baffling in themselves, some 
made so by the constant strife of the human elements involved. He has 
been struggling to keep hold on his own centre, and in spite of this mael- 
strom, to realize himself as an immortal soul standing in spiritual being. 
He has not been able to stand firm, but he has made a determined effort, 
looking anxiously toward the end of the day when he could get a cool 
draught of inspiration from his source of power and light. That time has 
come, but with it comes one of his fellows who, absorbed in the interests of 
his own day, pounces upon the weary one with some question or comment 
that serves to provoke the explosion which had been held off all day long. 
Cutting and perhaps unkind things are said. What happens then? 

Would you be amazed if I were to say that the other man usually 
dissolves in a flood of tears? And yet, in the sense in which the term is 
used in our rule, is not that what we should all expect to see happen? 
The particular brand of tears which flow will depend largely upon the 
man's temperament. Perhaps he gets exasperated, but, while giving no 
outer sign of his feeling, tells himself that this is outrageous conduct 
on the other man's part ; there he was, trying to share with him the fruit 
of the day's experience, speaking to him with complete courtesy, wishing 
him well in his heart and now, how like a boor that man behaves ! If 
there is to be any calling of names, this and this ought by rights to be 
said to him, and the chances are that those things are soon and bitterly 
said. Clearly the one who was so betrayed by exasperation had first been 
blinded by the tears of personal feeling, so that for the time being he 
lost hold on the clear sight of his day. At the moment he is as blind 
as if he had never seen any of the realities of life, never gauged the 
relative values of personal feeling and unchanging truth. 

Or we may suppose that the tears are of another kind. The one 
who happened to set off the gunpowder, gives way to hurt feelings under 
the other man's outburst ; he thinks how many times he has tried to help 
that fellow in work that was pressing; how often he has supported his 
plans when others were not inclined to pay any attention to them ; how 



46 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

generous he has been in letting the other take all the credit for their 
common efforts; how much he has endured from this person in all the 
years past, recalling with the swiftness of the dream state every occasion 
when there had been the least friction between them, no matter how 
thoroughly cleared up at the time. 

Or perhaps his tears flow in still another way. Maybe he has a little 
scrap of detachment and so recognized at the start that he had the 
misfortune to throw a lighted match onto the other's unguarded powder 
train; and naturally he would want to help the other man to make as 
quiet and honourable an exit as possible from the mess that explosion was 
making. So far, he is on good ground; then out gush the tears he is 
not exasperated, his feelings are not hurt, but he says to himself, This 
is too big a job for me; if only so and so were here to see what is the 
best way of handling this poor tired man! If I speak, it will simply 
give him further material for this outburst which he already is regretting 
more deeply than I feel my real sins; I want so to help him out; what 
shall I do? ... By this time there are two people hopelessly blinded by 
the emotions which they have allowed to sweep them off their feet, and 
the powers that make for true vision and right human relations have no 
representative at that meeting place. 

You ask what the disciple would do if the tired man exploded at 
him. Perhaps it would be only fair to say that such an explosion would 
not be as likely to occur in the presence of one who was really a disciple. 
O not in the least because that other would feel some sort of holy awe 
in his presence and manage to hold in the rising wrath. But because the 
disciple would be constantly watchful to weed out from his surroundings 
those feelings, thoughts, and attitudes of mind that necessarily jar upon 
others, that is, his atmosphere would not be such as to provoke petty 
friction. He would also be constantly on guard. The appearance of 
another person instantly leads him to ask for what purpose that other 
was sent; he pays attention, almost automatically, to the state of mind 
and heart in which that other comes he knows that he is held responsible 
for the effect that is produced upon that other, even in five minutes' casual 
conversation. In like manner, those of lesser degree might do well to 
ask themselves certain questions when they become innocent participators 
in such an episode as the one we have been using for illustration. These 
questions would not be in the line of trying to discover what is wrong 
with the offender for the moment that is unimportant but would 
involve a quick survey of one's own condition, the desire being to 
discover at once what there is in me that is causing my brother to offend ; 
and the probe would go deeper than externals of manner, attitude, form 
of expression ; would involve my condition of mind and heart, the centre 
from which I am viewing the misery of the man who is in the midst of 
his explosion. 

What, you ask, is the disciple going to do with the exploder? 
How is he going to regard the situation? What will he see, having 



STUDYING LIGHT ON THE PATH 47 

attained the stage at which the eyes are incapable of tears ? Is he there- 
fore indifferent, far removed from the scene of the conflict, as we might 
be from participation in the struggles of an ant which was trying to carry 
a load much too cumbersome for it to manage? Certainly not; if that 
were his feeling he could not be a disciple. He sees (and this is only 
one way of stating it) that the better part of this man has temporarily 
lost control and is struggling to regain it, while the particular form taken 
by the outbreak has significance for him only as indicative of the point 
at which he might hope to be of some help. From long experience with 
himself and with others, he may form a quick and intuitive judgment as 
to the treatment which will best reinforce the efforts of the man's better 
nature. Dispassionately, but with burning desire to help one of his 
Master's struggling children, he would decide what line to take. It 
might be that he would not appear to notice the commotion but would 
speak with quiet confidence of some new phase in the work in which they 
were both interested. Or he might feel that overstrained nerves needed 
to be soothed by a friendly recognition of the condition, by the sense that 
the disciple, too, had known the need for such emotional relief. Or he 
might think the man needed to be brought sharply to his senses, needed 
the help of a direct demand upon his flagging will, and so might tell him 
in a few short words how disagreeable he was making himself, empha- 
sizing the simple statement by leaving him. 

You say that you have not the wisdom to deal with another in this 
fashion, and you are right. The practical point, however, seems to be that 
you want to learn to use, in service, all the understanding that has been 
given you; want to see as truly as your imperfect vision will permit. 
Then you must look to the tears, first recognizing them for what they 
are, and then learning how to get them under control. You already 
know how often, as onlooker at a conference in which you had no interests 
or desires at stake, you have seen clearly the right course of action, to 
which the participants in the difficulty may have been wholly blind. For 
that moment tears were not blurring your vision. The next step is to 
learn to use your present vision as clearly, when all that you hold dear 
seems to be at stake. Yes, impartiality describes one angle of the attitude 
we must acquire ; but a partisan desire that the will of Masters shall be 
done, that their cause shall be advanced through every incident of life, 
would be a form of statement more sympathetic to my own point of view. 

This is only the beginning of what is suggested by that first unnum- 
bered rule ; you will discover far more about it as you work with it. One 
thing you may learn, as I have, is to be especially alert to the possible 
significance of the suggestions that do not at first appeal to you. We 
pass by so much that would give us the clues for which we are looking ; 
it does not exactly accord with our mood of the moment, with our 
expectation of the form in which truth must appear. In other words, 
our ears are so sensitive to what accords with our own desires and wishes 
that they miss most of the teaching which they are meant to hear. 

E. 




"THE GATES OF GOLD"* 

"When the strong man has crossed the threshold he speaks no more 
to those at the other (this) side. And even the words he utters when he 
is outside are so full of mystery, so veiled and profound, that only those 
who follow in his steps can see the light within them." Through the 
Gates of Gold, p. 19. 

HE fails to speak when he has crossed, because, if he did, they 
would neither hear nor understand him. All the language he 
can use when on this side is language based upon experience 
gained outside the Gates, and when he uses that language, 
it calls up in the minds of his hearers only the ideas corresponding to the 
plane they are on and experience they have undergone; for if he speaks 
of that kind of idea and experience which he has found on the other side, 
his hearers do not know what is beneath his words, and therefore his 
utterances seem profound. They are not veiled and profound because 
he wishes to be a mystic whose words no other can expound, but solely 
because of the necessities of the case. He is willing and anxious to tell 
all who wish to know, but cannot convey what he desires, and he is 
sometimes accused of being unnecessarily vague and misleading. 

But there are some who pretend to have passed through these Gates 

and who utter mere nothings, mere juggles of words that cannot be 

understood because there is nothing behind them rooted in experience. 

Then the question arises, "How are we to distinguish between these two?" 

There are two ways. 

1. By having an immense erudition, a profound knowledge of the 
various and numberless utterances of those known Masters throughout 
the ages whose words are full of power. But this is obviously an immense 
and difficult task, one which involves years devoted to reading and a 
rarely-found retentiveness of memory. So it cannot be the one most 
useful to us. It is the path of mere book-knowledge. 

2. The other mode is by testing those utterances by our intuition. 
There is scarcely any one who has not got an internal voice a silent 
monitor who, so to say, strikes within us the bell that corresponds to 



Reprinted from The Path, May, 1888. 



48 



THE GATES OF GOLD 49 

truth, just as a piano's wires each report the vibrations peculiar to it, but 
not due to striking the wire itself. It is just as if we had within us a 
series of wires whose vibrations are all true, but which will not be 
vibrated except by those words and propositions which are in themselves 
true. So that false and pretending individual who speaks in veiled lan- 
guage only mere nothingness, will never vibrate within us those wires 
which correspond to truth. But when one who has been taken through 
these Gates speaks ordinary words really veiling grand ideas, then all 
the invisible wires within immediately vibrate in unison. The inner moni- 
tor has struck them, and we feel that what he has said is true, and whether 
we understand him or not, we feel the power of the vibration and the 
value of the words we have heard. 

Many persons are inclined to doubt the existence in themselves of 
this intuition, who in fact possess it. It is a common heritage of man, 
and only needs unselfish effort to develop it. Many selfish men have it 
in their selfish lives; many a great financier and manager has it and 
exercises it. This is merely its lowest use and expression. 

By constantly referring mentally all propositions to it and thus 
giving it an opportunity for growth, it will grow and speak soon with 
no uncertain tones. This is what is meant in old Hindu books by the 
expression, "a knowledge of the real meaning of sacred books." It ought 
to be cultivated because it is one of the first steps in knowing ourselves 
and understanding others. 

In this civilization especially we are inclined to look outside instead 
of inside ourselves. Nearly all our progress is material and thus super- 
ficial. Spirit is neglected or forgotten, while that which is not spirit is 
enshrined as such. The intuitions of the little child are stifled until at 
last they are almost lost, leaving the many at the mercy of judgments 
based upon exterior reason. How, then, can one who has been near the 
Golden Gates much more he who passed through them be other than 
silent in surroundings where the golden refulgence is unknown or denied. 
Obliged to use the words of his fellow travellers, he gives them a mean- 
ing unknown to them, or detaches them from their accustomed relation. 
Hence he is sometimes vague, often misleading, seldom properly under- 
stood. But not lost are any of these words, for they sound through the 
ages, and in future eras they will turn themselves into sentences of gold 
in the hearts of disciples yet to come. MOULVIE. 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 



D September 10th, 1914. 

******* 

You must not permit yourself to be drawn into the current views 
of war ; and to regard it as an unmitigated evil which the devil has thrust 
upon mankind in spite of the efforts of a not sufficiently omnipotent God. 
It is God who sends war as well as peace. It is God who sends hunger 
as well as plenty. It is God who sends work and poverty as well as 
leisure and wealth. 

Nor must you allow yourself to become contaminated by the modern 
western horror of death, which is rapidly making wretched cowards of 
us all. These are the horrible, materialistic views of an unreligious and 
selfish, comfort-loving generation. 

I do not mean that war is not dreadful, that the pain and suffering 
are not pitiable; but I do mean that they are necessary, salutary and 
remedial. War is a crude remedy. It is the calomel of nature, to purge 
us of our sins when they have accumulated to an undue degree. 

In this particular case I believe that either a class war or an inter- 
national war was necessary, and of the two the former is infinitely the 
more terrible both in action and results. 

You are quite right in feeling it to be a frightful burden on the 
Master. You are also quite right in thinking that we can help him, 
not figuratively, but actually if we deliberately try to do so. One way 
is to consider our various faults as foes, and to fight them daily and 
hourly with the intention of offering him the results of our efforts for 
him to use as he pleases in the actual war. I know that he can and does 
use such efforts and that they are much more potent than we dream. 

With kindest regards and best wishes to you all, I am 

Sincerely yours, 
C. A. GRISCOM. 

September 18th, 1914. 

******* 

When a person is in pain, your desire is to comfort. The least idea 
of criticism or argument is abhorrent : and yet, if I see you taking your 
experiences in a wrong way, I am tempted to point this out at the expense 
of my own reputation for sympathy and kind-heartedness. 

If a woman has no beliefs at all, one can understand how her world 
would seem to be upset and life seem worthless and hollow if some loved 
one has to go off to danger and perhaps to death. But millions of women 
have the courage and moral stamina, even without any religious belief, 
to accept such a situation with calmness, poise, serenity and resignation. 
How much more then should you, who have an immense advantage over 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 51 

most other women in your beliefs, show by your attitude and conduct 
an example to those less fortunately placed. 

You, a firm believer in immortality, in reincarnation, knowing that 
suffering and death are not evils, but are sent by God for our regener- 
ation and best interests, you, especially, should not allow yourself to 
waver a single instant before such a common almost universal experi- 
ence as that of having a loved one go forth to war. And yet you write 
about it as if your world had suddenly caved in and your life ended in 
chaos. Are we T. S. members to fall short of the common standard 
instead of being away above it? 

It is our mission to set an example to others, not to follow some 
distance after; an example of courage, of faith, of poise, of selflessness. 
We stand in the vanguard ; we hew out the way for others to tread ; we 
are the point of the wedge which the Master is driving into the weakness 
and materiality of the world : therefore our task, our duty, our ordinary 
conduct, must be in accordance with a much higher standard than yet 
exists in the world. 

Suffer? Yes, of course, suffer, if need be as Mary suffered when 
she had the courage to stand at the foot of the Cross and watch her son 
die a disgraceful and agonizing death. There is an example for you. 
But no amount of suffering must be allowed to break our wills, to lower 
our colours, to lessen our faith that whatever happens is for the best. 

Any giving way, any emotionalism, any excitement, any abandon- 
ment to grief, self-centredness of any kind, is a lowering of standards, 
a failure and a disgrace. 

Does this seem hard ? Do I seem harsh and unsympathetic ? I can 
assure you that my heart is wrung with the thought of the suffering you 
must have, and I would do my utmost to help you bear each single pang ; 
but that does not blind me to the ideal towards which you should strive 
and it is my duty to remind you of that ideal at a time when circum- 
stances seem to have obscured it. 

It is false kindness to let your friends give way to selfish and unrea- 
soning grief ; it makes things worse, not better. Remember this in your 
efforts to help others. They may think you hard and unsympathetic, 
for a time. If so, offer that as a part of your sacrifice in trying to help. 

With kind regards, I am Sincerely, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



September 27th, 1914. 
DEAR 

I was, and am, exceedingly glad to see that you had of your own 
accord, braced to meet the emergencies which the war has called upon 
you to confront, and that in large measure you did not need my effort 
to help you. 

These are terrible times, for all of us, not only for you who are so 
personally close to and connected with the war. I do not know anyone 



52 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

trying to live a religious life at the present time who is not going through 
her or his particular private and personal hell. I suppose it is a part of 
the price we pay for our feeble yet willing desire to help the Master. He 
lets each give what he can to the common need; and we give struggle 
and pain. 

It is horrible to sit by and see others suffer, but think of the count- 
less years when that has been the unremitting and ungrateful task of the 
Master. Is he not doing it perpetually? And we know that this suffering 
which he sees we must have, none the less wrings his heart with anguish. 
It is his perpetual cross, his hourly crucifixion. 

Do not let go your firm grip on your rule. We need this sort of 
mechanical aid especially in times of stress, when our minds are inclined 
to excuse relaxations. 

With my best wishes for your welfare, I am, 

Sincerely, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



^ October 11, 1914. 

DEAR 

Your letter which I have just received, shows quite clearly the burden 
and suffering of the present time, and how the strain and trouble have 
affected you. I feel moved to the deepest sympathy, for I can assure 

you that my understanding of the war and of the conditions in 

is much more complete than you realize. 

I would wish, if able, to be of that real assistance which the positions 
we occupy should make imperative. Therefore it is of you as a would-be 
disciple that I must think, rather than of you as an individual and personal 
friend. In my previous letters, as in this, it is to the former that I 
address myself. 

I cannot feel that it is anything but quite natural that you should 
be so disturbed, while at the same time I cannot help wishing that you 
could have maintained throughout the disciple's attitude. When outer 
affairs are more settled, you will be able to look back upon all these 
experiences, and understand the meaning and purpose of events and 
what I have written regarding them. 

We who are striving for the life and attainment which Theosophy 
shows, must first of all realize that even the highest standard of those 
not so striving, because knowing so much less, is far below what we 
should expect of ourselves. The complete realization of this fact is a 
first step in comprehension. 

I must ask you to believe that I do not intend any reproach by this, 
but were I not, at such a time, to state it, I should fail in a serious duty 
and what I know to be my heavy responsibility. 

With my kindest regards and best wishes for you and yours, I am 

Sincerely, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



DEAR 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 53 

April 1st, 1915. 



This is Holy Week, and a very special time for all of us who are 
interested in the Master's special work and special efforts. My mind is 
so full of these things that it is hard for me to twist it back to the war 
and to your comments and difficulties about the war, and yet there is 
one thing I want to say. 

The reconciliation of the undoubted horror of this war and all war 
with the fact that it is a good thing and a part of the Master's plan, is, 
I think, along some such line as the following : 

The battle between the forces of good and evil usually takes place 
on inner planes, either the mental, or the moral, or some psychic plane. 
You can see for yourself, no doubt, that in recent years this battle has 
been going against the Powers of Light. The world, as a whole, was 
becoming more and more irreligious, more and more material, more and 
more given to sensual indulgence of all kinds; luxury and the craving 
for physical comfort and well-being were rampant; socialism a purely 
material conception of life was growing and spreading. This was all 
obvious. Whole nations, like the French, were pushing religion out of 
their personal as well as out of their national lives. From the standpoint 
of the soul, from the point of view of the Master, humanity was in a 
desperate condition and perishing of sloth and rottenness. The souls of 
men were slowly strangling in spite of the efforts to give them some 
spiritual breath. I do not believe you realize how very bad things were. 
The unusual character of the Theosophical Movement and the efforts 
made through it, indicate the unusual character and desperate nature of 
the need. 

So the war was allowed to come, may even have been precipitated, 
and the great battle was dragged down to the material plane where it can 
be and is being fought out with a tithe of the actual suffering and risk 
which would have resulted if the struggle had been confined to the inner 
world. From the Master's standpoint, therefore, it all comes down to the 
question of a dead soul or a dead body, and naturally he prefers a dead 
body. It is the same if expressed in terms of suffering. A strangling, 
rotting soul is infinitely worse than a mangled body, yes, even than a 
defiled body such as of those poor Belgian women you write of. It is 
all horrible enough, God knows, but it is as it is, and is what the Master 
has to work with. I wonder he does not get discouraged. Think of his 
perpetual crucifixion ! Yet he remains calm and serene and undismayed, 
na y f u ii of hope and joy because of what is being accomplished and 
what is going to be. 

Sincerely, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



54 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

May 24th, 1915. 



DEAR 

I have your letter. It shows a condition which is a very decided 
improvement over the previous attitude of resentment and rebellion, but 
it is still far from satisfactory. You are in a negative state, which is 
never comfortable or profitable. You need to take longer, larger, wider 
views of the war and of life, and not be swept off your feet by the 
emotional turmoil of your environment. 

You began by hating the war and thinking it an unmitigated evil. 

You still hate the war, but accept it with resignation because you 
have to. 

If you had understood the condition of Europe, you would have 
longed eagerly for the war and would be enthusiastically in favour of it, 
as the easiest, simplest and best solution of infinitely worse things. That 
would be the positive attitude, which you would maintain, serene and 
undisturbed, even amidst the psychic whirlwind in which you live. 

If, for instance, you were to read such a book as France Herself 
Again, by the Abbe Ernest Dimnet, you would see that the war is just 
what France needed for her salvation. England too was going down 
hill with frightful rapidity, with its growing socialism, drunkenness and 
materiality. It was a short, sharp pain, or generations of slow and 
growing torture, affecting every class and state, and carrying with it none 
of the inspiration and nobler feelings which a war generates. We should 
have had the whole world full of the horrid license and evils of war, 
permeating every walk of life, without anything to call out the better 
and higher instincts. What do a few years of war amount to in com- 
parison ? 

All these men and women who have died, would have died anyhow, 
would have suffered somehow. The war gives them a chance to die 
nobly and usefully, to suffer thankfully and in a manner to inspire others. 
It is a privilege and an opportunity which the countries involved have 
earned by what remains of good in them. I am afraid that this country 
has not earned the privilege of participating, but I do not know. We 
may have to have our regeneration come through a social-civil war, which 
is infinitely worse than a war with the Germans. 

You still have a lot of mental barriers, the result of your racial, 
national and family heredity; you still look upon death and suffering as 
evils. The Lodge does not. It looks upon death as a release, and upon 
suffering as a privilege. It is hard for us to get ourselves round to such 
a point of view, in spite of the teachings of Christ, of religion, and of 
the example of the saints, because it runs counter to the whole trend of 
modern thought which we inherit and which is saturated with mate- 
rialism. But we must try to do this nevertheless, and especially in so 
vital a matter as the war. 

While on the one hand, therefore, I sympathize keenly with your 
personal suffering, I can see quite clearly on the other hand, that for the 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 55 

sake of those you love, as well as for your own sake, you need to take 
a brace, and with supreme effort of will to increase your faith and your 
hold on your mind. This, before long, would bring truer understanding, 
better poise, greater usefulness. . . . 
Believe me 

Very sincerely yours, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



July 12th, 1915. 
DEAR 

******* 

I do not wonder that you feel depression in England's atmosphere. 
She has not been an edifying spectacle during these recent weeks. I sup- 
pose that the governing class have been under such a continuous strain 
for so many months, that their nerves are on edge, but that in itself is a 
sign of weakness. The nerves must be impervious to strain and disaster. 
I suppose you realize that the ideal qualities for a disciple and a statesman 
are exactly the same. The Asquiths and Lloyd Georges and Bonar Laws 
of England are fit for their jobs in just so far as they have the qualities 
which would make them good disciples. It is merely a question of direc- 
tion of energy, not of difference of quality or capacity. The faults and 
limitations which make them poor ministers, would make them poor 
saints, and vice versa. 

France shows up much better, so far as one can judge. This country 
is so hopeless that it is not worth talking about. 

There is nothing specific that I can suggest for you to do. This is 
a time of preparation for us and should be so regarded. Look upon life 
as a training you are receiving for the time of action to come. It is not 
far off, and you can realize from the state of the world what a tremendous 
need the Master has for competent assistants. 

I am sorry to hear that you have been ill again. That is another 
handicap we must learn to overcome. It seems a hard and unsympa- 
thetic statement, but ill health is always our own fault and is a barrier 
which we must surmount. It can be overcome by the will. The physical 
body is more absolutely the servant of the will than we can realize. It 
can be completely dominated. Apart from specific causes, like over- 
eating, etc., the chief source of trouble is negativeness. For instance no 
one who is positive ever "catches a cold." But we have such rotten 
habit-ridden bodies, that we must not go to extremes: we must accept 
necessary limitations, and use both common sense, and doctors, if 
necessary. 

I am, with best wishes, 

Sincerely, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



56 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

November 7th, 1915. 



DEAR 



I am not surprised that you are having a difficult and a painful time. 
We all are. A movement such as ours, so close to the real heart of 
things, cannot help at a time like this, but bring its members into the 
turmoil and maelstrom of the gigantic struggle between Good and Evil. 
We are shielded from the worst, for we could not stand under the real 
strain, but every ounce of pressure we can carry, every particle of effort 
we make, every self-conquest, our poise, our serenity, all tend to lessen 
the burdens carried perpetually by those who guard and cherish us. 

We were warned from the first to take "long views" of the war. I 
do not believe that the first act is yet over, yet just what that means I do 
not know. It is bound in the nature of things to be a long war, but that 
does not mean necessarily that it won't seem to end and then break out 
again. The world is not bad enough to have Germany conquer, and it is 
not good enough to make possible an easy victory. The countries fighting 
on the side of right are themselves too wicked to be entitled to help unless 
it comes in a form that purges and cleanses them. So we must expect 
a long war, or series of wars, much suffering and pain, many deaths and 
disappointments ; but we can be and should be sustained by the conscious- 
ness that it is all part of the Master's plan and that it all makes for the 
highest and best happiness of every one concerned. Remember that he 
wants us to be happy, and even when he chastises and corrects, even when 
he permits war and death and pain to run riot throughout the world, he 
is still doing it, individually and collectively, because it is the shortest 
and easiest road to happiness. Any other view is treason, treason to the 
Master himself, who is our great Captain, fighting campaigns too big for 
our understanding, but for our benefit and happiness. Nervous strain 
is also a sign of disloyalty. Look at the faces in the old Italian paintings. 
Those people lived in a time even more upset and tumultuous than this, 
but there isn't a sign of present worry or trouble in any of them. Their 
faces show what they went through to reach their place of peace, but they 
show peace. 

So must we strive likewise: it is by living finely, serenely, calmly, 
in the midst of struggle and pain, that we too can reach peace, and can 
bear an ever increasing share of the Master's burden. 

Make your meditations on these great themes and they will lift you 
out of the hurly-burly of everyday life, into the ever present world of 
the Eternal. 

Sincerely yours, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 




From Theosophy to Christian Faith, by E. R. McNeile, with a Preface by the 
late Bishop of Oxford; published by Longmans Green & Co. The authoress is 
to be congratulated on having escaped safely from the Society which goes by, and 
misuses, the name of Theosophy, headed by Mrs. Annie Besant and Mr. (now 
"Bishop") Leadbeater, "the most authoritative living exponents of Theosophy" 
(p. 5). Her contact with this Society seems to have been prolonged and intimate, 
for speaking of its average member she says, "If he perseveres, he sooner or later 
places himself under a mental direction so exacting that what he shall think or 
what he shall believe 1 , on almost every subject, is decided for him by others" (p. x) 
while she states (p. 5) "I have been admitted to the inner school by Mrs. Besant 
herself," and later, "There is a considerable body of beliefs which no genuine 
and convinced Theosophist would dream of disputing which, indeed, it would be 
disloyalty to the Society and to the chosen mouthpiece of the Master to venture 
to call in question." Such expressions, if compared with the proclamation on the 
back cover of the QUARTERLY, "The organization is wholly unsectarian, with no 
creed, dogma, nor personal authority to enforce or impose" will be seen to carry 
on their very face the perversions of any genuine Theosophic principle, let alone 
of common sense. The whole book breathes rebellion, and a very proper and 
righteous rebellion, at the assumed authority and dogmatism of the leaders at 
Adyar; as such phrases, "the large amount of dogmatic teaching on these subjects 
contained in its authoritative literature," (p. 33) or, "People in general are expected 
to accept the ipse dixit of two or three psychic observers: they are not expected 
to verify it," will show. Nor are such expressions an exaggeration of the facts 
of the case as existing in the Adyar Society to-day. It is indeed fortunate that 
the authoress has washed her hands of the whole thing, and has turned to Chris- 
tianity. One thing we regret. Misled by the travesty, which is all she knows of 
Theosophy, the authoress has accepted without investigation the attacks of the 
Society for Psychical Research against Madame Blavatsky. Second hand criticism 
of others is always a dangerous and never a charitable undertaking; even though 
the writer cannot in this instance be blamed for associating Madame Blavatsky 
with the travesty of everything for which that splendidly upright and much 
martyred woman stood. It is the Adyar Society which is responsible, not only for 
their perversions of Madame Blavatsky's own personal contributions to our knowl- 
edge of Theosophy, but also for the errors made by those ignorant of Madame 
Blavatsky herself, who are misled by the distortions of her doctrine which they are 
taught. " MARION HALE. 

Through an Anglican Sisterhood to Rome, by A. H. Bennett, published by 
Longmans Green and Co., 1914. 

The Story of an English Sister, by Ethel Romanes, published by Longmans 
Green and Co., 1918. 

Life of the Viscountess De Bonnault D'Houet, 1781-1858, Foundress of the 
Society of the Faithful Companions of Jesus, by the Rev. Father Stanislaus, F. M., 
Capuchin, published by Longmans Green and Co., 1913. 

57 



58 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Many members of the Society are interested in books which reveal the inner 
experience of different types of Christians. Spiritual experience being one, though 
it has as many forms as there are individuals capable of expressing it, any genuine 
records of steps along the Path have value. As the tenth numbered Rule in the 
second section of Light on the Path says, "Learn to look intelligently into the 
hearts of men;" and further, "Study the hearts of men, that you may know what 
is that world in which you live and of which you will to be a part." 

Members must understand something of the point of view of those to whom 
they would wish to carry the light Theosophy brings. Religious Orders are a mys- 
tery to the lay majority to-day; and yet in at least three branches of the Christian 
Church, many kinds of Religious Orders are supported by thousands of the best 
the most practical, self-sacrificing, and zealous Christians which the Churches 
possess. The three books whose titles are given above afford interesting material 
through which to reach the spirit and purposes of certain of those Orders. They 
also reveal, not only how it is that sincere seekers after the higher life think and 
feel, but also the limitations to which all who have not the genuine catholicity of 
Theosophy are condemned. 

The first book, Through an Anglican Sisterhood to Rome, gives not only a 
simple and even entertaining account of life in one of the leading Communities 
for women in the Church of England, but also of the reasons which prompted the 
authoress, as also practically all the Benedictines, both monks and nuns, of the 
Anglican Communion, to transfer their allegiance to 'Rome in 1912. These reasons 
had not hitherto appeared in print. 

Miss Bennett, and the Anglican Benedictines of Caldey, as well as the nuns of 
Mailing and Kent, became totally unable to reconcile their own opinions of what 
was right, either in liturgical matters or in interpretations of creed and dogma, with 
the conflicting and mutually opposed decisions of several Bishops in the English 
Church. Their demand was for a definite "authority," which could maintain some 
uniformity, and which would put an end to the conflicts of opinion that perpetually 
agitated both individuals and communities. No final and definite "authority" appear- 
ing and Miss Bennett evidently feeling that it was "dishonest" to appear 
"Roman," or to use liturgies not included in the Prayer Book she, and her friends 
the Benedictines, solved their difficulties by "submission to the Roman Obedience." 

If the Theosophic platform, and above all the Theosop-hic method of perfect 
tolerance and consideration were thoroughly understood, at least by the Bishops 
and responsible clergy in both the Anglican and the Roman Communions, such 
problems would simply never arise, and would never have arisen in the long history 
of the Church. More than this; in our opinion, if the Master Christ's own pur- 
poses were really understood in the several Churches, the energy of their members 
would be directed toward living a life of discipleship, rather than in seeking 
authority about spiritual matters outside the spiritual world, or in nearing personal 
shipwreck over the question as to which language or what prayers should be used 
in a form of religious worship. 

The second book, The Story of an English Sister, is a simple account of a 
wholesome English girl, the daughter of cultured and literary parents, who, though 
endowed with great feminine attractiveness and with brilliant intellectual gifts, 
yet found her truest happiness in the religious life. Her character is revealed by 
copious extracts from her letters, which are so full of worldly interests and slang 
that only a persistent reading discloses the depth of religious conviction, and the 
high principle that underlay her thinking and feeling. The book is marred by too 
scant explanation of events which a reader unfamiliar with English life does not 
understand ; and by the obvious desire on the part of a solicitous mother to defend 
the religious life at the expense of presenting her daughter's real struggles. Since 
the deflection of the Benedictines referred to above, Religious Communities have 
been subject to severe criticism throughout England. However, this account will 



REVIEWS 59 

give many readers a new conception of the practical value, the happiness, and the 
human sanity of the religious life. Sister Etheldred had such a fine and rare 
nature, which is traced in every line of her singularly pure face, that one might 
wish that she had been able to receive more direct spiritual direction than that 
made possible by the Church of England as it is to-day. 

In the third book, the Life of the Viscountess De Bonnault D'Houet, all the 
great advantages of the "Roman" heritage are set forth, together with its limita- 
tions. Madame D'Houet came of a titled French family, whose ancestors fought 
in the Crusades and stood beside St. Jeanne d'Arc at the Coronation in Rheims 
Cathedral. Wealthy, worldly in the good sense, and actually opposed to the religious 
life, the account of how the Master reached this good Catholic French woman, and 
turned her rebellion and disobedience into loyalty and self-sacrificing service, is of 
extraordinary interest. She had, what Miss Bennett and Miss Romanes (Sister 
Etheldred) lacked, a real spiritual director or guide, in the person of Father 
Varin, S. J., the famous director of Madame Barat, Foundress of the Society of the 
Sacred Heart. Madame D'Houet herself founded the Society of the Faithful 
Companions of Jesus, and "she found in the constitutions of the Jesuits the main 
principles upon which the Institute should be governed." It has become one of 
the three great teaching orders for women of the Catholic Church. 

The book is an excellent biography, Roman in tone, but catholic and therefore 
theosophic in its account of a spiritual life which was univetsal in its significance. 
It is tempting to dwell on the heroic measures used by Father Varin to test both 
Madame D'Houet's vocation and her spiritual strength. He crossed her will in 
every direction, gave her conflicting orders, and subjected her to a discipline which 
was calculated literally to "try the patience of a saint." Other confessors only 
added to her burdens. Madame D'Houet was able, however, to rise above any 
attacks against her lower nature, and "the snake of self" in her was not merely 
scotched, but killed. Perhaps the most refreshing characteristic, which breathes 
throughout the whole biography, is the simple and perfectly natural way that real 
spiritual experience is taken for granted. Madame D'Houet is constantly in com- 
munication with her Master, and holds conversations with him about the affairs 
of life, almost from day to day. It brings back vividly to mind the early traditions 
about Madame Blavatsky ; and after all, in its very different way, carries something 
of the same message, greatly diluted, and conveyed through a far narrower 
channel. A. G. 



ANSWERS 




QUESTION No. 245. How does a man overcome Karma; cease making Karma? 

ANSWER. When his will is perfectly united to the Divine Will, when he acts 
no more from himself or his own will, when he can say with St. Paul, "I live, no 
not I, but Christ liveth in me." What Karma can he then create? Surely it is all 
part of the Master's Karma, as his Manas is part of the Master's Manas; and the 
Master, having renounced his own will, and living only as an expression of the 
Divine Will, his Karma is nothing more than the working of Divine Law itself. 
So that he is an administrator of Karma, "Lord of Karma," as the phrase is, and 
the disciple shares in this lordship. Karma belongs to the world of personality; 
detached from that world, willing only the Master's will, and at each point fulfilling 
that will, the 1 disciple is no more under Karma, but is one with it. Thus as a thrall 
he has overcome it, and as an impediment he has ceased making it. That which 
held him back, he first made into a ladder by which to climb; and then, adding 
understanding to his obedience, into a solvent by which his nature 1 is welded to 
the Master's nature in acceptance and in dominion. CAVE. 

QUESTION No. 242 (Continued). Is there any possible point of reconciliation 
between the Theosophical idea of brotherhood and the best of the humanitarian 
ideas on the subject? Take, for instance, a person who is giving her whole life, 
and the very best of herself to social work, to righting other people's supposed 
wrongs and straightening out their affairs to the best of her ability. To her, 
abstention from this kind of work, and above all lack of interest in it or disapproval 
of it, is the height of unbrotherliness. In this case both the student of Theosophy 
and the Social Worker would have the desire to help; is there any reconciliation 
between their ideas as to the best means of doing so? 

ANSWER. A similar question: "What is the attitude of Theosophy toward 
movements for social betterment of which we hear so much?" (No. 118), was 
answered by Mr. C. A. Griscom as follows : 

"This question can be answered in many ways, and from several points of view. 

"We may quote from the statement printed each month on the last page of 
this magazine, and say that The Theosophical Society (a very different thing from 
Theosophy, mind you), welcomes any work which has for its object the bettering 
of humanity. But that only shifts the question, which becomes a query as to 
whether any specific 'movement for social betterment' really benefits humanity. 

"Or we may say that Theosophy has no attitude towards such movements. 
Theosophy, i. e. Wisdom-Religion, has no direct connection with any plan of 
social reform. One is a religion, all-inclusive, complete in itself; the others are 
man-made efforts to do specific things which are worthy and useful according to 
your point of view. One person may think giving soup to the hungry a fine 
work; another may be perfectly genuine in believing that it encourages pauperism. 
I know an enthusiast who spends her life showing little children how to grow 
lettuce, radishes, and what not, in the vacant plots of New York City. It is 
admirable work. Others devote themselves to cooking, sewing and housekeeping 



QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 61 

schools ; still others to teaching mothers how to care for their babies, and boys how 
to resole their own shoes : all admirable. Still others believe these to be palliatives 
only, and wish to cut the Gordian knot of poverty and ignorance by bringing about 
some general social reform, some socialistic program. One sees at once that the 
widest and most honest difference of opinion can exist as to the usefulness and value 
of these kinds of humanitarian work and the question arises, 'Does Theosophy 
throw any light on the whole subject?' Can we use it as a touchstone to determine 
whether or not these things are worth while, and, of several, which are the best? 
I think the answer would be something like this : 

"Theosophy would not be what it purports to be, namely, the Wisdom-Religion, 
if it could not illumine all the problems of common life. In this particular case, 
if one might dare to speak in its name it would say : 

"All human suffering, all misery, all the problems with which socialism and 
philanthropy and humanitarian work try to deal, all these are controlled by Karma, 
by the Law of Cause and Effect, which seeks always to force individuals to a 
greater and clearer and more perfect obedience to Divine Law. If we would do 
away with misery and unhappiness, we must do away with the ignorance of Divine 
Law, the infraction of which causes the misery and unhappiness. We may palliate 
the results of this disobedience, we may wipe away the tears caused by pain, we 
may spend our lives in a loving and self-sacrificing effort to undo the effects which 
individuals are suffering; and all this is fine and noble and commendatory. But 
the wise man would try to strike at the root of the whole trouble, ignorance of the 
laws of life ; and he would spend his time and energies teaching people those laws 
so that new causes of misery would not be created. This seems more worth while 
than to try to alleviate those already in existence and which must work themselves 
out to the last iota of a perfect balance." 

ANSWER. Reconciliation, yes; but let us try to arrive at it by looking toward 
the centre, by looking at the facts, not at appearances. Suppose I feel that I have 
a call to help those around me to straighten out their tangles, after having done 
my utmost to get all my own lines running straight. In that case I should have 
to study their circumstances, first, asking many questions like these : What lessons 
do they evidently need to learn? What means of learning is life giving them? 
Where are they missing their lessons? Can they be helped there? What is the 
most favourable result I could hope for if I tried to give them that help? Where 
might I do more harm than good? Parents know that when they are trying to 
teach their children some of the fundamental laws of life, there are situations in 
which they would not welcome the advent of Aunt Lucy, a maiden aunt with time 
and leisure to give the children a "good time," regardless of conditions. It is 
painfully well known to them, already, that Johnny sometimes goes hungry to bed 
because he refuses the glass of milk which the doctor says he must be taught to 
drink before his supper. They are conscious of the hot rebellion in Mary's heart 
over some necessary crossing of her stubborn little will; she will probably carry 
it so far that she will be ill; she will surely upset the rest of the nursery with her 
tantrums. The reinforcement of Aunty Lucy's sympathy for them in their troubles 
makes the struggle harder, for them and for their parents. That would be true 
even if Aunt Lucy gave up a motor trip which she had been planning the whole 
year, and, at much discomfort to herself, squeezed into cramped quarters in their 
home, so that she might be at hand to see that the parents were not too unkind. 

We all admire self-sacrifice. That is one reason why it should not be devoted 
to a bad cause; the effect of such action is so confusing to others. In one sense, 
and in one only, the better the motive behind a wrong action, the more resulting 
harm. That being true, so far as the onlooker is concerned, how about the recipient? 
How is it with the recipient of mistaken charity, or of the "help" that would not 



62 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

be called charity. If a church offers him assistance of a kind which would be 
pauperizing, and hence degrading to him, is it not misleading to him? Can he be 
expected to see that when such aid is offered, his manhood should inspire him 
to refuse it, and that it is something much more real that the church should give 
him instead? That were indeed to expect much insight from him. Does it become 
easier for him to realize himself as a child whom God is trying to reach and to 
teach, if some better educated person, whom he ought to be able to regard as under- 
standing more about what is best and right than he does, accepts his standards, 
and makes every effort to get him merely what he wants? Surely he is then con- 
firmed in his misunderstandings, not helped to see further. How is he to know 
that the benefactor whom he sees using her friends in a perfectly shameless way, 
in order, perhaps, to hold for him some position which his own carelessness or 
wrong-doing has caused him to forfeit, is only acting down to his level, for his 
supposed benefit? How can he know that she would scorn to take a similar posi- 
tion where she herself was concerned? How can he get any insight into what 
right standards, right impulses are? Whatever may be his view for himself, he 
wants to give his children the right sense of things and here too, he must be hope- 
lessly confused by some of those who are mistakenly trying to shore-up the sup- 
posed lapses, oversights, and negligences of that Divinity that shapes our ends. 

Are we not all, high and low, rich and poor, children of God? Must not the 
essence of our efforts to be brotherly consist in trying to find out what the Father 
wants of each and then doing it? E. 

QUESTION No. 246. Will you kindly define the following terms: "Higher and 
lower psychism"; "Occultism and pseudo-occultism." 

ANSWER. "Occultism" means the science of that which is hidden, the hidden 
laws of the soul. The life and teaching of Christ, of Buddha, of Krishna, of 
every Avatar is occultism, is the embodiment and revelation of the eternal laws 
of the soul, the laws which govern the evolution of that "to whose growth and 
splendour there is no limit." For there are such laws, fixed and immutable, and the 
price which the soul must pay for its growth is implicit obedience to them. 
"Pseudo-occultism" is that which pretends to be occultism and is not. For instance 
any dabbling with the hidden laws or forces of the psychic plane for any material 
end including bodily health or for the gratification of the desires or the un- 
healthy curiosity of the personality. 

"Psychic" is sometimes used to include everything above the material plane 
and short of the Absolute. (Strictly speaking anything below the Absolute is a 
reflection.) "Higher psychic" usually means those higher worlds of form where 
order reigns. "Lower psychic" is applied to the realm of chaos between the 
material and the spiritual worlds, the world of passions, of emotion, of unregulated 
and evil desires, of kama-lokic spooks. It is of this region that it is said that 
beneath every flower a serpent lies coiled. Those who dabble with spiritualistic 
seances, ouija boards, and similar activities, are opening themselves to the evil 
and degrading influences of this "lower psychism." J. F. B. M. 

ANSWER. I would define psychism, briefly and comprehensively, as all forms 
of lower mental activity, reasonings, imagination, emotions, etc. "Higher" or 
"lower" would depend upon what was in control of these activities, and the goal 
to which they were directed. If the activity is controlled by the spiritual forces 
of the higher self, to further the purpose of the higher self, it would seem higher 
psychism. If the activity is uncontrolled, or dominated by the lower nature, or, 
as in the case of the Black Lodge, controlled by higher forces, but directed to an 
evil end, in all these cases it would seem lower psychism. Occultism seems to 
me the science of transforming the baseness of the lower nature into the purity 
of the higher nature. Pseudo-occultism is anything that stops short of that end, 
and aims at a smaller goal, as the health, wealth, etc., of the mental scientist! 
and others. C. 




REPORT OF THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE 
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 

On Saturday, April the 24th, 1920, the Annual Convention of The Theosophical 
Society was called to order at 10.30 a. m. at 21 Macdougal Alley, New York, by 
the Chairman of the Executive Committee, Mr. Charles Johnston. The capacity 
of the room was taxed by the number of delegates, members-at-large, and members 
of the New York Branch and other Branches, who had gathered before 1 the hour 
set for the opening session. On motion made by Mr. E. T. Hargrove and duly 
seconded, Mr. Johnston was elected Temporary Chairman of the 1 Convention, and 
Miss Julia Chickering was duly elected Temporary Secretary. Mr. Johnston took 
the Chair, and it was moved and seconded that the Temporary Chairman appoint 
a Committe'e on Credentials. The Chair stated that since the standing of Branches 
and delegates was involved in the work of this committee, he would appoint to it 
Professor H. B. Mitchell, Treasurer T. S. ; Miss I. E. Perkins, Assistant Secretary 
T. S. ; and Miss M. E. Youngs, Assistant Treasurer, requesting the 1 committee to 
go into session immediately, and to report as soon as possible. 

ADDRESS OF THE TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN 

MR. JOHNSTON : While the Committee on Credentials is at its work, it is the 
custom for the Temporary Chairman to extend a very cordial and very sincere 
welcome to the members of the Convention. I have, amongst other duties, to count 
up the years of life of The Theosophical Society whenever a diploma is sent, and 
I see with some wonder and deep gratitude that in November next we shall enter 
our forty-sixth year; so we are close to the half century. In the earlier days, the 
Society grew by the methods of expansion, propaganda, and so forth, and growth 
was marked by the number of our members. In the more recent years, growth 
is marked by growth of character in our members. That is a moral and spiritual 
growth which immediately meets with formidable obstacles; therefore, as it con- 
tinues in the face of these obstacles, it becomes a very firm and well-founded 
spiritual life. If growth be marked in spiritual life, it should, each year, 
be in advance of the year before ; therefore each Convention should be better and 
stronger and more full of spiritual understanding. The Convention marks in a 
way the keynote of the coming year; therefore let us determine that during this 
Convention we shall prove that we have grown, and that we possess that high 
aspiration and faith and that devotion which are both the cause and the fruit of 
growth. I am confident that this will be done and that this Convention will be the 
greatest and the best, because the most closely founded on spiritual law, that the 
Society has ever held. In this confident hope I again bid the delegates very cor- 
dially welcome. 



64 



THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS AND ELECTION OF OFFICERS 
The Chairman of the Committee, Professor Mitchell, reported that the cre- 
dentials presented had been duly examined, and that the 1 committee found twenty 
Branches, represented either by personal delegates or by proxies, and entitled to 
cast one hundred and twenty votes. [The asterisk marks credentials received 
later.] 



Altagracia, Altagracia de Orituco, 

Venezuela* 
Arvika, Sweden 
Aurvanga, Kristiania, Norway 
Aussig, Aussig, Czecho-Slovakia 
Blavatsky, Washington, D. C. 
Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 
Hope, Providence, Rhode Island 
Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana 
Jehoshua, Sanfernando, Venezuela 
Karma, Kristiania, Norway 



Krishna, South Shields, England 
Middletown, Middletown, Ohio 
Newcastle, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England 
New York, New York 
Norfolk, Norfolk, England 
Pacific, Los Angeles, California 
Providence, Providence, Rhode Island 
Sravakas, Salamanca, Ne'w York 
Stockton, Stockton, California 
Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela 
Virya, Denver, Colorado 



On motion duly made and se'conded, the report of the Committee on Creden- 
tials was accepted, and the Convention proceeded to its permanent organization. 

The nomination of Professor Mitchell as Permanent Chairman was moved by 
Mr. Hargrove, seconded by Mr. C. Russell Auchincloss, and carried. The election 
of Miss Perkins as Secretary and Miss Chickering as Assistant Secretary was 
then made, and the permanent officers were duly installed. 



ADDRESS OF THE PERMANENT CHAIRMAN 

PROFESSOR MITCHELL: (Taking the Chair) I have before me two telegrams 
which I shall read at once: one from England, signed Bagnell, Graves, Keightley, 
reading, "Best wishes to the Convention." 

The other from Indiana, from Judge McBride: "Unable to attend Convention. 
Returning from Florida, I find so much to do that duty holds me here. Mentally 
and spiritually upstanding, and physically feeling my seventy-eight years, I treasure 
memories of Blavatsky, Judge and that devoted band that survived the Chicago 
cataclysm. Keep to the Path. Love and greetings." 

I assume that all those here present are members of The Theosophical Society. 
In our ordinary Branch meetings we welcome the public, but in the annual Con- 
vention of the Society, where we come together to consider its affairs and its 
policies, we must be able to talk with freedom, and a depth of feeling which we 
sometimes have to conceal when we speak to the public. It is with very deep 
feeling that I respond to your invitation to preside over the Convention. It is a 
privilege which you have extended to me for some years ; and each year I realize 
more profoundly its responsibility. We seem but a small gathering. Nevertheless, 
it is a gathering of those who are the heirs, the inheritors, the custodians of a 
tradition which it is impossible to value rightly; it is more ancient than anything 
in our civilization, because more ancient than our civilization itself. It is the 
tradition of that divine power in the world which has built civilization after civi- 
lization, which has acted first as builder, and then as destroyer; destroying for 
the purposes of spirit, ultimately to rebuild. We are not only the inheritors of 
one form of religion, or of one form of manifestation of the divine power. We 
are the inheritors of religion itself and of all forms of the manifestation of divine 
power. It is as trustees of that ancient tradition theosophia, the power and wis- 
dom of God that we come here to-day, in the exercise of our trusteeship. We 
have only to reflect upon it to realize the greatness of our privilege. We of all 
men should be most keenly conscious of our responsibility, for we, of all men, 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 65 

should see most deeply into the spiritual significance of the life that is ours and 
that is lived about us. And it is for us, entrusted with an understanding of its 
meaning, to keep clear in our own minds and hearts the 1 consciousness of the 
divine purpose to which our love and aspiration turn because from such con- 
sciousness there comes a mould, which makes it easier for the divine 1 forces to 
shape the evolution of the world. 

It is our custom to hold our annual Convention in the spring of the year, when 
nature is manifesting the re-creative forces which have lain dormant through the 
winter, showing forth a power of life which was not dead but hidden; trans- 
forming dead leaves and rotting wood and refuse into growing plants; in that 
divine alchemy, taking all its dead elements up and re-forming them, revivifying 
them, and quickening them into beauty. It is a process of life, the knowledge of 
which is entrusted to us, that we may aid it to act for the 1 regeneration of man- 
kind as it acts for the regeneration of nature. It is as the representatives, how- 
ever unworthy, of that great, age-old, infinitely potent tradition and power that 
we meet together to consider the interests of The Theosophical Society. 

Our first business consists in the 1 appointment of three regular Convention 
committees, to consider and plan for the business of the Convention the Com- 
mittee on Nominations, the Committee on Resolutions, and the Committee on 
Letters of Greeting. 

On motion made by Mr. Hargrove, seconded by Mr. Woodbridge, these thre'e 
Committees were appointed by the Chair, as follows; after which the reports of 
the officers of the 1 Society were called for: 

Committee on Nominations Committee on Resolutions 

Mr. K. D. Perkins, Chairman Mr. E. T. Hargrove, Chairman 

Mr. A. L. Grant Mr. C. Russell Auchincloss 

Mrs. M. F. Gitt Mrs. Emma S. Thompson 

Committee on Letters of Greeting 
Dr. C. C. Clark, Chairman 
Mr. Homer T. Baker 
Miss M. D. Hohnstedt 

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 

MR. JOHNSTON: It has been said at previous Conventions that the Executive 
Committee has the duty, between Conventions, of safe-guarding the welfare of 
the Society, and for that reason there has been often little to report, because 
no critical situation has arisen. There 1 has been a record of new Branches, and 
new members, which is reported more properly by the Secretary. That has, for 
the most part, been about all we have had to report, additions in Branches and 
membership. And this may be a suitable point to make clear the principle that 
The Theosophical Society is an open door. We 1 have the duty, the obligation, to 
admit all applicants for membership who desire to work for our objects; and 
where there is a proper application for a Branch charter, we have 1 the obligation 
to issue that charter, except in cases of criminality or moral turpitude. But so 
far as opinions, beliefs, and so on, are concerned, we have no right to refuse 1 any 
diploma or any charter, because every individual and group of individuals has the 
right to come within the influence of the nucleus of universal brotherhood. As 
Professor Mitchell pointed out, the T. S. is a spiritual life which goes back many 
ages ; it also goes forward many ages. Therefore, the nucleus of universal brother- 
hood, which we are striving to form, looks not so much to the humanity of to-day 
as to the spiritual life of future age's and future races. Therefore it becomes 
the duty of the Executive Committee to admit all properly accredited applicants. 
It is its further duty to do all in its power, thereafter, to safeguard that nucleus 
of universal brotherhood which has its splendid destiny in the future. 



66 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Therefore while every individual has the right to be brought into relation to 
that nucleus, if he fail to assimilate the principles of universal brotherhood, and 
that failure be shown by flagrant acts, then it is the duty of the Executive Com- 
mittee to take what action may be 1 possible and desirable to safeguard the nucleus 
of universal brotherhood against danger and against attack. 

This brings me 1 to the consideration of the situation as regards the German 
Branches. I think that it is not necessary more than to allude to the history of 
Germany since August 4th, 1914. The moral infamy of the German people is so 
clearly written on the memories of mankind at least on our memories that it 
is really needless to evoke once more the memory of those unspeakable abomi- 
nations. The 1 question is, what of the members of the Society who were in Ger- 
many during that time. We know that the whole German nation was very ingen- 
iously lied to by its government, also that it was very avid in the swallowing 
of those lies. But there is a presumption that members of the T. S. in Germany 
were so completely misled, that in spite of all their spiritual training, in spite of 
the fact that they should have stood for the foremost spiritual enlightenment and 
consciousness in their nation, there is a theoretical possibility that they were too 
completely deceived to se'e the facts. Therefore no action was taken during the 
war by the Executive Committee. In dealing with those German members, we 
waited for the event. 

In criminal law, he who aids and abets the crime is equally guilty with the 
principal, both as regards culpability and penalty. The question then is, how far 
did those German members aid and abet the infamies of the German people. Only 
they themselves can furnish the evidence, and we have waited for the evidence. 
The armistice was signed November llth, 1918, and a year and a half has elapsed 
since that time. During that year and a half the German members have had 
ample opportunity, both through the public press and through the confessions 
of men like Lichnowsky and the author of /" 'Accuse; men like Maximilian Harden 
and ever so many others, to learn the truth; they have had excellent opportunity 
also through the study of THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, and we know they have 
received those QUARTERLIES. Therefore we are entitled to assume that they are 
now fully in possession of the facts. What then is their action? How are they 
going to register themselves not what are we going to do, but what are they 
going to do, or what have they done? We will record that which they write 
down ; no more than that. 

You saw in the January number of the QUARTERLY a considerable corre- 
spondence, and a certain number of letters showing that some, at least, of the 
members in Berlin and elsewhere have made confessions of repentance, shame, 
humiliation, over the despicable and infamous actions of the nation. It remains 
for them to bring forth fruits of repentance, if they are really not nominally 
to form part of the nucleus of universal brotherhood of races and ages yet 
unborn. It is a question of fact, not of words, to form a part of that nucleus. 

There are those who have not made confession of repentance or contrition ; 
who, on the contrary, are flagrantly unrepentant. They do not deplore the vio- 
lation of Belgium ; they do not deplore the infamies recorded in the Bryce Report ; 
they do not deplore the sinking of the Lusitania or the abominable policy of the 
German submarine warfare. What they do deplore is the action of the Theo- 
sophical Convention. 

Those of us who were present at the Convention of 1915 will remember that 
this country was then beset by a deplorable miasma of moral neutrality, a bal- 
ancing between good and evil; the attitude of arbitration between God and the 
devil. The Theosophical Society, believing that the emergency called for a state- 
ment of fundamental principles, took a definite stand as regards neutrality, and 
said it was a disgrace and a shame, where a principle of righteousness was 
involved. The Convention therefore took the stand that war is not necessarily 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 67 

a breach of universal brotherhood, that waging a righteous war may be a most 
splendid privilege, Theosophy brings not peace 1 but a sword. This offended the 
unrepentant German members of the T. S. Therefore, instead of attacking the 
sinking of the Lusitania or the policy of the 1 atrocities, it was our action in Con- 
vention that they attacked. And that is how they wrote themselves down, as 
obdurate and unrepentant. I shall read documents to make that clear. 

As to the que'stion of repentance and forgiveness, there is an oft misquoted 
text in the New Testament, which rightly reads: "If thy brother trespass against 
thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him." (Luke 17, 3.) And so clear 
is the moral law there, that, I believe, the Council of Trent, which marks a criti- 
cal formulation of Church teaching, has gone 1 so far as to say that God himself 
cannot forgive unrepented sin. Here then, these members write themselves down 
as obdurate and unrepentant, and instead of clothing themselves in sackcloth and 
ashes, and confessing their great, shameful, and disgraceful sins, they turn around 
and attack the action of The Theosophical Society. The first of these letters was 
dated December 31st, taking the form of a motion intended for this present 
Convention. 

THEOSOPHISCHE GESELLSCHAFT ZWEIG BERLIN 

Berlin SW. 48, 31 December, 1919. 
To The Theosophical Society, New York 

Motion for the Convention in April, 1920. 

The undersigned members of The Theosopical Society, Berlin Branch, hereby 
put the motion to revoke the resolution adopted by the Convention in 1915: 

(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 ; 

as involving a dogma and therewith being contradictory to the principles of The 
Theosophical Society. 

The mover of the resolution, it is true, did not suggest, according to his 
words, that it is the duty of any member of the 1 Society not to be neutral; though, 
speaking for himself, he could not conceive of anybody as being neutral. There is 
not so much stress to be laid upon the words as on the practical effect of this 
resolution. That this resolution has operated as a dogma of The Theosophical 
Society and has borne dogmatic fruit is proven by the fact that a number of 
members of the Berlin Branch of The 1 Theosophical Society openly declared in 
a pamphlet that whosoever does not adopt the said resolution can no longer be a 
member of The Theosophical Society, as all resolutions adopted by a Convention 
are binding for all members. 

The undersigned are moreover convinced that the Spiritual Forces can impos- 
sibly be acting in a Theosophical Society that erred so far as to adopt a resolution 
of the kind. It is the conviction of the undersigned members that the Master 
Forces will turn again to the Society if the Convention of 1920 revokes the reso- 
lution of 1915 and therewith the dogma. It is for that reason, for the Cause of 
the Masters, that the undersigned beg the Convention to adopt their motion. 

Fraternally, 

Paul Raatz Margarete Wollenberg Robert Dubois 

Ernst John Woldemar Dietz Elise Schneewolf 

Martha Schmidt Franz Busch Gottlieb Schneewolf 

Otto Vollberg Karl Walzer Clara Ribbeck 

Willi Boldt Gertrud Baader Bertha Rohn 

Anna John Richard Baader Ernst Conrad 
Max de Neve 



68 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

They moved to revoke the resolution of 1915 on the ground that this reso- 
lution involves a dogma and therefore contradicts a principle of the Society. 

Now there is just one point of form which is worth going into at this junc- 
ture. The Convention adopte'd these resolutions in 1915. The Berlin Branch 
received a report in due time. (I confess with shame that at that time this 
country was not at war with Germany; mails we're going through, and they 
received the report.) At the following Convention (1916), they presented a 
resolution providing that matters of this sort should be brought up some time 
beforehand. We' accepted their proposal and embodied it in an amendment to 
the Constitution which reads as follows : "A copy of all resolutions affecting 
the policy, principles, or platform of The Theosophical Society, which are to be 
voted upon at the Annual Convention, shall be sent to the Executive Committee 
three months before said Convention, whereupon due notification of the proposed 
resolutions shall be given to all Branche's by the Executive Committee." 

This amendment originated in the Berlin Branch, which therefore accepted the 
entire propriety of resolutions affecting the policy, principles and platform of the 
Society being passed by Conventions. That was, in their view, an entirely right 
and proper proceeding. 

You have heard what the Berlin Branch has had to say. The Dresden Branch, 
writing February 15th, 1920, says practically the same thing. 

Dresden Branch T. S. February 15, 1920. 

To THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, T. S. 

We request you to lay the accompanying resolution of the Dresden Branch 
before this year's Convention, to be voted on, and to inform us of the result: 
Resolution: The Convention is requested to revoke (cancel) the resolutions 
passed by the T. S. Convention of 1915: (1) That war is not necessarily a breach 
of universal brotherhood; (2) That individual neutrality is unrighteous; and so 
on. Reasons : According to the unanimous view of the members of the Dresden 
Branch, these resolutions represent dogmas, and therefore, as such, contravene 
the Convention (? Constitution) and By-Law 38. 

Further, at no time were the German Branches asked their opinion on these 
two points; but these resolutions were passed over the heads of the German 
Branches. A proceeding which cannot exist in any Society whatever, much less in 
a T. S. Convention. 

Therefore we not only protest energetically against such an over-riding of 
the German Branches, but we further expect that this injustice toward the German 
Branches and this violation of the Constitution of the T. S. and By-Law 38 will 
be made good by the repeal of these resolutions unjustly passed by the 1915 Con- 
vention. 

With Theosophical fraternal greetings, 

(Signed) Emmy Hoffmann, Secretary, 
K. T. Toepelmann, President. 

By-Law 38 reads : "No member of The Theosophical Society shall promul- 
gate or maintain any doctrine as being that advanced or advocated by the Society." 

"Further, at no time were the German Branches asked or informed on these 
two points" they were, of course, represented at the Convention that passed them. 
Through their own limitations they were not present in person to express their 
opinion, but their representatives heard the whole matter discussed. Yet "these 
resolutions were passed over the heads of the German Branches." 

There is just one document more which I think, while It is later in date 
(March 17th, 1920), should be put in evidence at this point, because it reveals a 
great deal of the mental and moral conditions from which these rescinding reso- 
lutions arise. This is in the form of a letter of greeting. I am taking it now 
because it bears so directly on this subject. 



T. S. ACTIVITIES ; 69 

Dresden, March 17, 1920. 
To THE CONVENTION OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, NEW YORK, 

Greeting : 

For the first time in a long period it is possible' for the Dresden Branch of 
The Theosophical Society to greet the Members of the other Branches of the 
Society, in the person of their delegates to the Convention, and to have a share 
in their work. 

The Dresden Branch does this the more willingly, because great doubts have 
arisen within its ranks as to whether The The'osophical Society is still the same 
as the Society within which the Dresden Branch worked before the outbreak of 
the great war. 

So far as the Dresden Branch has been able to judge the situation, the Society, 
which has hitherto been free from dogmas, has been led to abandon its former 
standpoint, as set forth by its Leader in The Key to Theosophy, under the 1 head- 
ing, "The Future of The Theosophical Society," abandoning the qualities there 
declared essential; freedom from prejudice, clear judgment, and perhaps even 
selflessness; or the effort to bring forth these' qualities from the Society has not 
been able to withstand the self-seeking and evil passions and the discord and 
strife which spring from these, which, dwelling in the psychic forces, endanger 
and render well-nigh impossible the' true work of the Society, in the view of its 
Founder, according to the chapter of The Key to Theosophy. 

This at least is what our members have felt, in their ardent efforts to learn 
to understand the new direction of the Society, as they encounter it in the last 
and preceding QUARTERLIES ; and others, so far as impartiality still remains within 
The Theosophical Society, must admit that we ourselves have preserved this impar- 
tiality, since we take as our guide' only such directions as the Foundress of the 
T. S. has left us, for our guidance. 

In conformity with the ardent effort of the Dresden Branch to fulfil the mission 
of the T. S., according to the view of its Foundress, as set forth in this chapter, 
the Dresden Branch proffers its good offices to the Society, and expresses the hope 
that the devotion of the members present will make it possible for the power and 
light of the Master to influence the acts of the Convention, in order that, in the 
future, "the fetters of creeds and dogmas, social and caste prejudices," antipathies 
toward peoples and races, may be kept far from the T. S., in order that our Society, 
according to the view of the "last Messenger of the Great Souls," may once 
again become "a living and healthy body," bringing a blessing to mankind, and 
constituting an active basis for the expected next Messenger. 

For those, however, who need a further indication, we would close our greet- 
ing with the concluding words of the Notes on the Bhagavad Gita, by W. Q. 
Judge (William Brehon), who at the end of the fifth chapter, "The Book of 
Religion by Renouncing Fruit of Works," quotes and comments : 

" 'Effacement in the Supreme Spirit is gained by the right-seeing sage whose 
sins are exhausted, who hath cut asunder all doubts, whose senses and organs 
are under control, and who is devoted to the well-being of all creatures.' 

"If the last qualification is absent, then he is not a 'right-seeing sage' and 
cannot reach union with the Supreme. It must follow that the humblest imitator, 
every one who desires to come to that condition, must try to the best of his 
ability to imitate the sage who has succeeded. And such is the word of the 
Master; for He says in many places that, if we expect to have His help, we must 
apply ourselves to the work of helping humanity to the extent of our ability. 
No more than this is demanded." 

With helpful fraternal greetings, 

DRESDEN BRANCH, T. S. 
(Signed) K. T. TOEPELMANN, President, 
P. BRUEGE, Secretary. 



70 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

It is hardly necessary to comment on that, hardly necessary to point out some 
slight inconsistency or irrelevancy in members of the German nation who are 
still unrepentant, preaching about the annihilation of their sins and the welfare 
of mankind. There are certain things which we hate, murder, filthy unclean- 
ness, and lying hypocrisy. Therefore it is difficult to comment with the cogency 
that is called for, on this extraordinary document; difficult to comment on this 
tender by the German members of their good offices to us, so that once more the 
Masters may co-operate with the Society and once more it may, in their estima- 
tion, become a healthy spiritual body. I do not fe"el equal to it. But the point 
is that he who aids and abets a crime is equally guilty in law, both as to culpa- 
bility and punishment. We left it to the German members to put themselves on 
record as either protesting or concurring in the action of Germany. They have 
now put themselves on record in these two groups; they have registered their 
own situation. It merely remains for us to record the position they have taken 
up. The Executive Committee took that view and expressed it in a series of 
resolutions voted upon by all the members of the Committee and unanimously 
carried. 

Whereas, The principal aim and object of The Theosophical Society is 
to form the 1 nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without dis- 
tinction of race, creed, sex, caste 1 or colour; and 

Whereas, The German nation violated every known principle of brother- 
hood throughout the recent war, beginning with the violation of Belgian neu- 
trality and continuing with demoniacal barbarities practised against innocent 
people; and 

Whereas, The German members of The The'osophical Society, who may 
at one time have been ignorant of the facts, have now had every opportunity, 
from the pages of THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY and from other sources, 
to learn the truth about their country's misconduct; and 

Whereas, Some German members of The Theosophical Society have 
expressed the' utmost sorrow for Germany's wrongdoing, and have written 
that they sincerely repent of their own share of the responsibility ; and 

Whereas, Certain other German members, instead of expressing repent- 
ance, have not only sought to justify themselves and their country, but also, 
in a communication dated December 31st, 1919, addressed to the' Convention 
of The Theosophical Society, have attacked the Society on the pretext that 
the Society's declaration regarding neutrality, adopted by the Convention of 
April, 1915, was in itself a contradiction of the principles of the Society; and 
Whereas, The attitude and action of these other German members is a 
repudiation of the 1 principal aim and object of The Theosophical Society; 
therefore be it 

Resolved, That the Executive Committee of The Theosophical Society, 
acting under By-Law 1 of its Constitution and By-Laws, hereby suspends 
the Charter of the Berlin Branch and the Diplomas of the following members 
thereof, namely, Paul Raatz, Ernst John, Martha Schmidt, Otto Vollberg, 
Willi Boldt, Anna John, Margarete Wollenberg, Woldemar Dietz, Franz Busch, 
Karl Walzer, Gertrud Baader, Richard Baader, Max de Neve, Robert Dubois, 
Elise Schneewolf, Gottlieb Schneewolf, Clara Ribbeck, Bertha Rohn, Ernst 
Conrad; and be it further 

Resolved, That the Executive Committee recommends that at the Con- 
vention of The Theosophical Society to be held in New York in April, 1920, 
the said German metnbers, and all others who adopt or approve a similar 
attitude, be expelled from the ranks of the Society. 

The Constitution and By-Laws, as amended in 1917, gave the Executive Com- 
mittee 1 the power to expel, on good reason and after proper hearing; but the 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 71 

members of the Committee were convinced that this matter is so vital, because 
so deeply related to the 1 heart of our Movement, that while they themselves had 
not a shadow of a doubt as to what should be done, they have not taken the action 
of expelling these members, but have 1 preferred to suspend their membership 
and their charter, and to bring the matter up before the Convention now for 
decision. The Exe'cutive Committee wishes therefore to turn the matter over 
to the Committee on Resolutions, which will consider it and present, I suppose, 
resolutions which will be brought up this afternoon, and which will be pretty 
thoroughly discussed before they are adopted for the reason that this is a matter 
of such vital importance, one which goes so deeply into questions of spiritual 
principle, that every member of the Convention should come to a decision in the 
matter. Therefore the Committee will hand this material to the Committee on 
Resolutions for such action as that Committee shall deem fitting. 

THE CHAIRMAN: The primary question before the 1 Convention is the accept- 
ance of the report of the Executive Committee. No matter how clear it may be 
to us what course we should pursue 1 , in connection with the question laid before 
us by the Executive Committee, for the reason stated by the Chairman himself, 
that this matter goes deep into the fundamental principles which the Society must 
embody, I should be highly unwilling to have this Convention pass upon the ques- 
tion finally at this time. The Executive Committee proposes that it should be 
referred to the Committee on Resolutions and that upon the rendering of their 
report, the afternoon session should be devoted to a full, frank and complete dis- 
cussion of the matter, that there may be no appearance of passing on it hurriedly. 

MR. HARGROVE: I merely wish to second Mr. Johnston's motion, as a member 
of the Executive Committee. Of course, there is a great deal to be said which 
will be said this afternoon. 

Motion carried unanimously. 

THE CHAIRMAN : The next business is the report of the Secretary of the 
Society. It is a matter of profound regret to us that the state of Mrs. Gregg's 
health is not such as to permit her to be here to-day to present that report in 
person; but we are fortunate in having the Assistant Secretary to read it to us 
for her. 

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY T. S. FOR THE YEAR ENDING APRIL 24TH, 1920 

New Members 

Our gain in membership this year has been in certain limited areas. In each 
Branch where there has been marked increase in numbers, two conditions have 
existed. First, a leader or leaders, enthusiastic and persistent in endeavoring to 
extend the activities of the Branch ; second, members who gave themselves heartily 
to following up the leader's efforts. Both factors are evidently essential. At the 
same time we should not infer that every Branch would have made large gains in 
membership had both these conditions been present. There are times in the life 
of each Branch, as all the older members of the T. S. recognize, when its growth 
and its usefulness are to be measured by other standards than the number of 
accessions. Progress in understanding of the Theosophical Movement, greater 
devotion of heart and life to it, represent, in the membership of a Branch, increase 
in effective strength that would often count largely if it could be expressed in 
figures. In the earliest days of its history the Society had three classes of mem- 
bers ; to-day we count only one class. Yet when it is my duty to record here 
the new members added to our rolls, I find myself making distinctions that are 
not called for in our By-Laws. Going over the lists, there comes up the name 
of one and another member whose record shows a new devotion to the cause of 



72 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Masters, during the past year and I say to myself : Another added to the "Regu- 
lars" ; another who regards this incarnation as the opportunity to try to live 
Theosophy. Only the Masters, however, could really know how many of our 
membership have this year be'en added to that number. So I must, after all, con- 
tent myself with the usual form of recording Branches and members newly 
enrolled during the year. Charters have been issued to three new Branches : The 
Upanishad Branch in Ciudad Bolivar; the Sravakas Branch of Salamanca, New 
York; the Curasao Branch in Curasao, Dutch West Indies. During the year we 
have gained 70 new members, and lost 10. The additions are : In South America, 
24. (This includes the members of the new Branch in Dutch West Indies which 
was formed through the activities of one of the membe'rs of the Jehoshua Branch 
of Venezuela) ; Norway, 8; England, 3; United States, 33; scattering, 2. 

Among those 1 members who have been lost by death or by resignation, was one 
whose connection with the Society had extended over many years and who had been 
given the great privilege of doing pioneer work for the Movement Sr. F. Domin- 
guez Acosta of Caracas, Venezuela. I should like to share with you the brief and 
touching announcement of his death, received a few days ago, from one of his 
long-time comrades : 

"I beg to inform you, in order that you may do me the favor to impart the 
information to the other comrades, that on the evening of the 27th of this month 
we carried to the cemetery of this city the' mortal remains of our beloved and 
ever to be remembered comrade, Senor Francisco Dominguez Acosta. We can 
but say: The Lord's will be' done. 

As he had no relatives in this city, the interment was made by us, his friends, 
with the propriety and solemnity which the merits of the deceased demanded." 

In another letter from one of his fellow members in Venezuela it is said: 
"Both for his country and for literature in general, his loss is great and far 
reaching. He was the most impressive writer and the most brilliant orator I have 
ever known, really a Chrysostom. That is the opinion of all who knew him." 

Correspondence 

This year necessity has been one of the stern teachers under whom your 
Secretary has be'en working. There have been many times when it was not pos- 
sible to give prompt and complete attention to all the correspondence of the Office. 
Each inquiry from strangers, each letter from old friends in the work was wel- 
comed, and was responded to in heart and desire; but physical limitations have 
sometimes made it quite impossible for me to write letters, or else have reduced 
them to abbreviated messages. As they went out they were short in form, but not 
shortened as to interest, and a glad entering into the needs and problems of the 
correspondent. It has been most gratifying to receive so many letters from mem- 
bers, saying that they felt they were closely in touch with the Office although they 
had had no recent lette'rs. What pains most is to receive letters saying that the 
writer needed help, but did not ask for it, fearing that the Secretary might be 
too much occupied in other ways. Can we not be more simple' about the matter 
this coming year? The Secretary's Office is entrusted with certain ranges of 
correspondence Branches, members, inquirers, are freely invited to bring their 
wants and needs here. The' Office is never short of helpers. It is my intention 
to use them more freely in your service. So there will always be someone free 
to give the information desired. Please do not undertake to show consideration 
by holding back inquiries; but show it, instead, by anticipating needs, so that 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 73 

replies may not so often be desired "by return mail" 1 And please, hereafter, 
instead of addressing correspondence to the Secretary at 159 Warren Street, Brook-' 
lyn, address the Secretary at P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York this applies 
to all letters about the T. S., about Branch work, about the QUARTERLY. 

Branch Activities 

The most striking feature of the reports from Branches this year is the sense 
of responsibility, the note of consecration to the Movement, that runs through 
them all. There are, of course, accounts of the' outer activities of the Branch. 
It is clear, however, that, in most Branches, those are regarded as a means of 
registering, for outsiders, something of what has come' to Branch members in 
their individual efforts to understand and to follow the will of Masters, or of 
whatever guiding principle they acknowledge and serve. There 1 is also an inter- 
esting coincidence in the number of Branches which, entirely without suggestion 
from Headquarters, have been basing either public meetings or study classes, 
upon Mr. Griscom's contributions to the QUARTERLY some having selected the 
"Elementary Articles"; others his "Letters to Students." In this way his so dis- 
tinctive note has evidently beeti kept sounding through the Branch work. 

The Theosophical Quarterly 

Some one has called the THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY the new Lodge Messenger. 
Certainly it is receive'd as such in many hearts. This is true not only of our 
members, but among an increasing circle of readers who have no active share in 
the work of the Society. There are many letters of appreciation from non- 
members. It is all to their credit that they should adventure on the constant 
reading of a magazine with such a title, one that makes no appeal to popular 
taste. But, once having learned to trust and admire it, what a sorry adventure 
it is to stop just short of the goal! Why does not some echo from the past, some 
hope for the 1 future, lead them to take the next step? Why does not the quality 
of the QUARTERLY articles challenge them to get into touch with the Society? Tak- 
ing the magazine as the fruit of Theosophy's tree, is it not natural that those who 
enjoy the fruit should want to know, for themselves, what the plans are for mak- 
ing grafts onto that tree? 

Last year there were many members who feared that it might be impossible 
to continue the magazine, without Mr. Griscom. Looking back on the 1 comments 
that have come to this Office, it is safe to say that no volume of the QUARTERLY 
has ever been found more inspiring and helpful than Volume XVII, which has 
been, from cover to cover, a testimonial of love and gratitude to the magazine's 
first and only Editor-in-chief. 

The Quarterly Book Department 

This publishing house, an important part of our work yet financially independ- 
ent of it, has the rare distinction of being the only publisher who has not been 
raising prices. Several new editions of our standard books have been brought out 
during the year, but so far it has been possible to offer them at the old prices. 
Among the reprints, the most eagerly desire'd is Fragments, Volume One, which 
comes from the binder as these words are being written. The promise of last 
year still holds good. The Book Department is to give us books containing Mr. 
Griscom's contributions to the literature of the Movement, but no date for these 
publications can yet be fixed. 

A Personal Acknowledgment 

Thanks, profound thanks, for the opportunity given me to serve 1 in this great 
cause is constantly welling up in my heart. First, to the Masters whose generosity 



74 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

has used my small service in their great work; then to my fellow officers, whose 
unfailing support and guidance have made possible the conduct of this Office. I 
have been the recipient of much recognition, of many words of praise, that were, 
instead, their due. The Assistant Secretary has this year taken an increased share 
in the work of the 1 office, but prefers that mention should be made here of those 
whose assistance has made that possible to her. All the residents at the Com- 
munity House are, in one way or another, constantly contributing to the carrying 
on of this work, while definite branches of it are carried by certain of their number 
(Miss dickering, Miss Hascall, Mrs. Vaile, Miss Graves, Miss Youngs, Miss Bell, 
Miss Lewis, and Miss Wood), with Mrs. Helle's help, as always, in addressing the 
foreign list of the Quarterly. 

Assuring you that it is a joy to be entrusted with a form of service that neither 
sickness nor infirmities can wholly bar, this report is respectfully submitted. 

ADA GREGG, 

Secretary, The Theosophical Society. 



MR. WOODBRIDGE: I should like to make it a formal motion that the Con- 
vention accept Mrs. Gregg's report with love and thanks. 

DR. CLARK : I do not find any words to say after that report. Could we not 
find some kind of flowers that would be better than words to send to Mrs. Gregg? 

MR. HARGROVE: We did that last year and sent a kind of round-robin letter 
of greeting which I know was greatly appreciated by her. If we could do the same 
thing this year, I know it would please her immensely. 

It was unanimously voted that love and thanks should go to Mrs. Gregg, and 
that the 1 Convention give expression to its feeling by sending flowers, to be "ex- 
pressive of our missing her to-day and of our feeling for her." 

MR. HARGROVE: I would like, if I may, to say a word in regard to Dominguez 
Acosta, of whose death we have heard. Unfortunately, circumstances do not permit 
a public tribute to his memory, but I want to tell you some things about him and 
his service of the Cause, which are confidential and cannot be allowed to appear 
in the Convention report. (At the end of Mr. Hargrove's brief tribute, the mem- 
bers rose, as a silent tribute to the memory of a courageous comrade.) 

THE CHAIRMAN : I shall ask Mr. Hargrove to take 1 the Chair while I report 
on the affairs of the Treasurer. The financial statement for the year is as follows : 

Report of the Treasurer, Theosophical Society 
April 25, 1919 April 23, 1920 
GENERAL FUND, AS PER LEDGER 
Receipts Disbursements 

Dues from Members $609.20 Secretary's Office $138.70 

Subscriptions and Donations to Printing and mailing THEO- 

the THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 841.00 SOPHICAL QUARTERLY (four 

General Contributions 562.95 numbers) 1,963.46 

Expense of Subscription De- 

$2,013.15 partment of QUARTERLY 28.06 

Deficit April 20, 1920 408.70 Stationery, etc 10.08 

Miscellaneous (rents, etc) 135.10 

$2,275.40 
Deficit April 24, 1919. . 146.45 



$2,421.85 $2,421.85 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 75 

FINANCIAL STATEMENT 

(Including Special Accounts) 

General Fund 




Receipts $2,013.15 Disbursements 

Deficit April 23, 1920 408.70 

$2,421.85 

Special Publication Account 
Balance April 24, 1919 $312.00 Balance April 23, 1920 $312.00 

Discretionary Expense Account 
Balance April 24, 1919 $483.00 Balance April 24, 1920 -483.00 



Deficit in General Fund April 23, 1920 408.70 




Final Balance April 23, 1920. . $386.30 

On deposit in Corn Exchange Bank, April 23, 1920 $396.30 

Outstanding checks, uncashed 10.00 

$386.30 

April 23, 1920. HENRY BEDINGER MITCHELL, Treasurer. 



THE TREASURER: We began the year with a deficit of $146.00, which was very 
generously more than made up before the Convention was ended, but which, never- 
theless, stood on our financial statement as a deficit fqr that year. Those very 
generous donations which the Treasurer received at the time of our last Convention 
have been included here under the title of general contributions. That is why we 
show the deficit reported last year, though it was wiped out in twenty-four hours. 
This year the deficit is $400.00, that is, in two years we have spent $400 more than 
we have received. The reason, for it is quite simple : several years ago, 
namely in April, 1915, printing the QUARTERLY, per issue, cost $260.00. In 
January, 1920 (the last number of the QUARTERLY included in this budget), the 
printing of an edition of exactly the same size, cost $516. The 1 cost, therefore, of 
the QUARTERLY for the same number of pages and copies, irrespective of increase, 
has doubled. This magazine is, as you know, one* of our chief means of keeping 
in contact with our own members, and it is one of our chief means of making our 
ideals known to a wider circle. Our total receipts for the year were roughly 
$2,000.00; our expenditure's for printing $1,960. A small expense for rent and 
light, stationery, etc., must be added, but I know of no organization, anywhere, in 
which so much is done for so little, and where all service is so purely one of gift. 

There were two special accounts the Special Publication Account and the 
Discretionary Expense Account of $314 and $483, respectively, which stood over 
and above the General Fund in our bank account, for special purposes. It is from 
loans from these special funds that our deficit has been carried. So that the 
$408.70 has been met by advances from those special accounts, and thus, instead 
of being in debt, we have, including the special accounts, $386 in the bank. But 
the special accounts are owed by the General Fund $408, which represents the excess 
of our expenditures over our income. 



76 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

In presenting the report I must express my very deep gratitude, and let you 
know how much gratitude you owe, to the Assistant Treasurer, who has done all 
the work. I but get up he're and make the report; Miss Youngs is the proper 
recipient of a very real vote of thanks from this Convention. 

Moved by Mr. Woodbridge and seconded by Mr. Auchincloss that the report 
of the Treasurer be accepted with thanks to him and to the Assistant Treasurer. 
Carried. (Professor Mitchell resumed the Chair.) 

THE CHAIRMAN: I do not know whether the Convention wishes to discuss 
raising the price of the QUARTERLY. In that case we should no longer be in the 
proud position pointed out in the Secretary's report, of being the only concern that 
has not raised its prices. I doubt whether raising the price to non-members would 
make much difference. About three hundred dollars come in during the year from 
sales and subscriptions to the QUARTERLY, which do not come from our own mem- 
bers. To double the price might make a difference of three hundred dollars I 
doubt if it would make that much. Certainly not more, and that would not be 
enough. Therefore I doubt if it would be wise. We are in the position now that 
we have always been in, in our "healthy" days, when we have to rely entirely upon 
the generosity and enthusiasm of our members, and the gifts they make over and 
above the payment of dues. With the good will that is here to-day, I know that 
were it necessary to do so, I, as Treasurer, would only have to ask and the deficit 
would be more than made up. But it is not even necessary to ask, and therefore 
it seems needless to make any change now in our dues or charges. 

MR. HARGROVE: I was informed, just before the Convention, that the deficit 
has been made up. In other words there is no idea of passing the hat round. 

May I suggest that in years gone by, it was always our practice at this Con- 
vention and at about this time to have the enormous pleasure of listening to a 
speech from Mr. Griscom. He used to report on the QUARTERLY and his report 
was a peg on which to hang something from himself which we all wanted to hear. 
I think it would be a good thing for us to stand, happily, to vote him thanks for 
his work on the QUARTERLY. It would not exist to-day if it had not been for him. 
(A rising vote, members and delegates standing for a moment in reverent silence.) 

THE CHAIRMAN: The next business is the report of the Committee on 
Nominations. 

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON NOMINATIONS AND ELECTION OF OFFICERS 

MR. PERKINS : There are two memberships on the Executive Committee which 
expire this year, and the Committee on Nominations recommends that Judge 
McBride, of Indianapolis, and Colonel Knoff, of Kristiania, be the candidates for 
re-election to these two vacancies in the membership of the Committee. 

The nominations of a Committee needing no seconding, the question was put 
to the Convention and passed unanimously. 

The Committee further recommended that all the other officers be retained 
in their present positions for the ensuing year; and the Secretary was instructed 
to cast a single ballot for: 

Secretary, Mrs. Ada Gregg 
Assistant-Secretary, Miss Isabel E. Perkins 
Treasurer, Mr. Henry Bedinger Mitchell 
Assistant-Treasurer, Miss Martha E. Youngs 

MR. HARGROVE: May I ask if I might be authorized by the Convention to 
send a telegram to Judge McBride in the name of the Convention, thanking him 
for his message and expressing our appreciation of his long membership, and also 
our regards? Voted upon and passed unanimously. 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 77 

MR. JOHNSTON: I think we might also at the same time write a very cordial 
letter to Colonel Knoff, who had hoped to be 1 at this Convention, and those of us 
who know him personally were looking forward to meeting a very splendid and 
veteran member of this Society. Strikes prevented the sailing of his ship. 

Let us write and announce his re-election, and tell him how disappointed we are 
and that we hope he will come over next year, strikes or no strikes. 

THE CHAIRMAN: I should like to propose that a cable also be sent to Dr. 
Keightley expressing our thanks for his greetings. 

After announcements regarding the afternoon session, the evening meeting 
of the New York Branch, and the lecture Sunday afternoon, the Convention 
adjourned until 2.30 p. m. 



AFTERNOON SESSION 

THE CHAIRMAN: Our first business this afternoon is the report of the Com- 
mittee on Letters of Greeting. 

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON LETTERS OF GREETING 

DR. CLARK: We have letters of greeting from Branches in Europe, in South 
America and in our own country. These letters all have a common note. They 
speak of the efforts of the Black Lodge in a more subtle, underhand way, to get 
control of things in the world, after they have been thwarted openly; and of the 
great need of the Society in this Convention to take its stand against those efforts. 
This is only a briei summary of their contents. The letters themselves, which 
will be published in the QUARTERLY, will, I am sure, bear out this summary of 
them. Colonel Knoff's makes very direct reference to an unwillingness to take a 
positive and definite 1 stand, which he finds very characteristic of the so-called intel- 
lectual classes. 

MR. HARGROVE : I think it would be interesting if we could perhaps hear, from 
the Committee on Letters of Greeting, from whom the letters have come to 
remind us of old friends more than anything else. 

Dr. Clark then announced that letters had been received from Colonel T. H. 
Knoff, of Kristiania ; Mrs. E. H. Lincoln, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, England; Mr. 
J. W. G. Kennedy, of London ; Mr. Hjalmar Julin, of Arvika, Sweden (whose 
long and valued service of the T. S. was commented upon) ; Mr. Othmar Kohler, 
of Aussig; Mr. J. J. Benzo, of Caracas; Dr. D. Salas Baiz, of Sanfernando de 
Apure; Mr. Manning, of Cincinnati; Mr. A. L. Leonard, of Los Angeles. 

Moved by Mr. Acton Griscom, and duly seconded, that the report of the Com- 
mittee on Letters of Greeting be accepted with thanks. Carried. 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RESOLUTIONS 
MR. HARGROVE: Mr. Chairman and Fellow Members: 

I. Our first resolution is that Mr. Johnston, as Chairman of the Executive 
Committee, be authorized to reply to the letters of greeting. Carried. 

II. Our second resolution: that this Convention of the Society authorize 
visits of the officers of the Society to the Branches. Carried. 

III. Third, that the thanks of the Convention and of the Society be extended 
to the New York Branch for the hospitality received. Carried. 



78 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

The fourth resolution of last year read as follows: 

'Whereas, At the Convention in 1915 following the outbreak of the War, 
The Theosophical Society declared 

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

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

"Be it Resolved, That compromise with evil is as wrong as is neutrality; 
and that Bolshevism is the very opposite 1 of Brotherhood and of all for which 
The Theosophical Society stands." 



I think it is very much in order to read out that resolution of last year, 
because it reminds us that the T. S. is not a static thing, but a growing thing, 
and that the resolution which I expect we shall adopt this afternoon is the direct 
outcome of the spirit and purpose that are embodied in the resolution of 1919. 

And now we come to the major resolution of to-day. First of all, I would 
like to know whether there is any ne'ed to read out the letters and resolutions 
that were read by Mr. Johnston this morning? [No.] I think it would be 
merely wasting your time. Keeping in mind, therefore, as you will be good enough 
to do, the resolutions which were passed by the Executive Committee 1 , which, 
instead of taking drastic action as it is authorized to do under the Constitution 
and By-Laws, preferred to give you the opportunity to debate and consider the 
question ; bearing in mind the terms of that resolution, and that it was referred 
to you, and that the charter of the Berlin Branch was suspended and the diplomas 
of the German members suspended, you are asked to go one step further, and 
to cancel that charter and to expel those German members. 

Your Committee asks you to adopt the following resolution: 

Pursuant to the action of the Executive Committee, and confirming the self- 
expulsion of certain German members, be it 

RESOLVED, That the Charters of the Berlin Branch in Germany and of 
the Dresden Branch in Germany, are hereby cancelled, and that the Char- 
ters of all othe'r Branches of The Theosophical Society, if any, which 
adopt or approve the attitude of said Berlin and Dresden Branches shall 
at once be cancelled by the Executive Committee of the Society; 

RESOLVED, That all members of the Society who have endorsed the 
attitude 1 of said German Branches are hereby expelled, and that all other 
members, if any, who may hereafter take similar action shall at once be 
expelled by the Executive Committee. 

I do not see that there is need for me to say much more. Mr. Johnston, this 
morning, merely stated the facts. Partly because those facts speak for them- 
selves, partly on account of the lucidity of his statement, it would appear to me 
that argument is not needed. At the same time, we want to hear all opinions. 
Purposely, your Committee on Resolutions refrained from the usual series of 
reasons given under the head of "Whereas." We want your speeches to take 
the place of the reasons; we want the whole question considered, not only with 
an eye to the present, but with an eye to the future. From my own standpoint 
we" shall be doing the right and the only possible thing. We are not doing it as 
against the Germans whom we expel. We are doing it as the only brotherly 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 79 

thing that can be done under the circumstances. We are doing it to defend the 
parent body, and that which is done for The Theosophical Society must, in the end, 
be for the good of those 1 against whom the action is taken. When people do not 
belong organically to this Society, it is bad for them that they should belong 
nominally. However, that is not the main motive. The motive is, first, that we 
have to consider the ideal of what is right, in and for itself. Second, we have 
to think of the Society; and those of us who have had the immense privilege of 
long membership, those of us who feel that these Conventions celebrate once more 
the unfurling of the battle-worn standard of the T. S., are not prepared to see 
the Society injured if we can help it. You, of course, feel that way too. You love 
the Society; you know its history; you have fought for it, suffered for it, perhaps. 
You feel a sense of responsibility ; you know as well as I do that in any organism 
corruption breeds corruption. Corruption tole'rated is contagious. It is our duty 
to think of that, to think of the name, of the honour of the Society. 

Supposing there were anyone here in New York, nominally a member of the 
Society, but whose life was notoriously evil, would it not be our duty to expel 
him from the ranks, simply to protect the honour of the Society and the good 
name of Theosophy? Would you permit that name to be dragged through the 
mud if you could help it to be exposed to dishonour? Supposing that a Branch 
stands openly, defiantly, for all that Germany has done; supposing that a Branch 
turns around on the parent body and accuses the parent body of being a thing 
of evil, is there more than one course open to that parent body? There is not. 
And I want to remind you that this has been the attitude of the Masters of all 
ages, the Masters of the East and of the West. You will remember, doubtless, 
that in the old Vinaya texts of Buddhism there is provision made by Buddha 
himself for the expulsion of a member of his Order, for a variety of reasons. 
In those days they did not have a Constitution and By-Laws, as we have to-day. 
Buddha laid down Rules for his Order as events developed the need for rules. 
So in the Maha Vagga it. is stated that one of the members of his Order had 
sinned, and that when this was called to the attention of the Buddha, he stated 
that if any member of the Society were to commit theft, were to commit murder, 
were a liar, were to speak against the Dharma (that is, against the spirit of 
Theosophy, the Law), were to speak against the Sangha (that is, against the 
Society itself), "in these cases I prescribe, O Bhikkus, that you expel him from 
the Society." So there is the mild and gentle Buddha, whose 1 teaching is based 
upon universal love, but who thought of righteousness first; who placed justice 
above sentimentality, and who, because he 1 was a Master, was not afraid of doing 
what was right. So I submit to you that it is our duty to-day to perform this 
unpleasant but necessary surgical operation. 

MR. AUCHINCLOSS : Mr. Lloyd George says, in this morning's paper, that Ger- 
many is sick; and that she must be treated very gently until she is well. He is 
perfectly right about her being sick, but very wrong about the way she ought to be 
treated. There is the same hypocrisy now that there was during the War; the 
same bosh, the same disloyalty to principle, in haste to resume business relations; 
one hears it on all sides. And the 1 last piece of hypocrisy is the request that they 
be allowed to keep a standing army of 200,000 men until the other nations have 
disarmed. That same hypocrisy lies back of the resolution of Mr. Raatz and his 
followers. They have 1 no desire to atone, no repentance. They would do it all 
over again if they could; they are making their plans for that all the time. It is 
a question of principle, not of dogma. The Theosophical Society exists to help 
the souls of mankind. It has its face set against anything that is going to pre- 
vent that. It must attack anything that is going to prevent it. Mr. Raatz and 
his followers are standing for the spirit of Germany. Until they have changed, 
they simply do not belong to the Society; they have expelled themselves, and any 
expulsion by the Society is simply a matter of form they are out now. 



80 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

DR. CLARK: What those German letters brought up in my mind were the 
old words, "If the salt have lost his savour." What is the world to-day without 
the Society? The Society is just a small piece of leaven to bring something good 
out of the mass of evil that is around us everywhere. It seems to me that these 
letters are the arguments of that old wolf in the fable who had made up his mind 
that he was going to eat the lamb, and it did not matter whether it was the lamb 
or the lamb's mother. We have seen Germany try to get possession of everything 
else that was good; here is the deliberate effort to get possession of the leaven, 
of the salt, of the thing that will preserve that which so much needs to be pre- 
served. The action expressed in this resolution is the only action that is possible. 
It is a crisis; and a crisis is not a thing that admits of deliberations back and 
forth. It calls for immediate action. You cannot write notes in a crisis. Your 
principles are supposed to have been formed and you act upon them. That letter 
from Dresden is so outrageous, so thoroughly German, that while this expulsion 
happens to be a matter of words, I hope we can put so much intention back of 
it that they will really feel our meaning and purpose. 

MR. WOODBRIDGE: One of the very first lessons that anybody who comes into 
the Society gets is to be tolerant to another person's point of view; and when I 
first heard this proposed action, I wondered how we were going to four-square 
it with the doctrine of being tolerant. The only possible tolerance is to give the 
Germans an opportunity to repent. My next thought was, here is an intensely 
funny thing really funny people arrogating to themselves the possession of 
righteousness ; a kind of sublimated Jack Horner pie ! I realized that those letters 
might have been turned around and written by us to them; they show things 
upside down a perversion. Their last letter is a declaration of war. 

In the world to-day we can see very striking signs of an unrelenting cam- 
paign against everything that is decent: Violence, foulness, materialism cropping 
out in every direction. It does not stop on the lower plane; you find it among 
people who ought to know better, like noxious sewer gas it creeps up to destroy 
people. False doctrines of brotherhood are used by those who mean to throw off 
all decency, all law and order. There is a tendency to condone evil, and wherever 
we look we see some movement to divide man from what is decent. And now it 
has the audacity, the wicked courage to lift its evil head against the T. S. It 
is not a question of tolerance. These people are open enemies, and now are 
attacking the Society under their black flag. And so, as Theosophists, we have 
got to stand for the truth, got to attack the people who avow a lie and call it 
truth, who lift the standard of murder and call it kindness. I think it is a privi- 
lege to speak for the resolution. 

MR. MILLER: As I heard that last letter I found myself completely unable 
to understand the point of view of one who could write it. But it impressed me 
as being, like so many of the documents which appeared during the War, typically 
German, and another indication of the fact that the German to-day is unrepentant 
and unchanged. I think that one of the things noticeable in these documents is 
their hypocrisy. They have gone out of their way to find an excuse on which to 
base their action in the name of a protest against dogma. They have protested 
that the resolution of 1915 was a violation of the spirit of brotherhood; they 
show their hypocrisy by taking the last lines, of the Key to Theosophy to find! 
excuse for their action. If they had read the Key carefully they would have 
found in the early pages a statement to the effect that those who join the Society 
look in vain for any dogma; its only creed is loyalty to truth and its ritual to 
serve every truth by its use. It seems to me that this is a ( question of loyalty to 
the eternal principles upon which the Society was founded upon loyalty to truth 
and that is where we are at the parting of the ways. 

MR. SAXE: I agree entirely with the previous speakers, though the matter 
appears to me from a slightly different angle. The first object of the Society is 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 81 

the forming of a nucleus of universal brotherhood. This consists not in a com- 
munity of outward interests, not in identity of dogmas, not in that we believe in 
reincarnation or some other doctrine, but our bond is that we all have a common 
aim which is to approach one centre, one light. As we do that, as we come, 
each one on his own path, approaching the centre as the spokes of the wheel the 
hub, we' come closer to each other, and in that way we find in time that we have 
an actual brotherhood, a relationship. This is increasingly so as we progress. 
And in order to do this we study, we have meetings, read books, and so forth. 
The aim in all ways is to find out what will help us to make that progress and 
what holds us back. From time to time problems come up, obstacles of one kind 
or another. Times come when it is necessary to talk things over and make cer- 
tain decisions which are vital to the success of the Movement. Supposing that 
at a certain point a crisis arises ; the members convene to consider the thing 
carefully and deliberately; they take a step which to them is obviously the only 
one to take. Then one or more members, after having plenty of time' to con- 
sider the matter, without any possible excuse for not understanding the situation, 
say that the vie\v taken by the members as a whole is wrong; that what they see 
as white is black what they see as North is South. What can you do? Can you 
compromise and say that both views are right? Obviously you cannot. If you 
do, what would the result be to the protesting members themselves? Only con- 
fusion ; compromise has become impossible. The only thing to do is to take a 
definite stand and say: "If you see as white what we see as black the only thing 
for you to do is to leave us." I agree entirely with the motion and the speakers 
who preceded me. 

MR. PERKINS : It seems to me that we are talking about an entirely natural 
process here to-day not something strange or unusual. I wish we had a micro- 
scope here and a nucleus, one of those little nuclei of the organic world. If' we 
had one and put it under the microscope, and watched the field of the microscope 
with the intense light that beats there; it might happen that some 1 little black 
microbes of disease and anarchy and hell would come along. What then should 
we see? Something very simple' and very natural. We should see the nucleus 
pause for just a moment to take notice that something foreign, evil by its very 
nature, aimed against the' life of that nucleus, was present: then we should see that 
little organism contract, close up for just an instant, and right after that those black 
microbes of disease would be where? Outside the nucleus! 

We have here another example of exactly the same thing. We who have been 
members for even a few years, know that the T. S. is in point of fact the fighting 
line. When things are going along smoothly, what happens? Those who are 
actively on the fighting line are separated by intervals, and occasionally across 
the gap comes some word "Are you there?" But when, in response to attack, 
the forces of evil turn around and attack in turn, what happens. The spaces that 
have separated those on the fighting line exist no longer. They draw together until 
they are touching shoulder to shoulder, and along the line the pressure increases 
and something gets forced out; something that does not belong there', some- 
thing that cannot stand the pressure, something that is traitorous, something that 
has shown itself to be part and parcel of the agents of the Black Lodge. 

It is all very well to see at the present moment when everything is clear, but we 
> must do more. Mr. Hargrove, Mr. Johnston, and Professor Mitchell have called 
attention to the fact that it is important, not only to-day but in the light of the 
future, that we should all understand what we are doing and why we are taking 
action, in carrying out the re'solution of the Committee. It means that the claim 
on the part of these former German members of the Society, that at the 1915 
Convention the Society adopted dogma, is a very old story. Like everything else, 
the T. S. has been reborn several times; in fact it is one of the best illustrations 
of re-birth. We 1 must distinguish between dogma and principle. Dogma is a 



82 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

mental statement of a belief, the statement of an opinion. Was that resolution 
that was passed in 1915 a statement of opinion or was it a statement of ever- 
lasting principle 1 , a thing which always has been true and always will be true? 
What are the German members, in those letters, asking us to believe? Do they 
expect us to believe the 1 story that, as Mr. Woodbridge has said, was too silly 
for a child to tell? They indicate that, because the 1915 resolutions were, as they 
claim, matters of dogma, the Masters of Wisdom have been so horrified as to 
withdraw from the Society. Yet apparently, in their opinion, those Masters paid no 
attention to the sinking of the Lusitania, the violation of Belgian neutrality, the 
horrors in France; all those 1 things they appear to think that the Masters have 
passed over without a thought, a word, an expression. Silly? A thing to be 
laughed at if it were not so serious. But we must remember that in the years 
gone by, this Society has come to a parting of the ways, more than once, where 
it has been necessary to see these things clearly, to distinguish between mere indi- 
vidual opinion about something and an expression of one of the great laws of life. 

On what, in our hearts, are we, in this case, to decide whether it is a matter 
of dogma or of principle? We do not have to take a statement from others. We 
have heard their letters. We know in our own hearts the source from which 
they emanated. Why do we know, why do we recognize them as the expression 
of everything that is evil? Because we know the evil in our own hearts. Why do 
I know that they are based upon an attempt of hypocrisy, of falsehood ; the attempt 
to mislead? Because in my own heart I know that same devil, the attempt to 
deceive, to draw the herring across the trail, when I have done wrong and have 
been caught at it. That is why I know what is back of those letters. I know the 
devil inside, and there is no argument about it. 

Going through the woods you see little 1 foot marks in the trail. You cannot 
tell sometimes whether it is the footprint of a deer or a pig; their footprints are 
very much alike. But if you catch sight of the two animals you know, because 
the action of the two animals is entirely different. We know the difference 
between the action of the Masters of wisdom the action of the Powers of 
Light, the powers of the spiritual world, the powers of the higher nature in our 
own selves, in our own hearts and the action of the powers of darkness. We 
know it as a matter of experience; and as a matter of experience, I should like 
to second this resolution, that we vote to expel these foreign organisms that are 
deadly to the life of the Society which we love and to all that we know it stands for. 

MR. LADow: I think that as we listened to that infamous letter, we all 
must have remembered the efforts of Germany to place the blame for the inva- 
sion of Belgium on the "terrible plot" which Belgium had been indulging in 
against the Germans. The hyprocrisy in itself would not be so depressing if there 
were not added to it a very real force. Mr. Woodbridge said that this is a dec- 
laration of war. It is a declaration of the continuance of war by the Black Lodge. 
The children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light. 
Obedience of the forces of evil to their own end is opposed by a spirit of dally- 
ing and false tolerance on the part of those who should stand for the forces of 
light. It is the duty of The Theosophical Society to take a definite stand and 
definite action against that sort of thing. 

MR. ACTON GRISCOM : In all the reading which I have been able to do in 
what I might describe as Theosophical literature, I have never seen anything about 
toleration of principle. We are to tolerate the opinions of others, but I have 
never found that we are to tolerate the principles of others. I was very much 
amused at the definition which Webster's Dictionary (edition of 1874) gives of 
the word opinion, as applied particularly to what has just been suggested by Mr. 
Perkins. It says, "Opinion, a mental conviction of the truth of some statement, 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 83 

founded on a low degree of probable evidence." Those nineteen German members, 
and the letter from Herr Toepelmann, informed us very subtly that the Masters, 
after we passed the resolution in 1915, had withdrawn, and that they hoped that if 
we passed their resolution withdrawing the previous one, the Masters will then 
again accord to us their grace and power and help. It is quite obvious that there is 
a low degree of probable evidence involved in such a statement, and therefore that 
statement of theirs is not a statement of principle but of opinion. I think that this 
question, in one 1 sense, can be boiled down to a clear understanding of the differ- 
ence between a statement of opinion and of principle, because a statement of 
opinion which pretends to be a statement of principle becomes thereby a dogma, 
and may very well be misleading unless what lies back of the statement is clearly 
recognized. By their fruits ye 1 shall know them. A statement of principle which, 
on the face of it, expresses opinions based on a lack of information proves that 
there is no genuine righteous principle back of that statement. 

I also felt very warmly towards Dr. Clark's closing remarks, and have not 
been able myself to think of a phrase which would convey the same idea as tact- 
fully and in such a restrained way. I cannot do better, therefore, than endorse most 
heartily what he said. 

Mr. WOODBRIDGE: Looking at the picture of Mr. Griscom a little while ago, 
and thinking how he would blaze over such letters as those 1 we are discussing, I 
was reminded of something he once said: that there was one gift, and only one, 
which God had given us, which could not be taken away from us. If we 1 go back, 
we shall find the Germans attempting to do what God cannot do, and that is take 
from us the right to choose between good and evil. If a man joins the T. S. 
he does not the'reby lose the right to moral choice. 

Miss HOHNSTEDT: Mr. Woodbridge said that if we would look, we should 
find that much condoning of evil is prevalent. That is also my experience. People 
say to me, "I see that the 1 T. S. 'four hundred' will not receive our Society if we 
stand for what they call evil" implying that we are too censorious. I am glad 
that we are known to have standards. It was Mr. Auchincloss, I think, who spoke 
of the German nation as sick. It is sick, and I know just enough about the medi- 
cal profession to know that if they see a cancerous growth, they cut it out. They 
do not delude themselves into thinking that they can turn it into good healthy tissue 
by keeping it. 

MRS. GITT: From one angle, why do we trouble about this resolution? The 
Germans have expelled themselves ; they have made of themselves foreign bodies, 
parasites. Was it not said by a great Master He who is not with me is against 
me? They are no longer Theosophists, because they are not adhering, as I see 
it, to the principles under which they came into the Society. They have done 
wrong, and with all their "brass" they want to drag us over into their way of 
thinking. They are trying to pull brotherhood to pieces. The way the Germans 
treated Belgium should have made all those members in Germany stand up openly, 
in indignation against such warfare. I think the T. S. as an organization has 
been very patient to give them time and the chance to see what really happened. 
Now they have had their chance, and I think we should hurt them if we gave 
them further opportunity to talk to us about the matter. They should no longer 
be allowed audience by the T. S. 

DR. STEDMAN : I was especially interested in the Dresden letter because it 
is so much in accord with the letters I have recently been reading from Germany, 
in my capacity as editor of a professional periodical. Every mail brings me letters 
asking for a renewal of relations with no idea that there could be any bar to 



84 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

our going back onto the old footing with Germans. In all those 1 letters the 
writers either excuse themselves or accuse us, speaking contemptuously of the 
"crazy war psychology that fills America to-day." That extraordinary attitude 
appears to be typical of the German wherever you find him. The Dresden letter 
to this Convention seems to me to be full confirmation of their solidarity with 
unrepentant Germany. 

THE CHAIRMAN here stated that there were some things on his mind which 
he very much wished to say, not in his official capacity, but as a member of the 
T. S. He therefore requested Mr. Hargrove to take the Chair, and, being recog- 
nized by the provisional chairman, made the following remarks: 

PROFESSOR MITCHELL: What has been said leaves it entirely clear as to the 
necessity of our taking the action that has been recommended to us, carrying out 
the action already taken by the Executive Committee. I believe there can be no 
two opinions as there have ce'rtainly been no two voices as to what our course 
should be. The only question, therefore, that concerns us is how to take that 
course in such a way that it will not be capable of being misunderstood when 
our successors have' not the living animal in action (to use Mr. Perkins' figure), 
but only his footprint as it exists in the past. How are we to be sure that the 
record which we leave by our action here to-day, the precedent that we 1 establish, 
will be of such a nature as not to be misunderstood by those who come after us? 
That is part of our responsibility. In our hands is the 1 life-work of our prede- 
cessors. We are to pass on the fruit and seed of their age-long sacrifice and 
effort. We are responsible for the continuance of the right traditiorii within the 
Society. If we take this action and do not make it entirely clear why we are 
taking it and how, it is quite possible 1 that we shall be establishing an unfor- 
tunate precedent. 

Let us therefore look more closely into this question of precedent, and the 
possible misunderstanding which could exist as to our motive. Let us be clear 
first, that this action is a grave and important question, in that it tends to define 
more definitely just what the 1 Society is. The German attitude has been that 
cleare'r definition was unfortunate. We sought to define more clearly what the 
Society was in 1915. The resolutions then passed have been read and yet I 
want you to pause and consider them, because those are the 1 resolutions that we 
are asked to withdraw. Individual neutrality is not right when it is believed that 
a question of righteousness is at stake. Conside'r the opposite: individual neu- 
trality is right, proper, in accord with Theosophical principles, when the indi- 
vidual believes that the question presents a direct opposition betwe'en right and 
wrong. It is then right for him to be inactive. Do we wish to define The Theo- 
sophical Society more' sharply, in such a way that that definition will tell us that 
The Theosophical Society believes it to be right to be indifferent between right 
and wrong? We need only state the' question to see how impossible it is. 

Next, we are asked to withdraw our statement that war need not be a viola- 
tion of brotherhood, but may be necessary in obedience to the dictates of brother- 
hood. Let us see what objection to war was raised by members in Germany at 
a time when German armies were overrunning Belgium and when she had forced 
the vilest war in history on Europe, for no other purpose than that of her own 
aggrandizement, for a larger place in the sun for herself ; committing every 
unspeakable as well as speakable atrocity upon women and children, and utterly 
disregarding all the rights of decency. Germany was then preaching to its own 
people the doctrine of the superman; that their duty was to themselves and that 
their own good \vas alone worthy of consideration. To all other peoples they 
were preaching pacifism; their agents spread through this country, preaching, in 
the name of brotherhood, pacifism, neutrality, the rights of the labouring man; 
spreading discord and class hatred in the name of brotherhood. That act alone 
constituted an absolute prostitution of all for which The Theosophical Society 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 85 

stands. That act alone put those guilty of it, if consciously guilty, outside of 
membership in the Society. 

Why was it we waited from 1915 to 1920 to take action? That is part of the 
precedent here established. Not because we were in doubt as to the character of 
the act, but about the conscious responsibility of our German members. We could 
not know then, with surety, how conscious the authors of the Berlin protest were 
of the nature 1 of their own action ; how conscious they were of the prostitution 
of the name of brotherhood, of the name of The Theosophical Society. And now 
we do know. We have not judged them. We have left them to judge 1 themselves. 
Here, after five years, when all the world has had the opportunity of knowing 
what Germany was guilty of in Belgium, how the war was forced on Europe; 
when their own Government, which committed that act, has been overthrown so 
that they have no longer the pretext of loyalty to their own leaders, yet they 
repeat their protest. It is not against the action of the German armies, not 
against the action of the German Government: the unspeakable atrocities, the 
prostitution of the name of brotherhood which has spread Bolshevism through 
the world, they ignore in silence. What they protest against is the action of The 
Theosophical Society in saying that it is every man's duty to stand for right, 
as he sees it. We did not define the right. We merely put it to the individual that 
he himself could not remain inert, indifferent, a neutral, when he himself believed 
that a principle of righteousness was at stake; could not remain inert when he 
knew that force was being used against the helple'ss and that every principle of 
righteousness was being overridden. We stand to-day upon that clearer definition 
of the T. S.; we stand here facing the judgment that those German members 
have made of themselves (because there are other Ge'rman members whose con- 
clusions are the opposite of those expressed in the letters read to us). We are 
under the necessity of taking action with regard to those expressions. Whatever 
action we take will, in itself, tend to define more clearly the nature of the Society, 
as life itself forces the definition of every man's character in each conscious choice 
he is compelled to make. It is necessarily a sharper manifestation of the nature 
of The Theosophical Society, not in dogma, but in principle, in action. What 
action do we take'? The principle, or motive, or guide we have for that action 
has been very clearly stated in what has been put before us to-day. Plato stated 
it : It is not difference of opinion that separates men, it is difference of aim and 
of ideal. The Theosophical Society is not something that is static, but dynamic. 
It has a goal, an aim, a purpose; and it purposes to press toward them and to 
attain them. Those are our companions who seek that goal, irrespective of blind- 
ness, irrespective of faults, of weakness, of error. We welcome the companion- 
ship of all who press toward the goal toward which we also press. On high 
authority it was once said that we could exclude no one. Is it the same thing 
to exclude as to expel? No! Let us assume that someone who has sinned, is 
weak, comes to us professing universal brotherhood as we conceive of it. Are 
we to exclude him because he is less good, less wise or less strong than We? 
Or because he has some queer opinion about the Church in Ceylon or about the 
relation of Buddhism to Shintoism, or something else? Who are we to judge? 
We are not to exclude him for anything of the sort. We are to welcome him 
and give him his opportunity. But if, having done 1 that, he makes it evident by 
his own acts that the goal he seeks is wholly different from what we seek; that 
he is using words as we do not use them ; if under the same 1 names he is seeking 
different ideals which are the opposite of those we seek, then we must recognize 
the fact that he is not our companion. There is no religion higher than the 
truth, and we must register it. 

Let us look at the way in which the German members have written themselves 
down ; let us ask ourselves whether their statement that our resolution was a 
dogma (a matter of opinion, something against the ideals of the Society) is evi- 



86 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

dence that they are moving toward our goal? If so, let us keep them; if not, they 
have no part with us. They have made it manifest that their aim is not ours. We 
are not travelling the same road. To try to move together is for us mutually to 
neutralize all possible progress. 

We are establishing a precedent. We are doing more than that. We are 
endeavouring to fulfil a very serious trusteeship the trusteeship of this Society, of 
Madame Blavatsky, of Mr. Judge, of Mr. Griscom, of many old members. What 
is our duty there? What would we have our successors conceive to be their duty? 
We want them to be 1 very keenly aware of their responsibility, of the fact that each 
action they take will tend to define this trust of theirs, tend to shape what we 
have left, what we have poured our lives into. Yet we do not want them to be 
indifferent to another aspect of the case we do not want them to be so afraid of 
action that they will let others act toward evil in the name of their trust. Do we 
wish to let Mr. Paul Raatz and his followers continue to represent The Theo- 
sophical Society, as unwilling to pronounce that it is a man's duty to take definite 
action for what he sees to be right ? Are we willing for that to be spread throughout 
Europe as the ideal for which Madame Blavatsky, Mr. Judge and our other great 
companions gave their lives? If not, we must expel those German members. 

Expulsion: are we establishing a new precedent there? Are we imposing an 
artificial definition on the 1 Society, or registering a perception of its own inherent 
character? Whatever the Society is, it is a living organism, living with the lives 
given to it in the past. It is for us to see to-day that it fulfils its own nature. Is 
expulsion an unfortunate precedent, or may it become an unfortunate precedent? 
Is it something foreign to the nature of The Theosophical Society? Obviously 
not first, because provision for it exists in the Constitution. Then there 1 must be 
occasions, of such a nature that the duty of expulsion would become clearly ours, 
necessary to be exercised. Has it ever been exercised in the past? Yes, again and 
again. As we may read in Lucifer, Volume V, page 251 (1889), over Madame 
Blavatsky's own signature : "... It is now a matter of official record that the 
Branch of this name was discharted only in May of the present year, and its 
President . . . , expelled by the American Section of the General Council of the 
T. S." It is not a new precedent we are making, but an old one that we are 
following. We are following it for the same reason, because those who were 
expelled made it unmistakably clear over their own signatures, that they are 
pursuing an aim, a purpose, an ideal opposite to that for which the T. S. stands. 

How will our attitude affect the German members who are expelled? That 
point has been touched upon. Would it be right to leave them in any doubt as to 
our conviction of their complete antagonism to the T. S. and all for which it 
stands? Do we not at least owe the truth to our former comrades? How would 
silence on our part affect those German members who have seen more clearly, 
expressed their regret, accepted in full the resolution passed in 1915, and see it as 
an ideal expressive of the principle animating The Theosophical Society? What 
would be the effect on those members if we showed only indifference to the action 
of Mr. Raatz and? his followers, if we were to leave them toi fight against that 
attitude in Germany, unaided by us, leave them alone to champion our ideals 
with no expression from us as to which of the two sides we are on? Would that 
be a precedent that we should wish to leave for our successors? 

Surely that would not be an expression of our ideal. Whether we consider 
how it would affect our members all over the world, or how it would affect the 
Lodge of Masters, there can be no doubt of the action we should take. If the 
speeches that have been made are regarded as the reasons for our action, I do 
not think there could be any doubt in the future as to the nature of the precedent 
we are establishing. For my own part, it is a precedent that I am glad to see made 
just as clear as we can make it. 

MR. GRANT: While I shall certainly vote affirmatively when we come to vote 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 87 

on this resolution, I want to speak here 1 of a point affecting the manner in which 
we shall take action. I think we should make it very clear that we are not 
expelling those German members because they have said that we have undertaken 
to force a dogma on them. I can understand that there are many good people, 
kindly at heart, who honestly believe 1 that war and brotherhood are incompatible. 
We do not want to appear to be denying such people the right to hold that view, 
and yet remain good members of the T. S. I think we should make it very clear 
to all the Branches that we are not expelling those German members on any such 
grounds. This seems to me the more important because their letters are put in 
such form as to make it appear that we are trying to foist a dogma on them. We 
are not. We must therefore leave no loophole there, which would enable people 
in the future to say, "Well, those Germans were right in part, for certainly the 
principles of the T. S. gave them a right to hold their own opinions and to expect 
tolerance 1 for them from their fellow members." 

THE CHAIRMAN : I should like to answer, as Chairman of the Convention, that 
there is only one binding object in the Society. It is not a matter of conscience 
that all members endorse verbatim every declaration of the T. S. Our only binding 
object is to form a nucleus of universal brotherhood. 

MR. JOHNSTON: I think that what I said this morning made entirely clear, 
both my view and my conviction in this matter. But there were one or two things 
then out of place to say, which I should like to say now, especially as regards this 
matter of a nucleus of universal brotherhood which is the promise of spiritual life 
for future generations and races, to form which, as some of us think, the Society 
was instituted by Masters, with a long vision and an entirely definite purpose. What 
has been the history of the Society since it was founded? It has, from one point 
of view, been this: the formation of the centre of the nucleus as we believe by 
Masters themselves ; then the successive approach of groups of people of many 
nations and religions to this nucleus, with two results; either assimilation or 
extrusion from that nucleus. As it is a vital operation not merely physically vital, 
but a profoundly vital spiritual operation in every individual there is a sifting out 
of the elements in him which will assimilate with the nucleus and the rejection of 
the others. The first general movement of this kind, selection and extrusion, took 
place in 1884-1885. The centre of the selective movement was Madame Blavatsky, 
and the principle involved was really her moral and spiritual integrity. In historical 
fact, those who believed in that spiritual integrity were those who survived, and 
those who did not, did not survive. There were no Conventions no voting, in 
this case, but a tremendously vital and spiritual action which worked itself out 
with marvellous clarity. There were some, lame ducks, neither in nor out, who 
had not the presence of mind to order their own funerals; they hung about for a 
time, but finally dropped off; the vital force working its own way out with 
tremendous potency. In 1887-1888 the Secret Doctrine was published, and the 
Voice of the Silence. New spiritual life was able to come in on account of that 
extrusion. 

The next similar situation defined itself about 1894-1895, fifteen or twenty 
years after the foundation of the Society. There the point of decision really was 
the spiritual integrity of Mr. Judge, these two Lodge messengers, one after the 
other, acting as centres of spiritual selection. Those who saw, realized and acted 
upon their conviction of that spiritual integrity, remained, and in their degree were 
assimilated and became vital parts of the nucleus. Those who did not, disappeared 
to various limbos of psychism, and so on, where I do not propose to stir them up. 

A similar thing took place more impersonally in the spring and summer of 
1898. The principle here was that of spiritual liberty. It was no longer the precise 
question of the integrity of a Lodge messenger, but a question of spiritual liberty 
as against tyranny. Again a separation of the elements took place and one could 
say that those who took the right side became part of the nucleus, acting with the 



88 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

spiritual forces of the world, going forward into the future. Thus we see that 
the kind of selection which is here involved depends on spiritual law, not on the 
mere question of a Convention vote. 

In one or two points this is a novelty, a new situation. One 1 point is a cause 
for very sincere congratulation. Take the events of 1885 and 1895: it was the 
minority that was right, right, not in my opinion or in yours, but by that final test, 
"By their fruits ye shall know them." The evil tree 1 cannot bear good fruit. They 
are proven right by the fact of spiritual survival. It was the minority in 1885 who 
really saw the spiritual integrity of Madame Blavatsky I am not talking of 
infallibility, we have no dogma of infallibility. It was a minority who took that 
action; who held to Madame Blavatsky. Certain very conspicuous figures did not 
so hold, and they disappeared in the void. In 1895 the same thing the minority 
was right, and the minority expelled the majority. It is not a question of counting 
heads. Where there 1 are foreign bodies to be dealt with, more or less has nothing 
to do with it. But the interesting fact, and the fact which I speak of as being a 
very happy omen, is that for the first time the cause of the angels seems to be in 
the majority. As was said this morning, the growth of the Society rests in the 
growth of its members in spiritual life. There 1 we have the registration of it. I 
hope this resolution will be carried unanimously, but there is not the faintest doubt 
that it will have a majority vote. 

We were in the minority in 1885. We were in the minority in 1895 and again 
in 1898. There was one other case of division, in 1905, where a group of people 
had the grace, the singular good manners, to withdraw. 

The significant thing about this afternoon has been, not that one view was 
taken, or another view, but the sense of the spiritual force which went into what 
was said. That is the really vital thing. The singular thing has been the unanimity 
and the vital spiritual power that have been manifested here, on the side of the 
angels. So it is a novelty, a precedent in that sense ; but the process of assimilation 
with a nucleus, of extrusion from the nucleus, has been part of the procedure from 
the beginning, and will be till the end of the seventh round, which I understand is 
some time off. 

MR. HARGROVE: I should like to say first that I am sincerely glad Mr. Grant 
raised the point he did, when he emphasized that we are not trying to foist a dogma 
on the German members. No, we are not even trying to foist a principle upon 
them. You cannot foist principles upon people. All that has happened is that those 
particular German members have demonstrated that they have never assimilated 
the principles of Theosophy; have never understood the one and only principle of 
the Society, that of brotherhood. 

The German members have expelled themselves because of this final demon- 
stration of their inability to understand and to respond to that one binding principle 
of the Society. 

I am profoundly thankful for the attitude and feeling of the delegates and 
members present here this afternoon. It is so clear that the Society now has an 
opportunity to do that which the Allies ought to have done and failed to do, when 
they once got the whip hand of the military situation. The Armistice saved the 
skin, the hide, of the Black Lodge. If it had not been for the Armistice, if the 
War had been fought to a real conclusion, could we have received these letters 
from German members to-day ? Never ! But it is not only that we, as The Theo- 
sophical Society, have the opportunity to do what ought to have been done, it is 
that we have the opportunity to do what shall be done, to create the mould into 
which the future of the world may pour itself. Because, do not forget that the 
struggle between the White Lodge and the Black has not come to an end. Do not 
forget that unfortunately, not even Germany has been beaten to the point of 
knowing she is beaten. This War, in some form or other, will have to be fought 
all over again. Yes, you may say more than that, because those of us who believe 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 89 

in immortality as a fact, and not merely as a theory, may have reason for our 
conviction that some of us yourselves perhaps will be active participants in that 
next great struggle', when it will be of vital importance that you and the rest 
of us carry over in our bone's the conviction that compromise with evil does not 
pay. Never again an armistice with Germany! And so now we have the chance, 
as I say, to do that which ought to be done, to try to create a mould, a model, 
a pattern, into which the molten metal of the future may pour itself. Let us try 
to see things as they are, to see the truth. The psychology of the' Black Lodge is 
revealed in these letters from Germany : a smoke screen, thrown up, of accusation, 
of false accusation, known to be false and deliberately perpetrated to try to blind 
the eyes of fools. Hypocrisy, of course! Examine some of the statements that 
are made 1 . The Dresden Branch says that the resolution of the 1915 Convention 
was passed over the heads of the German Branches, and that this is unheard-of, 
preposterous. Their statement is a lie, and what is more, they know it is a He. 
They were represented at that Convention by proxy, represented just as much as 
a score of other Branches are represented at this Convention to-day. Nothing was 
passed over their heads. They are pretending to work themselve's up into a state 
of indignation in order to conceal their own crimes. "The resolution of 1915 is a 
dogma." That is a lie and they know it is a lie 1 . The object of the Society is 
to form a nucleus of universal brotherhood. If their attitude were correct in 
principle it would mean that, instead of the object being as you know, it should 
read: the obje'ct of the Society is to form a nucleus of universal brotherhood, but 
at the same time it is not to form a nucleus of universal brotherhood. The main 
point would be that you must not commit yourselves to anything ! They talk about 
dogmas. If you choose to misuse the word, you could call the first object of the 1 
Society a dogma, because it suggests there should be a Brotherhood ; and, misusing 
the word dogma, they could declare that this is a dogma. That is camouflage. 
It is typical of the 1 elementals that are common to all human beings, more or less. 
. . . What we have to do is to keep on top of such elementals, and not permit 
them to get on top of us. If that be part of your problem and mine, it is also 
part of the problem of the Society. What you would do, if you knew how, would 
be to expel all the elementals from your lower nature, and that is our function 
to-day. 

I want to read something which was not read this morning for lack of time, 
and that is the concluding paragraph of the letter from Mr. Raatz and eighteen 
other German members. It contains the same idea as that in the letter from 
Dresden. They say: "The undersigned are moreover convinced that the Spiritual 
Forces can impossibly be acting in a Theosophical Society that erred so far as to 
adopt a resolution of the kind. It is the conviction of the undersigned members 
that the Master Forces will turn again to the Society if the Convention of 1920 
revokes the resolution of 1915 and therewith the dogma. It is for that reason, 
for the Cause of the Masters, that the undersigned beg the Convention to adopt 
their motion." When it comes to evoking the cause of the Masters, to that kind 
of misuse of sacred terms, the situation becomes exceedingly difficult to tolerate, 
even mentally. It is the height of hypocrisy to pretend that the motive of the 
peopl^ who wrote that letter is really love of the Cause of the Masters: it is 
iniquitous. 

No one can ever say that our action this afternoon has been railroaded through. 
There has been every opportunity for discussion, for due deliberation. We simply 
confirm that which has already happened. Those people have expelled themselves. 
We certify to that act of self-expulsion. They can go where they belong, to their 
friends. That Black force which has inspired Germany all these years, the Lodge 
of Evil, will doubtless give them their reward. Mr. Chairman, I beg to move the 
adoption of the resolution. 

THE CHAIRMAN: The resolution is before you; are you ready for the question? 



90 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

(There were many calls for the question, and the resolution was unanimously 
adopted.) 

The next business, and pleasure, before the Convention is to hear from its 
delegates, to hear from those who have come from a distance. 

Miss HOHNSTEDT: I do not know that I can say anything new about our 
work in Cincinnati this year. We 1 have been greatly handicapped by illness, influ- 
enza, which necessarily interfered with our work. Our audiences have not been 
larger than in previous seasons, but I think I can truly say that the enthusiasm 
and devotion have 1 never been greater. We have gained one new member, and as 
an offset to that, one of our old members has become disaffected and I suppose 
will drop out of the Society. In that case, we can only take the attitude taken in 
the resolution passed here to-day that if people are not going along with us toward 
the same goal, it is better that they should not be a nominal part of our organization. 

MR. BAKER : Our Branch in Salamanca is small as well as young. We are 
weak, and we have yet to learn and to live Theosophy. There have 1 been times 
when our problems have seemed hopeless, but we know that they are not. In those 
times it has helped us to remember what Mr. Griscom wrote, that what always 
counts is our efforts. We have' really tried. 

MRS. GITT : This year I have been much interested to see what the Churches 
are doing to meet the wave of psychism that broke 1 out at the end of the War. 
Among our ministers in Washington there are some splendid men who are 
spiritually developed; and it has been a wonder to me to see how inadequately 
they have handled this subject. What unsatisfactory explanations they have given 
to bereaved members of their congregations who, feeling that they had communi- 
cation with their departed friends, wanted to talk it over with their pastors. They 
only made the situation worse than before ; and I have realized how badly those 
ministers needed some Theosophy. Then they could have pointed the bereave'd 
ones to the possibility of true communion with their departed friends, and to the 
need of purification to make such soul communion possible. The Christian Church 
appears to me to have lost the science of spirituality. The ministers seem to be 1 
afraid to go into the deep things of life lest, if they speak the truth plainly, they 
should lose their people. It seems to me that this is the only way to hold them. 
I have aske'd many how they would like to become members of a Church that only 
talked about the four Gospels and they all admitted that they were getting tired 
of the Old Testament and of the doctrines of St. Paul. The need of the 1 hour 
seems to me to be a real devotion to the life, character and teachings of the 1 
Christian Master; that is the only remedy that will serve for the healing of the 
nations. 

MRS. SHELDON: Mrs. Gitt's remarks have aroused much thought in connection 
with the work of our Providence Branch this year. Our experience, as it happens, 
has been just the opposite of hers. We have found fruit in our study of the Old 
Testament and of St. Paul. We dealt with the 1 Old Testament on the basis of 
articles in the old numbers of the QUARTERLY, by Mr. Johnston, and we started the 
season's work with the article on "Paul the Disciple," taking up the wonderful 
message that we felt Paul had for humanity. Then we took the Adam and Eve 
story, and got much from that. Next we considered the spiritual history of 
religions, a subject that always has much interest and beauty in it. That led us to 
the "Dogma of the Virgin Birth"; then we took up "Faith and Works," and that 
brought us back to Paul. Next came the "Tide of Life" which gave us the evo- 
lutionary scheme as presented in the Secret Doctrine, putting it in the light of 
Biblical teaching, showing how Genesis is really in accord with the teaching of 
modern science. 

We have added sixteen members to our Branch this year, and we feel that 
this gain was due to the thoughtful work we have done in our study class. It has 
been a most satisfactory year. Wtf have seen the Branch grow from small num- 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 91 

bers to a membership of forty-one; and the number of members is not the signi- 
ficant thing we feel that very spiritual work is being done through the Branch 
in the life of the people of Providence. 

MRS. REGAN : There is little for me to say about the Hope 1 Branch. We have 
gone on about the same as last year. Sickness and death have crept in, but we 
have maintained our meetings regularly and have been studying the "Elementary 
Articles" by Mr. Griscom, which we have had the pleasure of taking up from 
the beginning. 

Miss RICHMOND: I come here as a member at large, and I am glad of the 
chance to say that I am thankful to be permitted once more to be here 1 . 

MRS. THOMPSON : We have had no meetings of the Blavatsky Branch for over 
a year. A small study class, however, has been maintained and through it we have 
brought one new member into the Society and I am hoping that other things will 
come from this activity. 

MR. GRANT: I do not know whether I am here as a member at large or as a 
representative of the Toronto Branch, but I am certainly glad to be here, and to 
get the "boost" which comes through the Convention. A chemist, like myself, 
has constantly to be dealing with matter, and only one who is in that position 
could know how much I appreciate coming into contact with life on a different 
plane, and with people who meet life in the spirit that has been manifested in 
these meetings. 

MR. BANNER : We have no Branch in Pittsburgh yet, but it is a great pleasure 
to me and to Mrs. Banner, who is the really wide awake member, to be here, even 
though we have to come as visiting members. I hope that next year we may come 
as delegates representing a Pittsburgh Branch. After our visit last year, nothing 
would keep us away from Convention. I should like to add to this promise 1 for 
the future, our sincere gratitude for the uplift we receive in coming into contact 
with people who are dealing in a way which is so helpful, with the great problems 
of humanity. 

MR. VAIL: Whenever I can get to the meetings here it is a great inspiration, 
and I find that what I take back with me is a lasting influence. As I am aspiring 
to be a chemist, I sympathize with the member who spoke of the influence of that 
work on his everyday thought ; it is easy to get swamped in matter. Concerning the 
resolutions, I heartily believe in the action we have taken. Yet I was born and 
raised a Quaker, and have a large number of Quaker friends who are most of 
them very sincere pacifists. As they would willingly give their lives for their 
beliefs, would be satisfied if those beliefs landed them in prison, as we heard this 
morning had happened to a fellow member, they are evidently sincere. Yet I can- 
not but feel that they have gone wrong, that their vision is clouded. I should like 
to discover some way in which I could bring light to them. Certain sayings of 
Christ, strictly interpreted, are taken as the basis for their pacifistic standpoint. 
Theosophy, interpreting those same passages broadly, arrives at a diametrically 
opposite conclusion. I have attempted to suggest to my Quaker friends a broader 
viewpoint, but they tell me that I am merely getting away from the true teachings 
of Christianity. I think one of their mistakes must be that they confine their 
studies to the Gospels and to the lives of a few Quaker leaders thus shutting 
away a large body of truth and experience. 

MR. HARGROVE : A very interesting point has been raised by Mr. Vail. At the 
Branch meeting we are going to discuss Theosophy in general, and I am hoping 
that some member who may also be a Quaker in origin and by birth, will be willing 
and able to answer Mr. Vail's question. It would be well worth discussion. 

THE CHAIRMAN: The gateway from the Society of Friends to The Theo- 
sophical Society is one that has been opened and through which have come some 
of our most earnest, faithful and valued members. Mr. Griscom, himself, was a 



92 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

birthright member of the Society of Friends, and remained so to the day of his 
death. 

The time has come for the adjournment of this Convention. The Chairman 
would first, however, remind you of the several meetings announced at the close 
of the morning session, which some present may not have heard; also that those 
who wish have now the opportunity to sign the "round-robin" to Mrs. Gregg. 

MR. WOODBRIDGE: Once a year it is my privilege to move that the thanks of 
the Convention be extended to the Chairman, Secretary and Assistant Secretary. 

THE CHAIRMAN : They are gratefully accepted, and this Convention stands 
adjourned. 

ISABEL E. PERKINS, Secretary of Convention 

JULIA CHICKERING, Assistant Secretary of Convention. 



LETTERS OF GREETING 

Among the letters of greeting received from Branches of the Society, our space 
permits the publication of only the following : 

Kristiania, Norway. 

To The^Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled: The 1 black powers lost 
the terrible war which they had prepared so carefully, and which they waged with 
such a fury and desperation. So far they have failed in their wily attempt to 
destroy spirituality and to increase selfishness and self-assertion on earth. But the 
defeat was only on the material plane. They have now hurled a tempest of lower 
psychic powers into the realm of the human mind, and it seems as if poor, miser- 
able mankind were, at present, worse off than before. The man of the Western 
world is more than ever divided against himself, and he would soon be brought 
to desolation if the Gods were not always standing by, helping and protecting him. 
On the psychic plane the White Powers are still waging war against the black 
powers, and They will continue to do so till the defeat of the enemy is complete. 

But the White Powers want allies in this world, and They expect to find these 
in The Theosophical Society which They have founded, and for so many years 
protected and helped and strengthened for this very purpose. They have foreseen 
the need of such help, and have taken the necessary steps for having it at halnd 
when wanted. And it has, perhaps, never been so much wanted as just now, and 
in the immediate future. 

Let us try strongly to realize this claim upon us, and though we may feel our 
weakness and inability to give the help that is expected, and which we so eagerly 
wish to give, let us do our best. Let us pray the Lord of the harvest for more 
labourers to be sent, and for more strength, zeal, and wisdom to do work that 
can bring forth a rich harvest, for "the harvest truly is great, but the labourers 
are few." 

And let us also realize that there is no occasion for despondency, for, as Cave 
has said: "Remember, child, remember . . . when men's ears are deaf and their 
hearts are hard and they will not turn or listen ; when all your toil seems vain and 
the goal an endless vista, remember the armies of Heaven marching across the 
sky, and the great St. Michael leading." 

Let us, therefore, stick to our work with joyful endurance, for our work is 
our duty, our opportunity, and our greatest blessing. The crown of life is given 
to him that is "faithful unto death." 

With cordial greetings from co-workers in Norway, I am, 

Faithfully yours, 

THOMAS H. KNOFF. 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 93 

Arvika, Sweden. 

To the Secretary T. S.: We have very little hope that the proxy and this 
letter will come to you before Convention. But if it come in time we ask you 
respectfully to convey to the members in Convention, our cordial greetings and 
best wishes. In thought we are with you in Convention: and we long for the 
time when the post will go regularly again. 

Europe is in darkness, in some of its quarters even now many hundreds die 
of starvation every day, and the little of civilization it had is likely to go down 
for a long time. 

Fraternally yours, 

HjALMAR JULJN. 

Newcastle-on-Tyne, England. 

To the Members in Convention Assembled: We have much pleasure in con- 
veying to you the hearty greetings of the Newcastle-on-Tyne Lodge. We look 
forward to the Convention each year and are present in spirit if not in body. 
We recognize the importance of such a gathering and the mutual help to be 
derived from it. We eagerly await the arrival of the July QUARTERLY, that we 1 
may also in some degree experience the fire, the deep enthusiasm of a great Cause. 

***** 

With best wishes for a successful Convention, we are, 

Yours fraternally, 

P. DOUGLAS, President, 
ETHEL M. LINCOLN, Secretary. 

London, England. 

To the Members in Convention Assembled: The London Lodge of The Theo- 
sophical Society has held regular meetings during the last year. Part of the 
Secret Doctrine has been read and studied; later the study of the Yoga Sutras of 
Patanjali was commenced. The meetings have been small but interesting, and we 
hope that during the coming ye'ar new vigour will be imparted to the Society. We 
send our united greetings to the members in Convention assembled and hope that 
the spirit of the Masters and the united spirit of Brotherhood will be your guide 
in all your deliberations. 

With fraternal greetings, we are, 

Yours sincerely, 

NORA KENNEDY, 
J. W. KENNEDY. 

Caracas, Venezuela. 

To the Secretary T. S.: The "Rama Venezuela" of The Thcosophical Society 
sends its fraternal greetings to the members attending the Convention this year, 
and, through you, extends them to the Branches and members unable to assist at it. 

All of us will be there in thought and will, united with the same aspiration, 
the aspiration to that unity of conscience which is to keep up the 1 fundamental 
note of every soul that loves Brotherhood, and that, above all, seeks the Kingdom 
of God and His Justice among men. 

With cordial wishes for the greatest success in the fraternal work, I remain. 

Fraternally yours, 

JUAN J. BENZO, Secretary. 



94 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Sanfernando de Apure, Venezuela. 

To the Members of the T. S. in Convention Assembled: We send all of you 
our cordial greetings and our best wishes. There are very few events to report 
in the life of the Jehoshua Branch during the last year. Most of the! members 
have been out of the city, but they have always sustained their true 1 devotion to 
the Cause of the Masters. 

Our president gave us a splendid surprise 1 when he announced to us from 
Curasao that he had established a Branch of the T. S. in that precious island. 

We can truly tell you that that is our work in the present year. United with 
you in spirit and ideal we desire that the outcome of your spiritual labours may 
meet the needs of the world. 

D. SALAS BAIZ, President Jehoshua Branch. 



Aussig, Czecho-Slovakia. 

To the Members of the Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled: 
Great is our joy to be able once again, after several black years, to send you our 
most fervent wishes and greetings for the Convention. 

With genuine contrition we approach you, and beg your pardon that we were 
not able during the first year of the World War to stand whole-heartedly on your 
side, and to feel with fervent passionv for the cause! you saw as underlying the 
outer war and for which you fought. We have to admit our inability to accept 
promptly the help so generously offered from the wiser friends and leading members 
of The Theosophical Society. We did not realize the deep significance of this 
Great War; we did not comprehend the real, underlying issue of it. Unprepared 
for the thought that this war was "A royal Battle," ordered from the Silent 
Watcher; and drilled by the thought to obey to authorities, even at the cost of 
conscience ; not knowing the facts ; not having developed enough the conscious- 
ness of the heart, whereby we would have felt the wrongdoing without the witness 
of documents therefore, we succumbed under the onrush of the currents of 
national spirit and feeling, being the latter too impetuously and delusively. You 
must remember that all members of the Branch were relatives of that stock of 
Germans living in the frontier territories of Bohemia, being a country peopled for 
the most part with Czechs, a Slavic nation. 

Therefore we must confess to our great shame that all members of the Branch 
believed till the springtime of 1915, Germany to be on the right side. Thereafter, 
little by little, the truth was infused individually, till in the summertime of 1916 the 
Branch, as such, resolved to study even the articles upon the war presented us by 
the QUARTERLY, and to search the truth. The effect of such a study upon the 
minds of members was evident. But we experienced the fact that some dormant 
elements, corresponding with German spirit and German nature and barbarism and 
German mentality, were aroused and brought into daylight in this or that member. 
Yet even after the first winter's work (1916-17) of such study, we determined to 
send to the Convention (of 1917) a message of acknowledgment and an expression 
of our heartfelt thanks. But because of the entrance of the U. S. A. into the war, 
it was impossible to forward this letter. A copy of it you will find enclosed. 

The consciousness of the several members grew deeper, and so it was possible 
in the summer of 1919 to sketch a draft of a resolution prepared for the Convention 
"der Vereinigung deutscher Zweige" at Berlin, in September, 1919. We hoped that 
it would be passed. Unfortunately the very reading of the proposed resolution 
was rejected by the assembled members after voting. The intention we had in 
mind in putting forth this resolution, was : to acknowledge duly our thanks to our 
loved American brothers and wiser friends; to restore the confidence and faith in 
the real leadership of the T. S., and the trust in the ability of the present members 



T. S. ACTIVITIES 95 

leading The 1 Theosophical Society; and thirdly to set us a resolute order for 
interior and outer work. 

We will repeat: We acknowledge the leaders of The Theosophical Society 
to be the leaders of the World's hope and promise, and we experienced the deep- 
ening insight and the corroborative setitiments from acceptance of such right 
thinking as developed in the QUARTERLY. And therefore we are obliged very, very 
much, to its Editors and co-operators. 

From its lines we gathered also the stirring watchword for our Branch activity 
in the past two years, likewise valid even for the coming years: "Victory for the 
Soul of the Nation." We are happy to live in a country which has joined hands 
with France, to take from her its ideals and manners, and is now an ally of the 
Entente; an act prepared through old sympathies of the Czech nation with France, 
since many years ago. 

Evidently our Branch was living in a different mental and psychic atmosphere 
from that of the 1 other German Branches. And so it is only right to confess 
that we are obliged first to that nation, for having made it easier for us to make 
the turn, back to the right thinking and feeling of the older and wiser members 
of The Theosophical Society, as to the real issues underlying this Great War. 

It is necessary to tell you that it was Czech politicians who protested in the 
Austrian Parliament against the treaty of peace concluding the Franco-Prussian 
War, 1870-71, and that Czech politicians were tantalized in Austrian prisons because 
they tried to protest against this War and to tell the truth as they were seeing it. 
This precedent expression of sympathy for France* is a good omen and gives evi- 
dence enough to the statement that the declaration of alliance of the Czech nation 
with the Entente 1 has a real, genuine motive. 

Believing that this joining of the Czech nation to France would mean a partial 
victory in the battle for liberation of the Soul of the nation, we forget not, that 
now remain yet other battles to fight to complete the Victory; these battles being: 
to overcome the inclination of the Czech nation to stop in war and opposition 
against Germany and the Germans in its own country, the latter preaching, openly, 
disloyalty and opposition, because of false argumentation and wrong conclusions; 
the latter based on purely materialistic premises and finding expression in the 
fear to lose its now established state. Against this false 1 and paralyzing thought 
we must put forward with living force the real thinking, that to choose a material 
thing at the cost of ignoring and letting be unanswered a high spiritual vocation, 
which the Divine Wisdom has imbe'dded in the nation, would mean to lose the loved 
thing so longtime longed for. Then we must give impulses, through our own 
individual battles, above all, to overcome the deep-seated pacifistic and atheistic 
elements in the national mind. Points of contact for our work are given for the 
first case in the old dream of the Czech nation for kingship, for the Crown of 
Wenceslaus; and for the second, in St. Wenceslaus and his holy life devoted to 
God, himself. 

We remember that right, clear-cut thinking is the priceless ammunition we can 
provide for the White Lodge; but we forget not, that the war, fought out in the 
breast of every member, with the accumulated moral power, and with a more 1 or 
less strategical insight, is the essential preparation for partaking, in a real way, 
in the war in Heaven, even now raging. 

With fervent passion, we wish victory for the cause of Christ and pray that 
the Master may help us sinners, and make us worthier instruments in His hands. 
We have tried to sketch this, our report, as if we were in the presence of the 
Master, the Warrior of the warriors and the King of the kings. 

Very truly and faithfully yours, 

OTHMAR KOHLER, Branch Secretary. 



96 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 



NOTICE 

Members of the T. S. are reminded that mail intended for the 
several departments can be most readily and promptly handled if 
addressed as follows : 

Secretary T. S. Mrs. Ada Gregg, P.O. Box 64, Station O, New 
York. 

Treasurer T. S Professor H. B. Mitchell, P.O. Box 64, Station O, 
New York. 

Subscription Department THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, P.O. 
Box 64, Station O, New York. 

To this address should be sent all names and remittances for the 
QUARTERLY ; all corrections of address for members or subscribers ; all 
notices of the non-receipt of magazine. 

Quarterly Book Department P.O. Box 64, Station O, New York. 

To this address should be sent all orders for books ; all inquiries about 
books ; all money in payment for books. 

Members are requested to send changes of address to the Secretary 
T. S., to the Treasurer T. S., and to THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY. 




OCTOBER, 192O 

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. 

"SIGNS OF THE TIMES" 

u^- w ^HUS finally Science, in the person of its highest representatives, 

in order to make itself clearer to the profane, adopts the 

A phraseology of such old adepts as Roger Bacon, and returns 

to the 'protyle/ All this is hopeful and suggestive of the 

'signs of the times/ " H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (II, p. 533, 

1888). 

"Indeed," the passage just quoted continues, "these 'signs' are many 
and multiply daily." An effort was made, in the April number of THE 
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, to gather some of them together, with special 
reference to Five Years of Theosophy. 

We have space for but one more instance in which the science of 
to-day is catching up with the occult conclusions given out thirty-five 
or more years ago. In reply to the English F. T. S., we read : 
"Atlantis was not merely the name of one island but that of a whole 
continent, many of whose isles and islets have to this day survived. 
... A pedestrian from the north might then have reached hardly 
wetting his feet the Alaskan peninsula, through Manchuria, across the 
future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another 
traveller, furnished with a canoe and starting from the south, could 
have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands, and 
trudged into any part of the continent of South America." 

Two cablegrams of recent date bear directly upon this last state- 
ment. The first is dated Honolulu, September 13, 1919, and is as follows : 
"Search for evidence supporting the theory of a lost Pacific continent 
is being prosecuted in the Hawaiian Islands, the South Seas and along 
the west coast of South America. Professor Douglas R. Campbell, of 
the botany department of Stanford University, thinks that in certain 
specimens of ferns found on the Island of Hawaii he has established 
the fact that at some period there was land connection between the 
Hawaiian group and the islands to the south and west, through the 
Malay peninsula. Professor T. A. Jaggar, jr., in charge of the Federal 

7 97 



98 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

observatory at Kilauea, agrees with Professor Campbell's theory, assert- 
ing that there are geological indications that the islands of the Pacific 
were once connected. Seeking data in support of Professor Campbell's 
theory, Professor W. A. Bryan, of the College of Hawaii, is now tour- 
ing the west coast of South America and the South Sea Islands." 

The second cable message is dated Buenos Aires, December 26: 
"Evidence of a lost continent in the Pacific Ocean, a 6,000-mile prehis- 
toric 'bridge' of land between South America and Hawaii, is being 
sought by an American scientist, William Alanson Bryan, professor of 
zoology and geology in the college of Hawaii, who left Honolulu last 
June on his remarkable quest. Dr. Bryan, who came to Argentina by 
way of Mexico and the West Coast of South America, where he studied 
volcanoes and Andean geology, is about to return to Valparaiso, where 
he will board a ship for the little island of Juan Fernandez, 400 miles 
out. The island is inhabited by a small colony of fishermen and their 
families. 'In the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science/ said the 
Professor, *I was surprised a year ago to discover certain little fresh 
water molluscs from Juan Fernandez that were extraordinarily similar 
in their characteristics to certain molluscs in Hawaii. So I determined 
to visit the island, study those shells and its entire flora and fauna.' If 
the Juan Fernandez molluscs should prove to be closely allied with those 
of Hawaii, Dr. Bryan explained in an address here, it would prove that 
land connection had existed, as the species must have travelled from 
Juan Fernandez to Hawaii, or vice versa, by the rivers of the prehis- 
toric continent. He hopes by visiting the island to find evidence of the 
date of submergence of the continent, its geology, configuration, and 
the direction in which the rivers ran. . . . Professor Bryan considers 
it not unlikely that the lost Pacific continent preceded that of South 
America in the dark ages of time." 

Let us turn now to another field. A glance through the Index of The 
Secret Doctrine will show how great "a lover of the ancients," including 
the great men of classical antiquity from Anaxagoras to Zeno, its author 
was. 

We hail it as one of the "signs of the times" that the late Sir William 
Osier, in his address on The old Humanities and the new Science deliv- 
ered on May 16, 1919, before the British Classical Association at Oxford, 
has page after page concerning these classical ancients, that might almost 
have come from H. P. Blavatsky's pen. 

The address is full of humour, with a style for the most part 
delightful ; there are certain shortcomings, which we shall refer to later ; 
but for the passages dealing with the great men of two milleniums ago, 
every student of The Secret Doctrine will be sincerely thankful. 

Take, for example, this passage (p. 38) : 

"(Saint Augustine), the moulder of Western Christianity, had not 
much use for science, and the Greek spirit was stifled in the atmosphere 
of the Middle Ages. 'Content to be deceived, to live in a twilight of 
fiction, under clouds of false witnesses, inventing according to conveni- 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 99 

cnce, and glad to welcome the forger and the cheat' such, as Lord Acton 
somewhere says, were the Middle Ages. Strange, is it not? that one 
man alone, Roger Bacon, mastered his environment and had a modern 
outlook. How modern Bacon's outlook was may be judged from the 
following sentence : 'Experimental science has three great prerogatives 
over all other sciences it verifies conclusions by direct experiment; it 
discovers truths which they could never reach, and it investigates the 
secrets of nature and opens to us a knowledge of the past and future.' 

"The practical point for us here is that in the only school deal- 
ing with the philosophy of human thought, the sources of the new science 
that has made a new world are practically ignored. One gets even an 
impression of neglect in the schools, or at any rate of scant treatment, of 
the Ionian philosophers, the very fathers of your fathers. Few 'Greats' 
men, I fear, could tell why Hippocrates is a living force to-day, or why 
a modern scientific physician would feel more at home with Erasistratus 
and Herophilus at Alexandria, or with Galen at Pergamos, than at any 
period in our story up to, say Harvey. Except as a delineator of char- 
acter, what does the Oxford scholar know of Theophrastus, the founder 
of modern botany, and a living force to-day in one of the two depart- 
ments of biology. . . Beggarly recognition or base indifference is 
meted out to the men whose minds have fertilized science in every 
department. The pulse of every student should beat faster as he reads 
the story of Archimedes, of Hero, of Aristarchus. . . The methods 
of these men exorcised vagaries and superstitions from the human mind 
and pointed to a clear knowledge of the laws of nature. 

"In biology Aristotle speaks for the first time the language of 
modern science, and indeed he seems to have been first and foremost a 
biologist, and his natural history studies influenced profoundly his soci- 
ology, and his philosophy in general . . . the founder of modern 
biology, whose language is our language, whose methods and problems 
are our own, the man who knew a thousand varied forms of life, of 
plant, of bird, of animal, their outward structure, their metamorphosis, 
their early development; who studied the problems of heredity, of sex, 
of nutrition, of growth, of adaptation, and of the struggle for existence. 
. . . For two thousand years the founder of the science of embryology 
had neither rival nor worthy follower. . ." 

Thus Sir William Osier makes his declaration in 1919. As long 
ago as 1888, more than thirty years earlier, H. P. Blavatsky wrote : 

"This law of vortical movement in primordial matter, is one of the 
oldest conceptions of Greek philosophy, whose first historical Sages were 
nearly all Initiates of the Mysteries. The Greeks had it from the 
Egyptians, and the latter from the Chaldeans, who had been the pupils 
of Brahmans of the esoteric school. Leucippus, and Democritus of 
Abdera the pupil of the Magi taught that this gyratory movement 
of the atoms and spheres existed from eternity. Hicetas, Heraclides, 
Ecphantus, Pythagoras, and all his pupils, taught the rotation of the 
earth; and Aryabhatta of India, Aristarchus, Seleucus, and Archimedes 



100 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

calculated its revolutions as scientifically as the astronomers do now ; 
while the theory of the Elemental Vortices was known to Anaxagoras, 
and maintained by him 500 years B. C, or nearly 2,000 before it was 
taken up by Galileo, Descartes, Swedenborg, and finally, with slight 
modifications, by Sir W. Thomson . . . The sphericity of the earth 
was distinctly taught by Aristotle, who appealed for proof to the figure 
of the earth's shadow on the moon in eclipses . . . (I, p. 117) 
Following Plato, Aristotle explained that the term stoikheia was under- 
stood only as meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the 
four great divisions of our Cosmical world to supervise them . . . 
(I, p. 123) Thus the original Greek conception of Chaos is that of 
the Secret Wisdom Religion. In Hesiod, therefore, Chaos is infinite, 
boundless, endless and filled with darkness, which is primordial matter 
in its pre-cosmic state. For in its etymological sense, Chaos is Space, 
according to Aristotle, and Space is the ever Unseen and Unknowable 
Deity in our philosophy. . . ." 

And so one might continue to quote, page after page. 

To turn again to Sir William Osier's Address. Closely following 
what has been quoted, he says (p. 43) : 

"Unmatched among the ancients or moderns is the vision of Lucretius 
of continuity in the workings of Nature not less of le silence eternel 
de ces espaces infinis which so affrighted Pascal, than of 'the long, limit- 
less age of days, the age of all time that has gone by' 

'. . . longa diei 
infinita aetas anteacti temporis omnis.' 

And it is in a Latin poet that we find up-to-date views of the origin of 
the world and of the origin of man. The description of the wild 
discordant storm of atoms (Book V), which led to the birth of the world 
might be transferred verbatim to the accounts of Poincare or Arrhenius 
of the growth of new celestial bodies in the Milky Way. What an insight 
into primitive man and the beginnings of civilization ! He might have 
been a contemporary and friend, and doubtless was a tutor, of Tylor. 
Book II, a manual of atomic physics with its marvellous conception of 

". . . the flaring atom streams 

And torrents of her myriad universe/ 

can only be read appreciatively by pupils of Roentgen or of J. J. Thom- 
son. The ring theory of magnetism advanced in Book VI has been 
reproduced of late by Parsons, whose magnetons rotating as rings at 
high speed have the form and effect with which this disciple of 
Democritus clothes his magnetic physics." 

Of many passages in The Secret Doctrine referring to Lucretius, 
we need quote but one : 

"Modern physics, while borrowing from the ancients their atomic 
theory, forgot one point, the most important of the doctrine ; hence they 
got only the husks and will never be able to get at the kernel. They left 
behind, in the adoption of physical atoms, the suggestive fact that from 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 101 

Anaxagoras down to Epicurus, the Roman Lucretius, and finally even 
to Galileo, all those philosophers believed more or less in animated atoms, 
not in invisible specks of so-called 'brute' matter. Rotatory motion was 
generated in their views, by larger (read, more divine and pure) atoms 
forcing downward other atoms ; the lighter ones being thrust simultane- 
ously upward. The esoteric meaning of this is the ever cyclic curve 
downward and upward of differentiated elements through intercyclic 
phases of existence, until each reaches again its starting point or birth- 
place. The idea was metaphysical as well as physical ; the hidden inter- 
pretation embracing 'gods' or souls, in the shape of atoms, as the causes 
cf all the effects produced on Earth by the secretions from the divine 
bodies. No ancient philosopher, not even the Jewish Kabalists, ever 
dissociated Spirit from matter or vice versa. Everything originated in 
the ONE, and proceeding from the One, must finally return to the One." 
(1888, I. p. 567.) 

H. P. Blavatsky, like Osier, recognizes the profound debt of the 
modern atomic theory to Lucretius and his predecessors, and, at the same 
time, really gets at the heart of the ancient teaching. 

We have room only for one more passage from Osier, which closes 
his address : 

"There is a sentence in the writings of the Father of Medicine 
[Hippocrates] upon which all commentators have lingered, ( en gar parS 
philanthropic paresti kai philotekhnie' love of humanity associated with 
the love of his craft ! philanthropia and philotechnia the joy of working 
joined in each one to a true love of his brother. Memorable sentence 
indeed ! in which for the first time was coined the magic word 'philan- 
thropy,' and conveying the subtle suggestion that perhaps in this com- 
bination the longings of humanity may find their solution, and Wisdom 
Philosophia at last be justified of her children." 

In the Greek sentence which Osier thus quotes, perhaps without full 
realization of its source, from the Western Master, the word translated 
Wisdom is Sophia, but clearly used in the sense of Divine Wisdom, 
Theosophia. Taken in this truer sense, all students of Theosophy will 
agree with Osier, that "here the longings of humanity may find their 
solution." 

We spoke of certain shortcomings, as they seem to us, in Osier's 
outlook. Briefly they are these : he did not recognize the high value of 
the spiritual life of the Middle Ages ; he did not see the high philosophic 
worth of the older Eastern religions. But for what he did see, we are 
deeply grateful. 

In other directions also, there is this same turning to the teachings 
of the "ancients" that H. P. Blavatsky has called "a sign of the times." 
Some three years ago, a group of professors and teachers of philosophy 
and psychology, inspired, perhaps, by Bergson's greatest work, Creative 
Evolution, gathered together a group of essays, with the inspiring title, 
Creative Intelligence, under the general editorship of Professor John 
Dewey. Two of the essays in this book offer passages which well illus- 



102 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

trate our theme. The first is an essay on "Value and Existence in 
Philosophy, Art, and Religion," by Mr. Horace M. Kallen. The passage 
follows : 

"To Plato man is at once a protean beast, a lion, and an intellect; 
the last having for its proper task to rule the first and to regulate the 
second, which is always rebellious and irruptive. According to the 
Christian tradition man is at once flesh and spirit, eternally in conflict 
with one another, and the former is to be mortified that the latter may 
have eternal life. Common sense divides us into head and heart, never 
quite at peace with one another. There is no need of piling up citations. 
Add to the inward disharmonies of mind its incompatibilities with the 
environment, and you perceive at once how completely it is, from moment 
to moment, a theater and its life a drama of which the interests that 
compose it are at once protagonists and directors. The catastrophe of 
this unceasing drama is always that one or more of the players is driven 
from the stage of conscious existence. It may be that the environment 
social conditions, commercial necessity, intellectual urgency, allies of 
other interests will drive it off; it may be that its own intrinsic 
unpleasantness will banish it, will put it out of mind ; whatever the cause, 
it is put out. Putting it out does not, however, end the drama; putting 
it out serves to complicate the drama. For the 'new psychology' shows 
that whenever an interest or a desire or impulsion is put out of the mind, 
it is really, if not extirpated, put into the mind; it is driven from the 
conscious level of existence to the unconscious. It retains its force and 
direction, only its work now lies underground. Its life henceforward 
consists partly in a direct oppugnance to the inhibitions that keep it down, 
partly in burrowing beneath and around them and seeking out unwonted 
channels of escape. Since life is long, repressions accumulate, the mass 
of existence of feeling and desire tends to become composed entirely of 
these repressions, layer upon layer, with every interest in the aggregate 
striving to attain place in the daylight of consciousness. 

"Now, empirically and metaphysically, no one interest is more 
excellent than another. Repressed or patent, each is, whether in a 
completely favorable environment or in a completely indifferent 
universe, or before the bar of an absolute justice, or under 
the domination of an absolute and universal good, entitled to its 
free fulfilment and perfect maintenance. Each is a form of the good; 
the essential content of each is good. That they are not fulfilled, but 
repressed, is a fact to be recorded, not an appearance to be explained 
away. And it may turn out that the existence of the fact may explain 
the effort to explain it away. For where interests are in conflict with 
each other or with reality, and where the loser is not extirpated, its 
revenge may be just this self-fulfilment in unreality, in idea, which 
philosophies of absolute values offer it. Dreams, some of the arts, 
religion and philosophy may indeed be considered as such fulfilments, 
worlds of luxuriant self-realization of all that part of our nature which 
the harsh conjunctions with the environment overthrow and suppress. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 103 

Sometimes abortive self-expressions of frustrated desires, sometimes 
ideal compensations for the shortcomings of existence, they are always 
equally ideal reconstructions of the surrounding evil of the world into 
forms of the good. And because they are compensations in idea, they 
are substituted for existence, appraised as 'true,' and 'good/ and 
'beautiful/ and 'real/ while the experiences which have suppressed the 
desires they realize are condemned as illusory and unreal. In them 
humanity has its freest play and amplest expression/' 

There are several notable points here. To take the most obvious : 
We have here an exact description of the way in which many students 
of Theosophy believe the states of consciousness after death to be gen- 
erated, and particularly the state called Devachan, which is precisely a 
world "of luxuriant self-realization of all that part of our nature which 
the harsh conjunctions with the environment overthrow and suppress," 
and "an ideal compensation for the shortcomings of existence." 

Indeed we may go farther, and say that one side at least of the 
operation of Karma follows exactly the process described, and is so 
expounded again and again in the psychological teachings of Buddhism. 

We saw that Mr. Kallen began by citing Plato. He adds an exceed- 
ingly interesting footnote : 

"Compare Plato, Republic, IX, 571, 572, for an explicit anticipation 
of Freud." The passage is in substance as follows : 

"Certain of the unnecessary pleasures and appetites I conceive to 
be unlawful; every one appears to have them, but in some persons they 
are controlled by the laws and by reason, and the better desires prevail 
over them either they are wholly banished or they become few and 
weak ; while in the case of others they are stronger, and there are more 
of them. I mean those appetites which are awake when the reasoning 
and human and ruling power is asleep; then the wild beast within us, 
gorged with meat and drink, goes forth to satisfy his desires ; and there 
is no conceivable folly or crime which at such a time, when he has parted 
company with all shame and sense, a man may not be ready to commit. 

"But when a man's pulse is healthy and temperate, and when before 
going to sleep he has awakened his rational powers, and fed them on 
noble thoughts and enquiries, collecting himself in meditation, leaving the 
higher principle in the solitude of pure abstraction, free to contemplate 
and aspire to the knowledge of the unknown, whether in past, present 
or future ; when again he has allayed the passionate element, if he has a 
quarrel against any one when, after pacifying the two irrational prin- 
ciples, he rouses up the third, which is reason, before he takes his rest, 
then, as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is least likely to be 
the sport of fantastic and lawless visions. The point which I desire to 
note is that in all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast 
nature, which peers out in sleep." 

Mr. Kallen with great wisdom adds the comment: "This 'new 
psychology' is not so very new !" 

A student of Theosophy would be inclined to say that, in this 



104 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

passage of Plato, there is something more and deeper than an anticipa- 
tion of Freud : namely a clear indication of the Eastern teaching of the 
spiritual state of Meditation, and of its analogue in the condition beyond 
dreams. 

Take, in illustration, this passage from Prashna Upanishad: 

"So this bright one in dream enjoys greatness. The seen, as seen 
he beholds again. What was heard, as heard he hears again. And what 
was enjoyed by the other powers, he enjoys again by the other powers. 
. . . And when he is wrapt by the radiance, the bright one no longer 
sees dreams. Then within him that bliss arises. And, as the birds come 
to the tree to rest, so all this comes to rest in the higher Self." 

Here is Plato's idea expressed as profoundly, or even more pro- 
foundly, many centuries earlier. 

Or one might quote from the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad: 

"They also say that dream is a province of waking. For whatever 
he sees while awake, the same he sees in dream. . . Then as a falcon 
or an eagle, flying to and fro in the open sky and growing weary, folds 
his wings and sinks to rest, so of a truth the Spirit of man hastens to 
that world where, finding rest, he desires no desire and dreams no 
dream. . ." 

It would be a happy thing if modern students of psychology, who 
thus recognize that the new psychology "is not so very new," would 
take one step further and recognize that the great Eastern religions are 
based on the method of experience and grave experiment which the 
modern schools accept; that they long ago carried this method much 
farther, into the immortal region of our nature; and that their teaching 
of immortality is founded on what they learned there. 

That there is a real tendency in this direction, is suggested by 
another essay in the same book : "The Moral Life and the Construction 
of Values and Standards," by James Hayden Tufts. 

There is much of high value on the development of the self, which 
we should like to quote if space permitted ; for example, such a sentence 
as this : "The self by reflecting and enlarging its scope is similarly 
enlarged. It is the resulting self which is the final valuer. . . The 
self of the full moral consciousness, however, the only one which can 
claim acceptance or authority is born only in the process of considering 
real conditions, of weighing and choosing between alternatives of action 
in a real world of nature and persons. . ." 

One might compare this with the passage in Katha Upanishad: 

"The better and the dearer approach a man; going round them, the 
sage discerns between them. The sage chooses the better rather than 
the dearer ; the fool chooses the dearer, through lust of possession. . ." 

But we must content ourselves with citing only the closing para- 
graphs of this valuable essay : 

"What we have aimed to present as a moral method is essentially 
this : to take into our reckoning all the factors of the situation, to take 
into account the other persons involved, to put ourselves into their places 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 105 

by sympathy as well as conceptually, to face collisions and difficulties 
not merely in terms of fixed concepts of what is good and fair, and 
what the right of each party concerned may be, but with the conviction 
that we need new definitions of the ideal life, and of the social order, and 
thus reciprocally of personality. Thus harmonized, free, and responsible, 
life may well find new meaning also in the older intrinsic goods of 
friendship, aesthetic appreciation and true belief. And it is not likely 
to omit the satisfaction in actively constructing new ideals and working 
for their fulfilment. 

"Frankly, if we do not accept this method what remains? Can any 
one by pure reason discover a single forward step in the treatment of 
the social situation or a single new value in the moral ideal? Can any 
analysis of the pure concept of right and good teach us anything? In 
the last analysis the moral judgment is not analytic but synthetic. The 
moral life is not natural but spiritual. And spirit is creative." 

The last sentences go farther than anything else in the book to justify 
its high title : Creative Intelligence. They express the spirit of Theosophy 
which, even for Masters, is an experimental science. And perhaps, 
using some such bridge as this, students of the "new" psychology and 
students of Theosophy may meet and work together at the common task. 

This spirit of conciliation and reconciliation is finely manifested 
in a short article on "Science and Religion," by Mr. Garrett P. Serviss, 
a well known writer on astronomy; one of a series of articles that have 
appeared in the evening newspapers of our largest cities, and therefore 
rightly to be numbered among the "Signs of the Times." The central 
passages of the article follow : 

"Science is not opposed to religion. But it is opposed to theology 
when theology demands belief in things which all of man's means of 
obtaining real, verifiable knowledge tell him are not so. 

"Theology is not religion. It is simply theory about religion. The 
Bible is not religion; it is history compiled with theological bias of a 
remarkable people, and mingled with philosophical speculation, mythology, 
romance and poetry. Many theological scholars admit the truth of these 
statements, and some do not hesitate themselves to republish them. 

"Religion is recognition of the rule of higher power and higher 
intelligence than man's. If science should ever become so foolish as to 
oppose itself to that, it would deservedly and utterly fail. But out of, 
or upon, the fundamental idea of religion theological speculation has 
built many systems and dogmas which have had their tips and downs, 
their advances and retreats, their conquests and overthrows, throughout 
the course of human history. 

"All have had their 'revelations/ all have affirmed that they were 
divinely and specially inspired, and every one of them has proclaimed 
itself to be the sole possessor and upholder of truth ! But the truth that 
science seeks is universal, not exclusive. 

"If you aver that man's means of gaining knowledge mislead him 



106 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

and that his knowledge is false, how do you go to work to establish 
your assertion? Ignoring the only method of demonstration that man 
possesses, the very method upon which you yourself are entirely de- 
pendent for all the acts and decisions of your life, you merely say: 
'Believe this through faith only.' 

"That does not appear to me to be the kind of faith that Christ had 
in mind when He declared in effect that any man who could attain 
the faith that He spoke of, and exercise it in perfection, would be sov- 
ereign over nature. (See Mark 11, 23, and collate it with Matthew 8, 
26, and John 14, 12.) But it does appear to me that Christ's thought 
runs parallel with the aspiration of science, which, whether avowed or 
not, is to approach as near as may be the Supreme Intelligence. Can 
you discern any opposition between what Christ said and the teachings 
of science that man's course has always been upward? 

"Suppose that He were living on earth today among the people of 
the twentieth century, as He lived among the people of Palestine in the 
days of the first Caesars what course can you suppose that He would 
pursue with regard to the results of modern scientific progress? Would 
He command His followers to go back to the Ptolemaic system of 
astronomy, which theology covering itself with His name, once main- 
tained for inspired truth? 

"Would He condemn the telephone, the automobile, the printing 
press, the airplane, wireless telegraphy, life-saving surgery, chemical 
progress, as the evil works of Satan? Surely no! Yet those things are 
the children of science only, and are based entirely upon scientific dis- 
coveries, nearly all of which have been opposed, maligned, denounced or 
interdicted by that same theology, until they brushed it out of their way 
as the rising sun dissolves the lowering mists of an autumn morning. 

"Remembering the profound wisdom, the deep insight into man and 
nature, of the sayings of Christ f ragmentarily reported in the New Testa- 
ment, can you possibly imagine Him today rejecting the geological 
evidence concerning the vast age of the earth and of life upon the earth ? 
Would He say : 'If ye would enter into Heaven, avoid the natural history 
museum ?' 

"For my part I believe that Christ on earth today would be the 
supreme leader of science. There is a significance never yet fully 
fathomed in the fact that the great advances of science have all been 
made in countries where Christian civilization prevails, or where its 
influence has been predominant, although Christian theology, instead of 
taking the lead in those advances, has continually opposed them and 
only yielded with a bad grace when further opposition became plain 
folly. May that not mean that the true spirit of Christ's teaching 
is accordant with the spirit of science, whose constant aim is the truth 
and only the truth?" 

Students of Theosophy would be inclined to make this statement 
more general. Holding that to be a Master is thereby to be immortal 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 107 

as to the real individuality, they think of the Western Master as existing 
today, and destined to exist, according to his own words, "even unto 
the end of the world." And not only do they hold that that Master and 
all Masters are the real leaders in science, as in all truth, but they hold 
that the genuine truths of science have been known to Masters for untold 
ages ; and that our "modern" discoveries and achievements, like those 
enumerated in this article, are simply the most external form of powers 
habitually used by Masters, together with much greater powers, as 
incidents in their daily life. 

Significant as a "Sign of the Times" is an article by Mr. John 
Burroughs, in The North American Review for September, with the title : 
"A Sheaf of Nature Notes"; especially significant, because it marks the 
general reaction against the materialism of nineteenth century science, 
and, perhaps, because its author has often appeared somewhat biassed 
towards materialism. 

But in the evening of the day comes quietude, and, with quietude, 
wisdom; and some of the passages to be quoted closely echo The Secret 
Doctrine in its criticism of materialistic views. 

Thus H. P. Blavatsky wrote, some thirty-two years ago: "The day 
may come, then, when 'Natural Selection/ as taught by Mr. Darwin 
and Mr. Herbert Spencer, will form only a part, in its ultimate modifica- 
tion, of our Eastern doctrine of Evolution. . ." (I, p. 600.) 

And John Burroughs, unconsciously fulfilling that prophecy, writes 
today : 

"That Darwin was a great natural philosopher and a good and wise 
man admits of no question, but to us, at this distance, it seems strange 
enough that he should have thought that he had hit upon the key to the 
origin of species in the slow and insensible changes which he fancied 
species underwent during the course of geologic ages, and should thus 
have used that phrase as the title of his book. Had he called his work 
the Variability of Species, or the Modification of Species, it would not 
have been such a misnomer. Sudden mutations give us new varieties, but 
not new species. In fact, of the origin of species we know absolutely 
nothing, no more than we do about the origin of life itself. 

"Of the development of species we know some of the factors that 
play a part, as the influence of environment, the struggle for existence, 
and the competitions of life. But do we not have to assume an inherent 
tendency to development, an original impulse as the key to evolution? 
Accidental conditions and circumstances modify, but do not originate 
species. The fortuitous plays a part in retarding or hastening a species, 
and in its extinction, but not in its origin. The record of the rocks 
reveals to us the relation of species, and their succession in geologic 
time, but gives no hint of their origin. 

"Agassiz believed that every species of animal and plant was the 
result of a direct and separate act of the Creator. But the rationalist 
sees the creative energy imminent in matter. Does not one have to 



108 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

believe in something like this to account for the world as we see it ? And 
to account for us also ? a universal mind or intelligence 

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 

And the round ocean and the living air, 

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man. 

"Agassiz was too direct and literal; he referred to the Infinite 
Mystery in terms of our own wills and acts. When we think of a Creator, 
and of a thing created as two, we are in trouble at once. They are one, 
as fire and light are one, as soul and body are one. Darwin said he 
could not look upon the world as the result of chance, and yet his theory 
of the origin of species ushers us into a chance world. But when he 
said, speaking of the infinite variety of living forms about us, that they 
'have all been produced by laws acting around us/ he spoke as a great 
philosopher. But these laws are not fortuitous, or the result of the blind 
groping of irrational forces." 

There follows a very intuitive passage on the world as a living 
organism, which we would willingly quote if space allowed. Then John 
Burroughs comes back to Darwin, in passages which are admirably at 
home in THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY: 

"That Darwinism was indirectly one of the causes of the world 
war seems to me quite obvious. Unwittingly the great and gentle natur- 
alist has more to answer for than he ever dreamed of. His biological 
doctrine of the struggle for existence, natural selection, and the survival 
of the fittest, fairly intoxicated the Germans from the first. These 
theories fell in well with their militarism and their natural cruelty and 
greediness. Their philosophers took them up eagerly. Weissmann fairly 
made a god of natural selection, as did other German thinkers. And 
when they were ready for war, the Germans at once applied the law of 
the jungle to human affairs. The great law of evolution, the triumph 
of the strong, the supremacy of the fit, became the foundation of their 
political and national ideals. They looked for no higher proof of the 
divinity of this law as applied to races and nations, than the fact that 
the organic world had reached its present stage of development through 
the operation of this law. Darwin had given currency to these ideals. 
He had denied that there was any inherent tendency to development, that 
we lived in a world of chance, and that power only comes to him who 
exerts power half truths, all of them. 

'The Germans as a people have never been born again into the 
light of our higher civilization. They are morally blind and politically 
treacherous. Their biological condition is that of the lower orders, and 
the Darwinian law of progress came to them as an inspiration. Darwin's 
mind, in its absence of the higher vision, was a German mind. In his 
plodding patience, his devotion to details, and in many other ways, his 
mind was German. But in his candor, his truthfulness, his humility, his 
simplicity, he was anything but German. Undoubtedly his teachings 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 109 

bore fruit of a political and semi-political character in the Teutonic mind. 
The Teutons incorporated the law of the jungle in their ethical code. 
Had not they the same right to expansion and to the usurpation of the 
territory and to the treasures of their neighbors that every weed in the 
fields and even the vermin of the soil and the air have? If they had 
the sanction of natural law, that was enough ; they were quite oblivious to 
the fact that with man's moral nature had come in a new biological law 
which Darwin was not called upon to reckon with, but which has 
tremendous authority and survival value the law of right, justice, mercy, 
honor, love. 

"We do not look for the Golden Rule among swine and cattle, or 
among wolves and sharks ; we look for it among men ; we look for honor, 
for heroism, for self-sacrifice, among men. None of these things are 
involved in the Darwinian hypothesis. There is no such thing as right 
or wrong in the orders below man. These are purely human distinctions. 
It is not wrong for the wolf to eat the lamb, nor the lamb to eat the grass, 
but an aggressive war is wrong to the depths of the farthest star. 
Germany's assault upon the peace and prosperity of the world was a 
crime against the very heavens. 

"Darwin occupied himself only with the natural evolution of organic 
forms, and not with the evolution of human communities. He treated 
man as an animal, and fitted him into the zoological scheme. He removed 
him from the realm of the miraculous into the plane of the natural. For 
all purposes of biological discussion, man is an animal; but that is not 
saying he is only an animal, and still under the law of animal evolution. 
The European man is supposed to have passed the stage of savagery, in 
which the only rule of right is the rule of might. To have made Dar- 
winism an excuse for a war of aggression, is to have debased a sound 
natural philosophy to a selfish and ignoble end. 

"Germany lifted the law to the human realm and staked her all 
upon it, and failed. The moral sense of the world the sense of justice, 
of fair play, was against her, and inevitably she went down. Her leaders 
were morally blind. When the rest of the world talked of moral stand- 
ards, the German leaders said, 'We think you are fools/ But these 
standards brought England into the war the sacredness of treaties. It 
brought the United States in. We saw a common enemy in Germany, 
an enemy of mankind. We sent millions of our men to France for an 
ideal for justice and fair play. To see our standards of right and 
justice ignored and trampled upon in this way, was intolerable. The 
thought of the world being swayed by Prussianism was unbearable. I 
said to myself from the first, 'The Allies have got to win there is no 
alternative.' And what astonishes me is that certain prominent English- 
men, such as Lord Morley, John Burns, and others, did not see it. Would 
they have sat still and watched Germany destroy France and plant herself 
upon the Channel and make ready to destroy England? The very frame- 
work of our moral civilization would have been destroyed. Darwin little 
dreamed to what his natural selection theory was to lead." 



FRAGMENTS 



COOL fingers stroke the feverish brow of day. Evening is here 
with her purple shadows and her fragrant breath. A holy time, 
when the earth is fading, even to physical eyes, and the heavens 
growing nearer with the stars. I watched her climb up the hill- 
side from the valley, where the mists were lying floating like thin veils 
behind her. She has a gentle, silent step, yet steady, as one who knows 
her way, as well she must, having taken this path how many ages ! As 
she approaches, our light dims, and the snowy peaks above us grow 
more rose. When she has passed, they will turn violet, and presently 
take on the likeness of the mists below, faint, shadowy forms against her 
purple sky. 

Ah ! it was good to be here again after long absence : for the day 
had been very long, and its labours arduous. After she had passed behind 
the peaks, the bell rang calling us to prayer; and, as often before, I 
wondered whether the brother's hand upon the bell within the Temple, or 
some bell she touched behind the stars, drew from the heart such sweet- 
ness of response. "She is mysterious, the evening," said one of us. 
Another said, "Yes, 'for the world has never seen her eyes." 

There was a low laugh; one high in rank said : "She has the mystery 
of her mother, Nature, God's book of revelation, the mirror of Himself. 
Yet to behold and read, there must be the eyes to see, and so the bridge, 
which makes the Trinity. He who would see the eyes of evening must 
have eyes like hers, lit by the stars, but shadowed to everything save 
heaven." CAVE. 



Journey towards God though you be lamed or crippled in soul; to 
wait for healing is to lose time. ABU ABD ALLAH. 



110 



"BY WHOM? 1 ' 

KENA UPANISHAD 



TRANSLATED FROM THE SANSKRIT WITH AN INTERPRETATION 

I 



By whom impelled flies the forward-impelled Mind? By whom 
compelled does the First Life go forth? By whom impelled is this Voice 
that they speak? Who, in sooth, is the Bright One who compels sight and 
hearing? 

That which they call the Hearing of hearing, the Mind of mind, the 
Voice of voice, that is the Life of life, the Sight of sight. Setting this 
free, the Wise, going forth from this world, become immortal. 

Sight goes not thither, nor does voice go thither, nor mind. We have 
not seen, nor do we know, how one may transmit the understanding of 
this; for this is other than the knoivn, other than the unknozvn also. 

Thus have we heard from those who were before us, who have 
declared this unto us. 

That which by voice is not spoken, that through whose power voice 
is spoken; that, verily, knoiv thou as the Spirit, the Eternal, not this which 
here they honour and serve. 

That which does not think through the power of the mind; that by 
which, they have declared, the mind is thought; that, verily, know thou 
as the Spirit, the Eternal, not this which here they honour and serve. 

That ivhich does not see through the power of sight; that by which 
he perceives sights; that, verily, know thou as the Spirit, the Eternal, not 
this which here they honour and serve. 

That which does not hear through the power of hearing ; that through 
whose power hearing is heard here; that, verily, know thou as the 
Spirit, the Eternal, not this which here they honour and serve. 

That which does not live through the power of the life-breath; that 
through ivhose power the life-breath lives; that, verily, knoiv thou as the 
Spirit, the Eternal, not this which here they honour and serve. 

THERE appear to be two fundamental thoughts in this passage 
from the beginning of the Upanishad "By Whom?" 
The first thought is the character of the Spiritual Man, whom 
the Upanishads elsewhere call "the Man within, in the Heart"; 
that is, in the inner, spiritual nature. 

The second thought is the immediate relation, the entire dependence 
of the Spiritual Man on the universal Divine Being, here called Brahma, 
"the Spirit, the Eternal, the Great Breath." Not only is the Spiritual Man 
dependent upon the Divine Being, but each and every power of the 
Spiritual Man depends upon, and draws its being from, the corresponding 

in 



112 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

power of the Divine Being. This is the meaning of Paul's words : "in 
Him we live, and move, and have our being." 

While these two thoughts are fundamentally one, being two sides of 
the same reality, it may be simpler to consider them separately. 

To .begin with the second verse : "That which they call the Hearing 
of hearing, the Mind of mind, the Voice of voice, that is the Life of 
life, the Sight of sight. Setting this free, the Wise, going forth from 
this world, become immortal." 

Here, it is a question of the Sight, Hearing, Life-breath, Voice, Mind 
of the Spiritual Man, "the Man within, in the Heart," on the one hand, 
and the sight, hearing, life-breath, voice, mind of the outer personality, 
on the other. The Wise, the disciples, who set free the Spiritual Man, 
drawing him steadily forth "like the pith from a reed," from the meshes 
of the personal man, when they go forth from this world, become 
immortal. 

The same thing is beautifully expressed in Katha Upanishad : 

"When this lord of the body, standing within the body, departs ; when 
he goes forth free from the body, what is left ?" 

The phrase, "the Sight of sight, the Hearing of hearing," recalls a 
kindred passage in Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad : 

"The Spirit sees not; yet seeing not, he sees. For the energy that 
dwelt in sight cannot cease, because it is everlasting. But there is no other 
besides the Spirit, or separate from him, for him to see. 

"The Spirit smells not ; yet smelling not, he smells. For the energy 
that dwelt in the power of smell cannot cease, because it is everlasting. 
But there is nothing else besides the Spirit, or separate from him, for him 
to smell. 

"The Spirit tastes not ; yet tasting not, he tastes. For the energy that 
dwelt in taste cannot cease, because it is everlasting. But there is nothing 
else besides the Spirit, or separate from him, for him to taste. 

"The Spirit speaks not ; yet speaking not, he speaks. For the energy 
that dwelt in speech cannot cease, because it is everlasting. But there is 
nothing else, besides the Spirit, or separate from him, for him to speak to. 
"The Spirit hears not; yet hearing not, he hears. For the energy 
that dwelt in hearing cannot cease, because it is everlasting. But there is 
nothing else besides the Spirit, or separate from him, for him to hear. 

"The Spirit thinks not ; yet thinking not, he thinks. For the energy 
that dwelt in thinking cannot cease, because it is everlasting. But there is 
nothing else besides the Spirit, or separate from him, for him to think of. 
"The Spirit touches not; yet touching not, he touches. For the 
energy that dwelt in touch cannot cease, because it is everlasting. But 
there is nothing else besides the Spirit, or separate from him, for him to 
touch. 

"The Spirit knows not ; yet knowing not, he knows. For the energy 



"BY WHOM" 113 

that dwelt in knowing cannot cease, because it is everlasting. But there 
is nothing else besides the Spirit, or separate from him, for him to know." 

Here again, we are concerned with the two sides of the same reality : 
on the one hand, the Spiritual Man, whose powers are formed of the 
essence, the energy, within the external powers ; and, on the other hand, 
the unified Eternal Spirit, of which it cannot be said that it "sees, hears, 
knows," since there is no other being, separate from it, for it to see, hear, 
know. Nevertheless, within that Eternal Spirit dwell the essences, the 
energies, of all the powers ; and from these centres of power, of spiritual 
energy, in the Eternal Spirit, are directly derived the different powers of 
the Spiritual Man. 

Exactly the same thought appears to underlie the four unnumbered 
rules at the beginning of Light on the Path. 

One may, perhaps, be permitted to add, within parentheses, a few 
words which will bring this out ; premising, at the same time, that the full 
meaning goes much deeper, as is shown by the Author's Comments on 
these unnumbered rules. 

If, then, it be permitted to add certain words, these rules would read 
thus: 

"Before the (inner) eyes can see the (outer eyes) must be incapable 
of tears. Before the (inner) ear can hear (the outer ear) must have lost 
its sensitiveness. Before the (inner) voice can speak in the presence of 
the Masters (the outer voice) must have lost the power to wound. Before 
the soul (the Spiritual Man) can stand in the presence of the Masters its 
feet must be washed in the blood of the heart (through the purification of 
the whole personal nature)." 

These parallels would seem to make sufficiently clear the thought of 
the Spiritual Man, the "lord of the body, standing within the body." 

Yet the more vital side of the matter still remains to be emphasized : 
namely, that the Spiritual Man is not for a moment self-subsistent or 
self-dependent, but, moment by moment, draws his life-breath and the 
life of every one of his powers directly from the Eternal, the Spirit, the 
Great Breath. 

And the whole life and development of the Spiritual Man depends 
on the practical realization of this moment to moment dependence on the 
Great Spirit ; therefore the Upanishads are full of the Eternal. 

With the sense of the overshadowing, over-ruling Eternal as guide, 
we may now take up the separate verses of the Upanishad "By Whom?" 
in the attempt to make their meaning clearer. 

To the question : "By whom impelled flies the forward-impelled 
Mind ?" the answer is : The Mind is impelled forward, impelled into 
objective life, by the Eternal; by that power, that ray of the Eternal, 
which may be called the Mind of the Eternal, the Mind of God ; not in the 
general sense of the whole Logos, but in the special sense of that ray or 



114 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

principle of the Logos, which has the nature of Mind, and of which the 
human mind, and the mind in other living beings, is the ray, the manifes- 
tation. 

In the same way, the answer to the second question : "By whom 
compelled does the First Life go forth?" is, that the compelling power 
which sends the first life, the ruling vital breath, into manifestation, is the 
Life-principle in the Eternal, the principle corresponding to the vital 
principle in human and other life; or rather, the principle which is the 
source and fountain of that life, and to which that life corresponds. 

Similarly, the answer to the next question : "By whom impelled is 
this Voice that they speak ?" is that this Voice, which means not only the 
actual power of speech, but the energizing, creative force which lies 
within and behind speech, and to which speech owes whatever it possesses 
of compelling force, is the ray, the representative of a like primal power 
or ray in the Eternal : that special power which has given the name Logos, 
"the Word," to the whole Being of the manifested Eternal. 

The question: "Who, in sooth, compels sight and hearing?" may be 
answered in the same way. There is the primal power, the source and 
fountain head of these two forms of perception, in the manifested 
Eternal. These rays come down and manifest themselves in us, and in 
other living things, as the sight and hearing that we are familiar with, the 
ordinary perceptive powers which make use of the eyes and ears as their 
instruments. 

We have, therefore, three groups or levels of these powers : first, 
their primal essence and source in the manifested Eternal; second, their 
manifestation in the Spiritual Man, the immortal, indicated in the second 
verse of the Upanishad; and, third, their everyday manifestation in the 
outer man. And one may conceive direct lines of connection, originating 
in each power of the Eternal; passing through the corresponding power 
of the Spiritual Man and continued to the outer power of the personal 
man, the eye, the ear, and so on. 

Further, it would be wise to think of the Spiritual Man in two 
aspects, or, one might express it, at two stages. The first is the primal, 
ideal stage, which one might liken to an outline drawing of the future 
Spiritual Man. The second is the Spiritual Man, rendered fully con- 
scious and individual by the transfer to him of the centred consciousness 
developed in the outer personality. 

This transfer of the centred consciousness to the Spiritual Man is 
indicated in the first section of the second part of Katha Upanishad : 

"The Self-Being pierced the openings outwards; hence one looks 
outward, not within himself. A wise man looked towards the Self with 
reverted sight, seeking deathlessness." 

In this "reversion," this transfer of consciousness to the Spiritual 
Man, there are two principal elements: detachment from the outer, so 
constantly urged in the Bhagavad Gita, and recollection or one-pointed 
concentration, of which Patanjali has so much to say. 



"BY WHOM" 115 

This phrase from Katha Upanishad may very well be taken as the 
answer to the question : "By whom impelled flies the forward-impelled 
Mind? . . . Who, in sooth, compels sight and hearing?" The answer 
is : The Self-Being, the manifested Logos. 

We come now to the third verse : "Sight goes not thither, nor does 
voice go thither, nor mind. . . ." 

It is a question of making known, so far as that can be known, the 
nature and being of the Eternal, the Spirit, the Great Breath. That Spirit 
cannot be seen by the eyes; it is not externally visible as are natural 
objects. Nor can it be described in words, nor thought of by the external 
mind, the mental machine; because the mind-machine and the words it 
uses have both been developed to meet and describe external conditions 
of manifested things. Therefore they cannot be adequately used to 
describe or discern the Unmanifest. 

The Spirit, the Eternal, is other than the known : other than what is 
perceived and known by the external senses and the mind-machine. But, 
since this Spirit is, as we have seen, the source and fountain head of each 
of these powers, and of the mind also, the Spirit cannot be regarded as 
alien and infinitely remote. It is, therefore, different from the unknown 
also. 

Concerning the transmission of the knowledge of this, we should 
always keep in mind the fundamental fact that all Consciousness is ulti- 
mately one. There is no absolute chasm, no complete solution of 
continuity, between my personal consciousness at this moment, and the 
infinite Consciousness of the Eternal. We are not isolated lives, we are 
not islands of consciousness ; or we are islands only in the sense that all 
islands are connected together, beneath the ocean. 

If it were not for this connection, existing at this moment, existing 
everlastingly, the matter of our salvation, our liberation, would be hope- 
less. The chasm could never be bridged. 

But the link is there, the connection is there, the bridge is there ; it is 
only a question of our passing over the bridge; and detachment and 
recollection, which take advantage of the divine forces stretched out 
toward us, will carry us across. 

The knowledge of the Eternal, therefore, could never be transmitted 
from one isolated soul to another. But, since the Eternal is in both, no 
such transmission is needed. What is needed is the direction of the 
attention to what is already there : the divine light within the heart. And 
one may say that the whole of the Upanishads exist, simply to direct our 
attention to that "inward light." 

The remaining sentences of the passage translated are intended to 
awaken the intuition of that inward light, to direct our attention to it, to 
make us more vividly aware of its presence and nature. 

The inward light, the divine power within, is "that through whose 
power voice is spoken." For speech is an expression, a using, of both 
understanding and will; and understanding and will are manifestations 



1 16 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

of the inward divine life. And it should be kept in mind, as pointed out 
before, that 'Voice" means, not so much uttered speech, as the divine and 
magical force within speech and manifested by speech ; the creative power 
represented by the pentecostal tongues of flame. 

That divine, creative power, therefore, the power which lies behind 
uttered speech, is to be known as the Spirit; not "this which here they 
honour and serve." 

This last phrase is interpreted by the traditional commentaries as 
indicating the popular divinities, Agni, Vayu, Indra, and the rest ; personi- 
fied rays of the infinite Spirit, the Great Breath. 

But we may take the matter more intimately : "this which here they 
honour and serve" fairly represents the personal self, whom most of us 
do so inveterately honour and serve. 

It is a question, therefore, of detachment; a question of changing 
self-love into love of the Divine ; of transferring the consciousness from 
the outer man to the Spiritual Man. 

But here it is well to keep in mind what was said at the outset : the 
vital fact about the Spiritual Man is, that he lives and breathes through 
the life of the Eternal in him. Not for an instant may he be thought of 
as separate and independent ; his very being depends, from instant to 
instant, upon the Eternal, and upon ceaseless obedience to the laws of the 
Eternal. This immediate dependence of the Spiritual Man on the Eternal 
is the foremost fact of his being. 

For the disciple, this will mean that his inner life is sustained from 
moment to moment by the life of his Master, who embodies and focusses 
the Eternal for him; the life-breath of the disciple will be unceasing 
obedience to the will of the Eternal, expressed through the will of his 
Master. 

This will not mean passivity. Far from it, since the will of the 
Eternal is a divine, creative will. Therefore obedience to the divine will, 
the Master's will, and response to that will, means the gradual exercise of 
divine, creative power, but always in entire compliance with the plan of 
the Master, the Eternal. 

The Upanishad goes on to fix our attention upon the inner Spirit 
within each of our powers : sight, hearing, life-breath, mind. The purpose 
is recollection, inwardness, to be brought about through detachment and 
concentration ; thus gradually transferring to the Spiritual Man the life- 
forces previously squandered upon the outer man, and at the same time 
constantly keeping alive the intuition and recognition of the Eternal, the 
Spirit, the Great Breath, as the source and inspiration and home of the 
Spiritual Man. 

C. J. 
(To be continued.) 



ROMANCE 



WHAT is Romance? Not, what is a romance, but what is 
Romance itself? 
A glance at the dictionary definitions will show that 
while none of them does better than to summon before the 
reader his own instinctive intimation of what Romance is, nevertheless 
there are indications that historically both the word Romance and the 
idea behind it, have a very rich and suggestive meaning. Webster claims 
that Romance is "a species of fictitious writing," and again, "any fictitious 
and wonderful tale; a sort of novel, especially one which treats of 
surprising adventures usually befalling a hero or a heroine; a tale of 
extravagant adventures of love and the like." Under "Romantic," this 
dictionary approaches somewhat closer to the heart of the subject, when 
it says, "Pertaining or appropriate to the style of the Christian and 
popular literature of the Middle Ages, as opposed to the classical antique ; 
hence, fictitious, extravagant, fanciful," etc. Stormonth improves this by 
adding, "and with which the sublime and beautiful are more or less 
blended;" while the Century contributes, "an ideal state of things; par- 
taking of the heroic, the marvellous, the supernatural, or the imaginative." 

Adding together what is best in these definitions, the result, though 
suggestive, says no more than that Romance is composed of certain general 
elements. At the same time, such terms as "extravagant" and "fanciful" 
are used with "supernatural" and "sublime" in a way that is confusing 
and misleading. Can a thing be at once extravagant and truly super- 
natural, truly sublime ? And why is "the Christian and popular literature 
of the Middle Ages" "opposed to the classical antique?" Is Romance a 
thing confined to the Christian age, and if so, what of all the loves and 
fights and adventures of Homer's day and before. What did Macaulay 
mean when he wrote in his essay on History : "History commenced among 
the modern nations of Europe, as it had commenced among the Greeks, 
in romance?" 

Rather than undertake to answer these questions methodically, it 
would seem better to attempt some exposition of what we mean by 
Romance, developing the theme from an independent basis; and then to 
apply the result to such questions as may remain unanswered. 

Romance is a light of eternity irradiating the unexplained events 
familiar to our everyday experience and consciousness. It is the antidote 
to scientific or prosaic realism. It does not lead to idealism, the opposite 
to realism ; it reveals truth. It sees things as they are sub specie eternitatis, 
bathed in the rosy glow of divine illumination. It brings to our eyes, 
holden by false material lights and blinded by passion and desire, the 
vision of nature and of life more nearly as they are. Romance is the 
sparkling of the diamond truth. 

117 



118 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Therefore Romance itself exists. It is in, and of, reality; inherent in 
life as a radiance, as the essential poetry and joy and mystery of a divinely 
ordered activity. Romance is nature's charm; "that light whose smile 
kindles the universe/' When Romance itself is seen or felt or appre- 
hended in any way, then we have come upon eternal life. For true life 
is a romance; and so life, seen truly, is romantic. Romance, therefore, 
is at once a way of understanding the interplay of the love and mystery 
and beauty and joy of things, and a new quality that springs from their 
union and harmony. Until life is seen as radiant immortality, in terms 
of love and mystery and beauty and joy, it is not really seen at all. 
''Remember, moreover, that only to those who are deaf is life a cry; it 
is a song : and if this be true of life in general, it is also true of life in 
particular, of your life and of theirs." Life seen in such terms is 
Romance ; to sec the Song of Life is Romance. 

The so-called Romantic schools of art poets, painters, sculptors, 
musicians felt or saw or heard, something of real life, of immortal life. 

''For sure so fair a place was never seen, 
Of all that ever charmed romantic eye." 

The Romancer sees at once what is, and what may be, what should be. 
He has the "romantic eye" a thing in measure given, it would seem, 
to many; though in its higher and more penetrating sense, given only 
to him who, as having the ear to hear, has also the eye to see. Youth, 
more than any other age, and most of the great artists, possess this eye : 
youth, because it is innocent, and because "the pure in heart see God;" 
artists, because they have imaginations which are purified at least in part. 
Wordsworth, a true poet, has spoken for the capacity of youth for 
romance, at the same time revealing a high order of the romance-vision 
of the artist. 

"There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 

To me did seem 

Apparelled in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep 
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, 
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, 
Haunted forever by the eternal mind, 

Mighty Prophet ! Seer blest ! 

On whom those truths do rest, 
Which we were toiling all our lives to find, 
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ; 
Thou, over whom thy Immortality 
Broods like the day, a Master o'er a Slave, 
A Presence which is not to be put by . . ." 



ROMANCE 119 

It is, perhaps, because there is "a Presence which is not to be put 
by," a centre of immortal life, of reality, in most of us because most 
men and women have experienced moments when the veils of their own 
self-deception melted away before the radiance of some inner divine fire 
of love or religion or passionate endeavour, that so many crave Romance. 
People speak wistfully of such moments ; they cherish and reverence the 
ideals, the "dreams," of youth; so few, alas, dare to hope for their 
return. But Romance has been, it is, known; the imagination has been 
stirred; and imagination, the pioneer of the will, creates a fairy-land of 
mystery, of beauty, of happiness, of things as they ought to be, "moving 
about in worlds not realized." 

Spenser, perhaps the greatest Romance poet, says quite frankly that 
"Glory" is the "Faerie Queene" whom Arthure "went to seeke her forth 
in Faerie Land ;" and Malory takes us into another, similar world of his 
own creation, differing from others only in the individual contribution 
of his particular mind. "We must have symbols," says Emerson. "The 
child asks you for a story, and is thankful for the poorest. It is not 
poor to him, but radiant with meaning. The man asks for a novel 
that is, asks leave for a few hours to be a poet, and to paint things as 
they ought to be. The youth asks for a poem. The very dunces wish 
to go to the theater. What private heavens can we not open, by yielding 
to all the suggestions of rich music !" 

These "private heavens," our individual romances, are very much 
nearer to real heaven than we believe. They are the moulds into which 
heaven pours itself. The lover who dreams of his beloved; the warrior 
who pictures a happy hunting ground or Valhalla; the novelist, who, 
like Charles Reade in his wild romance of The Cloister and the Hearth, 
knows that "to save a human life, and that life a loved one : such moments 
are worth living for, ay three-score years and ten;" the artists who, 
from a Giotto to a Maxfield Parish, see that the world has no limits; 
and the poet who tells us, 

"Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint 
As from beyond the limit of the world, 
Like the last echo born of a great cry, 
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice 
Around a king returning from his wars." 

all these visions are heaven, if we will see them so. And they are 
Romance. It is for men, not merely to dream romances, but to create 
them, to live them. 

The light by which we see the world comes out from our own souls. 
It may be the light of hell; it is more often the grey light of earth; it 
can be the light of heaven. " Tis the good reader that makes the good 
book," says Emerson; and again, "The world is enlarged for us, not by 
new objects, but by finding more affinities and potencies in those we 
have." It is this whioh the child does instinctively. He is the prince he 



120 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

dreams, he walks past bowing courtiers, through embattled castles; he 
.fights unnumbered hosts of giants and wild beasts; he lives adventures 
in a world of gold and azure and loveliness. He fits all he knows of 
life into his dream, and this world of his creation is truer to him than 
everyday life. "We live among gods of our own creation." Wordsworth 
is right ; heaven is near, is reached, by such creative imagination, heaven 
does often lie "about us in our infancy." 
But, when the child grows up 

"Earth fills her lap with pleasures all her own ; 
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, 

Forget the glories he hath known, 
And that imperial palace whence he came." 

Earth, dull bare earth, with the mock "pleasures all her own," deceives 
man as to the truth, paints his life in harsh, drab colours, and tries to 
rob him, by enmeshing him in self-created lies, of those 

"High instincts before which our mortal Nature 
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised." 

And so we turn to the seers, the poets, the artists, who, to use Keat's 
words, teach us 

"Tales and golden histories 
Of heaven and its mysteries." 

When their best efforts fall short of realization, when their words, their 
pictures, their music are but faint echoes, "shadowy recollections," then 
we, the earthbound, say that they romance, and the dictionaries use such 
words as "extravagant" and "fanciful." But though we must recognize 
the fact that there are degrees of Romance, degrees of vision, of under- 
standing, and inevitable distortion, yet in all Romance worthy the name 
is a vista to a larger truth. A single flash bespeaks the diamond. Hence 
the universal popularity of novels, of plays, of romans d'aventures, of 
operas, and of landscapes, which, in one sense, have no basis whatever 
in the plain facts of life, but which hint that excitement is a perversion of 
that intense yearning of the heart for God which will carry a man through 
the fiery trial ; that passions both good and evil are, after all, revelations 
of how high pitched and vibrant immortal life really is ; that adventure is 
fulfilled only in the final Quest of the Holy of Holies ; that operas remind 
us of a time "when the morning stars sang together" ; and that Nature is 
the vesture of God, which only the pure in heart may hope to see truly. 
For the moment we are not concerned with the technicalities of an 
art, of how such effects are produced; nor of the fact that "realist" 
schools, so called, are seeking the same revelation by another method. 
The realist will meet Romance before his goal is attained. But Romance 
makes a contribution all its own, because it reveals itself. Deny its 
existence, and you rob yourself of the best of life of all the plus qual- 



ROMANCE 121 

ities, of spices, and of sugar coating. Accept it, ^ and you are in touch 
with a mystery. For Romance is pre-eminently a quality of the heart, 
and so leads us to the heart of life. 

From the foregoing, it will perhaps be divined that the Gods, the 
Masters, live lives of the truest Romance. And it is my belief that, as 
in heaven the everyday life of a Master is one long, thrilling, adventurous 
Romance, so on earth the greatest Romances ever enacted have had 
something of the life of the Masters in them. For it is immortal life 
that is the home of Romance, and there must be the touch of immortality 
to create Romance. 

It becomes, therefore, of special significance to discover that 
Romance, both as a technical word in the history of literature, and as an 
intellectual conception, seems specifically restricted to the Christian era. 
For this would suggest that the incarnation of the Master Christ infused 
the necessary consciousness into mankind to conceive of Romance. He, 
so to speak, brought the consciousness of Romance with him, when he 
came. Romance existed before, but men did not see it, their capacity 
to appreciate it lay dormant within them, not yet awakened by cyclic 
evolution. Only those who had risen above the world and claimed their 
immortality, had any conception of life as romantic. The Romance of 
Christ's life and nature, his presence in men's hearts, awoke the higher, 
the new consciousness in them. A new light had come into the world, 
all life and nature were filled with a new radiance. "Every good gift 
and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father 
of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." 

It is a fact that the word Romance itself first appears applied to the 
language of Gaul or France, as it developed from the Roman or Latin 
language at the close of the "dark ages." Coincident with this "Romance" 
language, appeared a body of literature, the first truly romantic literature 
to exist; which literature, because it was written in this Romance lan- 
guage, came to be called "Romance." So the special language, and the 
special literature appeared approximately together. The gradual devel- 
opment of romance literature, embodying certain new ideas, formulated 
a new conception, that of Romance itself, or the romantic, with which 
everyone is to-day familiar, but which, before A. D. 1000, was not suffi- 
ciently present in the minds of men to produce literature. It can be seen, 
however, in the lives and words of early Christian soldiers and saints. 

There is no equivalent that we can discover in any pre-Christian 
language, within the historic period, for the word, or for the idea, romance. 
Romance appears specifically to be a development of Christian civilization, 
and I should go further and say that it is characteristically Christian. 
This is so clearly recognized an historic fact that Webster defines 
Romance as "Pertaining or appropriate to the style of the Christian and 
popular literature of the Middle Ages, as opposed to the classical antique." 

The Romans, the Greeks, the Semitic races, probably even 
the Chinese, Persians, and Hindus, had no conception of life 



122 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

such as is conveyed to us by the adjective romantic. We, looking 
back on events in Greek life, for example, as it is depicted in their 
literature, call this and another incident romantic, or a romance. Perhaps 
the loves of Hero and Leander might serve as an excellent illustration. 
The Christian world conceives this story as filled with romantic beauty; 
but we read into it the feelings and understanding of our own hearts. 
The original poem of Musseus whether he be the chosen disciple and 
spiritual son of Orpheus (about 1400 B. C.) as Virgil and Suidas cele- 
brate, or a fourth century poet of the same name the poem itself does 
not contain or set forth our ideas. It is, even in translation, an exquisite 
poem, full of lyric beauty ; of rare simplicity, and portraying high passion 
and a noble virility. But both Hero and Leander are children. It is 
delightful to see two doves billing and cooing. The doves, perhaps, might 
be said to know what they are doing, in a way. Sweethearts of five and 
four are also aware, in a sense, of what they are doing. But though many 
of the romantic elements are present, true Romance is lacking, because the 
self-consciousness of the individuals is incomplete. It is grown men and 
women who see Romance in the little loves of children, not the children 
themselves. Romance, if it reveal immortal life, must be mature, must 
have the self-consciousness of the heart to be complete. The loves of 
Hero and Leander might have been mature, their ultimate experience was 
certainly maturing, but the Greek poem which is our source, does not so 
render them. 

It is very difficult to illustrate such a point by comparing a late 
translation from the Greek, with an equally sophisticated translation of 
such an early example of Romance as Aucassin and Nicolette ; a reading 
of both the poems entire would more easily establish the contrast. Yet, 
compare with the love of Aucassin, that of Leander, as rendered by 
Fawkes in the following passage : 

"Yet, beauteous Hero, grant a lover's prayer, 
And to my wishes prove as kind as fair. 
As Venus' priestess, just to Venus prove, 
Nor shun the gentle offices of love. 
O let us, while the happy hour invites, 
Propitious, celebrate the nuptial rites. . . . 
Then, as you fear the goddess to offend, 
In me behold your husband and your friend, 
Ordained by Cupid, greatest god above, 
To teach you all the mysteries of love." 

Separated from Nicolette by a storm : 

" 'Neath the keep of strong Beaucaire, 
On a day of summer fair, 
At his pleasure, Aucassin 
Sat with baron, friend and kin. 



ROMANCE 123 

Then upon the scent of flowers, 
Song of birds, and golden hours, 
Full of beauty, love, regret, 
Stole the dream of Nicolette, 
Came the tenderness of years ; 
So he drew apart in tears." 

The Greeks found beauty in nature; they did not find love. Cupid 
could teach love, but Cupid never gave his heart to men. Aucassin finds 
love, finds romance, in the song of birds, in the scent of flowers. He 
has felt, he is conscious of that "Sacred Heart," which is ever on his 
lips, even in this early poem. "Nicolette searched his hurt, and perceived 
that the shoulder was out of joint. She handled it so deftly with her 
white hands, and used such skilful surgery, that by the grace of God 
(who loveth all true lovers) the shoulder came back to its place." 

God was in his world, not as thundering Jove on Mount Olympus, 
but as Father, interested in and loving his children. The incarnation of 
the Son of God, an incarnation motived by pure love of God and men, 
brought love, a new love, into the world. And as the heart is the centre 
of love-consciousness, so the world to-day has had a heart infused into 
it. The gods, the Masters, no longer are felt to stand above or apart 
from the world of nature and of men, but are immanent in them; their 
celestial radiance shines upon them, as 

". . . that sustaining Love 
Which, through the web of being blindly wove 
By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
That fire for which all thirst." 

A Romance is not the word which we should use naturally about 
the life of Christ. Yet, if we examine that life in terms of Romance, each 
and all of the elements are present, proving to us that it is, what it must 
be, the greatest example of Romance "come true" that the earth has so 
far seen. Mr. George Saintsbury has analysed the elements of Romance, 
from the literary point of view, in so acute and able a manner, that we 
shall take over his terms almost bodily; laying, however, a somewhat 
different stress upon certain of those elements which do not much concern 
him in a strictly literary essay, but which have a special interest for us. 
Mr. Saintsbury 's article in the llth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica 
(vol. xxiii, pp. 500-504) to which we refer, is by far the best essay 
on the subject we have seen more comprehensive, and showing with 
the temperance of the scholar, a deeper understanding and insight, than 
that of any of the older studies. He appreciates all that Mr. Babbitt 
fails to realize, that Mr. Ker undervalues, and that Scott ignores. He 
suggests that Romance comprises, in order, "war, love, and religion; 
. . . the typical rather than individual character ; . . . the admix- 



124 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

ture of the marvellous, not merely though mainly as part of the religious 
element; the presence of the chivalrous ideal;" and, together with 
"adventure," "the world-old motive of the quest." 

Each and all of these elements will be seen to have their ultimate 
source in spiritual life, in the life of the disciple, and of the Master. 
It cannot be found anywhere else there is no final explanation of the 
raison d'etre for war, for love, for religion, for chivalry, outside the 
fullness of immortal, spiritual life. There has been no greater single fight 
than that waged in the temple at Jerusalem and on Cavalry. There has 
been no greater adventure than the quest of a whole world of hearts, nor 
one inspired by a greater love. Nor has there ever been a finer con- 
sideration of the feelings of others, a more superb self-restraint, a more 
absolute loyalty, greater self-sacrifice, more magnificent heroism in a 
word, such ideal chivalry, as that portrayed in the Gospel narratives. 

It was the incarnation of Christ which, endowing us with heart, 
made such things part of our human consciousness, made us self-conscious 
of them, not merely as isolated virtues, but as a unity, as an individual 
perfection necessary to establish the ideal man, and the ideal state of 
society. Christ added to the very trees and flowers a magic they had 
not possessed before; and I am convinced if we could hear the way 
birds sang 100 B. C. we should inevitably discern that their song to-day 
had deepened in quality, springing more from the heart and appealing 
more to the heart. Must not the incarnation of every Avatar as set forth 
in theosophic teaching, bring with it a new, individual gift from the 
Lodge for the whole manifested universe? This new consciousness of 
the heart then, may be regarded as the distinguishing mark of the whole 
cycle of Christianity, which the classical age had never known. In its 
realization, the literature, the art, of our world, entered upon a new 
cycle, a new phase, the cycle of the heart, and of the self-consciousness, 
the maturity, which comes when we awake to the realization of love. 

Romance is, therefore, for us, an achievement of Christianity. Mr. 
Saintsbury, striving to distinguish between all the adventure and story- 
telling of the Ancients, and the Romances of Christianity, notes that 
"two things were still wanting which were all-powerful in the romances 
proper Chivalry and Religion." There is no literature, outside specific 
scriptural writing, that expresses .the religious-mindedness of man so 
completely as Romance-literature which puts Christianity as the basis 
of its whole structure and that depends so completely upon a strictly 
religious interpretation of life, upon so high a moral ethic. Mr. Saints- 
bury emphasizes "The singular purity of the romances as a whole"; and 
he says, "In a very wide reading of romance the present writer does not 
remember more than two or three passages of romance proper (that is to 
say before the later part of the 15th century) which could be called 
obscene by any fair judge." Illicit love, as we now judge such things, is 
freely portrayed, but "it is never spoken of lightly and is always punished ; 
nor are the pictures of it ever coarsely drawn." 



ROMANCE 125 

Together with its elevated tone, Romance literature portrays chiv- 
alry; and as a consequence, the world to-day conceives of Romance as 
imbued with the chivalric ideal. Romance appeals to the hero, and to 
the heroic ; another clue as to its acting as a guide to the inner world ; 
because, contained within the Greek traditions (cf., for example, Hesiod, 
Works and Days, Works, II. 187-224) were echoes, and more than echoes, 
of the Third Race, when the Nirmanakayas reappeared "as Kings, Rishis 
and heroes," as Madame Blavatsky tells us in the Secret Doctrine. The 
memory, and almost the deification, of heroes, from Greek and also Scan- 
dinavian sources, persisted into the period of the Middle Ages when 
Romance literature appeared. So we find included the whole cycle of 
"quest" romances, depicting more or less 'vaguely and generally the 
initiations of the knight or "hero." 

The chivalric ideal, the Quest, the exaltation of women, the con- 
secration of life to a cause, as that of religion, or of the church, or of 
a lady, or of honour these things are the outward expression of 
Romance, are the efforts made by mankind to bring Romance out of the 
land of dreams, into everyday life. And we miss the import of these 
phases of human endeavour if we fail to discern that they carry with 
them the vitality of spiritual life. It is the genius of great minds to 
have visualized them ; it is the rarer genius of great men actually to have 
lived them. For Romance has "come true," and some day we shall all 
live our perfect Romance. 

A. G. 



To praise God means that all his life long a man glorifies, reverences, 
and venerates the Divine Omnipotence. The praise of God is the meet 
and proper work of the angels and the saints in heaven, and of loving 
men on earth. God should be praised by desire, by the lifting up of all 
our powers, by words, by works, with body and with soul, and with 
whatsoever one possesses; in humble service, from without and from 
within. He who does not praise God while here on earth shall in eternity 
be dumb. JOHN OF RUYSBROECK. 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY AND 
PRE-EXISTENCE 



II 

THE second half of Dr. M'Taggart's book is, as we have said, of 
even greater interest than the first.* It constitutes one of the 
best popular expositions we have seen of the philosophic 
rationale of reincarnation. It restates the principal arguments, 
familiar to students of Theosophy, for believing that, "if men are 
immortal, it is more probable that the beginning of the present life, in 
which each of us finds himself now, was not the beginning of his whole 
existence, but that he lived before it, as he will live after it." Dr. 
M'Taggart refers to the fact that, though declared heretical by the early 
Church at Rome, "there seems nothing in pre-existence incompatible with 
any of the dogmas which are generally accepted as fundamental in Chris- 
tianity" ; and he points out that " it was taught by Buddha and Plato, and 
is usually associated with the belief in immortality in the far east." 
"Why," he asks, "should men who are so anxious to-day to prove that we 
shall live after this life is ended, regard the hypothesis that we have 
already survived the end of a life, as one which is beneath consideration? 
. . . I do not see how existence in future time could be shown to be 
necessary in the case of any being whose existence in past time is admitted 
not to be necessary." 

When it is granted that immortality and pre-existence are logically 
bound together, Dr. M'Taggart proceeds to a consideration of the reasons 
for believing that their truth implies the probability of a long cycle of 
births and deaths through reincarnation. "Each man would have at least 
three lives, his present life, one before it, and one after it. It seems 
more probable, however, that this would not be all, and that his existence 
before and after his present life would in each case be divided into many 
lives, each bounded by birth and death." 

"If we accept immortality and reject a plurality of lives, . . . 
we must hold that the causes, whatever they are, which operate on each 
of us so as to cause his death once, will never operate again on any of 
us through all future time, . . . the death which ends his present 
life for each of us will change profoundly and permanently the conditions 
of all future life. And for this there seems no justification. 

"It might be admitted that a state of absolute perfection would 
render further death improbable. But even the best men are not, when 
they die, in such a state of intellectual and moral perfection as would fit 
them to enter heaven immediately, if heaven is taken as a state of abso- 
lute perfection which renders all further improvement unnecessary and 

* Human Immortality and Pre-existence, by Dr. J. Ellis M'Taggart, published by Long- 
mans, Green & Co. 

126 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 127 

impossible. . . But if our existence after our present life is imper- 
fect, and a state of improvement and advance, it has not yet reached 
that absolute perfection which might make future deaths improbable. 
And it seems to me that the natural inference from this view 
is that this life will be followed by others like it, each separated from 
its predecessor and successor by death and rebirth. For otherwise we 
should be limited to the hypothesis that a process of development begun 
in a single life bounded by death, would be continued as an indefinitely 
long life, not divided by birth and death at all. And to suppose, without 
any reason, such a change from the order of our present experience 
seems unjustifiable." 

In addition to the argument drawn from the "law of cycles," as it 
is termed in theosophic literature, whereby day follows night, summer 
winter, and periods of outbreathing succeed those of inbreathing, Dr. 
M'Taggart considers the necessity of the causes which we have put in 
motion, working out to their conclusions. "We continually find that 
death leaves a fault without retribution, a retribution without a repent- 
ance, a preparation without an achievement, while, in other cases, where 
the life has lasted longer, a similar process is complete between birth and 
death. If men survive death, we must expect that these processes, when 
not worked out before death, will be worked out in a future life." 
Without mention of Karma, as such, he shows its determining influence 
upon the question of reincarnation; and one by one rephrases, omitting 
all technical terms, many of the classic theosophical arguments. 

He adduces the differences in personal character and circumstance, 
and the strength of the ties which bind our hearts to our friends, as 
two features of our present life which can be explained more satisfac- 
torily on the basis of reincarnation than on any other. "Two people who 
have seen but little of each other are often drawn together by a force 
equal to that which is generated in other cases by years of mutual trust 
and mutual assistance. The significance of this fact has been, I think, 
very much underrated. . . On the theory of pre-existence such 
relations would naturally be explained by the friendships of past lives. 
The love which comes at first sight, and the love which grows up through 
many years in this life, would be referred to similar causes, whose simi- 
larity would account for the similarity of the effects. Each would have 
arisen through long intimacy, and the only difference between them would 
be that, in one case, the intimacy had been suspended by death and 
re-birth. 

"Again, as a man grows up, certain tendencies and qualities make 
themselves manifest in him. They cannot be entirely due to his environ- 
ment, for they are often very different in people whose environment has 
been very similar. We call these the man's natural character, and assume 
that he came into life with it. Such tendencies and qualities, since they 
are not due to anything which happens after birth, may be called innate, 
as far- as the present life is concerned. 



128 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"Now when we look at the natural characters of men, we find that 
in many cases they possess qualities strongly resembling those which, as 
we learn by direct experience, can be produced in the course of a single 
life. One man seems to start with an impotence to resist some particular 
temptation, which exactly resembles the impotence which has been pro- 
duced in another man by continually yielding to the same temptation. 
One man, again, has through life a calm and serene virtue, which another 
gains only by years of strenuous effort. . . If we hold the doctrine 
of pre-existence, we shall naturally explain these, also, as being the con- 
densed results of experience in this case, of experience in an earlier life." 

The part played by heredity, often held to be sufficiently determinative 
of a man's innate character to nullify this argument for pre-existence, is 
discussed at some length ; and the reader is led to see that, so far from 
the action of heredity being opposed to the law of Karma, it may be 
regarded as but a means whereby that law is fulfilled part of the 
machinery by which the reincarnating ego obtains, in each life, bodily and 
personal characteristics expressive of the inner character he has built up 
through past lives. 

"If a man's character is determined by his previous lives, how can it 
also be determined by the character of the ancestors by whose bodies his 
body was generated? 

"There is, however, no real difficulty here. . . The character 
which a man has at any time is modified by circumstances which happen 
to him at that time, and may well be modified by the fact that his re-birth 
is in a body descended from ancestors of a particular character. 

"Thus the two ways in which the character in this life is said to be 
determined need not be inconsistent, since they can both co-operate in the 
determination, the tendencies inherited with the body modifying the 
character as it was left at the end of the previous life. But there is no 
impossibility in supposing that the characteristics in which we resemble 
the ancestors of our bodies, may be to some degree characteristics due 
to our previous lives. In walking through the streets of London, it is 
extremely rare to meet a man whose hat shows no sort of adaptation to 
his head. Hats in general fit their wearers with far greater accuracy 
than they would if each man's hat were assigned to him by lot. And 
yet there is very seldom any causal connection between the shape of the 
head and the shape of the hat. A man's head is never made to fit his 
hat, and, in the great majority of cases, his hat is not made to fit his 
head. The adaptation comes about by each man selecting, from hats 
made without any special reference to his particular head, the hat which 
will suit his particular head best. 

"This may help us to see that it would be possible to hold that a 
man whose nature had certain characteristics when he was about to be 
re-born, would be re-born in a body descended from ancestors of a 
similar character. His character when re-born would, in this case, be 
decided, as far as the points in question went, by his character in his 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 129 

previous life, and not by the character of the ancestors of his new body. 
But it would be the character of the ancestors of the new body, and its 
similarity to his character, which determined the fact that he was re-born 
in that body rather than another. The shape of the head to go back 
to our analogy does not determine the shape of the hat, but it does 
determine the selection of this particular hat for this particular head." 

Dr. M'Taggart's discussion of this point is particularly valuable 
because it makes no effort to insist upon a theoretical degree of adjust- 
ment (of inherited bodily and temperamental characteristics to the indi- 
vidual innate character) greater than the observed facts of life justify. 
As a man must choose his hat from those obtainable in the shops at the 
time he comes to buy though their fashion may not please him so the 
reincarnating ego is limited in its choice of bodies, and to obtain one 
element, which it wants, must take others that it does not want. Thus 
it is that a man's true self and character are often submerged under 
hereditary characteristics that are in no permanent sense his own, but 
pertain solely to his instrument. These must be worked through, and 
sloughed off, before we really become ourselves, and this is no small 
part of the difficulty that confronts each one of us. 

Students of Theosophy will not find it hard, however, to reconcile 
this apparent divergence from perfect adjustment this modification of 
personal character by the circumstances and heredity of birth with the 
universal justice of Karmic law. Though Dr. M'Taggart does not deal 
a f length with this phase of the question, he points out that the ties which 
we form with those we love become such a close and intimate part of the 
nature of the self, and involve so many unfinished interactions, that it 
must be supposed that those who were associated together in the past 
must come together in the future. We might speak of this as group 
reincarnation, and it goes far to make clear what might otherwise be 
obscure. It bears directly on the modification of the individual character 
which heredity may cause. As we, in past lives, have influenced for 
good or bad the character of those with whom we were associated, so 
is it just that they should influence us; and the hereditary modification 
of character, which we receive from our parents, may be regarded as 
precisely such an interaction. 

A question that is frequently asked is, How is each person brought 
into connection with the new body that is most appropriate to him? To 
this Dr. M'Taggart answers : 

"I do not see any difficulty here. We know that various substances, 
which have chemical affinities for one another, will meet and combine, 
separating themselves to do so, from other substances with which they 
have been in previous connection. And we do not see anything so 
strange or paradoxical in this result as to make us unwilling to recognize 
its truth. There seems to me nothing more strange or paradoxical in 
the suggestion that each person enters into connection with the body which 
is most fitted to be connected with him. And if there were any difficulty 



130 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

in this supposition, it is a difficulty which would be just as serious for 
the theory adopted by most believers in immortality who reject pre- 
existence." 

One of the most interesting sections of the book deals with the 
question of memory. To Dr. M'Taggart, "it is certain that in this life 
we remember no previous lives, whether it be because we have forgotten 
them, or because there have been none to remember," and though we 
may well question the universal validity of this assumption, it is clearly 
true of the vast majority of mankind, and it raises the fundamental 
problem of the personal value of an immortality which appears, for most 
men as they now are, to proceed through life after life, blotting out the 
memory of each as it is completed. Dr. M'Taggart handles this problem 
in masterly fashion, and it will well repay us to follow the outline of 
his argument. 

"Sometimes, indeed," he begins, "it has been asserted that such a 
state would not be immortality at all. Without memory of my present 
life, it is said, my future life would not be mine. If memory ceases at 
the death of my body, I cease with it, and I am not immortal. 

"If each life had no continuity with its successors, and no effect on 
them, then indeed there might be little meaning in calling them lives of 
the same person. But we cannot suppose that this would be the case. 
If the same self passes through various lives, any change which happens 
to it at any time must affect its state in the time immediately subsequent, 
and through this in all future time. Death and re-birth, no doubt, are 
of sufficient importance to modify a character considerably, but they could 
only act on what was already present, and the nature with which each 
individual starts in any life would be moulded by his experiences and 
actions in the past. And this is sufficient to make the identity between 
the different lives real. . . . 

"We may then say that, in spite of the loss of memory, it is the 
same person who lives in the successive lives. But has such immortality 
as this any value for the person who is immortal ? 

"I do not propose to discuss whether any immortality has any value. 
. . . All that I shall maintain is that the loss of memory need not 
render immortality valueless if it would not have been valueless without 
the loss of memory. 

"If existence beyond the present life is not expected to improve, and 
yet immortality is regarded as valuable, it must be because a life no better 
than this is looked on as possessing value. . . And if this life has value 
without any memory beyond itself, why should not future lives have 
value without memory beyond themselves? . . . 

"But immortality is not only, or chiefly, desired because it will give 
us more life like our present life. Its attraction is chiefly for those people 
who believe that the future life will be, at any rate for many of us, a 
great improvement on the present. . . And it might be said that our 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 131 

chief ground for hoping for a progressive improvement after death would 
be destroyed if memory periodically ceased. . . 

"We must ask, therefore, what elements of value are carried on by 
memory from the present to the future. And then we must consider 
whether they can be carried on without memory. . . 

v< The Value of memory, then, is that by its means the past may 
serve the wisdom, the virtue, and the love of the present. If the past 
could help the present in a like manner without the aid of memory, the 
absence of memory need not destroy the chance of an improvement 
spreading over many lives. 

"Let us consider wisdom first. Can we be wiser by reason of 
something which we have forgotten. Unquestionably we can. Wisdom 
is not merely, or chiefly, amassed facts, or even recorded judgments. 
It depends primarily on a mind qualified to deal with facts, and to form 
judgments. . . And so a man who dies after acquiring knowledge 
and all men acquire some might enter his new life, deprived indeed of 
his knowledge, but not deprived of the increased strength and delicacy 
of mind which he had gained in acquiring the knowledge. And, if so, 
he will be wiser in the second life because of what has happened in the 
first. 

"Of course he loses something in losing the actual knowledge. . . 
And is not this loss really a gain? For the mere accumulation of knowl- 
edge, if memory never ceased, would soon become overwhelming, and 
worse than useless. What better fate could we wish for than to leave 
such accumulations behind us, preserving their greatest value in the 
mental faculties which have been strengthened by their acquisition ? 

"With virtue the point is perhaps clearer. For the memory of moral 
experiences is of no value to virtue except in so far as it helps to form 
the moral character, and, if this is done, the loss of the memory would 
be no loss to virtue. Now we cannot doubt that a character may remain 
determined by an event which has been forgotten. I have forgotten 
the greater number of the good and evil acts which I have done in my 
present life. And yet each must have left a trace on my character. And 
so a man may carry over into his next life the dispositions and tendencies 
which he has gained by the moral contests of this life, and the value 
of those experiences will not have been destroyed by the death which has 
destroyed the memory of them. 

"There remains love. The problem here is more important, if, as 
I believe, it is in love, and in nothing else, that we find not only the 
supreme value of life, but also the supreme reality of life, and, indeed, 
of the universe. The gain which the memory of the past gives us here 
is that the memory of past love for any person can strengthen our 
present love of him. And this is what must be preserved, if the value 
of past love is not to be lost. The knowledge we acquire, and the efforts 
which we make, are directed to ends not themselves. But love has no 



132 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

end but itself. If it has gone, it helps us little that we keep anything it 
has brought us." 

We cannot summarize Dr. M'Taggart's full discussion. The reader 
must turn to the book itself and will be richly repaid in doing so. But 
we cannot resist quoting certain further passages, which will show the 
direction in which his thought continues. 

"Now we know that present love can also be stronger and deeper 
because of past love which we have forgotten. Much has been forgotten 
in any friendship, which has lasted for several years within the limits of 
a single life many confidences, many services, many hours of happiness 
and sorrow. But they have not passed without leaving their mark on the 
present. They contribute, though they are forgotten, to the present 
love, which is not forgotten. 

"In other words, people who are joined by love cannot be dependent 
for their proximity to each other and consequently for the possibility 
of their love on some chance or mechanical arrangement whose recur- 
rence we could have no reason to expect. Their love is not the effect of 
proximity, but its cause. For their love is the expression of the ultimate 
fact that each of them is more closely connected with the other than he 
is with people in general. And proximity in a particular life, like every- 
thing else, is the effect or, rather, the manifestation under particular 
circumstances of those relations which make up the eternal nature of 
the universe. 

"If by any means we make our relations stronger and finer, then 
they will be stronger and finer at the next meeting. What more do we 
want? The past is not preserved in memory, but it exists, concentrated 
and united, in the present. Death is thus the most perfect example of 
the 'collapse into immediacy' that mysterious phrase of Hegel's where 
all that was before a mass of hard-earned acquisitions, has been merged 
into the unity of a developed character." 

The power and dignity of this concept of the immortal life of all 
mankind, might well reconcile us to the recurring and permanent loss 
of memory, were it indeed a necessary consequence of the truth of 
reincarnation. But it must be noted that Dr. M'Taggart does not so 
present it, nor is it so in fact. His whole discussion is based upon the 
assumption that, as a matter of common observation, and in at least the 
vast majority of men, memory of the past has not persisted or is not 
available ; and his argument is directed to showing that, despite this loss 
of memory, reincarnation means for every man an immortality of price- 
less value, offering the opportunity for progress and growth, and storing 
in the reincarnating self the distilled essence of the lessons and experi- 
ence of past lives, rendering them available for present use. As we saw 
in discussing the question of the immortality of personal traits, this 
freeing ourselves of incumbrances, and leaving behind the waste products 
of the past, is precisely what we would wish wherever we have departed 
from those permanent purposes, in loyalty to which the immortal self 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 133 

realizes its true identity. From such departures and failures we desire 
only to preserve the lesson, and could ask nothing better than that all else 
connected with them should pass into the oblivion of forgetfulness. Yet 
if there be much that we can only wish to forget, there are other experi- 
ences that we would pray might remain with us, always in memory 
an inseparable part of our immortal life and consciousness ; and surely 
we should hope for a time when we may learn to live aright. Will 
memory then be retained? 

In considering this question we must note that whereas Dr. M'Tag- 
gart was dealing with the problem of human immortality in general, we 
are now proposing to consider but a very special class, and what cannot 
be adduced of the general case may be true of the more limited one. 
Thus it would not be possible to prove from the definition of a triangle 
that its three angles were equal, for this is patently not true of all 
triangles. But it is a property that is possessed by a certain class of 
triangles, namely, the equilateral triangles. And if we add to the general 
definition of triangles the further characteristic of equal sides which 
differentiates this sub-class the truth of the proposition is easily proved. 
Dr. M'Taggart can establish from his general premises only such general 
conclusions regarding human immortality and human memory as are 
valid for all mankind as a consequence of their bare humanity. But it 
by no means follows that more may not be adduced in regard to men of 
whom we may predicate not only the common human nature, but also 
the definite aspiration and will to conform their lives to spiritual purposes 
and principles. The immortality and memory attained by such a special 
class may be very different from the minimum which is all that can be 
demonstrated of mankind in general. And, as it is open to every man 
to make himself a member of the special class, a far greater degree of 
personal immortality and a far more persistent memory of the past may 
be possible of attainment than that which Dr. M'Taggart suggests. 

Now to students of Theosophy it is very far from certain that 
no one in this life remembers the experiences of past lives. The East 
i? full of recorded instances of the manifestation of such memory; and 
though the thought of the West offers little temptation to confess it, there 
may be those who can remember the feeling and incidents of former 
lives as vividly as the happenings of yesterday. Though Dr. M'Taggart's 
purpose requires him to consider the ordinary and not the exceptional 
case, yet the existence of exceptional cases is sufficient to prove their 
possibility and to make it evident that the question of personal memory 
is primarily a question of the centre and content of personal conscious- 
ness, and that its permanence or impermanence must depend upon the 
same factors as determine the immortality or death of the personality, 
as distinct from the immortality of the soul. 

It is far too complex a subject to be discussed in detail here, yet 
there are certain obvious characteristics of the way in which memory 
operates, which it will be well to recall in considering the common 



134 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

unconsciousness of any recollection of former lives. In the first place, 
il is very rare that any memory should be absolutely continuous, that is, 
that it should never be absent from consciousness. At any given time 
the vast bulk of our memories are latent, rather than present or actual. 
They are recalled into consciousness in one of two ways : either by act 
of will, as when we try to remember, by seeking to link our present state 
of consciousness to the past, or automatically, by some inner or outer 
object or happening that is in some manner connected with the object 
or happening remembered our mind travelling back along that connec- 
tion, sometimes so slowly that we are conscious of the step by step nature 
of the process, sometimes so rapidly that we are quite unconscious of 
what the connection has been. Now it is clear that even though the 
memory of past lives existed, latent in my consciousness, precisely as 
does the memory of past days of this life, if I had no belief or thought 
of pre-existence I should never call these latent memories into present 
actuality by any act of will for there would be nothing to prompt this 
will. And it is also clear that whatever connection exists between any 
object or happening in this life, and some similar or other object or 
happening of a past life, is a connection that can exist in consciousness 
only through the immortal part of my self a part which was aware of 
the former happening as it is aware of the present. To travel back 
along this thread of connection, involves, therefore, the lifting of the 
personal consciousness, in at least some particular, to the consciousness 
of the immortal self. The facility with which this can be done, and hence 
the probability of a man's doing it, may range from such ease as to be 
instinctive and automatic, to such difficulty as to be almost impossible, 
according to the degree of his inner development and the habitual level 
of his personal thought and interests. 

Again, there are the common phenomena of unplaced memories. A 
landscape, a face, a line of verse, or some past feeling will rise into 
consciousness without our being able to place its origin and associations. 
We do not know where we have seen, or heard, or felt what we now 
remember. Sometimes we are able to recall the association we have 
with it; sometimes we cannot. It is probable that the memory of past 
lives would come to us, first, in just such fragmentary uncoordinated 
snatches, and that we have far more of such recollections than we realize, 
because it never occurs to us to think of or to place them for what they 
are. 

Consider, finally, the selective action of memory. Of the vast 
number of impressions that reach my consciousness through my senses, 
I remember very few. We are not conscious of all the causes which may 
make us remember one thing and forget another, but, broadly speaking, 
we remember the things that are related to our present thought and 
purpose, and do not remember, or remember less clearly, what is foreign 
to it. Purpose, and continuity of purpose, play a vital part in all ques- 
tions of memory. To use Dr. M'Taggart's simile in a different connec- 



HUMAN IMMORTALITY 135 

tion, if I enter the Burlington Arcade for the express purpose of 
purchasing a special kind of travelling cap, I am far more likely to 
remember the Arcade, and the details of the purchase, during my travels, 
than if I had only happened to pass through the Arcade and had bought the 
first hat I happened to see. It is the same with life. We attain continuity 
of memory as we attain continuity of purpose. We have seen that the 
memory of past lives can only be transmitted to the personal conscious- 
ness, which is ours in this life, through the memory of the immortal self. 
It seems natural to suppose that the memories of the immortal self will 
be vivid or blurred for the same causes as those we see operate in our 
everyday experience. If we live a life expressive of the continuous 
purpose of the immortal self, dealing with people, circumstances and 
events in accordance with the will of that self, then these people, circum- 
stances and events should make a far clearer impression upon its 
consciousness, and so upon its memory. But if we deal with life only 
as it affects that which is temporal in us, as it gratifies our bodily senses 
or impermanent desires, then the separate incidents of such a life would 
concern our immortal self but little, and only their essence, or lessons, 
would be gathered up and stored in memory. Here also, we see that 
personal memory, as personal immortality, is a question of personal life, 
and of inner and outer character. 

HENRY BEDINGER MITCHELL. 



Christ, the Eternal Sun, shining into the open heart, causes that 
heart to grow and to bloom, and it overflows with all the inward powers 
with joy and sweetness. 

So the wise man will do like the bee, and he will fly forth with atten- 
tion and with reason and with discretion, towards all those gifts and 
towards all that sweetness which he has ever experienced, and towards 
all the good which God has ever done to him. And in the light of love 
and with inward observation, he will taste of the multitude of consolations 
and good things, and will not rest upon any flower of the gifts of God, 
but, laden with gratitude and praise, will fly back into the unity, wherein 
he wishes to rest and to dwell eternally with God. JOHN OF RUYSBROECK. 



THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS 



XI 
THE FRIARS MINOR AND ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI 

CAPTAIN FERDINAND BELMONT, one of the heroic French 
dead, in a letter to his parents, a short while before his death in 
action, wrote : "All we see in this world are appearances, forms, 
and isolated effects ; we cannot conclude anything from them." 
One repeats with helplessness this comment of Belmont, when one's 
duty is to arrive at a conclusion about the life and work of a saint. 
How can a student give to others anything but queries or speculations? 
Truth can be known only from the position of the Lodge; on earth, 
the best we can do is to speculate reverently. One feels especially help- 
less when the saint in the case is Francis of Assisi. His selflessness, 
his other-worldly charm, his vigour, something of these one could hope 
to pass on to others through passages chosen from the old books in 
which he is so lovingly and so vividly portrayed. 

Of the early sources of information about St. Francis, two are note- 
worthy. These are the Little Flowers, and the Legend of the Three 
Companions. Both are narrations of incidents in the life of the saint. 
These narratives are not complete or chronological, and they were 
written some years after his death. But they portray a man of extraor- 
dinary humility, prayer, and zeal. They are sources from which later 
writers take the poetic and moving scenes they narrate such as the 
Sermon to the Birds, and the Wolf of Gubbio. Reading them after a 
modern critical interpretation, one feels : "Here is the man, the saint, 
about whom the other book was talking." Of the two, the Legend of the 
Three Companions^ confines itself more closely to Francis the Little 
Flowers includes incidents from the lives of those who joined him. 
Neither book gives dates or other biographical detail. But they give the 
real man. Biographical matter one can get easily from an encyclopedia. 

His life is of intense interest because we can watch the process of 
his becoming a saint. Too often, nothing of this process has come 
down in the old writings that tell of other saints. We can see the youth 
Francis busy with the world till it turns to ashes in his mouth. He then 
starts on a quest that finally brings him to the Master, and he advances 
along the Path of Discipleship until he reaches the stage of the Stigmata. 

He was born in 1182, and died in 1226; he is thus twelve years 
younger than St. Dominic whom he survived five years. He begins his 
work about fifty years after St. Bernard's death, and he antedates St. 
Catherine of Siena by a century and a half. The forty-four years of his 
life are divided just in half by his conversion, which began when he 



1 The Three Companions are three of Francis's earliest and best loved followers. 
136 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 137 

was twenty-two. After two years of brooding and prayer, he becomes 
sure of his vocation, and then for four years he is forming his Rule 
and gathering about him his first companions. With these, there begins 
an active ministry of about ten years, that is marked by an extraordinary 
increase of his followers. Then, in full-hearted devotion to his spouse, 
Lady Poverty, having surrendered so much to her, he is put finally to the 
severe test of forced relinquishment of his company. He had to witness, 
in his last six years, unbrotherly disputes among his brethren, and the 
falling away from their vows of many he had loved and trusted. He met 
the test courageously. We grieve for Francis, in those last years, as we 
do for Arthur, smitten with a deadly wound. But we feel that, as with 
Arthur, the fault and blame for any apparent failure, lies less with 
Francis than with others. 

His youth seems to have been foolish but not vicious ; prodigal and 
extravagant, but not debauched. His father was a rich silk merchant 
who encouraged and supported his son's expensive comradeship with 
young nobles. Perhaps from bad judgment, perhaps with the desire 
to make up for the difference in social position, Francis seems to have 
gone always beyond his comrades in prodigality and eccentricity of dress. 
He was like a college student, who becomes the leader of his fellows 
because he puts energy into the quest of diversions saved from vicious- 
ness by a kind of miracle. With his friends, Francis fought in one of 
the countless feuds against neighbouring towns, and was taken prisoner 
to Perugia. 

In a year, he was released. Illness came upon him after his return 
home, and, in his case, proved a blessing, giving him, what it gives to all, 
time for reflection, and conducing to repentance. Other mortifications 
followed this one of the body, and more humiliating. With habitual 
extravagance of dress and outfit, he prepared to go as a member of a 
civic mission, only to return sadly the day after he had gaily started 
forth. The reasons given for this sudden change of plan are varied 
some say it was a dream, warning him that he is not to be a mere knight 
of the court, but a cavalier of heaven ; others say it was illness, or the 
resentment of his friends, envious of his expensive clothes. It may 
have been all three reasons. His life of idle merriment becomes inter- 
rupted by moments of seriousness. He spends less money upon himself, 
and gives to the poor. At times he avoids his friends, preferring seclu- 
sion : he is brooding. His friends regret these interruptions of serious- 
ness, and they smile again when one day he announces a feast. The 
Legend narrates what happened at this feast. "So then he made a 
sumptuous banquet be made ready, as he had oft-times done afore. And 
when they came forth of the house, and his comrades together went 
before him, going through the city singing while he carried a wand in 
his hand as their master, he was walking a little behind them, not 
singing, but meditating very earnestly. And lo ! on a sudden he is visited 
of the Lord, and his heart is filled with such sweetness as that he can 



138 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

neither speak nor move, nor is he able to feel and hear aught save that 
sweetness only, which did so estrange him from carnal sense that 
as he himself afterwards said had he then been pricked as with knives 
all over at once, he could not have moved from the spot. But when his 
comrades looked back, and saw him thus far off from them, they re- 
turned unto him in fear, staring upon him as one already changed into 
another man. And they questioned him saying : 'Whereon wast thou 
thinking, that thou earnest not after us? Perchance thou wast thinking 
of taking a wife ?' To whom he replied with a loud voice : 'Truly have 
ye spoken, for that I thought of taking unto me a bride nobler and richer 
and fairer than ever ye have seen.' And they mocked at him." 

Soon after he went to Rome, perhaps seeking relief from inward 
pressure in outward observances. He saw the small offerings made by 
worshippers at St. Peter's. He opened his purse and threw out its 
entire contents. (It is his habitual prodigality, but no longer for self. 
That prodigality will be transformed into complete self-surrender to 
the Master.) Then, in contemplation of the niggardliness of his fellow 
pilgrims, he goes to the great public square of St. Peter, exchanges his 
own clothes for those of a beggar there, and stands all day, in the beggar's 
place, asking for gifts from the passers by. Again the prodigal ! 

That exchange for the beggar's filthy clothes prepared him for a 
new compassion which he mentions in his Will as the beginning of his 
religious life his ministrations to lepers. "The Lord has granted to me, 
Brother Francis, thus to begin to do penance; that while I was in sin, 
it seemed to me too bitter a thing to see lepers, but the Lord led me 
among them, and I showed mercy to them. And when I left them, 
that which had appeared to me bitter was changed into sweetness of 
body and soul; and not long after this I forsook the world." 

According to the Legend (Chap. IV), Francis was riding his horse, 
and reflecting upon the inward promptings. Suddenly he noticed a 
leper beside the road, and in disgust wheeled aside from him. The 
reaction was quick. Returning in shame and compassion, he gave all 
his money to the leper, and kissed his hand. Thus began his loving 
services to the wretches of the hospitals. 

This was the first stage of his conversion a gradual interior change 
during a period of two years, manifesting itself outwardly in a com- 
plete turning from frivolity to service of the needy. It required courage 
and involved sacrifice. The silk merchant had not checked his son's 
extravagance, so long as it was directed to a higher social class that could 
bring honour and advancement to the merchant's family. But upon 
beggars, that was quite different ! The son's changing way of life pleased 
the father less and less. If it continued, a break must come. In place 
of his former time-killing, Francis had begun to walk, for reflection 
and meditation, outside the town, stopping to pray at little delapidated 
shrines. Two of these became spiritual landmarks, St. Damian's and the 
Chapel of Portiuncula. In St. Damian's, he first saw the Master. He 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 139 

was praying. Suddenly he was aware of a Living Presence filling the 
Crucifix on the altar. It is not positively recorded that the Master spoke 
on this occasion. But Francis was moved by this favour to another 
decisive step. He would rebuild this delapidated shrine that had been 
so honoured. He hastened home, collected every saleable article of value 
that belonged to him, disposed of them in a neighboring town, and 
carried the money to the poor priest who tended St. Damian's. But his 
father, having made up his mind no longer to tolerate his son's folly, 
came upon him at this point, at St. Damian's, and, to avoid his anger, 
Francis hid, and did not venture back into the town for several weeks. 
The father's anger had not abated. He beat his son, and brought him 
before the magistrate, from whom Francis appealed to the Bishop, on 
the ground of being no longer a civilian, but a servant of the Church. 
Then occurred the famous scene which the old artists have painted. 
The father reproached his son for the great expense he had been. 
Francis withdrew for a few moments, and returned with all his clothes 
in his hands and a little money from his recent sale. He placed these 
at his father's feet and said quietly to the crowd : "Hear all ye, and 
understand : until now have I called Peter Bernardone my father, but, 
for that I purpose to serve the Lord, I give back unto him the money, 
over which he was vexed, and all the clothes that I have had of him, 
desiring to say only, 'Our Father, Which art in Heaven,' not my father, 
Peter Bernardone" (Legend, Chap. VI). The bishop and the crowd 
were convinced of his sincerity, and the bishop drew his own cloak 
around the disinherited son. 

Thus cut off from his source of supply, Francis had to beg what 
was needed to repair the little Chapel. He went into the market place 
of Assisi, asking for stones, and carried them through the town to 
the Chapel. He begged oil for its lamps. Finally, he begged his own 
food, unwilling to be a tax upon the poor incumbent of St. Damian's. 
In time he completed the repairs. Then he set about restoring another 
tumbledown little Chapel where he had prayed, St. Mary of the Angels, 
better known as Portiuncula, St. Mary's of the little portion. One 
morning after he had finished this second task, he was kneeling in the 
Chapel at Mass. The priest faced from the altar to read the Gospel 
for the day. Again Francis was aware of a Presence living and acting 
through the priest. And he heard these words : "Wherever ye go, 
preach, saying, The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Heal the sick, 
cleanse the lepers, cast out devils. Freely ye have received, freely give. 
Provide neither silver nor gold nor brass in your purses, neither scrip 
nor two coats, nor shoes nor staff, for the labourer is worthy of his meat." 
Thus was Francis chosen, after he had shown his willingness to sacrifice 
everything in order to obey the call he had heard. 

His example and his preaching preaching enjoined upon him by 
the Master's living voice attracted companions one by one. By 1210 
these numbered eleven. To provide for an increasing following, and 



140 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

to obtain authorization to preach without hindrance, he went with his 
associates in that year to Rome. With these first adherents, there had 
been no formal ties. They were drawn to Francis by the fire which 
contact with the Master had kindled in him. They saw his mode of living 
and the ecstatic Life that pulsed in him. They were eager to share the 
one in order to participate in the other also. His manner with the first 
inquirers was very simple. He took the first ones to the little Chapel of 
Portiuncula, and told .them the command given him. To verify it, he 
then opened the Gospels three times. Each time the book opened at 
a passage which reiterated or amplified the first command. 2 

Francis declared to his companions that these passages contained 
their life and rule, and exhorted them to obey straightway these com- 
mands. The duties to which their own zeal urged them, served in place 
of the formal test of a novitiate. With boughs of trees they made small 
rude shelters adjacent to the Portiuncula Chapel where they might come 
together for common prayer and counsel when proximity made that 
possible. They went off by twos (three men had joined themselves to 
Francis almost simultaneously), working by day in the fields with the 
labourers, accepting food for their hire, but no money, eating and sleep- 
ing where and how they might, and speaking at the right moment of the 
things that burned in their hearts. Naturally they were regarded as 
rogues or idiots, and their modesty and industry did not shield them from 
the abuse and mockery that normal civilians mete out to the dishonest 
and disordered, when these latter come into their power. The Legend 
describes the real testing to which these early companions were 
subjected. "Two of them were at Florence, and they went through the 
city seeking a lodging, yet could find none. But when they came unto 
a certain house that had an oven in the porch, they said the one unto the 
other : 'Here we may take shelter.' Accordingly they asked the mistress 
of the house to receive them within the house, and, upon her refusal to 
do this, they said humbly that perchance she would allow them for that 
night at least to rest near the oven. This she granted, but her husband, 
when he came and found them on the porch, called his wife and said 
unto her : 'Wherefore hast thou granted these ribalds shelter in our 
porch?' She made answer that she had refused to receive them into 
the house, but had granted them to lie without the porch, where they 
could steal naught save the wood. So her husband would not allow that 

2 The three passages are these: "If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and give 
to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me." "Jesus having 
called to him the Twelve, gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases. 
And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. And he said unto them, 
Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither 
have two coats apiece. And whatsoever house ye enter into, there abide, and thence depart. 
And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city shake off the very dust from 
your feet for a testimony against them. And they departed and went through the towns, 
preaching the gospel and healing everywhere." 

"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, 
and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and who- 
soever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain 
the whole world and lose his own soul." 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 141 

any shelter should be given unto them, albeit the cold was great, for that 
he thought them to be ribalds and thieves. That night, therefore, until 
morn they lay near the oven, sleeping but lightly, warmed only by the 
glow Divine, and covered only by the shelter of the Lady Poverty, and 
then went unto a Church hard by to hear matins. When morning came, 
the woman went unto that same Church, and seeing there those brethren 
continuing devoutly in prayer, she said unto herself : 'Were these men 
ribalds and thieves, as said my husband, they would not thus continue 
reverently in prayer.' While she was pondering these things inwardly, 
behold, a man named Guido was bestowing alms on the poor that were 
waiting in that Church, and when he had come unto the brethren, and 
would fain have given unto each of them money, as he was giving unto 
the rest, they refused his money, and would not take it. But he said 
unto them : 'Wherefore do ye, being poor, not take money as do the 
rest ?" Replied Brother Bernard : 'True is it that we be poor, but 
poverty is not a hard thing unto us, as unto the other poor, for by the 
grace of God, Whose counsel we have fulfilled, of our own accord have 
we made ourselves poor.' At this the man marvelled, and, asking them 
if they had ever had possessions, he learnt from them that they had had 
great possessions, but for the love of God had given all unto the poor. 
For he that thus made answer was that Brother Bernard, the second 
to the Blessed Francis, whom to-day we truly hold as our most holy 
lather ; he was the first to embrace the message of peace and repentance, 
and did run to follow the holy man of God, and, selling all that he had, 
and giving it unto the poor according unto the counsel of Gospel perfec- 
tion, did continue unto the end in most holy poverty. Wherefore the 
said woman, taking thought upon this, that the brethren would have 
none of the money, went unto them and said that gladly would she 
receive them into her house, if they would come thither for the sake of 
being her guests. To whom they humbly made answer: 'The Lord 
repay thee for thy goodwill.' But the man aforesaid, hearing that the 
brethren had not been able to find a lodging, brought them into his 
house, saying : 'Behold a lodging made ready for you of the Lord, 
abide therein according unto your good pleasure.' And they, giving God 
thanks, abode with him for some days, edifying him both by ensample 
and by word in the fear of the Lord, so that thereafter he bestowed 
much of his wealth on the poor." 

The efforts of these four comrades brought in three more recruits, 
thus making seven. The new friends went out at once to bear their own 
testimony, and four more were gained. The number of the little band 
was thus (including Francis) twelve. To facilitate their preaching (not 
to lessen their hardships), Francis decided to ask the approbation of the 
Church. This was in 1210. 

The visit to Rome was not entirely futile. It was inevitable that 
he should be suspected of heresy his manner of life was that of the 
Albigeois preachers. However, Francis's humility and sincerity gave 



142 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

no fuel to the suspicious. He was advised to enter one of the established 
Orders or to become a hermit not to set up a new form of religious 
living. He humbly but firmly resisted these persuasions. Disarmed, 
though not won, the Roman authorities dismissed him, bidding him return 
when his followers had increased. There was no official approbation. 
He was told he might preach after obtaining the consent of the local 
ecclesiastical incumbents. And he was told he could grant the privilege 
of preaching to his comrades upon similar conditions they were to be 
held responsible by Francis. He was given an overseer, one of the Car- 
dinals, and this overseer, with the intention of putting an ecclesiastical 
badge upon the lay workers, tonsured them before they left Rome. 

What had been won by the visit to Rome was nothing more than 
a non-committal toleration of their preaching. Francis was so humble, 
however, that he accepted with sincere appreciation this neutral act, and 
spoke of it with unfeigned warmth. His warmth and enthusiasm were 
passed on to the miscellaneous auditors who heard him, with the con- 
sequence that he appeared to them with a new dignity, and drew many 
more associates. But for some time after his visit, he continued un- 
certain of his method of work. Returning toward Assisi, he stopped 
with his friends in an old shed at the edge of a hillside wood. This 
shed was so small that Francis had to portion off its space in the most 
frugal and systematic manner in order to admit all of them under its 
shelter. The opportunities for prayer and meditation afforded by the 
unfrequented wood, made the discomforts of their pen-like outer life 
insignificant. The shed became more than a night's stopping place 
it became their abode, until the peasant owner drove them out. Francis 
found the seclusion of the wood congenial. His indecision, whether to 
withdraw to a purely contemplative form of life, is said to have been 
ended by St. Clare. She was a gentlewoman of Assisi, who in 1212, at 
the age of eighteen, obtained from Francis permission to adopt the life 
of poverty. She became the director of the woman's side of the move- 
ment, and from a convert, became the wise and faithful counsellor of 
Francis. At times of crisis, when he was in doubt what step to take, 
she pointed out the right direction. In the matter of the contemplative 
life, she seems to have shown him that his true vocation was the mixed 
life of prayer and preaching with which he had started his work. 

Expelled from the roadside shed, Francis went with his friends to 
the hospitable Chapel of Portiuncula, the spot where he had been chosen 
by the Master. An increased number of followers made his position 
embarrassing ; it had not been so when he was a solitary penitent at the 
little altar. 3 The Portiuncula Chapel belonged to some Benedictine monks 
upon the mountain side above Assisi. Francis and his band could not 
take "squatters' " possession. He had asked the Bishop of Assisi for a 
Chapel where he might congregate with his friends, and had been refused. 
A similar request made to the Benedictine Abbot was more fortunate. 

8 The Chapel is only ten feet long. 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 143 

The little Chapel of Portiuncula, with its holy memory, was given to 
Francis to continue his. More shelters of boughs were constructed, and 
the little band thus had its permanent home. About the same time it 
took its permanent name. The first companions spoke of themselves, 
when questioned, as "penitents of Assisi." The name "Friars Minor" 
was given in this way : In a civil dissension at Assisi, Francis had taken 
the part of the poor (minores). That word, minores, stands as one of 
the injunctions Francis had given his followers they were always to 
take subordinate and inferior positions, not positions of authority. The 
re-reading of this injunction impressed upon Francis that the word, 
minor (inferior, poor, weak), expressed what his followers wished to 
aim for. He therefore declared that his company should call itself the 
Friars Minor. 

The word Mendicant, as used to describe the Dominican and Fran- 
ciscan Orders, is meant more to distinguish them from the older, self- 
supporting agricultural Orders, such as the Benedictine and Cistercian, 
rather than to denote a company of idlers. The Dominican and Fran- 
ciscan are urban Orders they early established themselves in the uni- 
versity towns. They had not the means of self-sustenance for a large 
community afforded by the various industries of a great agricultural 
establishment. Francis and his friends worked in the fields with the 
harvesters, and accepted sustenance from those whom they helped. 
Later the Franciscans became great scholars, like the Dominicans, but 
that was no part of Francis's ideal for them. The large cities, which con- 
tained the universities, were selected as fields for Franciscan labour, 
originally, because of the numerous population of poor who needed to 
be evangelized. The Dominicans, on the contrary, chose the university 
centres because the Order of Preachers, from its very beginning, aimed 
to combat intellectual errors by the exposition of truth. 

The visit to Rome in 1210 had won from the Pope permission to 
continue what had been begun the preaching of penance. In the longer 
Rule which Francis wrote in 1221, he has drawn up a short sermon suit- 
able for his brethren to use "whenever they please, and whatever persons 
they may be." It is as follows : "Fear, honour, praise, and bless God. 
Give thanks and adore the Lord God Almighty in Trinity and Unity, 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Creator of all things. Repent and 
bring forth worthy fruits of penance, for know that we must soon die. 
Give, and it shall be given unto you ; forgive, and you shall be forgiven ; 
and if you do not forgive, the Lord will not forgive your sins. Blessed 
are they who shall die penitent, for they shall enter the kingdom of 
heaven; but woe to those who die impenitent, for they shall be the 
children of the devil, whose works they have done, and they shall go 
into everlasting fire. Beware, and abstain from all sin, and persevere 
in good to the end." 

To us it is incredible that such words as the foregoing should 
have so touched and won people's hearts. But there is absent from the 



144 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

words as we read them, the fire of the speaker which made them live, 
fire kindled at the Master's Heart. Everywhere men came out from the 
world to join the preachers for Francis and his companions went 
evangelizing into many districts of Italy. The number of friars who 
came together for a conference in 1219 was five thousand. This growth 
of the Order brought with it, however, grief and disappointment for 
Francis. From 1215 onward to his death, he carried on a losing 
struggle for his ideals, both with his own followers and with the 
authorities of the Church which he so deeply reverenced. 

Francis was so single-hearted and high minded, that he never felt 
the need of a method different from that used by the Master in calling 
him. He had responded to the Master's voice, and had tried to carry 
out the Master's directions. He laid that course before all his converts : 
"Hear, you who are my sons and my brothers, give ear to my words. 
Open your hearts and obey the voice of the Son of God. Keep his 
commandments with all your hearts, and perfectly observe his counsels. 
Praise him, for he is good, and glorify him by your works." Organi- 
zation was repellent to him. Until 1220, he struggled against the insist- 
ence of those who were urging him to formulate a systematized novitiate, 
etc. After 1220, until his death, he no longer directed the management 
of his company. In truth, it was no longer his, as he had given it over 
entirely to Vicars to direct according to their ideas, though in his heart, 
he held just as tenaciously to his former ideals for it. Truly Francis 
had conformed himself to his bride, Poverty. He had thrown from him 
not only prudence and caution in his prodigal devotion to the Master, 
but he gave up even the group of converts his preaching had won for 
the Master. 

Much is made in secular histories of the rivalry between the two 
preaching, mendicant Orders that were founded almost simultaneously. 
With aims and methods, partly similar and largely diverse, and with 
a human constituency, it is not surprising that jealousy and rivalry 
should make themselves manifest between the Dominicans and the 
Franciscans. And it is not surprising, in view of the narrowness of 
human sympathy, that an ardent admirer of Francis, like Sabatier, can 
find so little to admire in St. Dominic and the Preachers. But against 
this unpleasant picture there is the accredited testimony of Fra An- 
gelico (a Dominican) his well known painting of the meeting of the 
two Evangelists and their fraternal salutation. This is thought to 
have occurred in 1215. Dominic had gone to Rome to secure approval, 
with a view to widening his efforts. Francis was there to report his 
successes and needs. They met. And several times afterward their 
paths crossed. 

There are facts and legends which show the complete trust of 
Francis in the Master's guidance, and his distrust of book-learning. 
In 1219, Francis returned from a missionary enterprise among the 
Moslems. His absence from Italy had continued only a year, but 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 145 

advantage had been taken of it to do many things against his wish, 
prohibition of meat, etc. Stopping at Bologna, a great university 
centre, he found members of his Order constructing a building, some 
authorities say a monastery, others, a school. Whether monastery 
or school, such a structure was in violation of the rule to own and 
possess nothing, and also in violation of Francis's wish that his preachers 
should study only the Master's will. He had the incompleted building 
pulled down. A few years later, when Francis had surrendered 
all direction of his family, an incident occurred which illustrates 
very clearly his feeling about this matter. "One day a novice 
who could read the psalter, though not without difficulty, obtained from 
the minister-general that is to say, from the vicar of St. Francis 
permission to have one. But as he had learned that St. Francis desired 
the brethren to be covetous neither of learning nor of books, he would 
not take his psalter without his consent. So, St. Francis having come 
to the monastery where the novice was, 'Father,' said he, 'it would be a 
great consolation to have a psalter; but though the minister-general has 
authorized me to get it, I would not have it unknown to you.' 'Look at 
the Emperor Charles,' replied St. Francis with fire, 'Roland, and Oliver 
and all the paladins, valorous heroes and gallant knights, who gained 
their famous victories in fighting infidels, in toiling and labouring even 
unto death! The holy martyrs, they also have chosen to die in the 
midst of battle for the faith of Christ! But now there are many of 
those who aspire to merit honour and glory, simply by relating their 
feats. Yes, among us also there are many who expect to receive glory 
and honour by reciting and preaching the works of the saints, as if they 
had done them themselves !' 

" . . A few days after, St. Francis was sitting before the fire, and 
the novice drew near to speak to him about his psalter. 

" 'When you have your psalter,' said Francis to him, 'you will want 
a breviary, and when you have a breviary you will seat yourself in a 
pulpit like a great prelate and will beckon to your companion, Bring 
me my breviary!' 

"St. Francis said this with great vivacity, then taking up some ashes 
he scattered them over the head of the novice, repeating, 'There is the 
breviary, there is the breviary!' 

"Several days after, St. Francis being at Portiuncula and walking 
up and down on the roadside not far from his cell, the same brother 
came again to speak to him about his psalter. 'Very well, go on,' said 
Francis to him, 'you have only to do what your minister tells you.' At 
these words the novice went away, but Francis began to reflect on what 
he had said, and suddenly calling to the friar, he cried, 'Wait for me! 
wait for me!' When he had caught up to him, 'Retrace your steps a 
little way, I beg you,' he said. 'Where was I when I told you to do 
whatever your minister told you as to the psalter?' Then falling upon 
his knees on the spot pointed out by the friar, he prostrated himself at 

10 



146 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

his feet : 'Pardon, my brother, pardon !' he cried, 'for he who would 
be a Brother Minor ought to have nothing but his clothing.' " 

The last six years of Francis's life contained intense joy for they are 
marked by two noteworthy incidents, the Stigmata, in 1224, and a year 
later, the Canticle of the Sun. 

With certain types of saints, the Stigmata mark a stage of disciple- 
ship. Those whose aspiration leads them to mould themselves after 
Christ's pattern, must all inevitably, at some time share with Him some- 
thing of His passion. Many who have passed through that experience, 
prayed that the marks of the wounds on their bodies might be concealed. 
In Francis's case they were distinctly visible. He reached this new stage 
of communion after a long retreat for prayer on La Verna (or Monte 
Alverno), a wooded summit belonging to a friendly nobleman. 

Two or three friends accompanied Francis to this seclusion, but 
did not intrude upon his solitude. As the event is given, in narratives 
and paintings, a "seraph" came to Francis at sunrise, nailed to a Cross. 
When the "seraph" departed the wounds had been imprinted upon 
Francis' body. 

From La Verna, by a slow journey, Francis went to St. Damian's, 
his first holy spot, which had become the abode of St. Clare and her 
nuns. Francis was practically blind, and he felt that his end was ap- 
proaching. He made a long sojourn with this friend in the sanctuary 
where the Master had first spoken to him. He seems to have passed 
through a period of depression that gradually cleared and ended in the 
Song of Praise commonly known as the Canticle of the Sun. This song, 
composed in Italian, and many times translated, is one of the world's 
literary classics. 

"O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise, 
glory, honour, and all blessing! 

Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures, and specially 
our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who brings us the 
light; fair is he and shines with a very great splendour: O Lord, 
he signifies to us thee! 

Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, 
the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven. 

Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and 
cloud, calm and all weather by the which thou upholdest life in all 
creatures. 

Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very service- 
able unto us and humble and precious and clean. 

Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom thou 
givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant and 
very mighty and strong. 

Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth 



RELIGIOUS ORDERS 147 

sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruits and flowers 
of many colours, and grass. 

Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for 
his love's sake, and who endure weakness and tribulation ; blessed 
are they who peaceably shall endure, for thou, O most Highest, shalt 
give them a crown. 

Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the body, from 
which no man escapeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin ! 
Blessed are they who are found walking by thy most holy will, for 
the second death shall have no power to do them harm. 

Praise ye and bless the Lord, and give thanks unto him and 
serve him with great humility." 

His depression passed away in the singing of this Canticle, and 
radiant happiness again filled his heart. He directed his friars to pass 
through the towns singing it, as jongleurs de Dieu (God's troubadours) 
and to ask of their auditors in payment, repentance. 

Francis's naive and poetic disposition gave the world one of its 
most popular forms of worship. His desire to venerate the infant Jesus 
in the mean surroundings of His birth, led him to make a rude repro- 
duction of the stable at Bethlehem. The world has approved his judg- 
ment, and the familiar manger of Christmastide is his perpetual 
souvenir. 

Francis died in 1226, at the Portiuncula Chapel, his home. Before 
his death, he had his bare body placed on the uncovered earth as a symbol 
to his brethren of the Poverty he had taken for bride. The great prodigal 
who had started life all for self, died, still a prodigal, but all for Christ. 
Utter self-forgetfulness in love of Christ, simplicity and charm as of a 
little child this is what wins him the hearts of religious as well as the 
admiration of the world. C. C. CLARK. 



// we would see the stars of His mysteries, we must first descend into 
the deep well of humility. ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA. 



SAWS BENT AND OTHERWISE 




ITTREDGE broke the momentary silence with a laugh ; adding, 
"Well, you fellows will have to admit, after all, the effect of 
the old saw, 'It is the exception that proves the rule/ so, 
perhaps, I'm right after all." 

Darlwright made a gesture of impatience, using it to knock the 
ash off his cigarette. "There you go, misusing a truism to try to establish 
a fallacy. The misuse of that quotation always enrages me." 

"How 'misuse' doesn't it clearly let me out?" 

"It does seem pat," commented Packham. 

"Only because our modern generation has forgotten the real sense 
of the word 'prove.' If it be used correctly, the proverb is nicely exact 
and keeps Kittredge in the hole he got into." 

"How would you use it?" came Kittredge's challenge. 

"Wait a minute," broke in Packham, "let's leave it to the court of 
final resort. What does the dictionary say?" He crossed the room and 
took down a volume. 

"Well?" asked Darlwright. 

"By Jove, Kittredge, he's right listen to this : 'To try by experiment, 
or by test or standard; test; make trial of.' No; here's your meaning: 
To render certain; put out of doubt (as a proposition)' but, that's the 
second meaning. It goes back to the Latin probare 'test, try, examine, 
approve, show to be good or fit, prove,' from probus, 'good, excellent.' 
Let's see the Anglo-Saxon profian meant 'test, try, prove' there's a 
point for you, Darlwright, and, if we go back to 'proof,' there's still more 
weight for you." 

"I learned that, as a small boy, asking what the Army 'proving- 
ground' at Sandy Hook meant," explained Darlwright. 

"The dictionary has 'proving-ground' 'a ground or place used for 
firing proof charges in cannon, for testing powder, and for making 
ballistic experiments.' ' : 

"But, I still don't see why I can't use that second meaning of 'prove' ; 
which makes the proverb work my way?" This from Kittredge. 

"Substitute the word 'test' the first meaning and see what simple 
common sense, and sound wisdom, there is in the saw : 'It is the exception 
that tests the rule.' How can a rule be 'rendered certain,' be 'put out of 
doubt,' by an exception ? It is obedience to a rule that does that ; not an 
exception from it." 

"Unless something happens, as a result of the exception, that shows 
that it would have been better to have followed the rule in the first place," 
said Packham, as he closed the dictionary, and went back to his chair. 

"But that wasn't what I meant," confessed Kittredge, "and it is not 
what most people mean when they quote it. Think of the whole system 



148 



SAWS BENT AND OTHERWISE 149 

of modern philosophy that has been built up on the putting of the second 
meaning to that word 'prove.' I can see that Darlwright is right about 
that proverb though you are usually wrong, Darlwright ! I wonder if 
there are any other saws or proverbs that we twist, nowadays, to fit into 
our views, rather than holding to what the original epigrammist really 
meant." 

"Do epigrammists ever really mean anything, except trying to be 
super-clever?" asked Packham. 

Kittredge ignored this : "I can think of one. Everybody says : 
'Money is the root of all evil' which is nonsense. The original is : 'The 
love of money is the root of all evil' and that makes sense ; besides being 
good occultism. What a difference it would make, if people only realized 
the difference." 

"There's an old saying : 'You find what you look for.' The kind of 
people there are, nowadays, want a material standard for everything. 
They would simply say 'Why, everybody loves money' and believe it, 
however untrue it is ; so they would say that it could not be 'love of 
money,' because 'we are good.' ' Darlwright stopped for an instant, just 
long enough for Kittredge to cut in with : "Doesn't 'evil to him who 
evil thinks' cover that? Won't a given civilization find in its saws and 
proverbs what it wants to?" 

"Yet," protested Darlwright, "that doesn't justify a distortion of 
a truth, handed down from the ages, for that is all that a proverb or 
maxim really is." 

"Which reminds me," said Packham, "of something that Mr. Judge 
once wrote. As I recall it, it was : 'The antiquity which survives is of 
interest not from its age but for its truth.' Ought there not to be a Court 
of Interpretation of Saws, Maxims and Proverbs, to prevent their misuse, 
for what is more dangerous than the misuse or misapplication of the 
truth?" 

"Haven't we got that 'Court' now in the T.S., with the sayings and 
writings in all the world's scriptures and teachings Egyptian, Chinese, 
Hindu, Greek, Buddhist, and Christian, to say nothing of the Guatemalan 
and others less accessible and, for us in the West especially, Plato and 
his school, the Lord Jesus and his disciples, the Lord Krishna and his 
fighters, the Lord Siddartha and his chelas, the Master K.H., Madame 
Blavatsky, Mr. Judge, and their associates, to furnish a 'body of the law/ 
with 'leading cases' and 'ruling precedents' ?" was Kittredge's suggestion. 

"Be careful where you are going, Kit; remember 'Look before you 
leap'; you talk as if you believed that it is possible to find crystallized 
dogma and doctrine in the T.S.," was Darlwright's warning, "and that, 
we all know, is absolutely impossible. 'There aint no sich animal.' " 

"Of course there isn't. I know perfectly well that there is no T.S. 
dogma or doctrine. It wouldn't be the T.S. if there were. That is just 
why I used the phraseology of the Common Law practice, where every- 
thing is fluid and adaptable, or should be! as against Code Law, which 



150 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

attempts to establish unbending dogma and unchanging doctrine. But I 
interrupted you, Packham. What is it that you are so palpably suffering 
to say?" 

"It was about the danger of misusing and misapplying the truth. 
That is what is so very discouraging to me in our current, so-called 
civilization it either utterly ignores the truths that are antique, or blandly 
misapplies them." 

"For instance?" Kittredge queried. 

"Well, take our attitude towards 'repentance/ There are people 
urging that we hold out the right hand of fellowship to the fouled and 
bloody hands of the Hun and his partners. They even dare to cite Christ 
as authority for such forgiveness. They say that he said that we should 
forgive our brother and all men have been made brothers by the writing 
of the Treaty for the League of Nations ! Christ did say that we must 
forgive our brother, even if he offend us 'seventy times seven,' but he 
also, and most unqualifiedly and unequivocally, limited such forgiveness 
to repentant sinners. I remember having heard it said once, at a T.S. 
Branch meeting, by one of the speakers, that the Greek word, from which 
we get 'repentance/ really meant 'heart-turning/ Have the Germans 
shown any signs of 'heart-turning'? 

"Did I ever tell you of that sermon I heard preached by the Reverend 
John McGann of Christ's Church, Springfield, Massachusetts? He took 
for his text the Second Word on the Cross 'This day shalt thou be with 
me in Paradise/ Mr. McGann said that an estimable lady in his congre- 
gation had asked him to go to the county jail to see a 'repentant thief,' 
who had been given a two-years' sentence. He said that he went and 
found a very much inconvenienced thief, ready to say or to promise 
anything to get out of jail. Mr. McGann closed with pointing out that, 
while our Lord promised Paradise that day to the really repentant thief, 
he did not use his power to take the thief down from the cross and heal 
his sore and wounded body. And a truly repentant sinner, the Rector 
suggested, undoubtedly would prefer to work out his salvation on the 
cross, as a result of his real repentance. 

"Have you seen any signs of the Germans being ready to stay on 
their cross? They are, unquestionably, horribly inconvenienced, but, so 
far, what single sign by the German people has there been of repentance ? 
Dare we, as Christians, venture to forgive them, until they have complied 
with our Lord's mandate that repentance shall precede and earn for- 
giveness ?" 

Kittredge and Darlwright shook their heads in acquiescence. There 
was a period of that intimate silence of congenial smokers. As usual 
it was Kittredge who broke it, saying, "Do you remember that other time 
at a Branch meeting, when the comment was made on the word 'rich?' 
It was said by one of the speakers, as I recall, the same one who defined 
'repentance/ that, in King James' day, 'rich' had a very different meaning 



SAWS BENT AND OTHERWISE 151 

from that which it has today more nearly like our modern use of the 
word 'arrogant/ or, perhaps, 'purse-proud'." 

Packham crossed over to his Concordance and began to look up 
the word. "I should say," he remarked, "that it was used in a variety 
of ways ; yet there seems to have been sometimes a connotation of con- 
sciousness of possessions, that savours of your interpretation." 

Kittredge said : "Thank you. Let us take the phrase 'rich young 
ruler' would it not have been tautological if that 'rich' had meant 
'wealthy in the world's goods,' to which our modern ideas limit it? 
Though, now that I think of it, we do keep the old sense of 'rich,' when 
we speak of colours and of tones, preserving the old note that suggests 
arrogance. 

"The Master, who said 'Render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's'; the Master who steadfastly refused to set materialistic stand- 
ards, to degrade his mission to a worldly base, even to prevent his own 
sufferings, even to save his own life, could never have meant to exclude 
men from heaven merely and solely because they had money. Wasn't 
it wholly attitude and life that counted with him? An arrogant man, 
with or without money, would certainly have trouble getting into heaven. 
Even in the great drama of Dives and Lazarus, was our Lord not con- 
demning the abuse of position, rather than condemning position itself? 

"Think of the tragedy that attends the misunderstanding of that 
single word ! Here are millions and millions of well-meaning men and 
women in this country, and in all the English-speaking lands, backing 
and supporting Jewish Socialism and actually calling it 'Christian' 
because they have been led to believe that our Lord used the modern 
yardstick of dollars-and-cents. Could there be a more horrible travesty 
on all that he taught ? Of course it is hard, when one is too comfortable 
physically, to be good ; but, why limit that to millionaires ? Are over-paid, 
slack-working labouring men any more virtuous, any more Christian, 
with their recently increased material comforts? 

"It really seems to me that we are facing a rather hopeless situation, 
when Episcopalian, Roman Catholic and Methodist Bishops vie with one 
another in urging that the lines of salvation be determined by the number 
of dollars one possesses or lacks ; that capital is, per se, wicked and labour 
miraculously right, and entitled to take all and render or give nothing. 
And this is done in the name of Christianity! There is little teaching 
to-day of the fundamental, Christ-taught standards of intentions, efforts, 
aspirations, the performances of individual duties and the power of per- 
sonal self-sacrifice. It would seem as if no one stops to think that, 
perhaps, a man who has millions may be good, or that a man who belongs 
to a labour union may possibly be bad. We seem to have forgotten that 
our Lord located the Kingdom of Heaven in the heart. Are we not back 
with the Pharisees, calling upon the Messiah to set up a physical and 
material kingdom, where all men shall enjoy physical comforts and 
material preferences? The doctrine of taking up the Cross has appar- 



152 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

ently been forgotten. Did not one of the leaders of the railroad workers 
recently say that the time had come when labour wanted more of 'the 
fine things of life'? And then he went on to define them in purely 
physical terms in German, yes, and Pharisee-fashion, as material 
comforts." 

"And another, quite simply, said that an automobile, and a good 
automobile at that, had become a necessity," said Packham. 

"I wonder," said Darlwright, musingly, "if reincarnation may not 
explain the extraordinary anomaly that the world is dominated to-day by 
materialistic Jews, talking what you, Kittredge, termed 'Pharisee-fashion' 
German, Bolshevist, Labour Union, Humanitarian, Socialist, all alike, 
all the real rulers are of the selfish, materialistic class of Jews, however 
veneered they may be, and mostly of German Jewish extraction at that. 
The finer qualities of the race seem to have been smothered in the 
atmosphere of Hunland. Perhaps the German current, so-to-speak, has 
permitted a reincarnation of the egos which animated the bodies of those 
Jews who forced Rome to let the King be crucified, crying 'Crucify him,' 
as they are to-day crying that the world shall crucify all that he taught, 
as to each man's responsibility for what he, himself, is and does, rather 
than the assumption of authority to make the other man perform his own 
duties." 

"That might be a hopeful sign. You remember the predictions 
through St. John the Divine." 

"Let us certainly hope so I'm beginning to feel that 'Hope long 
deferred maketh the heart sick,' " was Packham's vigorously given 
comment. 

"Another saw that, I firmly believe, is bent and twisted in its modern 
use," declared Kittredge. "You used it, just as most of us do, just as 
if it said The fulfilment of hope long deferred maketh the heart sick.' 
We are tainted with the spirit of the outer world, as it is to-day, when 
we mean that. That is materialism, pure and undefiled ! If that emphasis 
on the primary concept of fulfilment were true, do you think that our 
Great Captain could have kept up his fight these nineteen centuries and 
more, against the activities of the Devil and his cohorts, and the beastly, 
soggy negativeness of most of the world? Isn't it his flaming, loving 
hope, in spite of non-fulfilment, that has kept his cause alive and fighting?" 

"That's a new point of view to me," came from Packham. 

"And to me," added Darlwright, "yet I think it has validity, 
Kittredge, for, after all, it is rank materialism to say that, if one can't 
have the result he wants, hejnust not be blamed if he gets discouraged." 

"Can't we see," resumed Kittredge, "that this was the distinguishing 
difference between the French and the Germans during the war ; between 
the spiritual and materialistic powers? The French were inspired to 
hope on, with no material foundation for hoping, except their spiritual 
hope in their cause ; in the Master who inspired the cry 'Us ne passeront 
pas' ; in the Maid, whom they believed to counsel their fighters, from 



SAWS BENT AND OTHERWISE 153 

Generalissimo to poilu. It was not faith, that blind, Anglo-Saxon, obsti- 
nate, never-say-die-but-cling-to-the-end faith it was hope, radiant, 
flaming hope, buoyant, joyous hope. Had it not been for such hope, the 
war would indeed have made the heart of France sick. 

"In fact, don't you think it is fair to say that, if there be sickness 
in France to-day, it is due to the premature fulfilment of the hope of 
beating the Hun, resulting from our essentially non-hopeful President's 
single-handed and separated, premature negotiations, that led to that 
futile, foolish, peace-without-victory Armistice, so wildly welcomed in 
our purblind land ? And yet we Americans still feel proud after that, and 
after our shameful years of fat neutrality, and our utter lack of pre- 
paredness. Worst of all that is, almost worst of all, for, I suppose, in 
the ledgers of heaven, the biggest charge against us is our neutrality 
worst of all is the fact that we seem to have learned absolutely nothing 
we are calmly and sweetly letting the great, secret Teutonic Order of 
Blackness reorganize militant Hunland and demoralize pacifist America. 
A good authority tells me that German influences and propaganda, 
especially in labour union circles, were never so strong, active, and 
effective, even in the palmiest days of von Bernstorff, as they are to-day, 
and right in Washington, too." 

"What would you say to the use of another old saw : 'God tempers 
the wind to the shorn lamb' ?" asked Packham. 

"Isn't that still another case of popular blindness to truth? Don't 
people forget the emphasis that should be placed on that word 'shorn'? 
I suppose it is because so very few of us have any first-hand knowledge 
of sheep-raising. A lamb is 'shorn,' whether it likes it or not, by an 
outside, stronger, and arbitrary po\ver. The shorn lamb is a non- 
consenting victim to the shearer. It does not seek, desire or enjoy the 
shearing. Yet people will quote that proverb just as if it meant that 
God could spare a man from the inevitable consequences of his own 
folly or his own misdeeds. If it read : 'God guards the innocent victim 
of another's act,' it would be true; but, used the way that most people 
mean it why, honestly now, don't you think it is arrant nonsense and 
that there is much more truth in : 'God hates a fool' ?" 

"Since we are talking of changes in counsel down the centuries, is 
it fair not to remember that America started with a vital fallacy of that 
sort? Mr. Eliot Goodwin, in his researches into the influences upon the 
founders of our republic, discovered that Jefferson had made a radical 
and far-reaching change, in restating a bit of Montesquieu's compacted 
wisdom. Goodwin found that that great Frenchman might justly be 
called the grandfather of America. Montesquieu wrote that 'Man is 
entitled to life, liberty, and the protection of property'; bully good 
common sense and a creed any nation could well afford to adopt, for 
there is nothing in it incompatible with individual responsibility for one's 
own acts and for the performance of one's own duties. Jefferson, 
perhaps the most unsound thinker that America has produced, and so 



154 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

characteristically typical of present day thought that it is not unfair to 
regard him as the protagonist and exemplar of what is upsetting the 
nation to-day Jefferson loved the sound of words and the reactions from 
phantasy. He rarely stopped to count the consequences of his words and 
acts. That called for creative imagination, which he lacked and which 
Burke and Hamilton possessed. It caught his fancy to revolt from 
Montesquieu's sublime common sense and to write into the Declaration 
of Independence 'Man is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness,' which sounds well, means nothing, and which began in 
America the chasing of rainbows, without regard to the facts of life or 
the laws of the universe. Is it not easy to see that a people so nurtured 
on sound and phantasy is not wholly blameable for not thinking straight, 
and for falling easy victims to the fine words in which Jewish Socialism 
is being dressed for American consumption ?" Darlwright stopped, either 
because he was through or else to light his cigarette. 

Packham, it was, who this time broke in, saying: "That makes 
Jefferson a psychic. That would explain the mystery of his going back 
on all his convictions and annexing Louisiana, when Napoleon gave him 
the chance, although it went against Jefferson's own rulings as to con- 
stitutional limitations and against his own record. But, after all, psychics 
have no real convictions." 

"Unless their blind faith in themselves and their momentary wisdom, 
however often they may change sides, may be a conviction," was Darl- 
wright's addition. 

"And I am led to wonder if Jefferson was the last great psychic 
to lead American thought, or to try to," came from Kittredge's corner. 

"In spite of your explanation, Darlwright, don't you think it is 
rather strange that a people who are fast changing the old national motto 
'In God we trust,' into 'Safety first/ should blunder along as we do in 
the face of the Hun menace?" asked Packham. 

"Isn't that simply because we don't know what is the real 'safety'?" 

"No I think it is basic," broke in Kittredge, getting up and walking 
up and down. "We mean it. We have become so materialistic that we 
measure everything in terms of physical comfort. The Socialists are 
perfectly logical in their attitude towards war. They were even logical 
and consistent in their unfailing support of Germany during the war and 
since. Any set of people who want to take by force from one man to 
help out another man, who has proved his own unwillingness to help 
himself, naturally sides with the invaders of Belgium. It is all a question 
of using force to deprive another of his rights. More than that to the 
true worshipper of 'Safety first,' it would be better to let Germany seize 
America, and rule us, than to sacrifice a single life or limb in fighting for 
independence, self-respect, and decency." 

"Wouldn't it be worth while to start a national organization to 
preach and to teach where the real safety lies in the old motto : 'In God 



SAWS BENT AND OTHERWISE 155 

we trust' ?" Packham spoke with more seriousness than any of them had 
heretofore shown. 

Kittredge stopped in front of the smaller bookcase. "Where's your 
Occult World?" he asked. 

"On the top shelf, at your left," called over Packham. Kittredge 
took down a book and ran over its pages. 

"Here's your answer," he said, "and answered by one of the wise, 
that wonderful and loving teacher and helper, the Master K. H. Don't 
you remember this ?" and he read : 

' 'Such is unfortunately the inherited and self-acquired grossness 
of the Western mind, and so greatly have the very phrases expressive of 
modern thought been developed in the line of practical materialism, that 
it is now next to impossible, either for them to comprehend or for us to 
express in their own language anything of that delicate, seemingly ideal, 
machinery of the occult kosmos. To some little extent that faculty can 
be acquired by the Europeans through study and meditation, but that's 
all/ 

"And though Americans are Europeans, in the sense in which the 
Master K.H. used the classification, how many really study, and how 
many would be ready to meditate on any problem, even if it did involve 
their souls' salvation?" Kittredge fairly shot this over his shoulder. 
Then he resumed reading : 

" 'And here is the bar which has hitherto prevented a conviction of 
the theosophical truths from gaining currency among Western nations 
caused theosophical study to be cast aside as useless and fantastic by 
Western philosophers. How shall I teach you to read and write, or 
even comprehend a language of which no alphabet palpable or words 
audible to you have yet been invented?' " Kittredge looked up and said: 
"And don't you remember that hint of our great Western Master, when 
he was 'allowed to go among the herd of men as their redeemer'; that 
saying that is to me one of the very saddest in the Gospels 'And he said 
unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be 
persuaded though one rose from the dead.' One did rise from the dead, 
and have men yet been 'persuaded'? And the line of prophets did not 
stop with John the Baptist, but has continued on, down to this very day. 
If such work has failed, do you think that any exoteric organization, 
however great, could succeed? But here is something even more con- 
clusive, I think." Turning over the pages, Kittredge began to read again : 

" 'Thus, because they cannot with one leap over the boundary walls, 
attain to the pinnacles of Eternity because we cannot take a savage from 
the centre of Africa and make him comprehend at once the Principia of 
Newton or the Sociology of Herbert Spencer, or make an unlettered child 
write a new Iliad in old Achaian Greek, or an ordinary painter depict 
scenes in Saturn, or sketch the inhabitants of Arcturus because of all 
this our very existence is denied. Yes, for this reason are believers in 
us pronounced impostors and fools, and the very science which leads to 



156 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

the highest goal of the highest knowledge, to the real tasting of the Tree 
of Life and Wisdom is scouted as a wild flight of imagination/ " 

Kittredge put back the book and said : "That was written, remember, 
in the very early eighties. Is it not true to-day? A world which still 
rejects the Living Christ, cannot be expected to understand, or to be 
able to understand, where real 'safety' lies. You would be using 'old 
Achaian Greek,' indeed, if you tried to preach and teach generally, that 
is, to the mass of men, against the great ground swell of the present tide 
of ignorance, selfishness, sloth, and materialism that is sweeping over 
the world." 

"You are talking like a man who has lost hope, Kittredge. That is 
not like you !" Packham showed his surprise. 

"Thank God, I have neither faith nor hope in any materialistic 
measures. Yet I do hope and hope confidently for the coming of his 
kingdom and I dare hope because of two saws that, I believe, I use 
correctly." 

"And those are?" asked Darlwright. 

"The first is : The kingdom of heaven is taken by violence.' My 
theosophical studies have taught me that this means violence, by me, to 
my own lower nature, which must be overcome, and never means and 
never meant, any kind of violence to my neighbour 'nor his ox, nor his 
ass, nor anything that is his.' As I do such violence to the enemy in my 
part of the fighting line, and as others do it on their parts for no man 
works alone, for good or for ill then, under the leadership, guidance and 
teaching of our Master, victory will surely come. So I see that what 
seems so utterly hopeless in the outer world, may only be the releasing 
of pressure, that will yet drive men to turn from futile, popular legisla- 
tion and 'necessary automobiles' to Christ's commandments and the 
spiritual comforts." 

Packham spoke: "But you said you used two saws what's the 
second?" 

" 'Great oaks from little acorns grow.' As long as the T.S., and its 
Branches, live and work, there is no need to lose hope for the world. 
Our 'little acorns' were picked from that 'Tree of Life and Wisdom' by 
the Masters themselves at least that is my firm belief, which I know you 
share. The Masters have planted the seed. They know the soil. They 
plant not in vain. The work of Madame Blavatsky, Mr. Judge, and their 
associates, must inevitably bear fruit. Indeed we should be hopeful, for 
have we not seen with our eyes and heard with our ears the Message they 
have brought?" ROBERT PACKHAM. 



To smile in your brother's face is alms. SAYING OF MOHAMMED. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



IN the widespread confusion of the present day, and the general 
bewilderment as to causes or remedy for that confusion, it is refresh- 
ing to find such a statement as the following from a recent lecture by 

Mr. Alfred Noyes : 

"To-day the real truth is called 'commonplace' or 'platitude/ but it is 
still the property of a very small minority. . . . The real rebel, the 
follower of the real truth, will be found obeying, or trying to obey, those 
laws of life, thought, art, in which there may be no more originality (in 
the fashionable sense) than in the laws that govern the courses of the sun. 
Yet, in their service still, to-day as yesterday and forever, we enter into 
our perfect freedom." 

What a congeries of unpopular ideas these lines suggest : turning 
(presumably away from progress, that slogan of the present) back to 
ideals and standards of the past ; seeing truth and reality in the common- 
place ; regarding the minority, and a conservative minority at that, as in 
the right, and sole possessors of the truth ; and above all, finding freedom 
that guerdon for which all the world is seeking with such lamentable 
blindness in service and obedience. Needless to point out the contrast 
between this view and the general attitude of the time; it is painfully 
evident in every turn of events, in every page of newspaper or periodical, 
in the attitude of the workingman on every side and all too often in the 
involuntary reaction of our own rebellious minds and ungoverned wills. 

There is, of course, the small minority who possess the truth, and 
who, let us hope, may serve as the three good men in Sodom and Gomor- 
rah ; but in general the attitude of the day is well expressed by two 
paragraphs taken, one from an issue of a Trade Union magazine 
appearing shortly after the Armistice : 'To-day . . . there should be 
written down ... a prayer that this great victory of righteous force 
may not lead us unconsciously into the fatuous belief that men can be and 
should be compelled to render service to their fellow men" ; the other, 
from a New York commercial sheet, which declares : "The people are 
'sovereign/ so far as sovereignty on this earth can go. They may attempt 
whatever they please, and they must take the consequences." The snake 
of self given free rein that is the law of the day, the explanation of all 
the manifold activities both at home and abroad, included under the term 
Bolshevism and the explanation, as well, of the almost universal blind- 
ness or indifference to their inevitable result. 

Some years ago, the anarchist, Prince Kropotkin, wrote, "What we 
learn to-day from the study of the Great [French] Revolution is that it 
was the source and origin of all the present communist, anarchist, and 
socialist conceptions ... up till now, modern socialism has added 
absolutely nothing to the ideas that were circulating among the French 

157 



158 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

people between 1789 and 1794, and which it was tried to put into practice 
in the year II of the Republic (i. e., in the Reign of Terror)." Granting 
that this is the case, the French Revolution should afford many parallels 
to tendencies and events of the present day, and above all should offer 
illuminating suggestions, at least, as to the consequences that may be 
expected. Among recent publications, one by Mrs. Arthur Webster 
entitled The French Revolution, published by Constable and Company, 
London, gives an account written from an unusual and interesting point 
of view, well suited to bringing out the parallel or relationship between 
that period and our own. The sub-title of the book is "A Study in 
Democracy," and the author has undertaken to present her subject not 
from the revolutionary and not from the monarchist standpoint, but from 
that of the French people. 

"During the last few years," she writes, "the French Revolution has 
become less a subject for historical research than a theme of the popular 
journalist who sees in that lurid period material to be written up with 
profit. This being so, accuracy plays no part in his scheme. ... If 
the Revolution is to be regarded as the supreme experiment in democracy, 
if its principles are to be held up for our admiration and its methods 
advocated as an example to our own people, is it not time that some effort 
were made to counteract that 'conspiracy of history' that in France also, 
as M. Gustave Bord points out, has hitherto concealed the real facts 
concerning it? Shall we not at least cease from rhapsody" (a reference 
to Carlyle's work which she quotes Lord Cromer as terming a philosoph- 
ical rhapsody, inaccurate and prejudiced; well worth reading, but not 
history) "and consider the matter calmly and scientifically in its effects on 
the people ? This, after all, is the main issue how was the experiment a 
success from the people's point of view?" The author consults for her 
purpose memoirs, journals and other contemporary accounts, of which 
she has made an exhaustive study, weighing the evidence on both sides, 
taking into account the personal bias or political sympathies of the writers 
and endeavoring to give actual facts freed from the many-coloured coat 
with which they have been overlaid. 

The result differs widely and in many respects from the histories 
with which most of us are familiar. The outstanding feature perhaps is 
the assertion, well and convincingly substantiated, that the Revolution, far 
from being an expression of the will of the people, was the outgrowth of 
a series of intrigues, chief among which was a conspiracy of the Due 
d'Orleans and his followers to seize the throne. The theory of a French 
people groaning under oppression, and forced in their misery to revolt 
against a cruel tyranny, is shown to be based on misunderstanding. The 
actual situation called for reform; the people demanded reform, and the 
King, in sympathy with the very apparent need, met it generously and in a 
way that won him the loyal support of his subjects. The Orleaniste 
conspiracy is the thread on which is strung every event of the Revolution. 
Systematically and cleverly organized, for the Duke, however un-able 



FRENCH REVOLUTION 159 

himself, had men of very genuine ability in his pay, it was spread 
secretly over all France, and accomplished its aims through calumniation 
of the monarchy, employment of corrupt and base men as its tools, and 
terrorization of the people. By disseminating lying propaganda, by 
duping the uneducated classes, by committing atrocities in many cases 
the equal of those in the Great War and attributing them to others, by 
claiming sinister designs on the part of those victimized, the Orleaniste 
faction, with diabolical ingenuity, led the French people to work out their 
own destruction. This conspiracy it was which brought about each of the 
five great crises of the Revolution, contriving with consummate skill to 
conceal the real instigators and produce the effect of a spontaneous move- 
ment of the people against despotism. This it was which caused the 
continual vacillation of the mob from wild enthusiasm for the King to 
outbursts of revolutionary fury, as the basest and most corrupt means 
were invariably employed to avert popular satisfaction at each concession 
made by the monarch. 

A correspondingly different view of the King and Queen are given. 
Honest, benevolent, possessed of great simplicity and sincerity, the King 
regarded himself as the servant of his people. Again and again a display 
of force, the firing of a few shots, gave promise of ending the disturb- 
ances ; but so long as the insurrection was against his own authority, so 
long as it was his own life at stake, he refused to shed the blood of his 
subjects ; and only after an agony of irresolution could he determine to do 
so when the people, turning on each other, made it a duty to protect them 
against themselves. In affairs of state he was blundering, uncertain, 
short-sighted, and his great misfortune was never to have had, at any of 
the great crises, disinterested advisers. Added to this, his slow-moving 
mind could not calculate effects nor play on the emotions of the mob, as 
his enemies knew so supremely well how to do. His nobility, his goodness, 
his love for France, would have made him, in a less turbulent period, a 
greatly loved King. The author's comment on his death is consistently in 
accord with her view of him throughout : "Of all the men who played 
their part in the Revolution, there was only one who, realizing that no 
hope for his life remained, could say from the depths of his heart, as he 
stood on the threshold of the other world the platform of the guillotine 
T desire that my blood may seal the happiness of the French.' That one 
true patriot, that one man ready to die for France and for the people, was 
the King." 

Of the Queen, too the Marie Antoinette of the years of the Revolu- 
tion a different view is given. She is shown to have had many truly 
queenly qualities, heroic courage and fortitude, dignity, charm, aloofness, 
and a certain strange power over those about her a power which the 
author does not attempt to define, but before which the infuriated rabble 
more than once fell back abashed. She is represented as genuinely 
attached to the interests of France, but, while sensible, clever and quick of 
mind at the very points where the King was slow, she nevertheless 



160 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

possessed none of the qualities of statesmanship, and erred continually 
through blindness and bewilderment. Her very virtues won her the bitter 
enmity of a number of the nobility, particularly that of the Due d'Orleans 
and his boon companions, and, accordingly, persecutions, infamous libels, 
and intrigue against the Queen formed no small part of the Orleaniste 
conspiracy. Her other arch-enemy was the King of Prussia, whose 
ambitious schemings had been thwarted by her marriage with Louis XVI 
and the resulting alliance with Austria. And here a whole new network 
of intrigue is suggested in the machinations of Frederick William through 
his agent Von der Goltz and others in his employ in Paris. An item is 
given from the account of the Prussian King for the year 1792 "six 
million ecus for corruptions in France" money spent for the purpose of 
embroiling France with Austria, thus overturning the balance of power in 
Europe; for discrediting and blackening the character of the Queen, as a 
means to undermine the monarchy in France ; for arousing sympathy with 
Prussia, and in every nefarious way for opening up avenues to the reali- 
zation of Prussian ambition. Everyone is familiar with the accusations 
against Marie Antoinette regarding her Austrian sympathies. Mrs. 
Webster writes : "This, then, was one of the great crimes of the unhappy 
Queen that she was anti-Prussian. Those amongst the French who still 
revile her memory would do well to remember that she was the first and 
greatest obstacle to those dreams of European domination that, originating 
with Frederick the Great, culminated in the aggression of 1870 and 1914." 
Many there were, according to the author, who knew the facts, par- 
ticularly of the Orleaniste conspiracy ; and certain men, among whom are 
mentioned Mounier, Bergasse, Lafayette, might have used their great 
influence in exposing and righting the situation. They failed to act, we 
are told, not because they lacked courage, but because they regarded the 
conspiracy as incidental to the Revolution, "they recognized its existence 
but failed to recognize its extent, . . . they were visionaries, and at 
times of national crisis visionaries are of all men the most dangerous; 
intent on the pursuit of unattainable ideals, they shut their eyes to realities, 
and instead of facing danger prefer to ignore it." This, it would seem, is 
one of the fundamental parallels between that period and this : a vast 
majority of people, well-meaning, perhaps, but indifferent, blind, and too 
intent on material concerns to be awake to the situation (though for 
different reasons in each case) ; and leaders who are visionaries, pursuing 
unattainable ideals, ignoring danger instead of facing it. In our own day 
this has been evident on every hand. We have seen it in the attitude 
toward each step of German infamy and aggression; it was clear in the 
case of the murder of the Czar and every ensuing feature of the Russian 
situation ; it is equally clear, in the present world crisis, in the way in 
which we dally with the matter of recognition of the Soviet government, 
complacently remain "unruffled" toward the defiant action of Labour in 
the question of war with Russia, or calmly watch Red armies negotiating 
for German aid, reassuring ourselves with the observation that "the whole 



FRENCH REVOLUTION 161 

mental outlook of Germans of that class is too utterly foreign to that of 
Bolshevism for anything like real friendship to be possible." On the part 
of the majority of mankind there is ignorance, indifference, disinclination 
to act ; on the part of their leaders, refusal to face facts, or an attempt to 
minimize their seriousness, a continual tendency to avoid the issue, to 
temporize, to compromise. And what was the result in 1789? Leaders and 
people alike fell an easy prey to a few unprincipled men filled with "the 
will to power" ; were readily deceived by the subversive doctrines of a 
handful of malcontents who led them from illusion to delusion, and thence 
to revolutionary madness. "But does the nation know what it wishes?'' 
sneeringly retorted one of the revolutionary leaders in France. "One can 
make it wish, and one can make it say what it has never thought . . . 
the nation is a great herd that only thinks of browsing." 

To turn to a matter which attracts comparatively little attention : 
what is being done at the present time to combat the literature of the 
Bolshevist propagandists or of the equally subversive "intellectual 
radicals"? In a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly, an article by J. 
Salwyn Schapiro makes the statement : "A phenomenon new to America 
is the growing sympathy among men and women of education, with the 
ideals and methods of the revolutionary proletariat. . . . What is 
taking place in America now something with which Europe has long 
been familiar is the formation of an intellectual class, revolutionary in 
tendency and bound together by a common antipathy for the present order 
of things." He refers also to a tradition established at the time of the 
French Revolution, that writers, teachers, artists, and scientists can 
exercise power in society, provided it is used on the side opposed to the 
status quo. Even a casual glance at radical periodicals will offer endless 
illustrations of the work of this type of writer men and women bent on 
"exercising power in society," carried away with the idea of self-expres- 
sion, and in every case convinced that a new life, a new world, lies open 
to them if only the existing order can be destroyed. (We all know the 
counterpart of this in ourselves : which of us has not had the conviction 
at one time or another that he could really live pretty well up to his ideal 
if only this or that hindrance, obstacle, or interfering circumstance could 
be removed !) Given free rein, what is the significance of these subversive 
doctrines ? To what do they lead ? 

We are told that in the France of 1790 the philosophers the noted 
reformers, Rousseau and Diderot, for example had comparatively little 
effect on any but the aristocracy and the educated bourgeoisie. The 
common people, the peasant tilling the soil, were too intent on their crops, 
or on other immediate interests, to be influenced by them. But there were 
a host of pamphleteers, journalists, subversives of all sorts, "intellectual 
radicals" like the coterie of Madame Roland, who reached all classes with 
the contagion of their seditious doctrines, and who worked endless harm. 
"To make the people happy," wrote one of them, "their ideas must be 
reconstructed, laws must be changed, morals must be changed, men must 

11 



162 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

be changed, things must be changed, everything, yes, everything must be 
destroyed, since everything must be re-made." In passing, it may be added 
that the writer of these high-flown phrases lived to see them realized in all 
their horror. His wife became a suicide from despair, and he himself a 
victim of the guillotine. France, too, had her parlour Bolshevists, people 
who dabbled over dinner tables in revolutionary doctrines, and outdid the 
revolutionists themselves in the ardour of their laudation of each excess. 

In our own day there is a more or less general feeling that one is 
rather hysterical to take these misguided people too seriously ; they have a 
right to their opinions, it is said, and, after all, what more does it amount 
to than a form of "self-expression," extreme, yes, but harmless. On this 
point of self-expression, there is a pertinent line from Professor Babbitt's 
Rousseau and Romanticism: "A man may safely go into himself if what 
he finds there is not, like Rousseau, his own emotions, but, like Buddha, 
the law of righteousness." In Mrs. Webster's history there is an oppor- 
tunity to see the poison of the "harmless" theories taking its insidious 
effect, and to trace it in its far-reaching results. And the author offers in 
comment : "Is not the instigator of a crime infinitely more criminal than 
the wretched instrument who commits it? And were not the orators and 
writers Marat, Danton, Desmoulins, Brissot, Carra, Madame Roland 
more truly the authors of these excesses than the crazed and drunken 
populace who put their precepts into practice? For the cannibals of the 
Tuileries, the horrible women of the Paris Faubourgs plunging their 
knives into the bodies of their victims, had not evolved such deeds from 
their own inner consciousness." 

De Tocqueville, in his study of pre-Revolutionary France, comments 
on the influence of the writers who inspired and developed the revolu- 
tionary ideals, and asserts that the government should have employed 
them, thus having them under some degree of control. Profiting by the 
suggestion, whether knowingly or otherwise, Germany, as was character- 
istic of her, kept her revolutionary writers under direct control and 
supervision, with the natural result that such form of expression did not 
flourish in that country. What our own country might or might not do in 
the way of prevention or of counter-propaganda is not to the point, here. 
The chief point is, what can we do personally? What are we doing to 
familiarize ourselves with facts, to take a clear and (so far as possible) 
intelligent view of events, and above all to control or eliminate in ourselves 
the subversive element which will otherwise colour and distort every 
thought, every influence that comes to us? It is a difficult task and one 
that requires a man's whole attention and effort to realize that each one 
of us has a direct causal connection with events, even of world-wide 
import, and then to do something about it. It is difficult, because so much 
more is necessary than mere mental assent indeed, it involves the whole 
problem of self-mastery; for, without self-mastery, right thinking can 
never be relied upon to lead to right action. 

Point by point, as we read Mrs. Webster's account, the parallel stands 



FRENCH REVOLUTION 163 

out. The specious promises of the revolutionary leaders, the events which 
led to the establishment of the Republic, the ensuing war on civilization, 
the plan for world-wide extension, the hideous program of the Reign of 
Terror, all have their counterpart in the rule of Lenin and Trotzky. Early 
in the course of events the people saw and repented of their error, but too 
late, for through the Jacobin Clubs, formed secretly in all sections of the 
country, every opposition to the central power could be forestalled and 
visited with hideous penalty. From Arthur Young's contemporary 
account, The Example of France, comes the following : "Doubtless there 
were French farmers who rejoiced at the spectacle of all the great proper- 
ties of the kingdom being levelled by the nation ; they did not, however, 
foresee that it would be their own turn next ; that the principle of equality 
being once abroad, would infallibly level all property." Mrs. Webster 
quotes phrases from contemporary documents such as, "day-labourer now 
enriched with 50,000 livres of income/' or, "who arrived in Paris in sabots 
and now possesses four fine houses" (phrases suggestive of conditions 
with which we are all familiar). But she writes: "The democrats of 
1789 had become the aristocrats of 1792, and it was no longer only the 
nobles who cursed the Revolution, but the farmers, the manufacturers, 
and the industrious bourgeois who three years earlier had hailed 'the dawn 
of liberty,' and now found themselves sharing the fate of the class they 
had been so eager to dethrone." 

Similarly, Mrs. Webster cites a law of 1791 suppressing all coalitions 
of workmen (annihilation, not suppression, is the actual word used), and 
forbidding the workmen to "name presidents, keep registers, make reso- 
lutions, deliberate or draw up regulations on their pretended common 
interests," or to determine any fixed scale of wages. A recent book on 
Bolshevism by John Spargo, The Greatest Failure in All History, might 
well be referring to that same period. It tells of the struggle in Russia 
between the Soviet government and the trade unions, with the subsequent 
abolishment of certain unions, denial of the right to strike, arbitrary 
settlement of wages and working conditions, suppression of all meetings, 
and the compulsory labour of all citizens, of both sexes, between the ages 
of sixteen and fifty. The Commissar of Labour is quoted as having 
placed in a number of industrial concerns special dictators "with unlimited 
powers and entitled to dispose of the life and death of the workmen." All 
this in the so-called reign of the proletariat and facts of this character 
can be multiplied indefinitely. 

It may be objected that such parallels refer only to conditions in far- 
off Russia. We are inclined to feel so remote, so safe ! Much is written 
in our periodicals to show that such conditions could never exist in our 
country. The qualities, characteristics and past experience of the Russian 
peasant are dwelt upon and contrasted with those of the working class 
elsewhere. The fact that in America there are hundreds of thousands of 
small landholders, with interests at stake, is shown to be a sure preventive. 
The tremendous extent of our territory, causing the same class or the 



164 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

same labour group to have diametrically opposing interests in different 
localities, is regarded as a final safeguard. Yet is not all this rather like 
drawing the bed covers over one's head, in the belief that if the dark is 
not seen, there is no dark to be afraid of especially in the face of. recent 
labour developments in England, and of the I.W.W/s open expression of 
adherence to the Soviet and antagonism to its foes, with its recent expul- 
sion of seven thousand members for loading transports with supplies for 
General Wrangel? 

However, be the effect of revolutionary contagion what it may, the 
most important fact in connection with the French Revolution far more 
important than the parallel of tendencies and events is the lesson that 
human nature follows the same course both in the past and in the present. 
The Revolution marked a cyclic culmination of the activity of the same 
forces that are finding expression to-day. The world over, there is actively 
at work the leaven of malice, wickedness, and greed the spirit that 
regards obedience, service, sacrifice, all that is noble, all that is high, as 
hateful, as an abomination. Yet, opposed to it, there is the age-old truth : 
Except a man deny himself and take up his cross daily. Let us remember 
that every day, every hour, in our minute-to-minute choice, we place our- 
selves actively on one side or the other. And let us remember, too, that 
even a little leaven will leaven the whole lump. J. C. 



It is a fatal mistake to suppose that we cannot be holy except on the 
condition of a situation and circumstances in life such as shall suit our- 
selves. It is one of the first principles of holiness to leave our times and 
our places, our going out and coming in, our wasted and our goodly 
heritage entirely with the Lord. Here, Lord, hast Thou placed us, 
and we will glorify Thee here. T. C. UPHAM. 




THE REALM, THE RADIANCE AND THE 

POWER* 

"Learn now of me, how he who has won the first great victory, shall 
go forward to the everlasting Power. Here is the perfect rule of wisdom, 
briefly told: 

"Let him hold himself firmly in the ray of the illumined Soul, freeing 
himself from the tyranny of sensations, and rising above lusts and hate; 

"Let him dwell in solitude; let him be sparing of bodily lusts; let 
him subordinate thought, word, and deed to the Light; let him steadily 
bring himself under the inspired will; let him overcome self-reference; 

"Let him rid himself of these things: conceit, violence, arrogance, 
sensuality, jealousy, graspiness; then, free from the sense of appro- 
priation, and full of the great peace, he builds with the everlasting 
Power" Songs of the Master. 

THE perfect rule of wisdom here set forth, holds the answer 
to the difficulty and perplexity we are facing at this very time : 
the question what to do next. We have won the first great 
victory. And now we are waiting, in a kind of quietness and 
uncertainty, knowing that something has been gained, but not seeing 
clearly what it is, not able to give any lucid account of it to ourselves ; 
not seeing whither our victory is to lead us. To use an idiom: we 
cannot see where to take hold : where to catch on. 

This is far from being a new difficulty, or a perplexity peculiar to 
ourselves, or to the present hour. On the contrary, this uncertain and 
waiting attitude is a quite inevitable and constantly recurring stage on 
the great path of lif e ; all who have passed along the path, have faced it, 
just as we are doing; and it is so familiar a friend that its position is 
marked in all the books of the Mysteries. 

We shall make the matter clearer, if we go back a little, and see 
what our victory consists in. We may put it on record that every stage 
on the path consists of three parts, and that we have passed two of 
the three, in the stage we are travelling on. Every stage has three 

* Reprinted from The Thccsophical Forum of March, 1899. 

165 



166 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

divisions : the time of aspiration ; the time of illumination ; the time of 
realization. And the moment of perplexity comes after illumination, 
and before realization the point where we now stand. 

We have all passed through the time of aspiration. We all know 
how it was with us. First, the time of miserable unrest; of crying for 
the light, but without in the least knowing what we wanted, or what 
our malady was. Nothing but a great dissatisfaction; a sense of the 
meanness of our lives. That was the first stirring of the soul. Then 
came a stronger longing for the realm, the radiance, and the power : for 
all the dim glory hidden in our souls. At first the thought of it was 
cherished as an almost hopeless regret, a sadness for something far 
beyond our reach. But here, as elsewhere, the appetite grows with 
eating. And aspiration gradually nursed itself into hope. We knew that 
the realm and the radiance were real ; and we watched for the gleaming 
of the light that led us on, till hope became fulfilment ; till aspiration 
ripened into illumination. 

The full illumination may or may not remain within our conscious 
memory; but the sense of it is there. We know that the Oversoul has 
gleamed into our hearts, that we are inwardly open to the immortal sea. 
We may not know how we know this, nor remember our hour of 
revelation. But the radiance haunts us; the brooding divinity is there. 

That is the second stage. Now comes the third. We have to work 
that radiant hour into our lives, to realize it in character and in work; 
to embody our revelation. When we have done this fully, we shall be 
ready to rise to a new illumination and a new realization; and so the 
great work goes on. But how to realize our sense of the Soul? That 
is the problem that brings us the perplexity of waiting. The memory 
and sense of the Soul haunt us like a shining sea we have seen in 
dreams, but we cannot find our way back to it; or we are on ice so 
smooth, that every movement sets us slipping. We can get no grasp 
on it, no hold, no leverage to move ourselves by. We cannot make 
our start in life. 

The perplexity is a real one. But we overdo it. We never lose a 
chance of telling ourselves that we are at the end of our powers. That 
is one of the privileges of sovereign man. But there are ways out of 
our difficulty. 

The first clue is this: it is not really we ourselves who have to 
find the way; it is not we who have to form the plan, and win the 
battle. That is already provided for, by the lord of life and death in 
each of us. The great Life, the everlasting Power, which, like a strong 
torrent, flows through the channel of our lives, has seen to that. We 
are not personally responsible for the moving power, for the vital force 
that is to carry us onwards. A sense of this brings stillness; and, in 
the stillness, the lord of life and death, the Genius, who really is 
responsible, will be able' to catch our attention, and get his idea into 
our heads. But we try the patience of the Genius. 



REALM, RADIANCE, POWER 167 

There are two elements : first, the almighty Power ; then, our 
individual selves. Our work is, to express the Power, through our 
individual selves. That is what the sage of old meant, by bidding us 
keep firmly in the ray of the illumined Soul. 

Our perplexity is due to this : a new power is to enter our lives, 
and it is so unlike anything we are familiar with, that it takes us a long 
time to recognize it; it takes us a long time to become conscious that 
we have recognized it. Then at last we shall be ready to move forwards. 

It is another of man's privileges, to get into mischief of precisely 
the same kind, a hundred times in succession. This is what happens at 
this point of progress. We get entangled in the very things that we 
have just conquered, on our upward path of aspiration. There is a new 
air about them now, and we get taken in again. The traps that catch 
us are two, one for each of the inferior worlds, into which we have 
dropped back after our hour of illumination in the third world, the 
world at the back of the heavens. The two dear foes are, the lust of 
sensations, and the conceit of our personal selves. To get rid of the 
lust of sensation, is like a bath in the ocean, or a long breath of mountain 
air. To get rid of conceit is like a harassed debtor's sudden release 
from all financial liabilities. These are the things that stand in the way, 
and keep us from hearing the voice of the Genius. 

It is not sensation that we are to conquer, but the lust of sensation : 
the preoccupation of our fancies, by memory and desire. Sensation 
is the earth, quite clean in its due place. The lust of sensation is that 
same earth afloat in the sea of emotion ; the muddy wave of a shallow sea. 

The position is this : our souls have a layer of sensation below us ; 
a layer of inspiration above us. We cannot do justice to both at once; 
we cannot have the sense of both at once. If we are preoccupied with 
the one, we shall be deaf to the other. But we are here to catch the 
voice of inspiration. Before we catch it, we must close our ears to the 
voices of the earth. People fancy they cannot get on without sensation, 
and that if it ceased for a moment, they would die. They have to learn 
the contrary. To put this in another way: the perpetual thinking of 
certain sensations, as dwelling in certain parts of our natural bodies, 
forms a web which holds the psychic body within the physical body, 
and prevents its going forth to commune with the Soul. We must 
forget about our natural bodies for awhile, or we shall remain prisoners, 
till death tumbles us out into the blue ether. 

It is not a question of deadening sensation, and growing rigid. It 
is rather that we must wash our memories and fancies clean, at least 
for a while. We are to receive a quite new kind of impression, from 
a new direction. We cannot be in two places at once. This is the very 
simple truth which underlies all ascetic ideals. Abstinence, in itself, 
has not the slightest value, but the stillness that goes with it is needed, 
if we are to hear the other voice. 

Then that dear enemy, who comes back to us as often as recurring 



168 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

springtime : the conceit of our personal selves. It is something like 
this : we are made of three things, the animal, the personal, the divine. 
Our life really streams down from the divine, through the personal life, 
to be expressed by the animal, in the visible world. For the animal 
can really express very noble and subtle things, in his looks and works. 
But the personal part of us, the middle man, labours under the delusion 
that he is doing it all ; and he thinks, moreover, that whatever he wants, 
must be good for all three. So he exasperates the creative man above 
him, and makes the animal man do many unwholesome and exciting 
things, which bring him to an early grave. It is the illusion of very 
young people, that all half-heard conversation is about themselves; and 
that all the world is watching them. That part of youth often lasts 
long; and it is this fatuity which defeats the Genius. The personal 
man thinks that everything which goes on, is for his benefit; he wants 
to get a profit from everything, and is continually trying to wrest things 
in his direction, instead of letting them go clear through, to express 
themselves in the outer world. What is there in it for me? asks the 
personal man; and that instinct vitiates all good work. That is what 
the old sage meant by the sense of appropriation. It is the sin of the 
middle world. Vanity keeps many a man from hearing the voice of the 
soul. The vanity of what he fancies his personal self to be, of what 
he fancies others think of him, and expect of him, keeps many a man 
from daring to obey the voice of the soul, when he has heard it. And 
the personal man is an adept at pleading in his own favour. He is a 
most plausible knave, and very sorry for himself. 

We cannot listen to the soul, because we are thinking of our 
troubles; and vanity is father to most of them. The sage of old has 
mentioned other things which stand in our light. There is arrogance, 
the cheerful assurance of superiority, which seems to lighten every man 
who comes into the world. At least, we all use moral looking-glasses. 
Then violence, in which nature rebukes us. She makes a noise only 
when she is destroying. All her building goes on in silence; all the 
splendid vitality of spring comes forth without the audible stirring of 
a leaf. She can move a continent, and no one hears a grain of sand 
fall. Then jealousy, and the rest, that we know as much of as any sage. 
These things make the noise of our personal selves, which fills our ears, 
and drowns the voice of the silence. 

These are the things that thwart us, when we should be standing 
in the ray of the illumined Soul. They keep back the stillness, in which 
the new voice should speak. Every inspiration comes from within and 
above us ; from the Life in the radiance and the realm. The Life speaks 
to the individual soul, and seeks to be expressed through the work of 
the individual soul. Now all souls are different. So all expressions 
of the Life will be different, though inspired by the same Power; just 
as the same sun brings forth a hundred different flowers, from as many 
different seeds. Each of us has his seed of genius and power, his 



REALM, RADIANCE, POWER 169 

individual talent and gift. And the problem is, to let it be quickened 
by the eternal sunlight. 

Here is at once a difficulty, and a delight. The work will be different 
for each of us; so that no one can really show the way to another. 
But its fruit will be different for each, so that each of us will have the 
delight of original creation. We are in the presence of the Power, the 
Radiance, the Life. The Oversoul is brooding palpably over us, and 
we feel the haunting presence. But it is all so new, so unprecedented, 
so strange, that we do not know how to begin, or how to put our hands 
to the work. 

Well, there is plenty of time. Work that is to last forever, need 
not be hurried. We shall not be taken to task, for making the gods wait. 
But that splendid presence will haunt us, brooding over our days and 
nights, until we are carried away by its mighty breath of creative fire, 
and then we shall know what the lord of life and death was whispering 
to us through the silence. C. J. 



Now understand this well: all those who love themselves so inordi- 
nately that they will not serve God save for their own profit and because 
of their own reward, these separate themselves from God, and dwell 
in bondage and in their own selfhood; for they seek, and aim at, their 
own, in all that they do. And therefore with all their prayers and with 
all their good works, they seek after temporal things, or may be strive 
after eternal things for their own benefit and for their own profit. These 
men are bent upon themselves in an inordinate way; and that is why 
they ever abide alone with themselves, for they lack the true love which 
zvould unite them with God and with all His beloved. . . 

But from that very hour in which, with God's help, he can overcome 
his selfhood that is to say, when he is so detached from himself that 
he is able to leave in the keeping of God everything of which he has 
need behold, through doing this he is so well pleasing to God that God 
bestows upon him His grace. And, through grace, he feels true love: 
and love casts out doubt and fear, and fills the man with hope and trust, 
and thus he becomes a faithful servant, and means and loves God in all 
he does. Behold, this is the difference between the faithful servant and 
the hireling. JOHN OF RUYSBROECK. 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 



March 22nd, 1916. 

DEAR 

******* 

But I cannot feel about the war as you do : I cannot think of it as 
"a terrible war." The awful element in the war is that which caused 
it ; the evil of humanity which gradually accumulated during the past ; 
the past thousand years or the past million years, whichever you like. 
That evil is the terrible thing, the thing to mourn over, to get emotional 
about, if you like. But do not permit yourself to do anything but rejoice 
over the war itself, which is doing so much to clean up this accumulated 
evil. It is wholly good; and the more suffering it causes, the better it 
is, so long as human souls have the courage and fortitude to take it in 
the right spirit, as they are doing in France so splendidly, and in some 
measure everywhere else. 

Your instinctive and automatic attitude against war is just as logical 
and very similar to the position you might take of thinking very terrible 
the restrictions on the liberty and self-indulgence of religious in a con- 
vent. Indeed, I have no doubt that there are times when the human 
side of you does almost unconsciously think that the religious have a very 
hard road to travel, and you pity them and their hardships. But please 
note that they do not pity themselves, at least those who are any good 
do not. 

We can pity the religious who pities himself, and we can pity the 
person nowadays who does not understand and whose ignorance causes 
him to suffer because of the war, but we must not pity him because of 
the war, or because of the direct suffering it may entail. 

We can pity the ignorance that causes this suffering, but the suffering 
itself is purely remedial, is a blessing sent by the Master, is a gift of 
grace from on high. 

You know all this with part of yourself as well as I do. Why then 
not make it a part of your daily consciousness, and conquer that emo-^ 
tional element in you which reacts to your environment, and which blinds 
your real vision of things? I feel sure that you will now do this, in the 
light of the splendour which France has shown you. 

With kind regards, 1 am, sincerely, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



November 19th, 1916. 

DEAR 

About a week ago the New York Times printed two extracts from 
Cardinal Mercier's last pastoral letter, which, we understand, was issued 



170 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 171 

by him about two months ago, was suppressed, and a copy of which only 
recently reached England and was translated. 

Cardinal Mercier is one of the great figures of the world; one who 
has risen to his responsibilities in a way that makes one's heart glow. 
Everything we have seen of his, and we have watched for everything he 
has spoken or written, has been fine, and some of it has been sublime. 
This last pastoral has the best definition of righteous war that we have 
seen. 

I have often started to write you during these recent months, but 
there is so much to say that I have shrunk from the task of trying to 
express any of it. 

The superb behaviour of France, the gradually improving condition 
and behaviour of England, the unutterable selfishness and materialism 
of this country, which does not seem to us to have one redeeming feature, 
the progress generally of the fight between the White and the Black 
Lodge, all these things fill our thoughts hourly and are the mainsprings 
of our actions. Things are working to a crisis everywhere, and I look 
soon to see some outer expression of inner facts, which will be of the 
greatest importance to us all. 

With best wishes, I am, Yours sincerely, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



DEAR 

I was glad to receive your letter of January 3rd, and it was a great 
pleasure to have your reply in English. . . . 

I am glad, too, to learn that you hope soon to found a new Branch 

at , and I hope that your wishes will come true. Please remember, 

however, that the great Masters who watch over and guide the destiny of 
the human race, are more anxious about the quality of members than 
about numbers. Two or three really wise and devoted disciples are worth 
more than thousands of ordinary members. Mr. Judge used to say that 
if, as a result of his life's work, he could know when dying that he had 
brought seven people to the Masters, he would feel that his work had 
been a success ; but of course he meant to bring seven people into con- 
scious discipleship. Only a very few of the thousands who try, ever really 
succeed from the point of view of this high standard. It is not easy to 
become a disciple, but it is easy to try; and if we try we are sure to 
succeed in time. 

I trust that you will write to me if you find any difficulty in carrying 
out the practices I recommended in my first letter, and that you will try 
very faithfully to do just what was suggested. 

I am much obliged to you for your good wishes for the New Year. 
I also wish you peace and growth and well-being. 

Fraternally, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



172 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 



DEAR 

It was a pleasure to receive your letter of April 21st, and I am sorry 
that so long a time has gone by before I replied to it, but I have very 
many letters to write. 

I was interested in what you told me of the priest. I believe that 
a liberal priest can do more good in the Church, gradually instilling high 
and noble ideas among his brethren, than by defying his superiors and 
being excommunicated. There is very much that is good in the Qiurch, 
which is one of the instruments used by the Lodge, and which never has 
been abandoned. 

I also note what you say about meditation. It is very hard to medi- 
tate. Only chelas can do it perfectly, but as we are trying to become 
chelas we must also learn to meditate, and the way to learn is to continue 
trying. We get more and more light as we go on. The tendency to go to 
sleep is natural, but it must be fought by making the effort to meditate 

more positive and virile. 

******* 

Fraternally, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



DEAR 

Your letter of the third of November reached me in due time, and 
1 want to assure you that you have my most sincere sympathy in the 
great loss that has come to you. For it is a "loss" when those who are 
bound to us by the closest ties are taken away from us. We are fortunate 
in knowing, as so many do not, that the ties of real love hold beyond the 
change that is called death. Indeed we have so much help in meeting all 
the trials and the discipline of life, that we may well require of ourselves 
a stout-hearted acceptance of the lessons sent us, and a courageous 
determination to find the essence of them. The tone of your letter, in 
these respects, is very gratifying to me ; and I am sure that as you go 
forward, meeting to the very best of your ability the new duties and 
obligations that have been laid upon you, help, guidance and consolation 
will be sent you in generous measure. That is one of the blessings of 
sorrow, rightly accepted. We are led by it to see that there is help offered 
us in many ways, help to which we are blindly indifferent when life goes 
along smoothly for us. 

I have been greatly interested in , and very much pleased with 

the character of the articles appearing in this new magazine of yours. 
We wish you all success with it. 

With best wishes to you, and your work for the Cause to which 
you have dedicated your life, I am, 

Fraternally, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 173 

DEAR 

******* 

I am very sorry to hear of the death of your eldest son. The whole 
world seems to be full of death and suffering in these days of the great 
war. It must be good, or it would not be, but it is very hard to under- 
stand when the sorrow comes close home to us. I can sympathize with 

you. 

******* 

Fraternally, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



DEAR 

I find that I have another letter from you, dated July 21st and 
announcing the very good news of the formation of your Branch, with 
its list of officers of so many different nationalities. I wish you every 
possible success and good fortune. The only advice I can give you is 
that you should be patient and charitable with each other. You cannot 
hope always to agree. Each one of you should remember that the others' 
way may be just as good as your way; and that it does not matter so 
much what is done as that your intentions should be good. Try to settle 

all your differences of opinion in this spirit. 

******* 

Fraternally, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



DEAR 

I was exceedingly glad to learn about your marriage. You must let 
me congratulate you and wish you every happiness. I know of few 
greater blessings than to have a wife who is at one with us in our 
religious belief. The woman ought to be the inspiration of the house- 
hold; keeping the members of the family up to the highest possible 

standard of conduct and faith. 

******* 

You ask many questions about Karma. Yes, Karma often acts in 
the same life, often almost immediately in fact. If you eat too much 
and have pain, that is Karma. If you lose your temper and are disagree- 
able to another, your feeling a few days later that he does not love you 
as much as you wish him to do, is Karma. Karma can be modified. 
We are all modifying our Karma every moment. The whole problem 
of discipleship is an effort to modify our Karma to overcome and to 
nullify the effects of our past sins. The bad Karma we have created in 
the past, causes us to have certain faults and weaknesses, makes us stupid 
and blind. Our constant effort must be to overcome these faults, to 
learn not to be stupid and blind. In all of this we are modifying Karma. 
It is always fluidic, plastic, subject to constant change. Our destiny is 
entirely in our own hands. We are not the blind slaves of a law which 



174 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

drives us forward ; we are the children of a wise parent who guides and 
directs and gives us tasks and duties which will develop our capacities 
and cultivate our powers. 

Remember that the law of Karma is administered by great, loving, 
wise and compassionate spiritual beings ; and that its purpose is our salva- 
tion and our happiness. No two people in the world have the same 
Karma, and no two people would react in exactly the same way to the 
same influences. If two men each lose their much loved son, one of them 
may get bitter, hard, cynical ; the other be made gentle and resigned, and 
be turned towards religion. There is no rule. 

There are different kinds of Karma. Physical Karma is like the law 
of gravitation. If we walk over a precipice, we fall no matter how good 
or how bad we may be. If we eat poison, we suffer; and if we take 
enough, whether by accident or on purpose, we die. 

But moral Karma is different. Here the motive counts as well as 
the actual act. If we make an honest mistake, the compassionate law will 
save us from the full consequences of our action. We often do unwise 
things with good motives and escape the normal consequences of 

unwisdom. 

* * ***** 

Fraternally, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



DEAR 

I was interested in your quotation from "Casandra." I believe that 
the present war will not teach the world the futility of Socialism. Even 
the debacle of the Russian revolution will not carry home the lesson. I 
expect a future war between the forces of Socialism and the conservative 
elements in society. This war may also be international, but with the 
people of each country fighting against each other. 

As for your questions : 

Karma can be avoided in one sense, for some one else may pay the 
price for your sin. That is the true meaning of vicarious atonement. A 
mother is constantly bearing the burden of her child's wrongdoing, and 
constantly saves the child from the consequences of his sin. Wherever 
there is real love, there is likely to be the bearing of another's burden, 
or Karma. The law itself must be fulfilled ; but the law does not care 
whether you pay the price, or whether I do. That, of course, is a rough 
and ready answer to a very complicated question. 

******* 

Sincerely, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 



THE Lords of Karma are winnowing, as when it was said of 
one of them that his "fan is in his hand, and he will throughly 
purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he 
will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." 

On the plane of that which is being winnowed, there is turmoil and 
confusion. But the wielder of the fan knows what he is doing, and why. 
The thoughts of many hearts must be revealed. The wheat and the 
chaff must be separated. 

We had been discussing this great law of life, both as exemplified 
in nations and in individuals. Presently, current events were mentioned, 
as examples. 

"Presumably," said the Student, "those who claim to be a majority 
of the Irish people did not reveal themselves sufficiently during the war, 
although I should have thought they had. In any case, they continue to 
reveal themselves. I thought the murder of Commissioner Smyth par- 
ticularly illuminating." 

"Who was he and how was he murdered?" someone asked. 

"Smyth had been a Colonel in the regular army during the war. 
He had won the Victoria Cross for extraordinary gallantry in action. 
He had lost one arm. When the war was over, he was appointed a Com- 
missioner in Ireland. Because, in that capacity, he performed his duty 
with conspicuous success, the Sinn Feiners decided to murder him. They 
waited until this one-armed man was alone in his club, off duty. A dozen 
of them quietly entered and riddled him with bullets." 

"Archbishop Mannix ought to have been there to bless them," com- 
mented the Philosopher. 

"Yes," answered the Student. "But the wheels of the gods grind 
slowly. You must not expect too much self-revelation, all of a blow. 
Give him time. He is doing his best !" 

"The Vatican is doing its best also," the Historian remarked. "The 
decorations in St. Peter's which were used at the canonization of Joan 
of Arc, were still in place on May 23rd when Oliver Plunket, at one time 
Archbishop of Armagh, was beatified; and Oliver Plunket is famous 
simply because he conspired to bring a foreign army into Ireland, for 
which he was hanged at Tyburn in 1681. His beatification was of course 
a Sinn Fein event and a compliment to their 'cause'." 

"Great breadth of mind, has the Vatican," said the Philosopher 
grimly. "It is a mystery to me why the Soviet does not get itself baptized 
under those auspices. Mannix could then be made a Cardinal to look 
after their interests in Rome." 

"When I think of the saints who have grown up within that Church, 
and of the heroism and self-abandonment of French priests during the 
war, the unprincipled political manoeuvring of the Vatican assumes the 



173 



176 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

proportions of a world crime, of a sin against the human soul every- 
where. It is monstrous. The only explanation is that just as, during 
the war, the wheat was being separated from the chaff as between nations 
and as between individuals, so now, with that particular war nominally 
over, the same process is taking place within nations, within individuals, 
and within organizations. The high gods must wish to compel devout 
Roman Catholics to discriminate; to rely more upon the unseen and 
spiritual, and less upon the external and personal ; to follow Christ rather 
than an ecclesiastical 'walking delegate/ whose first thought is for his 
religious 'Union' instead of for the principles and purposes of his Lord." 

The Student had been speaking. He loves the devotional and mys- 
tical literature of Catholicism. It is because of this love, he says, that 
he so intensely hates the Vatican. 

The Historian was the next to speak. "Your condemnation of 
Rome," he said, "is mild in comparison with that of many Catholic priests. 
I was talking with one of them not long ago, who admitted frankly that 
he could not and would not live in Rome itself, and whose disgust for 
the Roman Cardinals was as profound as his faith in what he described 
as the divine soul of his Church. He had learned what the Catholic 
layman also must learn, to discriminate for himself, as you have said, 
between that which is from Christ on the one hand, and from the craft 
and subtlety of the devil on the other hand/' 

"Meanwhile, however/' the Sage suggested at this point, "the 
Catholic layman, to a far too great extent, takes his cue from those same 
Roman Cardinals, using his Church as a means to his own political ends, 
and adopting any sort of 'principles' which lend themselves temporarily 
to his needs. Thus, the Knights of Columbus, at their supreme conven- 
tion recently held in New York, unanimously adopted a resolution pro- 
posed by United States District Attorney Gallagher of Boston, that : 

" 'As Americans and as Knights of Columbus we believe in the right 
of freedom to [sic] every people everywhere to determine the form of 
government under which they live. It is trite, perhaps, to say it; but 
say it we do, that the Knights of Columbus, in common with all true 
Americans, believe that Ireland has the right and ought to be a free and 
independent nation. This truth is axiomatic and, therefore, no argument 
is necessary/ 

"That resolution quite obviously is not honest. Among the Knights 
of Columbus there are men of some education, trained, as lawyers or 
doctors or what not, to know that two cows will not make one horse. 
Actually, they know that the theory of self-determination is nonsense, 
and that it was disposed of in this country during the Civil War. Suppose 
that a majority of the inhabitants of Wisconsin were to say 'We are 
Germans. We have a right to determine the form of government under 
which we live. We have a right and ought to be a free and independent 
nation. We hereby separate ourselves from the United States and invite 
His Imperial Majesty William of Germany to rule over us/ Would the 



SCREEN OF TIME 177 

Knights of Columbus endorse that proposition? If the Alaskans or the 
Porto Ricans or the natives on the banks of the Panama Canal were to 
declare their independence ; or the Bretons in France, or the Sicilians of 
Italy, or, perhaps, the negroes of Louisiana or the Jews of New York, 
would these Irish-American patriots stand by their 'axiom' ? I trow not !" 

"The so-called principle of self-determination," the Sage continued 
after a pause, "is one of the psychic perversities which sprang, fully 
armed, from the solar plexus of our Capitol during the war. 

"Question: If fifty-one per cent of the inhabitants of Albania were 
uneducated Mohammedans, and forty-nine per cent of them were semi- 
educated Christians; if neighbouring villages throughout Albania were 
occupied severally by these separate divisions of the population, and if 
the chief desire of both Christians and Mohammedans were to kill one 
another on sight, how would self-determination work out if both 
sections independently were to claim a prior right 'to govern their own 
country their own way'?" 

The Student laughed. "If," he said, "the word 'psychic' means, 
among other things, the unconscious burlesque of an ideal, and therefore 
of a spiritual reality, it is certainly the right adjective to describe the 
doctrine of self-determination. Clearly, it can exist only in the Lodge, 
among disciples. Try it in a nursery (it has often been tried there) and 
see what happens ! Each child has the right of self-determination, 
the right to be 'a free and independent child'. Each child has the right 
to decide what it will eat and when ; what it will wear and when ; what 
it will play with and when. . ." 

"I suppose you know," interjected the Doctor, "that infantile insanity 
is enormously on the increase in this country, particularly among the 
children of the rich, just because so many nurseries actually have been 
conducted on a basis of 'self-determination' and of 'self-expression'." 

"Yes," the Student answered. "I have heard so. The parents of 
such children poor little unfortunates seem to proceed on the theory 
that there is but one self, which is the lower self, and that Lenine and 
Madame Montessori are Its prophets. 

"When all men are perfect in wisdom and in self-control, there will 
no longer be need for outer government and for outer control. Conse- 
quently, the reforming psychic argues catching a glimpse of this 
ultimate attainment and turning it upside-down, consequently, you 
should do away with outer control and permit the free expression of the 
self within, so that the ultimate attainment may be precipitated." 

"Quite so," the Doctor commented. "Set free the unbroken colt. Let 
him follow the inspirations of his spirit. When he is old and dying, he 
may eat out of your hand supposing he has not strength enough left 
to eat you . . . It's a great scheme." 

"But seriously," asked the Visitor, rather worried, "does not every- 
thing you have been saying apply with equal force to the principles of 
democracy and of universal suffrage?" 

12 



178 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"It looks like it," laughed the Doctor. 

"But what are you going to do about that?" 

"What are you going to do about Sin, and the Influenza?" 

"Well, I can at least try to keep them out of myself." 

"Good for you ! Perhaps we can do as much when it comes to 
democracy and self-determination. In any case, we need not encourage 
them; and, occasionally, from some vantage point of safety, beyond the 
range of brickbats, it may be possible to suggest to others that demos 
means 'mob', and that the world to-day looks like it !" 

"Irrespective of theory," the Engineer suggested, "I wonder what 
would be the practical result if a foot-ball team were to be captained by 
a committee. Imagine, in the course of a match, that every decision had 
to be arrived at by means of conference, discussion, and a formal vote. 
Compare the chances of that team if matched against another whose 
captain, without being a genius, were capable of intelligent and quick 
decision !" 

"But suppose the members of a team refuse to play unless all of 
them have an equal voice in all decisions?" This from the Visitor. 

"In that case, they must be content to be beaten whenever they do 
play. But they cannot have an equal voice. They cannot even make an 
equal amount of noise. And apart from noise, unless you anticipate 
unanimity on all occasions, there will be inequality between the man who 
yells 'No' with the majority, and the man who yells 'Yes' with the 
minority." 

"The Black Lodge delights in confusion," said the Sage. 

"Yes ; and in self-assertion also," added the Student. 

"You realize, of course," the Historian commented, "that you are 
not criticizing a method of government which is necessarily an expression 
of democracy. A mob can elect a captain as easily as it can elect a 
committee. Confusion in the latter case is incessant ; in the former case, 
when the mob elects a captain for a fixed period, the confusion is periodic, 
while when it elects him 'subject to good behaviour,' which means for so 
long as he does what the mob wants, the confusion, while not always 
incessant, is always frequent and usually violent. 

"The essence of democracy, as I see it, is the election of one or 
of many persons to represent the mob, every member of which has an 
equal vote regardless of varying intelligence, of varying moral responsi- 
bility, of age, of class. And because the best of a nation, at this stage 
of evolution, must form a small percentage of the whole, it follows that 
democracy usually elects as its representatives, men who fall far short 
of the best, as the average must . . . It is a make-shift method, 
which it is ridiculous to regard as ideal." 

"Do you suggest, then," the Visitor asked, "that government by 
the Hohenzollerns would be better than government by a properly elected 
President, as in France or the United States?" 

"Incidentally," answered the Historian, "you will please keep in 



SCREEN OF TIME 179 

mind that the word President means a presiding officer : one who is 
supposed to preside over, and to voice the decisions of, either a committee 
or a gathering of elected representatives. Our own recent experience in 
this country ought to have demonstrated how much confusion arises 
when that fact is overlooked, and also how impossible it is for a consistent, 
a continuous policy to be carried out under an elective system. We know, 
not only in theory but in practice, that the moods of a mob are as unstable 
as water. 

''However, to answer your question properly, I must ask you one : 
when you speak of 'government by the Hohenzollerns', do you mean a 
government of devils, by devils? If so, my answer is that I greatly prefer 
our own or the present French system ! Or do you mean a government 
based upon the dynastic principle? because, if so, and if we are to 
discuss the matter intelligently, it is only fair that you should accept 
the government of Costa Rica as a typical republic." 

Our Visitor laughed. "Have it your own way," he said. 

"Very well," the Historian answered. "Then we will begin by asking 
ourselves. . ." 

"Pardon me," the Student interrupted, "but I think I foresee where 
you are wending, and before we leave the subject of government by com- 
mittee, I should like to read you a passage from The Adventures of 
Dunsterforce, by Major-General Dunsterville, who was in command of 
the small British force which worked its way during the war, from 
Bagdad, through Persia, to Baku on the Caspian Sea. General Dunster- 
ville, by the way, was the original, when a boy, of Kipling's Stalky. His 
adventures when in command of the 'Hush Hush Army', as it was called, 
are a fitting sequel to Kipling's story. . . When he arrived at Baku, 
it was his duty to keep out the Turks and the Germans by active co-opera- 
tion with some untrained Armenians, some Russian 'Reds', and a handful 
of disciplined Cossacks. 

"Dunsterville says : 'As an example of the behaviour of the Red 
Army troops I will relate an incident that resulted in the loss of one of 
our armoured cars at this time. Bicherakov ordered a reconnaissance to 
be carried out by one of his Cossack squadrons supported by a British 
armoured car. The party passed over a bridge which was held by a 
strong detachment of the Red Army, and they impressed on the com- 
mander of this detachment the importance of his post, as this bridge 
carried the road over an impassable nullah on their only line of with- 
drawal. The reconnoitering party carried out their duties and proceeded 
to withdraw. On arrival at the bridge they found that it was in the 
hands of the Turks. The Cossack cavalry put up a very good fight in 
the endeavour to regain possession, and to cover the withdrawal of the 
armoured car, but the effort did not succeed; the cavalry suffered very 
heavy losses, and the armoured car fell into the hands of the Turks. One 
cannot help smiling at the idea of troops in action leaving their posts to 
attend political meetings, but these comic incidents -have tragic endings, 



180 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

and in this case the amusing behaviour of the Red Army soldiers meant 
the lives of many brave men and the loss of the armoured car. When 
freedom is carried to the extent of permitting men to leave their military 
duties during the progress of an action, war becomes impossible. 

" This is the first example of such failure of duty recorded in the 
history of this campaign, but it will not be the last. We soon learnt that 
such conduct was the rule and not the exception.' 

"That is all. Trotzky, Lenine, et al., have thrown off the mask since 
then. The Black Lodge has never been accused of brainlessness. It 
uses Democracy, which spells confusion, as a stepping-stone. It was 
used in Russia for that purpose. Trotzky and Lenine, willing tools, 
forced their way up through their native slime and chaos until they 
made themselves despots. The Czar, theoretically, was a despot. But 
he was among the very best of his people. He was so much too good 
for the majority of them that they revolted. God usually gives us what 
we deserve! Russia reaps what it sowed. It murdered. It reaped 
Trotzky and Lenine. It is still reaping murder, a huge harvest." 

There was a pause. The Student turned to the Historian. 
"Again I apologize for my interruption," he said. "Please tell us what 
you were going to say. Our Visitor has to leave before long. When I 
broke in, you . . ." 

"I had intended to suggest," the Historian responded, "that an essen- 
tial preliminary to finding out whether a ship is steering a right course, 
is to know her destination. What, then, is the destination of peoples 
and of governments ? Also, from what very different ports are those very 
different vessels sailing? With perfect respect academically at least 
for those who insisted that men gave their lives in the war that the world 
be made safe for democracy, I should like to point out that if we describe 
our common destination as x, a steamship starting from New York, and a 
sailing vessel starting from Bombay or Alexandria, cannot properly steer 
the same course. Further, the course they are steering must depend 
necessarily, to some exent, upon what stage of their journey they have 
reached. Considerations such as these would be regarded as trivial, I 
fear, by those who would apply the Constitution of the United States 
as a plaster to cover the heads of all mankind. All I can say is that, 
as a passenger on one of those ships, I should feel more comfortable if 
the Soviet in command would condescend to take these practical 
'trivialities' into account. 

"Assuming that you, however, will accept my fundamental proposi- 
tion, namely, that the question of destination must first be answered, I 
shall next have to ask you what you think our western world means 
when it prays as all sects pray 'Thy Kingdom come' ?" 

"It doesn't mean anything," the Visitor answered. (He has an 
honest mind. Some day he will make a good member of The Theosophical 
Society). 

"I am afraid you are right," said the Historian. "But let me ask 



SCREEN OF TIME 181 

you this : what is the petition, 'Thy Kingdom come', supposed to mean ?" 

"I believe," said the Visitor, "that when people give it any signifi- 
cance at all, most of them mean by those words, 'May all that is nice 
about God, come into the world: the peace and the comforts and fair 
weather of His Kingdom'; and I think they would add, if they knew 
enough, 'But I hope He won't interfere'. However, there must be 
many besides myself whose interpretation is different, and who try 
sincerely to pray that Christ will rule over us, and over his world, just 
as he rules already in heaven." 

'That," said the Historian, "as I think you know, would be the 
theosophical interpretation, except that Theosophy would be more specific. 
For instance : how does Christ reign in his heaven, or, to be still more 
specific, how does he reign in the Lodge? What is the method of gov- 
ernment in the Lodge? By the term 'Lodge', you will understand, we 
mean that great brotherhood of the elect, who, from all races and in all 
ages, have struggled upward from selfishness to selflessness, from 
imperfection toward perfection, and, in some cases, to perfection itself. 
Those who have attained completely who are perfect in love, in wisdom, 
in power we speak of as Masters, though they speak of themselves as 
the Brothers. Above the greatest whom the world has known, there 
are others, even greater. Thus, when Christ spoke of his Father, he 
referred sometimes to God, or to the Logos, and sometimes to his 
spiritual Father in the Lodge, to a great Master to whom Christ 
himself looked up. Remember, please, that there can be no finality in 
the universe; that there can be no entity of whom it may be said, 'He 
is the last, the greatest, the furthest : there is nothing beyond Him/ 
Philosophically, that would imply finality, limitation; and there can be 
no limitation within the Absolute, or, for that matter, within the universe, 
once you grant, as I think you must, that the universe itself is 
infinite . . . 

"So, within the Lodge, within the great Brotherhood made up of 
the world's sages and saints and adepts, there are men and women who 
differ widely in spiritual attainment, from those who have but just 
crossed the threshold and who still are struggling upwards, to those who 
reached 'the terrace of enlightenment' in manvantaras preceding our own. 
In other words, the Lodge is an aristocracy, based upon spiritual 
attainment." 

"Could you use some other word?" broke in the Student, rather 
anxiously. "You know what prejudice there is against the idea of an 
aristocracy." 

"People who read the QUARTERLY/' the Historian answered, "are. 
supposed to be open-minded, and if the Recorder intends to use this 
conversation in the "Screen of Time", I shall be obliged if he will use 
my term. It is a perfectly wholesome word ! It is derived from 
two Greek words, as I remember it, from aristos, best, and kratos, rule. 
It means, therefore, 'rule by the best', or, as dictionaries translate it, 



182 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

'government by nobles'. Very well : the Lodge is governed by its noblest. 
Have you any objection to that?" 

"I gather," smiled the Visitor, "that an objection, if one were to 
object, would not greatly affect the fact !" 

The Historian laughed. "I admire your resignation," he said; "or 
in any case your philosophic calm in the face of anything so subversive 
. Aristocracy let it be, then. But a brotherhood too, the only 
true brotherhood. 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity', is a reality in the 
Lodge, and nowhere else. For see how the world perverts, by psychic 
inversion, the truth within every reality, within every ideal. In the 
Lodge, aristocracy means government by the best, by the noblest, with 
the willing, loving, adoring consent of the younger and less perfect. You 
can imagine it, can at least try to do so. Assume that Ananda, the 
beloved disciple of Gautama Buddha; that St. Paul and many Christian 
saints ; that Madame H. P. Blavatsky and hosts of others each of them 
looking to his own Master ; imagine them all there, with but one thought, 
to love and to serve. Think, on the one hand, of how they would 
rush to obey, and, on the other hand, of the perfect fellowship, of the 
complete 'equality', which would exist between them, the desire of one 
and all, that the least shall be as the greatest. Think, if you will, of the 
love, yes, even the reverence of some Master for one of his disciples, 
a mere child, perhaps, in the spiritual sense, who had fought nobly, and 
who, in spite of suffering, in spite of darkness, in spite of defeat, had 
loyally, faithfully, valiantly fought on. Yes, there is such a thing as 
spiritual equality. You see it in an ideal family, between parents and 
children. But the blind world, following the lead of blind poets and 
of philosophers still blinder; following the lead, finally, of demagogues 
and devils, has seized that spiritual fact to reinforce its own egotism, 
its own self-assertion, and, to the tune of 'Liberty, Equality, and 
Fraternity', has produced . . ." 

" Tammany," interjected the Student. 

"Yes, Tammany; but worse than that, inasmuch as Tammany is 
merely a surface indication of a deep-seated disease. And the world has 
treated the ideal of aristocracy in exactly the same way, misusing it, 
when it has used it, until Germany at last dragged it so low that it dis- 
appeared from human ken." 

"Did Germany do that, or did the Hohenzollerns ?" questioned our 
Visitor. 

"Germany made the Hohenzollerns. The Hohenzollerns did not 
make Germany. They must have interacted, the one upon the other ; but 
the Hohenzollerns undoubtedly were the horrible efflorescence of their 
race : they were the answer of Karma to the German desire." 

"I can see, dimly, what you mean by equality in the Lodge," con- 
tinued the Visitor, questioningly ; "but I do not see how liberty can 
co-exist with autocratic power, which I assume your great Masters would 
possess." 



SCREEN OF TIME 183 

"Liberty," answered the Historian ; "why, there is the most perfect 
liberty imaginable. The doors of heaven are not barred behind the 
conquerors who enter. They can resign! Seriously, those who are there, 
when not yet perfect, are in danger always of being exiled by the force 
of resurgent sin. But in that case, they are their own executioners. 
They become unlike, and automatically cease to share the Lodge con- 
sciousness. Remember, please, that the greater the Master, the more 
perfect his obedience, and that the spirit of disobedience would inevitably 
create expulsion. 

"But now, if I may, I should like to go back to our main topic. I 
have told you what I believe to be the destination of human development, 
namely, the Lodge. Much, of course, remains to be said, for the Lodge 
is not a single cell organism, but is made up of East and West, and of 
sub-divisions of these. Both the active and the contemplative life are 
represented. The Lodge is a hierarchical system, capable of infinite 
expansion." 

"You mean, then/' said the Visitor, "that instead of evolving toward 
an undetermined, because as yet unattained, goal, we are being guided 
toward a condition which many individuals of all races have already 
attained ?" 

"Exactly," the Historian answered. 

"I must say that whether true or false, it is a marvellous, a fas- 
cinating conception . . . Do you mean that nations are being guided 
in the same way, toward the same goal?" 

"We do," the Historian answered. "On what other basis can you 
account for the facts of history? Nations grow as individuals grow, 
and are actuated by the same motives. The theory of economic necessity, 
as accounting for all the movements of races, and for the passions, 
heroisms, and sacrifices of national life, has utterly been discredited, 
except as a contributing factor. The philosophy of history remains to 
be written. The life of a nation, in some cases, is the effort of the Lodge 
to lead that nation toward discipleship. In other cases, when that effort 
would be futile, the Lodge may attempt to merge the best of one nation 
with the best of another, in the hope that the commixture will be less 
barren of spiritual fruit than when the two had separate existence. In 
still other cases, destruction may be the only remedy. But in all cases, 
the goal of national life is the same as that of the individual, the mani- 
festation of the soul by the perfecting of character. 

"Once more, though, let us go back to our main topic. Let us ask 
ourselves, with our destination now clearly in mind, whether we can 
foresee any of the intermediate .steps, which nations must take, before 
they can hope to reach their goal and to enter fully into the consciousness 
of the Lodge. 

"To foresee, we must look back, not only to history but to tradition. 
Then we must use analogy, asking ourselves, in this case, through what 
stages of government a man passes, first, within himself, and, secondly, 



184 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

in his recognition of spiritual authority as it exists outside of himself. 
But to cover that ground adequately, would take hours. This afternoon I 
can suggest the result only of my own study. We should have to consider 
the whole method of evolution, as Theosophy explains it : the descent of 
spirit into matter, until innocence becomes self-conscious, spirit 
reascending, with the self-consciousness it has gained, to greater heights 
than it descended from, together with those elements of matter which 
it has transformed and glorified. We should have to consider the life 
of men and of nations in that light, tracing both the gain and the loss, 
the loss of primitive innocence, of primitive vision (for men then saw 
the high gods walking in their midst), and the gain of increasing self- 
knowledge and self-dependence. Incidentally, if we were to study our 
subject thoroughly, we should have to read the works of Renouvier, who, 
of all writers on the philosophy of history, seems to have come nearest 
to the theosophical interpretation. 

"Then, reaching backward beyond the historical period, we should 
have to investigate tradition, with the result that everywhere we should 
find traces of Adept Kings, and of 'gods' who dwelt among men, instruct- 
ing, guiding, governing this nation or that, adored by their people for 
the noble work they did. 

"I cannot even touch on the analogy of our own spiritual experience, 
and on what we can learn of progressive methods of government from 
that. There is the primitive obedience of babyhood, of innocence; there 
is the revolt, the self-assertion, the 'democracy' of youth; there is the 
anarchy and Bolshevism of some lives, and, in others, there is the 
voluntary obedience to spiritual guidance, culminating, when discipleship 
is reached, in conscious obedience to a living Master . . . You 
can work that out for yourself. 

"So far as tradition is concerned which I accept, when it is 
universal, as being at least as valid as history we must look for a 
return, on a higher plane, of that which used to be. We must expect in 
the future a repetition of that which was, though greatly modified, of 
course, by added experience and self-consciousness. Instead of the 
vision of innocence, there will be direct and related perception. Progress, 
being subject to cyclic law, passes up a spiral, as it were, after the fashion 
of a cork-screw. We do not return to the same place, as Nietzsche and 
others have wrongly argued. We return to a similiar place, on a higher 
level of attainment. 

"We may look, therefore, for an actual coming of Christ's kingdom, 
on earth as now in heaven, though I confess that it seems a very long 
way off, because I do not believe he will come until he is wanted. Prior 
to his coming, however, we may look for an organized effort to induce 
his coming; we may look for centuries of preparation by those who 
know him and love him and who long for his advent. We may look 
also for a period, preceding his next incarnation, when the world, or 
the western world in any case, will be governed by a group of his 



SCREEN OF TIME 185 

disciples, as kings, consciously co-operating, and presided over, I suspect, 
by an Emperor (I believe, Emperor of France), so as to prepare the 
world for the real reign, the real glory, the real consummation, which 
will follow." 

The Historian was deeply moved. He spoke quietly, but it was easy 
to see that the day of that far-off kingdom was the consuming passion 
of his heart. 

"I do not like to speak about it," he said, "because men make faces. 
They do not understand him, that great one. Mention his name, and 
while some sneer, others try to look pious. He is everything, rapture 
itself, and the source of it. He is the soul of every poet ; the vision of 
every artist. He is the hidden beauty in light and in shadow, the joy 
of life, and its end . . . Some day they will know, but not yet, not 
yet." 

It was the Objector who brought him back to earth. (Our Visitor 
remained silent, slightly bewildered, but disturbed, impressed.) 

"You are not suggesting, I trust, that, as a preliminary, we should 
turn the United States from a republic into a kingdom, and that God 
should appoint Mayor Hylan, or some other American nobleman, to act 
as our first king? I should hate to have to emigrate." 

"No, that is not my suggestion," the Historian answered serenely. 
"And, to be frank with you, I simply cannot imagine how this country 
could at any time become other than it is, constitutionally or otherwise." 

"Perhaps it is to persist as an Awful Warning," the Objector 
countered. 

"I hope not, but you can never tell ! ... In any case, I have 
not been trying to suggest a next step for any country, certainly not 
for our own. I have been attempting to show the absurdity of treating 
a make-shift as if it were an ideal. Democracy is in no sense an ideal. 
It is a stepping-stone, and, presumably, as things now are, in certain cases 
it is a necessary stepping-stone. Even in those cases, however, it need 
not and should not be used as a seat, much less as a bed. Apart from 
other considerations, as a bed it is wretchedly uncomfortable! On the 
other hand, as I have said, I have no political or constitutional programme 
for this country; no idea what its next stepping-stone should be. Until 
it is converted, I doubt whether it greatly matters what form of govern- 
ment it has. And I suspect that is true, more or less, of all the western 
peoples. In Europe, of course, aristocracy still exists as a form. No 
matter how decadent, how unworthy of its name, there is something 
there to reform. Here, there is nothing to reform, except the mob, 
and to reform a mob is about as easy as to reform the winds." 

"What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed the Objector. 

"No, I am not. On the contrary, I am deeply optimistic. I believe 
in magic, in miracles, in the omnipotence of love, in all the things which 
make optimism possible and pessimism impossible. But however that 



186 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

may be, please understand" turning to our Visitor "that I have been 
speaking for myself only: in no sense for The Theosophical Society or 
for the QUARTERLY/' 

"I am grateful to you in any case," the Visitor replied. And then 
he left, having told us beforehand of an appointment, which he was going 
to keep, he said, as his first essay in Theosophy! 

When we were alone together for the Objector had left too the 
Student told us that he had received a letter, asking for suggestions 
about prayer. Without mentioning names, he described the character 
and circumstances of his correspondent, and asked for our advice. 

"I would tell him first," volunteered the Philosopher, "that the motive 
of his prayer is more important than its form, or than the objective which 
his prayer sets forth. For instance: I have a letter or an article to 
write. I pray for light, for guidance. Now the real value of the prayer, 
as I see it, depends upon whether I want guidance for myself for my 
own protection or preservation or reputation, or whether I want really 
to step aside, to obliterate myself and my own interests, that the Master 
may speak as he wills, for his purposes. We should watch ourselves 
ceaselessly for that difference of motive." 

"I agree with you," said the Neophyte, "but I would tell him also 
that he will not have mastered the meaning of prayer until, step at a 
time, adding hour to hour, he succeeds at last in transforming his habitual 
conversations with himself the back and forth talk of his own mind 
into habitual conversation with the Master. To do this, he must use 
recollection, imagination, will. He must not strain, but must imagine, 
creatively, what the Master would say to him. As he does this, he 
will find before long that he has pierced through to reality, for he will 
have provided a channel along which the Master's thought can travel." 

"All true," commented the Ancient. "But do not forget faith. I 
doubt if many of us realize the dynamic power it has. Certainly, without 
it, nothing can be moved, not even your own hand by your own will. 
You must believe it can move to make movement possible." 

"Do you remember," added the Student finally, "do you remember 
the appeal of the Gael on this same subject, shortly before he went to 
Europe? I cannot quote his words, but you will recall in any case his 
complaint that Anglo-Saxons have so little faith; and then was it not? 
'Children of the Dawn, children of the Dawn, have faith ! Prayers 
never go unanswered. Pray for what you want, and what He needs 
will be given you. Pray and keep on praying, though no dew fall from 
heaven and though earth give torment and no more. He hears. With 
heart wide open to receive (was it not pierced!), he waits till brave 
persistence, till heroic faith, have given him the clay for miracles. And 
then, miracles happen ! When darkness is worst, the messengers of 
light appear. Magic is made manifest. The whole world is changed. 
. . . But without faith, ye can do nothing'." T. 




Laotzu's Tao and IVu Wei, Dwight Goddard and Henri Borel. Brentano's, 
New York, $1.25. 

We have only one criticism of this admirable little book, and may as well 
begin with it: The title is misleading. It gives the impression that there are two 
books by Lao Tse, and that we have translations of them. But there is, in reality, 
only one book by the Chinese sage, the Tao-Teh-King ; while the second part of 
this volume is a modern, romantic interpretation of Lao Tse's philosophy by Henri 
Borel, who has put it into dialogue form, roughly following, one may say, the model 
of the Bhagavad Gita. Therefore we have, in Henri Borel's study, first the 
approach to the Master; then the entering of the disciple into the spirit of the 
Master ; and finally the disciple's return to outer work. As a title for this fine piece 
of work, Henri Borel has chosen two words which are characteristic of Lao Tse: 
Wu Wei, literally, "No Work," indicating the idea of detachment exactly as set 
forth at the beginning of the third book of the Bhagavad Gita : "Not by withhold- 
ing from works does a man reach freedom from works," and so forth. 

In this modern dialogue on Lao Tse's philosophy, there are passages of great 
beauty, such as this : 

"There shines in each one of us the inextinguishable light of the soul. . . . 
The eternal Tao dwells in all. . . . All bear within them an indestructible 
treasure. . . . " 

And in general one may say that Henri Borel has given a true and worthy 
interpretation of Lao Tse, though it is deeply tinged with the Western spirit. 

The first half of this composite book is a translation of the Tao-Teh-King, 
and, so far as we can judge, an excellent one, which sticks very close to the text 
and, at the same time, expresses its spirit both in depth of thought and in excel- 
lence of style. 

But, good as the text is, we feel under almost greater obligations to Mr. 
Goddard for the Introduction, which begins : 

"I love Laotzu! That is the reason I offer another interpretative translation. 
. I want you to appreciate this wise and kindly old man, and come to love 
him. . . . " 

Of great value and truth is this passage concerning the meaning of Tao: 

"Although for two thousand years he has been misunderstood and derided, 
to-day the very best of scientific and philosophic thought, which gathers about 
what is known as Vitalism, is in full accord with Laotzu's idea of the Tao. Every 
reference that is made to-day to a Cosmic Urge, Vital Impulse, and Creative 
Principle can be said of the Tao. Everything that can be said of Plato's Ideas and 
Forms and of Cosmic Love, as being the creative expression of God, can be said of 
the Tao. When Christian scholars came to translate the Logos of St. John, they 
were satisfied to use the word 'Tao.' " C. J. 



The Gist of S^vedenborg, by Julian K. Smyth and William F. Wunsch, is a 
compilation in a hundred pages of salient thoughts of the mystic philosopher, 
giving in brief form all that is best in his thirty-odd volumes. Bearing in mind 



187 



188 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Madame Blavatsky's caution that, though "his clairvoyant powers were very 
remarkable," nevertheless, "they did not go beyond this plane of matter" [Sweden- 
borg saw the inhabitants of Mars dressed as modern Europeans] ; and again, "all 
that he says of subjective worlds and spiritual beings is evidently far more the 
outcome of his exuberant fancy, than of his spiritual insight" (Glossary'), mem- 
bers of the Society will find much that is intuitive, suggestive, and even brilliant in 
this compilation. In view of the recrudescence of interest in Swedenborg, which 
bears fruit in numerous biographies and translations of his works, and in the 
erection of an imposing cathedral near Philadelphia, a summary of his teaching is 
particularly timely. His more extravagant phases are not included, as the book is 
obviously intended to attract the average unthinking Christian. It is, therefore, 
Swedenborg at his best. That best may, perhaps, be appreciated by the following 
excerpts : 

"Those who love their country, and from goodwill do good to it, after death 
love the Lord's kingdom, for this is their country there; and they who love the 
Lord's kingdom, love the Lord, for He is the All in all of His Kingdom." 

"The only faith that endures with man springs from heavenly love. Those 
without love have knowledge merely, or persuasion. Just to believe in truth and 
in the Word is not faith. Faith is to love truth, and to will and do it from inward 
affection for it." 

"It is the mind which makes another and a new man. The change of state 
cannot be perceived in man's body, but in his spirit." 

"The Church at large consists of the men who have the Church in them." 

MARION HALE. 

Benedictine Monachism, by the Right Rev. Cuthbert Butler, Abbot of Down- 
side Abbey; published by Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co., $6.50. 

By readers of the QUARTERLY who are familiar with several articles in past 
issues on the Benedictines and St. Benedict's Rule, this volume will be welcomed 
and prized. It is one of the most interesting books the reviewer has ever read. 
The learned author is so much the master of his many subjects, that each chapter 
of the twenty -two, devoted to some special characteristic of ancient or modern 
Benedictine life, or to a discussion and interpretation of the Rule, is the synthesis 
at once of a wide and of a profound study, giving the reader the fruits of a mature 
judgment and ripened scholarship. Indeed, the Benedictine tradition of thorough- 
ness in scholarship is exemplified afresh; and the forty years which Father Butler 
has spent as a Benedictine, bear witness by their fruits to the soundness of that 
venerable institution to-day. 

There is practically no inquiry about St. Benedict, his Rule, its inception and 
development through fifteen hundred years; or about the history of the Order, its 
offshoots, its effects on European history, and its contributions to European civili- 
zation and culture, which does not receive masterly treatment. Perhaps the most 
original contribution is a chapter on "The Benedictine Idea in the Centuries" in 
which the candid admission is made of "the mediaeval presentation of Benedictine 
life", that, "nothing else can be said than that it was a complete transformation of 
the manner of life planned by St. Benedict at Monte Cassino. ... It was 
more. It was a reversal of one of the things he deliberately did in his reconstruc- 
tion of Western monachism" (pp. 198-199). St. Benedict did not conceive an 
"Order", in the sense of a hierarchical organization of religious, bound by vows, 
and devoted to some special type of life or function in Church polity, as repre- 
sented by the Franciscans or the Jesuits. St. Benedict founded "a school of the 
service of God", which, it is pointed out, is not even "a school of perfection", the 
latter implying a different point of view. No, St. Benedict, along with St. Gregory 
the Great and St. Bernard, was true to a type which was "Western", in contradis- 
tinction to "Eastern". They represented "a mysticism purely spiritual, of a 



REVIEWS 189 

simplicity equal to its elevation" (p. 91), "non-philosophical, being unaffected by 
the neo-Platonism that preceded it, or the scholasticism that followed it. . . . It 
is purely objective, empirical" (p. 90). In two valuable chapters, Father Butler 
expands "Benedictine Mysticism" and "Benedictine Life Contemplative", pointing 
out that whereas, outside the Benedictine tradition, most mysticism in the West 
was really Eastern or Scholastic, with St. Benedict one finds the truly original 
Western contribution to mystical experience a valuable distinction which the 
author promises to develop in a forthcoming book to be entitled Western 
Mysticism. Properly understood, again, a "contemplative" life is not that of 
Cassian's early Egyptian hermit-recluse, as imagined by the layman to-day, and as 
exemplified only by the Calmaldolese and Carthusians. Nor is it the "contemplative 
concentration" of "the Eastern mind as ordinarily constituted even to this day, be 
it Buddhist, Brahmin, or Mohomedan", which is "rarely met with among West- 
erns" (p. 96). It is the "mixed life", the life lived by Christ on earth, in its per- 
fection. St. Benedict's "only conception of a contemplative life is one in which 
active good works hold a considerable, and even, in point of time, a preponderant 
place ; but in which for all that, the effort to exercise also the works of the contem- 
plative life is kept habitually in operation" (p. 99). Again: "St. Gregory did not 
look on contemplation as a nearly superhuman thing, one of the rarest graces. On 
the contrary, he believed it to be within the reach of all men of goodwill who give 
themselves seriously to prayer and keep due guard upon their hearts" (p. 100). 

It is impossible in the compass of a review to do justice to the many excel- 
lences of this volume, or even to catalogue points of special interest. The reader 
is urged to seek those out for himself. One error, however, we feel called upon to 
notice. In the chapter on Mysticism, preparing for his definition of the word, 
which has "a good and a bad" meaning, the author classes "spiritualism and 
hypnotic phenomena, theosophy and 'Christian Science'" together. Like so many 
others, Father Butler seems totally unaware of the fact that there is Theosophy, 
as apart from a theosophy which he does know and which he rightly denominates 
"a counterfeit of religion": Theosophy, which is not an "ism", but which is pre- 
cisely what St. Paul meant when he spoke of Christ, Theou Sophia, the Wisdom 
of God ; and which we venture to suggest is the ideal and wisdom striven for, alike 
by St. Benedict and by Father Butler himself. A. G. 



ANSWERS 




QUESTION No. 246 (Continued). Will you kindly define the following terms: 
"Higher and lower psychism"; "Occultism and pseudo-occultism". 

ANSWER. I have been asked to add a word to the two answers already contrib- 
uted to this question. 

I would agree that psychism, as that term is generally used, could be defined 
"as all forms of lower mental activity, reasonings, imagination, emotions, etc."; but 
when the distinctions between higher and lower psychism are sought, such a defini- 
tion runs the danger of being misleading. Owing to the Law of Correspondences 
("as above, so below"), the psychic world, strictly speaking, could not be confined 
to the lower mental and emotional planes. The higher realms must also possess 
that which is the equivalent on their own planes. Light on the Path makes the 
distinction clear in the use of the word astral; and higher and lower astral is but 
another way of saying higher and lower psychic, though astral is more often used 
to designate the realm, and psychic to designate the faculty. These terms, how- 
ever, owing to the fact that the users rarely understand what they are talking 
about, are too loosely employed for any such distinction, as I have just made, to 
hold beyond a certain limited point of suggestion. 

I would define the psychic world as the world of reflection; and the psychic 
individual as one who sees the reflection of something, or sees by a reflected light, 
instead of beholding directly. We may see an object in a mirror, and if the mirror 
be true and clean, we may see that object accurately; only, we must always make 
allowance for the fact that everything is reversed. If the mirror be cracked, dis- 
torted, covered with dust or mud, we are likely to have very dim and inaccurate, if 
not seriously misleading pictures. Also we may see an object by moonlight. The 
object is there and we see it; the facts are beyond question. Yet equally true is it 
that the same object, beheld in broad daylight, wears an entirely different aspect, 
so different, often, as to seem another object altogether. No man questions, how- 
ever, in which circumstance the object has been truly discerned. These matters of 
everyday experience furnish us with simple clues. 

If the objection be raised that, in the spiritual world, reflection cannot exist 
an objection which I have heard I would venture to suggest what seems to me the 
faulty metaphysics of such an attitude. Surely the higher the plane the greater its 
inclusiveness, since Unity is the ultimate; and therefore in the higher planes we 
must of necessity find all that is contained in the lower planes, transfigured from 
things of sense to things of spirit, from things of ugliness to things of beauty, 
from things of decay to things of immortality, the perversions redeemed to their 
original purity and purpose. Postulate God as the one Reality, and Unity as the 
ultimate, as does Theosophy, and I do not see how the objection can hold. Reflec- 
tion is not perversion in esse, and must exist at every point of duality, short of the 
final Absolute in which duality is lost. This last, however, is a condition which we 
can postulate, though by no means conceive. The highest reaches of the imagina- 
tion barely touch its possibilities, but from these shadowy filaments we sense the 
mystery and awe of its all-comprehensiveness. 

In the higher psychic world the reflection is pure and direct. Allowing always 
for reversal, what is seen is accurate. So, too, the higher psychic individual has a 
clean and perfect mirror. But it is in a mirror that he sees. The thing in itself 

ISO 



QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 191 

he does not see ; indeed his back must be turned upon it, more or less, for purposes 
of seeing. The psychic sees always not merely "through", but into, "a glass"; and 
"darkly" or not, as his psychic faculty be pure or otherwise, according to his own 
purity. 

A little consideration of this, and its many implications, will help to clear any 
misconceptions in the mind. All that science has determined regarding the use of 
mirrors, and the reflection and refraction of light in connection with them, etc., 
can be advantageously investigated by those wishing really to pursue the subject; 
and in these days of extreme psychic refraction and confusion, such research would 
well repay the time and effort expended. 

In the higher psychic realms, only that which is in and of higher psychic 
realms can be reflected. The circle "Pass not" protects it from contamination with 
everything not of equal purity of essence. To the lower psychic individual these 
upper realms are dark; only the back of the mirror can be seen, and that forms 
the roof of his sky. Therefore the lower psychic world reflects what is of the 
lower worlds alone, and the lower psychic individual sees nothing outside of them, 
no matter what he may fancy, or what names he may use. 

To behold both worlds as they are, is the peculiar privilege of the spiritual 
seer. Spiritual vision is like a great beam of light which flashes up or down as 
does a powerful searchlight. Being of the nature of the highest spiritual planes, 
it has the force of those planes, and therefore no lower plane can obstruct it. The 
spiritual seer is he who possesses this faculty of vision. He may possess much or 
he may possess little; he may have deep undertanding of what he sees, or he may 
have as yet acquired but slight understanding of it. The distinction between him- 
self and the higher psychic is not one of degree, but of quality. The higher psychic 
may see a great deal, but he only sees reflections, and so can never be sure, the 
least breath of wind may alter the whole picture. The spiritual seer may not yet 
have acquired the power to see much, but what he sees will be the thing in itself, 
and so he can be sure. Also the Master's light can reinforce him, which in the 
case of the psychic would be impossible, for the Master's light would shatter his 
mirror. 

There is an interesting consideration in this connection. Such powerful light 
must act as a disintegrating force on lower forms of substance, and less ethereal 
combinations of elements and atoms. A man to possess any of this force, must 
therefore to a safe extent partake of its nature. Also to be flooded with this light, 
as it might come to him from the Lodge or from his own Master, or even from a 
highly developed fellow-student, would involve grave dangers for him, and we can 
see from this the need for much withholding on the part of those above us, much 
shading and tempering. Were we, in our impure and undeveloped condition, to 
stand in the ray of that light, disintegration of all save the original germ of divine 
life would instantaneously occur. God in mercy withholds knowledge and power, 
insisting that we shall become as "little children," and be led step by step. This 
represents not merely our only hope of attainment, but our only hope of survival. 
Should we push ourselves, by the force of our own wills, into the direct field of 
that light (an attainment, difficult indeed, but by no means impossible), instant 
extinction would ensue of all that constitutes conscious individuality. 

Experiments in the use of various kinds of light in the treatment of disease, 
poisonous growths, etc., show us also the curative powers of that spiritual light 
when administered to the diseases of our souls. This is our major profit in the 
confession of our sins to those in spiritual authority (by which I mean, of course, 
those possessing this spiritual power), and above all when we lay our hearts bare 
before our Master. His spiritual vision, considering with wisely adjusted power 
the deadly growths and poisons' within us, disintegrates and withers them. All 
disciples, therefore, who have attained the rank of Apostles, or even are priests 
in fact, have the power to "heal the sick", for they cannot have attained this rank 



192 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

without having acquired the faculty of spiritual vision to a definite degree. It is 
not touch that heals, but vision. Touch is often used as a medium, but the healing 
power does not exist in the touch, but in the light behind it. 

I should like to make another minor suggestion. On the physical plane, how- 
ever perfect a man's sight, however much he may see, there is one object he can 
never behold save by reflection, and that is himself. From which we may deduce 
that in his consideration of himself in his own mind, he can never see himself save 
psychically. How much of our self-assurance and self-assertiveness would be 
corrected, could the full significance of this fact be borne in upon us, could we once 
realize that hardly anyone has so imperfect a view of us, as we ourselves I 

Furthermore, if the common facts of daily experience were studied in this 
way, if they were taken as symbols of inner truths, and hints for guidance in the 
inner life, how much of information we should gain to the profit of our souls! 

CAVE. 

QUESTION No. 247. / have heard it said that we must not let our attitude* 
toward life become "flattened out" and grey, but that at the same time we must 
exercise restraint. I think a great many people feel that the two things are incom- 
patible that restraint necessarily results in "flattening out" What is wrong in 
such a case is it the kind of restraint that is exercised, or a wrong reaction of the 
person restrained, or both? 

ANSWER. It is the restraint of the levees along its banks that keeps the 
Mississippi a deep river and prevents it from flattening itself out in innumerable 
swamps along its course. It is the same with a man. If he fail to restrain his 
innumerable desires, all his force will run out into them and leave him utterly flat 
and impotent. Restraint stops the leaks. There can never be power without it. 

That part of us which we restrain, our lower nature, is very likely to feel 
"flattened" out and to raise a great clamour about it. The trouble is that we permit 
ourselves to be deceived by these wailing voices into identifying ourselves with 
them and feeling that ive are flattened out. The remedy is right self-identification. 

J. F. B. M. 

ANSWER. The questioner is right. Restraint does flatten one out because it is 
so often merely negative. We restrain our desires and put nothing in their place. 
The result is a void and there is nothing flatter than a void. It is the old case of 
the man from whom a devil was cast. Seven devils returned and filled the 
void. People are afraid to follow their intuition because it may be mistaken. They 
are afraid to go by the past because they do not want to harden themselves against 
progress. They will not act because they are afraid of making a mistake. The 
result is that life does become grey and flat. What is needed is a purpose. One 
thing should be restrained in order that something else may be put in its place. It 
should be a positive process, not a negative one. If a man says to himself all day, 
"I will not think evil thoughts, I will not think evil thoughts," he is keeping his 
mind on evil thoughts and getting nowhere. If he says, "I will think good thoughts 
and will reject anything incompatible with good thoughts," he has a chance for 
success. Y. 

NOTICE 
CHANGE OF ADDRESS 

All mail intended for Mrs. Gregg personally, as well as that for the Secretary's 
Office, should be sent hereafter to P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York. Mrs. Gregg 
is residing no longer at 159 Warren Street, Brooklyn. 

A NEW EDITION 

The Quarterly Book Department has brought out a new edition of Through th* 
Gates of Gold, price $1.20. This book is recommended as preparation for the study 
of Light on the Path. 




JANUARY, 1921 

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

THEOSOPHY, SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

THEOSOPHY, Divine Wisdom, is the Spirit of Reconciliation, 
working harmony. It first establishes the divine balance in us, 
leading the activities of body and mind into harmony with the 
spiritual nature, and then, through immemorial ages, bringing 
harmony among men and the races of men, by infusing all with the 
Holy Spirit of God. 

During the last thirty or forty years, there have been few causes 
of inner disharmony more poignant, and more charged with pain, than 
what is called the "conflict between religion and science;" which is, in 
fact, the contest between the external mind, with its account of the 
universe, and the interior spirit, with its account of the universe. And 
perhaps there is no field in which Theosophy has been more completely 
successful than in this, neither sacrificing religion to science nor science 
to religion, but working harmony between them, giving each its true 
development in the light of Divine Wisdom. 

We have a recent echo of that earlier conflict in a large pamphlet 
bearing the title: "The Great Question of the Day, Creation versus 
Evolution, for the first time brought prominently before the world of 
science and theology alike, and overwhelmingly defended in favor of a 
Creative Interference; A Study in recent Anthropology." The subtitle, 
which, in its fulness, suggests the fashion of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, reads : "A series of three articles on the physical, mental 
and moral arguments for a direct creation of man by supernatural 
Agency, embodying the latest scientific discoveries." The author is Dr. 
Philo Laos Mills, and the pamphlet bears the Imprimatur of Cardinal 
Gibbons, who writes thus to Dr. Mills : 

"In view of the deplorable havoc that is being wrought in our midst 
by the godless evolutionism and materialism of the day, I cannot but 
welcome most cordially your valuable contribution on the opposite side. 
Personally I am convinced that the days of Darwinism are numbered. 



13 



193 



194 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Any science that will serve to show that man was created in the image 
and likeness of the Almighty cannot but merit the highest commendation 
of every sincere and right-minded thinker. May God bless you in your 
noble undertaking and secure the widest publicity for your excellent 
work." 

Dr. Mills, in all likelihood without being conscious of it, has, in 
his main argument and in many of his views, gone a long way towards 
the positions that were taken up in The Secret Doctrine, published 
thirty-two years ago; he reiterates many of the criticisms of Darwinism 
there set forth, especially where Darwin's theory deals with man ; and he 
reaches conclusions which, while not going as far as those of The Secret 
Doctrine, nevertheless tend strongly in the same direction. 

It will, therefore, be of value and of interest to indicate the con- 
clusions and arguments of Dr. Mills, and, further, to suggest, at several 
points, the way in which The Secret Doctrine rounds out his conclusions. 

In the Synopsis of the Argument, Dr. Mills states his major 
proposition thus : 

"It is certain that the earliest types of man are enormously 
separated from any of the simian types and are followed by a slowly 
degenerating or semi-pithecoid type of which the modern 'savage' and 
the buried remains furnish many examples." 

We shall come presently to the minor premiss and the conclusion. 
First, let us see how Dr. Mills establishes his major premiss. 

He rests much of the purely physical side of his case on the broken 
remnants of the "Piltdown skull," the history of which is as follows : 
In the autumn of 1911, Mr. Charles Dawson discovered these fragments 
in the lower stratum of a flint-bearing gravel overlying the Wealden 
formation (the Hastings Beds) at Piltdown, near Fletching, in Sussex, 
England. This gravel stratum is a part of the former bed of the river 
Ouse, which flows into the English Channel a few miles east of Brighton ; 
but, since this gravel was laid down, the Ouse has cut its channel some 
eighty feet below that level, giving an index of the long spaces of time 
that have passed since then. 

In the neighbourhood of these skull fragments was found a part of 
a jaw, with which, in combination with the skull fragments, Mr. Dawson 
and Dr. Charles A. Smith Woodward indulged in a reconstruction that 
might be almost exactly described by certain lines of a poem of Bret 
Harte's: the relics of "an animal that was extremely rare." Or one 
might, with some justice, call it an unconscious emulation of the less 
ingenuous feat of the late P. T. Barnum, who united the head and body 
of a monkey to the tail of a fish, in the earlier days of his famous museum. 

Barnum acted in obedience to a world-old myth ; the myth called for 
a mermaid, and a mermaid he produced. It is instructive that Mr. 
Dawson and Dr. Woodward did very much the same thing. Modern 
mythology called for a "missing link," part monkey, part human, and a 
"missing link" was accordingly produced, not by joining a monkey and 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 195 

a fish, but by combining the fragments of a woman's skull (for it seems 
that this is the skull of a woman), with the jawbone of a chimpanzee. 
The facts were set forth and commented on in THE THEOSOPHICAL 
QUARTERLY for October, 1919 (pp. 175-6). 

The two points of interest about the Piltdown skull are, that it is 
definitely human, not simian, and that it is quite certainly of very high 
antiquity. 

As to the second point, the skull fragments were found close to the 
tooth of a rather early Pliocene type of elephant, the molar of a mas- 
todon, and the molar of a bear belonging to the first half of the Pleisto- 
cene period. The stratum of gravel was composed of Pliocene drift, 
probably reconstructed in the Pleistocene epoch. In general, there was 
a characteristic land fauna of Pliocene age. 

As to the capacity of the Piltdown skull, it is so fragmentary that 
it is far from easy to put the pieces together; therefore estimates differ 
greatly, ranging from 1070 to 1600 cubic centimetres. But it is un- 
doubtedly human, and almost certainly of Pliocene age. 

Dr. Mills might have taken an even stronger example in the Galley 
Hill skull, found in a high gravel bed above the Thames, in Kent. It is 
also almost certainly of Pliocene age, found in a stratum which, in the 
same neighbourhood, contains remains of a Pliocene elephant and rhino- 
ceros, and other remains which tell of a warm and therefore pre-glacial 
or interglacial period. And the type of the Galley Hill skull is un- 
doubtedly high, so high that many scientists too firmly wedded to the 
dogmatic side of Darwinism have disputed its antiquity for that reason 
alone ; which is, of course, remaking the facts to fit the theories, instead 
of forming the theories on the facts. 

We may sum up the position by quoting from Prehistoric Man, by 
W. L. H. Duckworth (1912) : 

"On the whole, then, the evolutionary hypothesis seems to receive 
support from three independent sources of evidence (skull form, asso- 
ciated animal remains, implements). 

"But if in one of the very earliest stages, a human form is dis- 
covered wherein the characters of the modern higher type are almost if 
not completely realized, the story of evolution thus set forth receives 
a tremendous blow. Such has been the effect of the discovery of the 
Galley Hill skeleton. . . . The argument is reasonable, which urges 
that if men of the Galley Hill type preceded in point of time the men of the 
lower Neanderthal type, the ancestor of the former (Galley Hill man) 
must be sought at a far earlier period than that represented by the Galley 
Hill gravels. As to this, it may be noted that the extension of the 
'human period/ suggested by eoliths (the earliest flint implements) for 
which Pliocene, Miocene, and even Oligocene antiquity is claimed, will 
provide more than this argument demands. . . . But if this be so, the 
significance of the Neanderthal type of skeleton is profoundly altered. 
It is no longer possible to claim only an 'ancestral' position for that type 



196 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

in its relation to modern men. It may be regarded as a degenerate form. 
Should it be regarded as such, a probability exists that it ultimately 
became extinct, so that we should not expect to identify its descendants 
through many succeeding stages. That it did become extinct is a view 
to which the present writer inclines. . . ." 

We have, therefore, the fully human type of the Galley Hill and 
Piltdown gravel beds, associated with a Pliocene elephant and rhin- 
oceros, both belonging to a warm climate; and we have the decidedly 
inferior and much later Neanderthal type, associated with a later Pleis- 
tocene elephant (mammoth) and generally with the reindeer, both be- 
longing to a much colder period. And from this sequence Dr. Mills 
draws the conclusion that we are faced, not by a steady upward devel- 
opment, but by a high initial level, followed by a downward curve of 
degeneration, which again curved upward to modern times. 

Dr. Mills makes no attempt to fix the date of the early, higher type. 
It belongs either to the beginning of the Pleistocene period, or, more 
probably, to the still earlier Pliocene. In 1909, Dr. Sturge estimated a 
part only of the Pleistocene period at 700,000 years. Dr. Sturge allows 
300,000 years since the earliest Neolithic implements; so that we may 
assume 1,000,000 in round numbers as the time that has elapsed since 
the beginning of the Pleistocene, the high Galley Hill type thus being a 
million years old, or more (Dr. Sturge, Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, 
January, 1909; published in 1911). 

We may say, therefore, that the facts fairly sustain Dr. Mills' argu- 
ment from the human fossils: that a type of man as high as that of 
today existed much earlier than the degenerate Neanderthal type. The 
approximate age we have assigned to this high early type, a million years, 
agrees fairly closely with the estimate given in The Secret Doctrine for 
the duration of Pleistocene time (II, 710, 1888). 

Dr. Mills bases a second argument on the comparatively high spirit- 
uality and morality of certain "primitive" tribes, chiefly belonging to the 
Negrito races of the Malay region; tribes which he believes closely to 
resemble the men of the Galley Hill type, and to be, in a sense, un- 
changed descendants of that type. He wisely includes in the equipment 
of these primitive races many powers popularly called magical, which 
students of Theosophy would be inclined to class as psychical. 

Here again we find ourselves in general agreement with Dr. Mills. 
And we are particularly attracted by his conclusion : 

"Thus we see that there is a material or technical progress from 
,age to age. . . . Moreover, the spiritual and the ideal come first, the 
practical and the useful follow later; and from this point of view there 
is a higher science in primitive times than in any other period of Hu- 
manity. The primitive super-man has no use for a flying machine when 
'his soul can soar above the clouds'; nor for a wireless outfit when 'he 
can see the distant vision in the shining water.' . . . Can this be ex- 
plained in any other way than by a primordial communication of super- 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 197 

natural truth to the original ancestors of mankind? How can we other- 
wise account for its increasing brilliancy the further we mount up into 
the past? And if a revelation be once admitted, a supreme Creator and 
Elevator of man becomes a necessity. There is no illumination without 
an Illuminator!" (The italics are Dr. Mills'.) 

With the general thought expressed in these sentences many students 
of Theosophy will find themselves in hearty agreement. This primitive 
revelation they think of as the work of the Dhyan Chohan, the Planetary 
Spirit, representative of the Logos, incarnated among the first races, and 
impressing on their plastic minds the broad outlines of spiritual teach- 
ing, which have reverberated down the ages and are, in fact, preserved, 
though only as a distant echo, by the primitive tribes whom Dr. Mills 
so well and justly describes. 

But many students of Theosophy would go much further. They 
hold that this primitive revelation, once bestowed upon mankind, was 
preserved in its completeness by certain classes of supremely spiritual 
men; that it is so preserved today; that The Secret Doctrine presents 
many of the teachings of this primitive revelation, and that the whole 
of this revelation is within reach of those who will pass through the 
preparatory stages of purification and sacrifice. 

More than that, many students of Theosophy hold that this primitive 
revelation was not a single, isolated event; but, rather, that we are in 
the presence of a progressive spiritual development. That the same Spirit 
of the Logos, having become incarnate in the beginning, appears again 
and again in incarnation, bringing life and immortality to light ; and that 
the fundamental unity of all true religions springs from this unity of 
source. 

Students of Theosophy will also agree with the view of Dr. Mills, 
that the whole process of evolution, from the beginning, has been marked 
by the interposition and guidance of intelligent spiritual powers; and 
the Catholic doctrine of the hierarchy of Angels, Principalities and 
Powers depicts just the kind of agency that students of Theosophy 
accept. 

Students of Theosophy might be inclined to criticise the wording, 
rather than the general idea, of Dr. Mills' minor proposition and con- 
clusion, which he states as follows : 

"This enormous separation and subsequent degeneration give the 
lie to progressive evolutionism, but postulate the sudden elevation of 
the (human) species at the very commencement by a Power which is 
above and beyond all the forces of nature. 

"Therefore: The earliest types of man can only be accounted for 
by the direct intervention of a transcendent Power/' (The italics are 
Dr. Mills'.) 

This appears to us to mean that the Galley Hill and Piltdown races, 
or, perhaps, earlier ancestors of theirs, of the same general character, 
were not developed from some antecedent form (whether lower or 



198 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

higher) but were "created," turned out ready-made, with the whole 
complicated apparatus of the vertebrate skeleton and physical organs 
complete. It is not altogether clear whether Dr. Mills accepts some form 
of evolution for animals, and particularly the other vertebrate types, 
all of which so closely correspond to the vertebrate frame of the human 
body. But Dr. Mills seems inclined to hold some such view, since he 
always sets the human and the non-human over against each other. 

Here, perhaps, is the point at which The Secret Doctrine may offer 
the clues for which Dr. Mills is seeking. 

We have already made it clear that The Secret Doctrine, which was 
published in 1888-89, has anticipated most of the conclusions reached by 
Dr. Mills thirty years later; and, in general, with the same purpose in 
view : to demonstrate the divine origin and spiritual life of mankind. 
But The Secret Doctrine further presents a solution of many difficulties 
into which, it seems to us, a thinker may be led, who presses too rigidly 
the conclusions expressed by Dr. Mills. 

First: Is it necessary, or advisable, to postulate the appearance 
of the Galley Hill man ready-made, with all the infinite complexity of 
his vertebrate form and organs? 

Second: Is it advisable to postulate this sudden appearance, and, 
at the same time, to think of the general vertebrate type, which corre- 
sponds bone for bone with the human skeleton, as having been slowly 
developed by evolution? 

Third: Is it advisable to cut a chasm between the works of God 
and the works of Nature, with, let us say, the skeleton of man on the 
one side, and the almost precisely similar skeletal plan of the vertebrate 
animals on the other, saying that God made the one, and that Nature 
made the other; Nature, apparently, having perfected the vertebrate 
plan first? 

Then there is the far deeper and more difficult question of conscious- 
ness. Dr. Mills appears to imply that the human consciousness is the 
direct creative work of God ; while the consciousness, let us say, of birds, 
is the work of Nature. But the consciousness of birds contains many 
of the elements of understanding and feeling on which Dr. Mills relies 
to prove the spirituality of primitive man; for example, a high sex 
morality (in many species) ; devotion, to the point of complete self- 
sacrifice, to offspring; wonderfully artistic construction, for instance 
in the orioles; and, in so many of the thrush family, a gift for music 
which, outside humanity, has no parallel whatever in nature. Further, 
the birds appear to possess certain faculties, a certain gift with regard 
to space and time, which human beings in general cannot emulate, or 
even comprehend. 

Is it, therefore, advisable to hold that Nature has, in the birds, 
produced this miracle of consciousness unaided, while nothing less than 
divine interposition will account for the similar consciousness in man ? 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 199 

Is it not wiser, more consistent and philosophical, to hold, as do 
many students of Theosophy, that God and Nature are not divided by 
a chasm; that Nature is God made manifest, the primal Divine Incarna- 
tion, and, therefore, the immeasurable initial Sacrifice? That God is 
in the truest sense immanent in Nature, in every atom or electron, which, 
therefore, thrills with spiritual life and potential consciousness ; but that 
God is also Transcendent, eternal in the Heavens; that the Logos, the 
Mind of God, is no mere sum of the life of the electrons, but is a unitary 
Divine Consciousness, infinitely possessing Wisdom and Truth and Love, 
and working through Angels, Principalities and Powers at every point, 
in every atom of Nature, ceaselessly working for the redemption of all 
things, till all be perfected in the One? 

Many students of Theosophy, therefore, believe in the spiritual 
character of every form of life, though, through misuse of free-will, that 
spirituality may be perverted and turned to evil; but at the same time 
believe in an orderly progression or development, in which not only the 
Galley Hill man but the orioles also have their spiritual part. 

Dr. Mills affirms his belief in a primeval revelation. Many students 
of Theosophy, as has already been said, believe the same thing. And 
they are disposed to see, in the early chapters of Genesis, as in many 
other ancient Scriptures, clear echoes of that primeval revelation or 
newer unveilings from the same source. 

The author of The Secret Doctrine has put forward the view that 
we have, in the first chapters of Genesis, a highly philosophical and 
scientific outline of the great process of development, as it in fact took 
place. The first chapter and the first three verses of the second chapter, 
the Elohistic portion, contains the broad outline of the whole process 
of evolution, perfected in seven great periods or Rounds, and having, 
as its goal, the development of spiritual man made perfect, an immortal 
archangel. The next portion, beginning with the fourth verse of the 
second chapter, the story of Adam and Eve, is, on the contrary, the 
description of the present period or Round, the fourth of the seven. And 
in this fourth period, Man is the first form to be developed on the earth, 
to be followed later by other animal forms. 

But students of Theosophy do not picture to themselves the sudden 
appearance of, let us say, the Galley Hill man, with a ready-made 
complete vertebrate skeleton and a complex wealth of organs. That 
would seem somewhat abrupt and violent. Students of Theosophy 
think, rather, of a spiritual, almost an ideal form, becoming gradually 
more condensed and defined; a form that, at a certain stage, might 
almost be called semi-material and gelatinous; in which the pattern of 
the vertebrate skeleton (which had been worked out in an earlier world- 
period or Round) was gradually impressed and solidified. 

It happens that this process can be well illustrated by certain facts 
observed in embryonic life. A quotation from C. W. Beebe's book, 
The Bird, will serve the purpose well : 



200 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"About the fourth day of incubation, sections of our embryo chick 
will show a low, rounded ridge, extending the whole length from the 
neck to the tail. While we can never be absolutely certain that perfect 
homology exists between the two (the chick and a generalized aquatic 
ancestor), yet it is very significant that soon after its development it 
dwindles away, leaving four conical, isolated buds the beginnings of the 
limbs of the bird. Within two or three days after the appearance of the 
limbs, faint streaks become visible upon the tips of the extremities, and 
these hints of the bones of fingers and toes, for such they are, soon 
push out beyond the edge, still bound together by their transparent 
membrane, and for some time they present the appearance of webbed 
paws or radiate fins. But as early as the tenth day, except for the 
absence of feathers and claws, the limbs are, in appearance, very perfect 
wings and feet. The most interesting fact in connection with the limbs 
is that their development begins superficially and works inward, not, as 
would be thought, starting at the shoulder and ending at the digits. Even 
the deep-seated shoulder and thigh girdles of bone are not derived from 
the axial skeleton. The former, in the long ago, were pushed in from 
the surface. . . Up to about the twelfth day the tiny foreshadowings 
of bones are cartilaginous, like those of the shark, but at this time real 
osseous, or bony, tissue begins to be deposited in spots which spread 
rapidly. In the various portions of the skull these bony centres spread 
until the bones are separated only by narrow sutures, and in the adult 
bird even these are obliterated. . . (Pages 473-75.) 

This gives some idea of what we mean by the pattern of the 
vertebrate skeleton being gradually impressed on a being who was, first, 
ideal, then ethereal, then gradually solidifying through a stage which 
we have ventured to call gelatinous ; and some such view as this is held 
by many students of Theosophy. Here is the great curve of degeneration, 
the Descent into Matter, a part of which Dr. Mills has clearly seen and 
has illustrated by his diagrams. For this gradual solidification and 
definition, we must allow several million years, at the end of which will 
appear such a type as the Galley Hill man, to whom we have tentatively 
assigned an antiquity of a million years or more. 

But the development of the chick serves also to illustrate something 
else : First, the impressing of the generalized vertebrate pattern on soft, 
gelatinous material; then the specialization of this general form into 
that of a biped with feathers, and, in particular, the specific form of the 
barndoor fowl. 

Many students of Theosophy think of the development of vertebrate 
life as following some such course as this : first the impressing of the 
general plan, the idea, so to speak, on a semi-ethereal body which 
gradually passed through a gelatinous stage to one of full solidity; then 
the specialization of the one general pattern into the numberless forms 
of vertebrate life. Man retains the general form; animals, birds and 
other vertebrates are the specializations. In this sense, man stands at the 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 201 

beginning of this period of life; and it is easy to understand why his 
form is practically unchanged in a million years, while Elephas 
meridionalis has been succeeded by Elephas antiquus, this in turn making 
way for Elephas primigenius, the mammoth, now extinct, and replaced 
by living elephants; so that, of the characteristic animals which sur- 
rounded this early man, not one now survives, while his form remains 
unchanged. 

And many students of Theosophy, who trace the history of man thus 
downward from an angelic being, are persuaded that we have reached 
the midpoint of the curve; they think of a long progression in the 
future, through such stages as Saint Paul has called the psychical body 
and the spiritual body, returning once more to the angel, but an angel 
redeemed, enriched by age-long experience, purified by suffering and 
sacrifice. 

Dr. Mills has, with endless patience and intuitive insight, reached 
some of the conclusions which were given to the world more than thirty 
years ago, in The Secret Doctrine. He has patiently and painfully put 
together a number of the pieces of the great Chinese puzzle; is it too 
much to expect that he may now turn to the pattern, and see how the 
whole picture is completed? Should he do this, we can promise him 
that the solution of many enigmas will be there to his hand ; the conflict 
between science and religion will cease to exist, reconciled and har- 
monized in a science which is deeply religious, in a view of religion 
which is at the same time profoundly scientific. 



That long conflict drew its force from the materialism of science, 
on the one hand, and from the dogmatism, the intolerant spirit, of 
religion, on the other. From the standpoint of Theosophy, it may be said 
in parenthesis, science which is materialistic is no true science, and 
religion which is intolerant is no true religion. 

It is, therefore, with sincere happiness that students of Theosophy, 
the Spirit of Reconciliation, are able to recognize so much true and wise 
tolerance in the conclusions of the recent Lambeth Conference. As a 
main result of this Conference, the "Archbishops and Bishops of the 
Holy Catholic Church in full communion with the Church of England, 
two hundred and fifty-two in number," have put forth an Encyclical 
Letter, which breathes the spirit of brotherly love. Perhaps the most 
distinctive passage is this : 

"The secret of life is fellowship. So men feel, and it is true. But 
fellowship with God is the indispensable condition of human fellowship. 
The secret of life is the double fellowship, fellowship with God and 
with man. . . 

Since the principal object of The Theosophical Society is "to form 
the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without dis- 
tinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour," it is with the utmost interest 



202 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

that students of Theosophy look for the applications, in the recent 
Encyclical, of this doctrine of fellowship. 

There is, first, the difference of creed. What has the Encyclical 
to say concerning the principles here ? Perhaps this passage will answer 
the question: 

"In the past, negotiations for reunion [of Christian Churches] have 
often started with the attempt to define the measure of uniformity 
which is essential. The impression has been given that nothing else 
matters. Now we see that those elements of truth about which differences 
have arisen are essential to the fulness of the witness of the whole 
Church. We have no need to belittle what is distinctive in our own 
interpretation of Christian life; we believe that it is something precious 
which we hold in trust for the common good. We desire that others 
should share in our heritage and our blessings, as we wish to share in 
theirs. It is not by reducing the different groups of Christians to 
uniformity, but by rightly using their diversity that the Church can 
become all things to all men. So long as there is vital connection with 
the Head, there is positive value in the differentiation of the members." 

The key sentence here : "not by reducing the different groups to 
uniformity, but by rightly using their diversity," is an admirable presen- 
tation of a principle which has been set forth times without number by 
students of Theosophy. 

So much for difference of creed. Concerning difference of sex, the 
Encyclical Letter has equally wise words of counsel : "It is the peculiar 
gifts and the special excellence of women which the Church will most 
wish to use. Its wisdom will be shown, not in disregarding, but in 
taking advantage of, the differences between women and men." Here 
again is what we have long been accustomed to call the distinctively 
Theosophical principle : not unison, but harmony. 

As to difference of race, there is this passage in the Encyclical : 

"We cannot believe that the effect of the coming of the Kingdom 
of God upon earth will be to abolish nations. Holy Scripture emphasizes 
the value of national life and indicates its permanence. The sense of 
nationality seems to be a natural instinct. The love which Christ pours 
into the hearts that are His, makes men cease to hate each other because 
they belong to different nations. Within redeemed humanity nations 
will not cease to exist, but nationality itself will be redeemed." 

Students of Theosophy would, perhaps, be inclined to say that 
nationality is not so much "a natural instinct" as the expression of the 
differing rays of the Logos ; therefore as inherent as the difference 
between the notes of the gamut and between the colours ; and, like these, 
rendering possible a harmony of tones or colours that would otherwise 
have no existence. But, in general, this presentation of nationality is in 
harmony with the first principle of The Theosophical Society. 

One point we should like to underline. The Letter says : "The love 
which Christ pours into the hearts that are His, makes men cease to 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 203 

hate each other because they belong to different nations." Students of 
Theosophy might be inclined to press the principle further, and to say 
that there is true nationality only when the hearts of a nation are 
receptive to that Divine Light; that there are counterfeit nationalisms 
inspired not by Divine Light but by egotism and vanity; and that, being 
no true nations, they have no true title to national life, nor any true 
claim to associate themselves with the real nations. This may have a 
bearing on two things : the movement called Sinn Fein, and the admission 
of Germany into the League of Nations, for which the Encyclical pleads, 
but which by no means commends itself to students of Theosophy, so 
long as Germany remains unrepentant; and students of Theosophy will 
believe Germany repentant only after she has made the utmost possible 
reparation, instead of shirking and lying and breaking her pledged word. 
We doubt whether, in any branch of any Church, there is provision for 
the absolution of unrepented sin; and we are convinced that condoning 
of unrepented sin makes one participant in that sin. 

So far as the difference of caste, or class, is concerned, we cannot 
express such complete sympathy with the expressions of the Letter. The 
distinctive sentences are these : 

"The Church will, for instance, maintain that fellowship is endan- 
gered if all who serve do not share equitably in the results of labour. 
For this is part of Christian justice. The Church will fearlessly claim 
that the human character of every worker is more sacred than his 
work; that his worth as a child of God and a member of the fellowship 
must not be forgotten, or imperilled by any form of industrial 
slavery. . . 

We have no criticism of what is here said, except it be that the most 
painful toil, and even slavery itself, may bear excellent fruit in Christian 
character. A man need not stop work in order to cultivate his soul; 
on the contrary, his soul is in far more danger, just because he has 
stopped work. We suggest an ancient verse concerning mischief and 
idle hands ; nothing at all is said about busy hands, even the busy hands 
of a slave. 

But we do criticise seriously, not what is said, but what is omitted. 
Surely, one of the gravest moral dangers of humanity, and in a special 
way, of England is, not any oppression of capital, but the heavy, blind, 
brutal tyranny of "Labour." We conceive that the Church of Christ 
is more menaced there than it has ever been by any conditions of hardship 
whatever. And, to speak quite frankly, we feel that there is a certain 
cowardice, a certain temporizing, politic timidity, or, what is, perhaps, 
more dangerous, a thorough-going blindness to the realities of the case, 
in this silence. 

It is of particular interest to students of Theosophy to find that 
Theosophy and The Theosophical Society have had careful consideration 
by the Lambeth Conference ; or, to speak more accurately, that such has 
been the intention. 



204 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

It is a fair guess that the Archbishops and Bishops, two hundred 
and fifty-two in number, will be somewhat taken aback to be told that, 
on the one hand, the spirit of The Theosophical Society is admirably, 
though not completely, expressed throughout the Encyclical Letter; and, 
on the other, that nowhere, perhaps, will certain strictures which they 
have passed on Theosophy, as they conceive it, be so heartily welcomed 
and warmly appreciated as by many readers of THE THEOSOPHICAL 
QUARTERLY. 

What the Conference has to say, is this : 

"The Conference, while recognizing that the three publicly stated 
objects of The Theosophical Society do not in themselves appear to be 
inconsistent with loyal membership of the Church, expresses its conviction 
that there are cardinal elements in the positive teaching current in 
theosophical circles and literature which are irreconcilable with the 
Christian faith, and warns Christian people who may be induced to make 
a study of Theosophy by the seemingly Christian elements contained 
in it to be on their guard against the ultimate bearing of theosophical 
teaching, and to examine strictly the character and credentials of the 
teachers upon whose authority they are encouraged or compelled to 
rely." 

Many readers of THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, as has been said, 
will welcome this pronouncement most sincerely. It is simply a repetition 
of what has been said, over and over again, in these pages. For the 
only body known to the Conference appears to be the Adyar Society; 
and its leaders, in the view of many who read THE THEOSOPHICAL 
QUARTERLY, parted company with the genuine principles and practice of 
Theosophy twenty-five years ago. 

We record with profound sympathy the paragraph which follows : 

"The Conference, believing that the attraction of Theosophy for 
some Christian people lies largely in its presentation of Christian faith 
as a quest for knowledge, recommends that in the current teaching of the 
Church due regard should be given to the mystical elements of faith and 
life which underlie the historic belief of Christendom." 

That is a good and fruitful quest. It is exactly what many students 
of Theosophy have been doing for many years. 



How should you be a lamp when you yield no light to what is dost 
besides youf AKHLAQ-I JALALI. 



FRAGMENTS 



THERE is but one way, the way of self-forgetfulness, and 
devotion to the interests of others. Without this, as a perpetually 
animating spirit, joys may easily become snares. 

From any joy be always detached ; in any joy be always recollected. 

Let all joy be in and through me. In my keeping it is safe ; in your 
own it will be lost. 

To walk safely, be secure in the purity and honesty of your intention, 
and seek perpetually how you may help and serve and minister to the 
interests and pleasures of others, with no single thought of your own. 
If you live from minute to minute with such intention, you can make 
no mistake, there will be no danger, and the work entrusted to you will 
prosper, since I will keep and guide it. If in the smallest detail it slips 
from my hand, there lies the danger, as one stitch dropped can unravel 
the whole. 

You must bear with cheerful patience whatever else may be put 
upon you. Sin must be purged, and that means sorrow. Pain and 
sacrifice make atonement for past wrong. Accept as from my hand 
each deprivation; there shall not be one feather's weight more than 
must be, and every blessing you make possible, or have made, I shall give. 



Failure is an illusion, like all other illusions, one of the snares of 
Mara. Its consciousness pertains only to the four worlds, and it fades to 
nothingness at the entrance to the higher three. No breath of its cold 
blight touches the Immortal Dweller in those regions. Keep steadfast in 
that faith. Set it as a torch upon the pathway of your life. 



It has been said that Buddha climbed into heaven upon the shoulders 
of a million men. This is one expression of Brotherhood, and of the 
obligations entailed by it, too seldom or inadequately understood. That 

205 



206 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

I stand where I stand to-day, I owe but in small part to myself. Myriads 
of beings on all planes have contributed to make me what I am, physically, 
mentally, morally. Many are quite unconscious of the fact, as uncon- 
scious as I. Others have deliberately and of free choice given of their 
best or sacrificed for me, stepping from sunshine into shadow to make 
room for my more pressing need. 

Bound together, part and parcel each of the other's success or 
failure, we grow and evolve as others help us to make possible ; as we, in 
turn, make possible their evolution. That I have not yet opened that 
door ahead of me, upon whose handle, perchance, my uncertain ringers 
have lain these many years, hesitating, timid, how many, guess you, 
have been obliged to wait, a tedious or painful wait, before entering 
a further room of better light and truer freedom and wider outlook? 
That fault I have struggled with in part, but which is still unconquered, 
the fate of how many, may be, is hanging in the balance of my victory 
or defeat? 

And this is true of souls in all stages of evolution; we confine our 
responsibilities and gratitude far too much to human kind. Brotherhood 
knows no such distinctions, but runs freely through all kingdoms, from 
tiniest atom to highest, intangible being. The whole universe is different 
that I live. So the great question confronts us, how is it different? 
That is what we must ask ourselves, seeking if we may discover the 
means whereby to prove an endless blessing throughout the seven worlds, 
a benefactor in the highest, purest sense. 



The secret of this tangled, bewildering, painful life is the inner life 
the religious life ; and the secret of the religious life is love. Great saints 
carry us still further into the depths of these mysteries, telling us what 
sometimes seems difficult of comprehension, that the heart of it all is joy, 
and bliss unspeakable. O marvel of marvels ! toward which we grope 
in our blindness, reaching out longing hands, straining our weary steps. 
For this unfailing testimony through all the ages awakens a hope as 

immortal as its source. 

CAVE. 



WILLIAM BLAKE 



"Those who break Nature's laws lose their physical health; those 
who break the laws of the inner life lose their psychic health" 

Light on the Path. 

"We are the richer, but they [poets & artists] are the poorer. They 
should have sealed their lips, guarding the vision in their hearts till they 
had wrought it into the fabric of their lives." 

The Song of Life. 

WILLIAM BLAKE'S name has some of the fascination of 
the "untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for 
ever" from the sight. One finds apt quotations from his 
writings in almost every essay or book that treats of mysticism. 
Anthologies reprint lovely and suggestive poems over his name. Authors 
who stand at extremes of the temperamental range, from exuberant and 
exaggerating Swinburne to judicial Miss Underbill, praise him in various 
manners and degrees. The cumulative effect of such mention of an 
author who is otherwise unknown, is that we receive an impression of 
rich, unexplored country. But if one sets out to explore, the margin 
fades. First, the books are not easily accessible; they did not find pub- 
lishers during Blake's lifetime. The most important of them (according 
to Blake's opinion) were for the first time published in ordinary type, 
so recently as 1904 a whole century after they were written. While 
there are earlier editions than that of 1904, those earlier printings are 
facsimiles of script attractive (and expensive) for collectors, but for 
practical use, illegible. A curious explorer who persists beyond the 
first obstacle of inaccessible books, faces, next, the difficulty of writings 
that are not to be read by him who runs. The explorer does not skim 
neat sentences it seems as if the apt quotations and the charming verse 
of the anthologies contained all the gold he encounters forbidding heaps 
like the desolate accumulation of rubbish outside a slate quarry. The 
average explorer turns back from Blake's untravelled world, and contents 
himself with information at second hand. 

But bolder navigators are advancing. A hundred years ago, when 
Blake's voluminous manuscripts came into the hands of his executor, 
that executor burned them, convinced that they contained harm- 
ful teachings. Now, conditions have so changed that a vogue 
of Blake may be possible. Two facts might make him popular. 
First, he writes in "free-verse." 1 Second, he paints and writes 
about spiritualistic or psychical subjects; he drew portraits of 
the spirits who visited him in his rooms his writings were 



1 The well known anthology poems in conventional metre are lapses from his customary 
form. 

207 



208 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

taken down in dictation from spirits. A year or so ago, a Blake 
exhibition was held in New York. Art Museums, in Boston and else- 
where, are collecting his works. Two editors, Ellis and Yeats, the latter, 
at one time, an avid student of theosophical writings, have expounded, 
by aid of the Secret Doctrine, Blake's elaborate symbology. Certain 
literary coteries Swinburne and the Pre-Raphaelites, made a fad of 
Blake. From a fad, he may become a temporary idol; he may be 
regarded as another prophet unhonoured in his own generation, a 
neglected forerunner of Conan Doyle and Oliver Lodge. 

Blake was born in 1757 and died in 1827. He was able to work 
until his death. His period of productivity thus covers two different 
cycles, and two generations of men. He worked in the last quarter of 
the 18th century the cycle of Cagliostro and St. Martin. He sym- 
pathized with the political ambitions of the French Revolution. In the 
opening cycle of the 19th century, he outlived Byron, Shelley and Keats. 

His thought, in its general course, is a curious blend of tendencies 
from each cycle and generation. Though he abetted the 18th century 
revolutionary movement, on its political side, to the point of intimate 
friendship with Priestley and Paine, there is no superlative that would 
exaggerate his detestation of its anti-Christian nature. He traced back- 
wards the religion of the Revolution Deism and "Natural Religion" 
through Locke, Newton and Bacon. Those three names recur as a 
refrain through his philosophical writing a refrain of anathema ; some- 
times he adds to them, singly or combined, Gibbon, Hume, Voltaire, 
Rousseau. He held up against their anti-Christian dogmas not only the 
Christ of history but the Living Christ. He believed it possible to meet 
the Living Christ face to face in the world. He made a transition, by 
that positive belief, from the negative scepticism of the 18th century to 
the constructive philosophy of the 19th century poets. Like these latter, 
he saw the imaginative faculty as a saving spiritual element in man; 
and in his elaborate symbolical system, he recognizes correspondence 
between that faculty of man and Christ. With these positive convictions, 
he nevertheless held certain private interpretations that greatly restrict 
his understanding of Christian history such as on the Passion and 
Death of Christ that they represent a certain weakness of Christ's 
human nature, rather than triumphant victory. While he partakes of 
the constructive work of the new generation, his true position is transi- 
tional. 

The new poetry of Blake's time ("Tintern Abbey" and "Adonais" 
fairly represent it) seems tabula rasa, so far as no explicit or implicit 
mention is made of doctrines hitherto taught as specifically Christian. 
But such clearing of the surface worked advantageously in the end, 
and forced a re-statement of convictions that were deeply felt. The 
result in the poetry itself was a new (Blake had very little share in 
this achievement) and fresh understanding of the universe as the One 
Life in many lives the old understanding of the Upanishads. That 



WILLIAM BLAKE 209 

new interpretation of life, and new understanding of nature, was 
perhaps one of the gifts to the new century from the Lodge Messenger 
of 1775. And the result for the poets themselves, as in the case of 
Keats, was such a deepening appreciation of the One Life in many lives, 
as to lead almost to the discovery of the possibility of discipleship. 

Blake's father was a very poor man, and Blake was one of several 
children. He was trained to earn his living as an engraver on copper. 
And, as he showed facility with the pencil, he was given lessons in art, 
also. In addition to copying upon copper for his livelihood the pictures 
of others, he began to make sketches and designs of his own, and also to 
write verse. Occupation with art brought about friendship with John 
Flaxman, a sculptor of the Canova, pseudo-classicist type. Flaxman's 
name is seldom heard now, but in the period of 1800 he was much 
honoured as a successful illustrator of Pope's Homer. Interest in art 
was not the sole bond holding Flaxman and Blake. Both were admirers 
of Swedenborg, whose writings appeared in English translation soon after 
their author's death in 1772. Flaxman was a thorough -going adherent, 
while Blake accepted Swedenborg with reservations. Though Flaxman 
was only two years older than Blake, he had the prestige of growing 
success, and generously tried in many ways, for many years, to advance 
Blake's interests. First, he introduced Blake to some literary people, 
at whose soirees, Blake sang his verses to tunes of his own improvisation. 
As a novelty, Blake lasted long enough with this "set," for their leader, 
jointly with Flaxman, to bear the expense of putting through the press 
some of his youthful poems. These poems attracted no notice whatever. 
By 1789, Blake had written more verse those known as Songs of 
Innocence, and containing the best of all his poems, the sweet, naive, 
and devout "Little lamb, who made thee?" Blake was perplexed about 
how to get these published. With the utter failure of the first volume, 
he had ended as a "nine days' wonder" with the literary coterie. He 
had no money, and no friend among publishers. In this perplexity, one 
night while asleep, his brother, Robert Blake, who had recently died 
(and who, William said, continued to visit and converse with him every 
day) came to him, and suggested a way out of the difficulty. The way 
suggested was a perfectly natural one, although slow and laborious. 
Robert Blake pointed out that his brother need have no dealings with 
printers and publishers. He could take small pieces of copper plate, 
and engrave his verses, just as visiting cards and invitations are engraved. 
Blake did so, surrounding the verses with ornamental borders and 
designs. After he had printed from the engraved plates, St. Joseph 
came, according to Blake, and showed him how to fill in the designs 
and background with water-colour paints. 

By this slow and tedious method, Blake published a few years later, 
1794, a second small collection of verse, Songs of Experience, contain- 
ing the often quoted Tiger poem "Tiger, Tiger, burning bright"; and 
by that same laborious process, he put forth his writings until his death. 

14 



210 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

There was one exception. A publisher did undertake one poem on 
The French Revolution, as anything upon that subject seemed promising 
at a time when England was full of applause for the new movement in 
France. But Blake never carried it beyond the first section. 

The Songs of Experience are Blake's last literary work. From 
1790 onwards, he was engaged upon his so-called Books of Prophecy 
or Books of Vision, political, philosophical, religious, and cosmological 
treatises, set forth through complex symbology. Some of the titles are : 
Tiriel, Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Daughters of Albion, 
Urizen, Ahania, Los, Vala. These culminate in what he considered his 
most important writings, Jerusalem and Milton. The "Prophetic Books" 
are brief from three to twenty octavo pages of ordinary print. The 
Milton and the Jerusalem are very much longer. The composition, 
engraving, and colouring of these writings was done in whatever leisure 
he had (often abundant) from his occupation of engraving for the trade. 
How slowly the process of engraving his manuscripts proceeded, is 
revealed by the dates of the Jerusalem. The date engraved on the title 
page is 1804. But the date water-marked in the paper on which Blake 
printed from the plates, is 1820. That means it took him sixteen years 
to make the plates for this single writing. 

As Blake was in the business, the purchase of copper plate required 
comparatively slight capital. Once the plates were made, they eked out 
his income, which was always meagre. From time to time one of his 
few friends would order a coloured copy of some book either moved 
by genuine interest or by charity; if the latter, generously concealing a 
gift under the name of an order. Blake furnished a list of prices to 
enquirers for copies. The prices range from 3 to 10. The copies are 
reported as of varying value, dependent upon the mood, the care and 
enthusiasm in which Blake made them. The copies were not numerous, 
and are now objets de luxe. Facsimile reproductions, in colour, have 
been made of some. The New York Public Library owns some of 
Blake's own hand-coloured copies, and some facsimiles. 

At the same time that Blake was engraving for the trade, and doing 
his writing and private engraving, he was also drawing and painting 
pictures of all kinds. Most of these went to friends who would gener- 
ously commission him to prepare ten or more pictures ; these pictures 
were paid for in advance, and Blake was given his own time for their 
completion. The circumstances of his life were so hard that he often 
had to solicit a second advance from his patrons while still in arrears 
with his payment. 

There was a definite purpose in all this labour and this life of 
poverty. It was to further "the interest of true religion and science." : 
In carrying out his purpose, his plan of action was not unlike Madame 

2 In a letter of 1802, Blake writes: "The thing I have most at heart more than life, or 
all that seems to make life comfortable without is the interest of true religion and science. 
And whenever anything appears to affect that interest (especially if I myself omit any duty to 
my station as a soldier of Christ), it gives me the greatest of torments." 



WILLIAM BLAKE 211 

Blavatsky's. He struck hard blows at the false religion and false science 
then current, and after that attack upon the Church, and upon the enemies 
of the Church, he built up his own system of religion and science unified. 
Naturally, he shocked the orthodox, when he stoutly declared that "being 
good" would get no man into Heaven. He had grasped a commonplace 
of the East, the idea of "pairs of opposites" "being good" and "being 
bad" are only one such pair. That idea was entirely foreign to the 
West, and when Blake vehemently denounced the false asceticism which 
masks as piety, he was in turn denounced as an extreme radical. He 
was not a radical at all. He was declaring the truth that Heaven is 
not won by negativeness, but is taken by violence. "The treasures of 
heaven are not negations of passion but realities of intellect . . . The 
fool shall not enter into heaven, be he ever so holy." Blake's attack upon 
orthodox ecclesiasticism can be found in most of his productions, 
flippantly, in the doggerel verses of Songs of Experience: 
Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold 
But the ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm. 

His object was too serious, however, for him to endanger it by frequent 
use of such a method. His more usual attitude is shown in a conversation 
quoted by Mr. H. Crabb Robinson, the lawyer friend of the artists and 
literary people of the day : "I have much intercourse," Blake said, "with 
Voltaire, and he said to me : 'I blasphemed the Son of Man, and it shall 
be forgiven me, but they [Voltaire's enemies] blasphemed the Holy 
Ghost in me, and it shall not be forgiven them'." 3 Blake's concentrated 
attack is to be found in verse called "The Everlasting Gospel." Irony 
and sarcasm abound. His sallies admit explanation which take much 
of the sting out of them. But no explanations are published with his 
words, and their sharp crudity is meant to outrage. The poem is intro- 
duced thus : 

The vision of Christ that thou dost see 

Is my vision's greatest enemy; 

Thine is the Friend of all mankind, 

Mine speaks in parables to the blind. 

Then in half a dozen sections Blake scores some of the virtues prized 
by Pharisees and orthodox, and shows that Christ's life went counter to 
every one of these distorted virtues. First, Blake ridicules gentleness. 

Was Jesus gentle, or did He 

Give any marks of gentility? 

When twelve years old He ran away 

And left His parents in dismay. 
"No earthly parents I confess 

My Heavenly Father's business." 

8 Robinson continues the conversation thus: "I asked in what language Voltaire spoke. 
His answer was ingenious, and gave no encouragement to cross-questioning: 'To my sensations 
it was English. It was like the touch of a musical key; he 1 touched it probably French, but to 
my ear it became English.' " 



212 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Next, Blake pours contempt upon perverted notions of humility. 

Was Jesus humble? or did He 

Give any proofs of humility? 

If He had been anti-Christ, creeping Jesus, 

He'd have done anything to please us; 

Gone sneaking into synagogues, 

And not used the elders and priests like dogs ; 

But, humble as a lamb or ass, 

Obeyed Himself to Caiaphas. 

God wants not man to humble himself. 

He concludes "The Everlasting Gospel" with this couplet, 

I am sure this Jesus will not do 
Either for Englishman or Jew. 

Duly considered, Blake's attacks do no more harm than to shock the 
"being good" type of religion. If he had stopped merely with attack, 
it would be harmful. But he built up a construction to replace the 
valueless things he tried to overturn. 

Yet Blake did not ally himself with the philosophers and economists 
who were the outspoken enemies of orthodoxy. He censured them even 
more sharply than he had done the ecclesiastics, and shows what a 
narrow range their blind materialism has. "He never can be a friend 
to the human race who is the preacher of natural morality or natural 
religion. You, O Deists! are the enemies of the human race and of 
universal nature." He calls the scientist gods of the eighteenth century 
Newton, Bacon, Locke devils in disguise, and the instruments of devils. 
Their materialism is a pall of blight, smothering humanity. 

Bacon and Newton, sheathed in dismal steel, their terrors hang 
Like iron scourges over Albion. 

I turn my eyes to the schools and universities of Europe, 
And there behold the loom of Locke, whose woof rages dire, 
Washed by the water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth, 
In heavy wreaths, folds over every nation. 

Combatting the dogmas of the material scientists and philosophers, Blake 
maintained, with the authority of personal experience, that life is not 
a small thing of the physical perceptions, but that there are finer and 
finer forms of substance interpenetrating the gross matter of the physical 
plane. These finer grades of matter are the more solid as they are more 
remote in essence from physical matter. He declared also that those 
planes of finer substance are not cloudlands but countries in "stronger 
and better light" than earth; their inhabitants have stronger and better 
"lineaments than the eye can see." Blake drew portraits of men from 
those worlds who frequently sat in his study. He pushed his attack 
against the pseudo-scientists to the last point by reiterating emphatically 



WILLIAM BLAKE 213 

that those higher worlds, which are perceived by inner senses, and their 
inhabitants, are not vapours, but organisms minutely constructed; the 
spiritual beings who conversed with him were not ghosts, but "organized 
men." 

In his constructive work, Blake takes religion and science out of 
their antagonistic position, and brings them together in mutual support. 
To religion he wished to give a scientific, metaphysical basis; to science 
a spiritual goal, in seeking out the nature and laws of inner worlds. His 
constructive work is done by means of a vast allegory, parts of which 
extend through practically all the "Prophetic Books." The purpose of 
the allegory is clearest in the two long books, Jerusalem and Milton. 

Meditating upon the spurious religion and the spurious science of 
the world, and man's helplessness with those "blind mouths," Blake, 
claiming to be taught from Heaven, 4 undertakes to point man the way 
out of the dark forest, as Dante and other poets and seers have done. 
He makes a giant, Albion, by name, represent man or humanity. The 
giant's stature suggests the vast potentialities locked up in human nature. 
But, notwithstanding his divine potentialities (Albion is the Divine 
Image), this giant of immense strength has become the prisoner and 
slave of a pale Spectre. To Blake, the word Spectre, was sufficiently 
descriptive and connotative. He did not feel the need of any other name 
to symbolize the rationalising powers of the mind which are "the slayer 
of the real." To the physical body in which Albion is clothed, Blake 
gives a fitting symbol, "the Shadow." Albion's duty is "to slay the 
slayer," and to awake to his real consciousness, out of the dream of 
elemental consciousness into his true humanity which is an image of 
the divine. 

Each man is in his Spectre's power 
Until the arrival of that hour, 
When his humanity awake 
And cast his Spectre into the lake. 

Albion was enslaved by the Spectre when the Spectre captured and 
demolished his chief citadel, Jerusalem. The name, Jerusalem, sym- 
bolizes the spiritual imagination, the faculty in man which images 
divine truths and realities. It emanates from the Divine Image, Albion; 
and Blake calls it, in opposition to the Spectre, the Emanation. It is the 
city of the great King, "the temple not made with hands," the place where 
Albion meets his Creator, where man attains to union. To free him- 
self, Albion must upbuild again that fortress. The struggle before him 
is age-long, and must be repeated again and again, on many planes. An 
Arjuna brood of "fathers and grandfathers, instructors, uncles, brothers, 

* "I am under the direction of messengers from heaven, daily and nightly." from a letter 
to his friend, Butts. 

"I have written this poem (Milton and Jerusalem) from immediate dictation, twelve or 
sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without premeditation, and even against my will." 
Letter to Butts. 



214 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

sons" is ranged in this fratricidal strife. When man shall gain the final 
victory, he will have won a share in his triumph not only for all of 
humanity, but for all the lives below the human level. 

All human forms identified, even tree, metal, earth and stone ; all 
Human forms identified, living, going forth and returning wearied 
Into the planetary lives of years, months, days, and hours ; reposing 
And then awaking into His bosom in the life of immortality. 

As in all symbolic writings, the allegory is not a tissue of a single 
thread, but a fabric intricately interwoven. The Divine Comedy and 
the Faerie Queene are stories that weave together individual, national, 
historical, and religious meanings. So, too, with Blake. Albion stands, 
also, for enslaved England, which Blake would like to see transformed 
into the new Jerusalem, the bride of the King. The crossing threads 
of the allegory need not in any way interfere with one another the 
varied colours of a rich brocade do not. It is usually clear which is for 
the moment on the surface, as in the following beautiful lyric. 

\ And did those feet [Christ's] in ancient time 

Walk upon England's mountains green? 
And was the holy Lamb of God 
On England's pleasant pastures seen? 

And did the Countenance Divine 
Shine forth upon our clouded hills? 
And was Jerusalem builded here 
Among these dark Satanic mills? 

Bring me my bow of burning gold ! 
Bring me my arrows of desire ! 
Bring me my spear ! O clouds, unfold ! 
Bring me my chariot of fire ! 

I will not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
t Till we have built Jerusalem 

In England's green and pleasant land. 

Blake has made a distinguished, if not unique place for himself in 
English letters, by his sight into some of the laws of Life and the lives. 
Western materialism blinds and blurs ; and if it is suggested to an average 
man that he is not his physical body, he is made very uncomfortable and 
regards his informant as an unpleasant individual. Blake caught the 
Eastern idea of hierarchies of life of sub-human levels and super- 
human, also. He caught the Eastern and Christian ideal of union, 
after faithful effort to follow a Master's life. There is a wide chasm 



WILLIAM BLAKE 215 

between his rock-truths of science and religion, and the dry sand of his 
contemporaries. Blake is one of the very few occultists in English letters. 
There are mystics, like Edmund Burke, a contemporary of Blake, but 
what a distance between an intuitional mystic and a scientific occultist! 
Blake's place is not unique, because a predecessor, William Law, has 
the rare distinction of being an English occultist. Law, it will be remem- 
bered, learned his science from a study of Jacob Boehme's theosophical 
writings. Blake, too, studied Boehme, but has not indicated the extent 
of his indebtedness. 

The scarcity of occultists in English writers shows what an im- 
portant service Blake might have rendered to the English speaking 
world. William Law is a bridge of approach toward occultism for those 
who come from the side of orthodoxy. Blake might be an approach for 
those who are outside the religious fold. His poems drew admiration 
from his young contemporaries, like Wordsworth. With his scientific 
bent, Blake might have put into scientific expression those profound 
truths which the poets set forth afresh in their verse, truths which the 
average reader disregards with nonchalance as abstract speculations. 
The cause of the Lodge might thus have been greatly advanced. But 
there are serious faults in the carrying out of Blake's worthy purpose, 
faults so grave as to raise doubt about the value of all he has done. 

His program, "to open the blind eyes and to bring out the prisoners 
from the prison," implies some degree of approach toward cooperation 
with the Master, toward discipleship. And that, in turn, implies some 
measure of humility. Realization of his own helplessness and his total 
dependence upon the Master is not wanting, as the following lines from 
Jerusalem evidence : 

I rest not from my great task : 

To open the eternal worlds! To open the immortal eyes 
Of man inwards ; into the worlds of thought : into eternity 
Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the human imagination. 
O Saviour ! pour upon me thy spirit of meekness and love. 
Annihilate selfhood in me ! Be thou all my life ! 

On the other hand, the responsibility of cooperation with the Master, 
conscious or unconscious, is likely in reaction to provoke human vanity. 
Of this likewise we should expect Blake to have an ample human share. 
But did he have an abnormal share, which cancels his credit of humility, 
and renders his contribution to humanity, not only zero, but, worse than 
zero, an influence for harm? 

On Flaxman's authority, we have an estimate of Blake's pictorial 
work in his younger days by a contemporary of note, a great portraitist: 
"Romney," wrote Flaxman, "thinks his [Blake's] historical drawings 
rank with those of Michelangelo." One knows how easy it is, in casual 
conversation, in a book-shop or gallery, to express an opinion which one 
would not care to maintain formally. The circumstances in which 



216 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Romney spoke would have to be known before his meaning and inten- 
tion could become clear. Sir Joshua Reynolds, another portraitist, told 
Blake, in conversation, "to work with less extravagance and more sim- 
plicity, and to correct his drawing." Blake threw the latter opinion aside, 
and disliked Reynolds for the rest of his life. Romney's flattering com- 
parison sank into his vanity, germinated, and sprouted a tree of strange 
fruit. We find Blake all through his life putting himself in the company 
of the Renaissance Italians, as of their rank. In a letter to the friend 
and patron, Mr. Butts, who for several years bought whatever Blake 
painted, he says : "The pictures which I painted for you are equal in 
every part of the art, and superior in one, to anything that has been done 
since the age of Raphael. ... I also know and understand and can 
assuredly affirm, that the works I have done for you are equal to the 
Caracci or Raphael (and I am now some years older than Raphael was 
when he died). I say they are equal to Caracci or Raphael." That would 
seem a superlative degree of egotism. He goes beyond that, however, 
in declaring : "I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could 
well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books 
and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before 
my mortal life; and those works are the delight and study of the arch- 
angels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mor- 
tality?" It is wrong to call this quotation egotism. It is brain sickness. 
It shows a crossing of the boundary line between madness and sanity. 
Blake travelled back and forth across that line all his life. 

Only a trained psychiatrist can trace the demarcation line of sanity. 
But we can see in Blake tendencies to unrestraint which might lead to 
complete unbalancing. Tatham, one of the biographers, writes : "Blake 
despised restraints and rules so much that his father dared not send him 
to school." His marriage in 1782 is a strange piece of impulsiveness. 
He was in love with a girl who was indifferent to his attentions. His 
disappointment one day, brought an expression of regret to the lips of 
a second girl who was standing by. Blake immediately turned to the 
second, saying, "You are sorry for me then, I love you." They were 
shortly married. She proved an adoring creature, serving him devotedly 
until his death, even learning to colour his books for him. 

Some persons are born exaggerators. In their colour scale, red 
equals normal grey. One learns to calculate their hyperboles. Others 
are born psychics. They see every movement of their own emotion and 
every mental process as a prompting from outside, and usually the 
prompting comes from people of distinction. A line of old poetry pass- 
ing through a psychic's head might be described as the old poet himself 
holding up his volume and with dramatic gesture pointing to the lines 
which at that moment come back in memory. One learns to normalize 
the psychic's experience. Many of Blake's queer expressions could be 
explained as ordinary exaggeration and psychism. At some point in 
psychism, if it be continuous and extreme, delusion begins. The deluded 



WILLIAM BLAKE 217 

person is convinced of the actuality of experiences which an outsider 
knows to be untrue. Blake suffered from the delusions of insanity. 
He was a psychic, a medium, and, therefore, undoubtedly saw swarms of 
figures in the psychic regions, but when he insisted upon his identification 
of those psychic forms, he was deluded and insane. When he was four 
years old, he saw God, he maintained. No one would be willing to say 
that the God of Blake's pictures expresses a sane man's ideas of the 
Absolute. Milton, Blake said, was sent down from the plane of discar- 
nate spirits, to assist Blake in his difficulties, and also to correct errors in 
his own religious views. The prophet Ezekiel was another of Blake's vis- 
itants. Blake was sane in asserting the actuality of the psychic experience. 
He was insane in acting upon deluded interpretation of that experience. 
Saints are warned against trusting their visions old teachers declare 
that one of the devil's favourite tricks is to dress himself up as an angel 
of light. Poor Blake was a victim of the old prank. His "spiritual 
visions" are such exceedingly unpleasant things, like bad dreams. He 
called them saints and angels, but we turn from them instinctively. 

Beauty is almost lacking in his work, written and painted. As a 
writer, his literary career ended with the Songs of Experience. In the 
present article, lyrics are quoted from the "Prophetic Books." These 
lovely lyrics are accidental a momentary lapse from the "free-verse" he 
adopted as the best medium of expression for his allegorical and cosmo- 
logical views. His most important books, Jerusalem and Milton, he 
thought, were dictated to him by heavenly visitants, so many lines a 
day. Blake said those two works were the greatest poems in the world. 
A brief summary has been given of the purport of the books. A reader 
would arrive at that summary with difficulty, because the two works, 
and the other "Prophetic Books" sprawl in incoherence. An irreverent 
and punning critic who liked the story of the Faerie Queene but was 
bored by the moral teachings, said of the allegory: "The alligator will 
not bite you, if you do not trouble it." His irreverence embodies a prin- 
ciple. The great poets constructed their poems as life is constructed. 
One can see life either as a succession of incidents, or as significant oppor- 
tunities for discipline and instruction. One can read the Divine Comedy 
or Pilgrim's Progress merely for the story, or can make personal applica- 
tion of what he reads. The point is that the creative artist has con- 
structed the poem in planes, as man is constructed; the poem is a true 
likeness of life. One can choose his plane; but in a great poem, all are 
there completely. This is what is meant in criticism by the technical 
word "verisimilitude." A writer can take a wholly imaginary person 
as the hero of his drama. But to that imaginary man, the dramatist must 
give the brain and heart, weakness and strength of an actual man. The 
imagined creature must be a very likeness of a real man. In Blake there 
is no verisimilitude. There is no human Arjuna, whose irresolution and 
mixed motives hold our sympathetic attention. There is only the alligator 
that bites. The "Prophetic Books" are a cipher, not an allegory. One 



218 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

has to use a code to unravel who and what are the names that recur : 
Enitharmon, Bowlahoola, Golgonooza, Thammaz, Ore, Sol, Luvah, 
Ahania. They stand for persons and places. But they have no more 
life than a genealogical tree. They have no more individuality than the 
figures in Blake's pictures. 

As a literary man, Blake's status is not likely to change permanently. 
He is an anthology poet. He has no whole to offer, only extracts. This 
is true of his pictorial work also. Small bits of it are pleasing. But it 
lacks beauty. Most of it is unpleasant. Some speak of its massive 
strength. Keats has finely described what strength means, when it has 
to be spoken of in that manner as an artist's salient trait : 

Strength alone though of the Muses born 

Is like a fallen angel : trees uptorn, 

Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres 

Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs 

And thorns of life. 

Blake cultivated the grand style of Michelangelo. But too often there 
is no trace whatever of his model in his grotesque deformations. In 
particular, he was obsessed by foreshortening, especially the foreshort- 
ened arm and thigh. Tintoretto and other Italians paint daring feats of 
foreshortening which, however, do not leap out from their large com- 
positions. In the New York Public Library, it is possible to see how 
Blake, having imagined a fine form, foreshortened it into deformity. 
For a book illustration, he imagined the body of an unwinged angel, 
descending, headforemost, with trumpet at lips, to awaken the dead. 
In carrying his plan into execution, he ruined the design by grotesquely 
and unnecessarily foreshortening the arm and thigh. The illustration 
was one of a set made by contract with a publisher, for an edition de luxe. 
The publisher was wily, and dishonest. He knew that Blake had a 
certain gift which was likely, however, to take a wild form, and he knew 
also that Blake was worse than temperamental about accepting sugges- 
tions. The publisher therefore tampered with the contract. He got the 
designs from Blake, and then gave them to a conventional Italian engraver 
to tone down their eccentricity and prepare them for the public. At the 
New York Public Library one can see Blake's original and the changes by 
the Italian. Blake was furious at being cheated. But the unscrupulous 
publisher and his conventional engraver had the better judgment. They 
straightened the foreshortened arm and thigh of the angel, and gave 
natural lines to a Michelangelesque athlete. 

The infrequent shining out of beauty in the work of Blake is the 
more noteworthy inasmuch as the goal toward which he was striving 
all that he symbolizes in the word Jerusalem he represents as a centre 
where Art for the first time finds an atmosphere for expression. "I know 
of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of 
body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination. O ye relig- 



WILLIAM BLAKE 219 

ious, discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise 
art and science. What is the life of man but art and science?" There 
may be a sense in which Blake is right. But his words recall the old 
Greek fable of the people who were so enamoured of the Muses that they 
vowed to spend days and nights in singing their praises. The Muses, 
however, grew very bored by those praises, and changed their foolish 
adorers into crickets, who could only chirp ! Blake does not mention 
the will, at all, in his constructive spiritual scheme. The imagination is 
an important instrument. But one who wishes to become a great artist, 
cannot magnify the imagination and pass over the will, without becoming 
a "cricket." Such a one-sided course means blindness as to the value 
of discipline. Blake's complete lack of discipline, even his ardent ad- 
mirers acknowledge: Gilchrist, his very partial biographer, summing 
up his long study of the man and his work, writes : "he was impatient of 
control, or of a law in anything, in his Art, in his opinions on morals, 
religion, or what not." Gilchrist demurs at the opinion of Blake ex- 
pressed by Wordsworth and Southey "great, but undoubtedly insane 
genius." Gilchrist suggests that the milder word, undisciplined, or ill- 
balanced, be substituted for insane. After all, the point at which habitual 
uncontrol passes into insanity is not easy to fix precisely. But to class 
a man as an unbalanced genius is to rank him with the minor and not 
with the great. 

If Blake be judged as a man of letters, there can be no doubt that 
his rank is far below the generation of poets who were partly his con- 
temporaries. There was nothing unique in his literary aim. W r ordsworth 
and Keats, two different types, each succeeded, in his own way, in vin- 
dicating a high place for the imagination, a supreme place; but it was a 
disciplined imagination they revered. Endeavouring to bring more of 
their natures under the mild yoke of discipline, they achieved the verse 
which is, each in its own manner, an ornament of our literature. In the 
fourteenth book of the Prelude, his spiritual autobiography, Wordsworth 
says of the disciplined imagination : 

This alone is genuine liberty. 

And Keats, always sensitive to transcendent beauty, which he thought 
might at any moment meet him face to face, wrote of it : 

The thought thereof is awful, sweet, and holy, 
Chasing away all worldliness and folly. 

Blake aimed at the same goal as Keats and Wordsworth. He has left 
mere chips of beauty. He failed as artist because he would not submit 
to discipline. 

Where Blake has an aim different from his contemporaries, and 
where he might have won distinction, perhaps unique, is as occultist 
in his effort to work for true religion and true science. Here, too, he 
failed. He became lost in the psychic whirl and did not rise to clear 



220 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

vision. Some of his "prophetic" works read as if he had seen the Stanzas 
of Dzyan, reflected upside down and grotesquely foreshortened. 

Earth was not, nor globes of attraction ; 
The will of the Immortal expanded 
Or contracted his all-flexible senses; 
Death was not, but Eternal life sprung: 

A shriek ran through Eternity, 

And a paralytic stroke, 

At the birth of the human shadow. 

There are threads of Wisdom in his confused, incoherent writing, 
"I give you the end of a golden string," he wrote as the first line of a 
poem. He gave hints of the inner Wisdom, and one who is eager, might 
follow the golden string until the certain Path is reached. Blake 
himself does not give whole cloth. He was a madman who frayed out 
threads and shreds from the robe of Wisdom. He might have served 
the Lodge and their cause. He failed and disappointed. 

c. c. c. 



A doctor who has made a specialty of nervous diseases, so we read, 
has found a new remedy for the blues. His prescription amounts to this: 
"Keep the corners of your mouth turned up; then you can't feel blue." 
The simple direction is: "Smile; keep on smiling; don't stop smiling." 
It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Well, just try turning up the corners of 
your mouth, regardless of your mood, and see how it makes you feel; 
then draw the corners of your mouth down, and note the effect, and you 
will be willing to declare "there's something in it!" FATHER LASANCE. 



GOSSIP 



THE poor word did not always have a bad meaning; it has been 
dragged down from high spiritual estate. In its archaic form 
"godsyp", it meant literally "related in God", and was used to 
designate a sponsor in baptism. Then it slipped a little, as words 
will, and came to mean a friend with whom one has familiar talk, to 
whom one can say anything, the understanding friend whom we all 
seek, and some of us find, in this world of lonely spaces. It is 
comfortable to believe that this was not so much a slip as a real 
widening of significance, hinting that we dare only to take our ease with 
those who are "related to us in God". By-and-by the poor thing took a 
big landslide and came to mean just tattle, leaky, vulgar, silly tattle; 
and that is how we use the word to-day, prefixing "personal" to 
emphasize its ignominy, apparently quite forgetting that "personal 
gossip" can be the most loving and understanding thing in the world. 
Gossip in one form or another is inseparable from existence; it is 
one expression of the inevitable preoccupation of life with living, and 
it will continue until the mind of man shall cease to register reaction to 
the destinies of man. As with most inevitable things, it is potent for 
both good and ill. In its silent form, which we call meditation, its 
potency is highest, here, to make us safe, it must positively be spelt 
"godsyp". It is probably not confined to humans. Birds, for instance, 
are inveterate gossips. They often sound like what country people 
call "a good tell", but this turns suddenly acrimonious if they get 
personal, and bird rushes at bird with indignant outcries when statements 
are repeated. Much misunderstanding and unhappiness among the nests 
results from this habit. You may sometimes see two horses in their 
lunch hour gossiping about a mean driver ; and who can blame them ? As 
to the poor unresting bandar-logs, they have no conversational alternative 
except scolding. When two talk in a corner of their cage, throwing 
uneasy glances behind them, it is easy to see that they are saying the 
nastiest things possible about the others, and who can blame them? No 
doubt even fishes gossip. As to human beings, if they ever stop long 
enough to give themselves a chance, it is considered the correct thing 
to condemn soundly, and utterly to repudiate, the pursuit; at least it is 
felt that though one's own gossip is harmless and excusable, everyone 
else should undoubtedly be muzzled. 

On the low plane where it usually prevails, gossip is a hideous 
thing it all depends upon the plane. The bandar-logs themselves cannot 
sink far below the detestable "he said" and "she said" and "I was told 
not to repeat this, but", and so on, for ever and for ever. This can be 
done without brains, when it bores to tears ; and without heart, and then 
the devils have entered in. The fruit of it is always poison, an irritant 

221 



222 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

poison fatal to the germs of mutual understanding and good will, and 
almost impossible to eradicate from the system. Most people have the 
grace to be ashamed of this plane even while they function on it. 

If the matter were thus simple, it could be dismissed by the 
self-respecting with a final and all-including "thou shalt not", but the 
roots of gossip are buried deep in holy ground. The fine flower of 
brotherly love springs from the same soil, for the instinctive preoccu- 
pation of humanity with humanity shall not produce only weeds. Art 
also flowers splendidly here, and all Art gossips. We have been told 
that its province is to "purge us with pity and with terror" and for that 
it must tell us of ourselves, it must deal with people, with the desperate 
and hopeful little race of man. Every real poem, every true picture, 
every honest book, and even most dishonest ones, are efforts to bridge 
gulfs, to establish relationships, to break up the sense of separateness. 
The artist, be he never so coolly detached, is avid for crvnitaSeia 
"a feeling together". He says in effect, "this is how life looks to me 
can such fulfilment be mine that it also looks so to you?" He is 
empowered to express us to ourselves, and the great things of Art live 
on and on because they have gained the assent of humanity "yea, thus, 
and thus, it is with us." 

And my song from beginning to end 
I found again in the heart of a friend 

no fame, no wealth can be named with this rapture. It is another way of 
finding what love finds directly, and it is gained largely by sublimated 
gossip. 

But, it may be objected, is Art to be held guiltless? By no means: 
in effect one is torn every day between reverent gratitude and a desire to 
box its ears. When the silly world, calling for stories like a child at 
dusk, is lured by psychic rubbish, or worse, down wasteful and 
forbidden ways, then Art stands arraigned and our souls must be the 
judge. 

The problem for disciples is how to deflect this incessant stream 
of comment on life, into some channel where it may serve the Master's 
purposes, instead of balking them ; how to lift our interest in each other 
from the low material, the dangerous psychic, to a higher plane; how 
to make the Master accessory to the fact. 

Personal gossip on the psychic plane is a thing compared to which 
the "he said" and "she said" of the illiterate, is a harmless nursery 
game. It is often delicately elusive, entertaining, lenient, sporadically 
charitable. It is indulged in by people who have seen so much of life, 
lived through so many stories themselves, sat through so many plays 
and faced so many human problems, that they have grown expert; they 
honestly, as it is phrased, "take an interest in life for its own sake", 
but the step from this to making a playground of the sanctities of 



GOSSIP 223 

friendship, is sometimes a short one. Those people who pride them- 
selves on psychological acumen are the enfants terribles of this game, 
and it is played by tongues that have not lost their power to wound. 

The theosophical student is largely recruited from this class, for 
Theosophy does not appeal to the stupid, but to people of aroused 
psychic force. The best thing that can happen to such a student is to 
be brought up with what is known as "a round turn". If so fortunate 
as to be attracted to a group where only the highest teaching prevails, 
he cannot fail to be impressed with the irresistible stress laid upon the 
matter of Love and all Love's discretions. He finds that any rules given 
for his guidance are based on the absolute determination that the 
individualities of others shall be reverently screened; that a spiritual 
noli me tangere is theosophical etiquette; he finds that to be spiritually 
well bred is to hear no evil, speak no evil, think no evil; he finds "the 
new commandment" which He gave unto us, printed in invisible ink on 
every page, and the Angel of Silence, finger on lip, awaiting him at 
every turn ; in short, he finds that the Theosophical Movement is actually 
based on the brotherhood of man, just as it always said it was. If he also 
finds himself surprised, so much the more goose he. With all this he 
discovers, if he did not know it before, that the warp and woof of life 
is so heart-thrilling, so love-stirring, so watched by Great Ones who 
hardly venture to breathe upon it as they weave, that there is no place 
for the little personal judgments of little personal people. 

"Let your communication be yea, yea, and nay, nay", was the 
admonition given to his chelas by the Prince of Gossips, and then and 
there he gave them practical demonstrations of his method. Well he 
knew that the poor things who hung about him would not listen unless 
they were gossipped to, and so he gossipped, but with what imperturbable 
discretion, with what sublime impersonality! The stories he told them 
were all about people, and are as full of human interest to-day as when 
the silent thousands drank them in. They are as minutely "noted" as 
the baldest realism of the most realism-drunk devotee; they are so 
entertaining that children listen and say, "tell it again", and so close to 
the heart of life that they have served as a running comment on life from 
that day to this. Only once through all the parables were names 
mentioned those of Dives and Lazarus and, as they were both dead, 
discretion was not marred. "A certain king made a marriage for his 
son", "There was a certain householder which planted a vineyard", 
"A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among 
thieves". Observe that careful use of the word "certain", bestowing 
all the vraisemblance of a name. "Jump right in with your human appeal 
give it to them hot", demands the slangy twentieth century editor. Two 
thousand years ago he "gave it to them hot"; he met the unappeasable 
craving with the undying genre. True stories he told them, as true as 
Love, as true as Life, for they were spoken by the spirit to the spirit 
they were gossip raised to the spiritual plane. 



224 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

But the student of the Wisdom wants more than this. "Why speak 
ye unto them in parables", the disciples asked; and the answer was, 
"Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of 
heaven, but to them it is not given". Perhaps some of us begin to sense 
dimly that deepening and widening of consciousness for which we watch 
and pray, that other plane where deep shall call unto deep and talk shall 
be transcended. 

Plotinus is not speaking of the Masters, but of disciples who have 
begun to understand, when he says : 

"They see themselves in others. For all things are transparent, and 
there is nothing dark or resisting, but everyone is manifest to everyone 
internally and all things are manifest ; for light is manifest to light. For 
everyone has all things in himself, so that all things are everywhere. 
. . . and infinite is the glory." 

L. S. 



Here are some little practices very easy and of wonderful efficacy, 
for keeping up union of hearts, that source of happiness here below. They 
are summed up in this word: be always amiable. For this purpose, observe 
faithfully the following rules: 1. Smile habitually. 2. Never answer 
by a NO, or a negative sign when a superior commands. 3. Spare others 
all the trouble that you can take on yourself. 4. Never show yourself 
discontented or sulky. 5. Repress every impatient gesture, every un- 
guarded word. 6. Let a kind word accompany the orders given to infer- 
iors. 7. Even when a reproof is well deserved, never administer it with 
rudeness or bitterness. 8. Do not forget the little formulas of politeness, 
the amiable expressions that are usual: "thank you", (( if you please", etc. 
We grant that to keep up such practices we must sometimes make sacri- 
fices; but, fust as there is no happiness ivithout sacrifice, so also every 
sacrifice brings with it a little happiness. Let us only try, and we shall 
soon regret not having acted thus all our life. THE ART OF BEING 
HAPPY. 



"BY WHOM?" 

KENA UPANISHAD 



TRANSLATED FROM THE SANSKRIT WITH AN INTERPRETATION 

II 

// thou thinkest: I know It well, little, indeed, of a truth, knowest 
thou that form of the Eternal that form which thou art, that form 
which is in the Divine Powers; but if thou sayest: It is to be searched 
for and sought out, then I think It is known of thee. 

He who says: I think not that I know It well, nor do I not know 
It he, indeed, knows It. He who says: I know It, knows It not; he 
who thinks: I know It not, he knows It. 

Of whom It is not understood, of him It is understood; of whom 
It is understood, he knows It not. It is uncomprehended of those who 
comprehend; It is comprehended of those who comprehend It not. 

When It is known through illumination which turns toward It, and 
so is understood, then he who thus knows It, finds immortality. Through 
that Supreme Self he finds valour; through illumination he finds immor- 
tality. 

If he has come to the knowledge of It in this present life, this is 
the supreme good. If he has not come to a knowledge of It, great is 
his loss, his fall. Searching for, and discerning It in all things that are, 
sages, going forth from this world, become immortal. 

THE subject of these enigmatical sentences is the Eternal, the 
Supreme Self of all beings. And in this second name of that 
ineffable Mystery one may, perhaps, find a way to an under- 
standing of these riddles. 

Let us begin by realizing that Spiritual Life, the Eternal, the Supreme 
Self cannot be known by the lower, external mind ; the marvellous piece 
of machinery which we have through ages developed, to deal with ma- 
terial objects and conditions; the mind which determines the nature of 
things external by measuring them, by comparing, by weighing one 
against another; the mind on which we depend in the practical things 
of daily life. 

This wonderful piece of machinery has been specialized for exactly 
these practical ends, and has a certain quite limited scope. It can weigh 
and measure and compare. It can never, because of its very nature, tell 
us about the real nature of anything; can never tell us what anything 
really is. This limitation is of the essence of its nature, because it is 
of no practical value to us, in our daily lives, to know the real nature 
of things, any more than it would be of practical value to rabbits to know 
the botanical classification of the different grasses. Rabbits can get 
along quite well with a relative knowledge, the knowledge of the flavour 

15 225 



226 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

and wholesomeness of different green things; any further knowledge 
would be a useless encumbrance. 

So in us the lower, external mind, the mind which looks outward 
upon external nature, needs only relative knowledge of things, and not 
a knowledge of what they really are. It was brought into being for just 
that purpose, and is, by its nature, strictly limited to that function. 

But there is within us another power, the beginning of which is 
intuition. Bergson, who has approached nearest to the Eastern Wisdom 
in his consideration of these high problems, rightly says that this power, 
intuition, is not a machine which measures and compares, but is the 
representative in us, in our inmost being, of the Infinite Life; is at once 
the Infinite Life and the most real element of our being; and, because 
it is this, intuition can give us some perception, some experience, of 
Infinite Being; not through a process of outward viewing, of weighing 
and measuring and comparing, but through direct spiritual self-conscious- 
ness, through being that which we know. 

The external mind, therefore, cannot know Life, the Eternal, the 
Supreme Self of all beings. But, through a reversal of the tendency 
of our lives, through a withdrawing of ourselves from the entanglements 
of external things and a turning inward and upward within ourselves, 
we can awaken intuition, we can reach spiritual self-consciousness; we 
can begin to realize the Eternal, because the Eternal is the very essence 
of that new part of ourselves which we have awakened to consciousness ; 
or, to speak more correctly, that part of ourselves to a consciousness of 
which we have awakened. We begin to know the Eternal by awaking 
to a realization that we are of the Eternal, that we are in the Eternal; 
that the Eternal is that within us, which both knows and is known. It 
is a process, not of mental measurement and comparison, but of spiritual 
self-consciousness. 

A part of the lasting tragedy of human life is this : The lower, 
external mind not only cannot understand the real nature of things, the 
real nature of the Infinite Life, the Eternal, and our relation with 
that Life; the lower mind cannot even recognize that knowledge of this 
kind exists, nor is such knowledge of even the slightest interest to the 
lower mind. It will of itself never even ask the question. 

But, in virtue of the divinity within mankind, in virtue of the 
spiritual stature and endowment which renders his inner nature to some 
degree self-conscious, there is, within him, some measure of intuition. 
And this first glimmer of intuition does ask the infinite question ; does 
concern itself with the reality of things, does seek to sound the infini- 
tudes. This it does, because it is itself of the essence of the Infinite. 

Intuition, therefore, puts the question concerning things infinite. 
The lower, external mind catches the reflection of this question from the 
intuition above and within ; seizes on the question, and strains its powers 
to find the answer. This would seem to be the motive and driving power 
of all rationalistic philosophies. 



"BY WHOM" 227 

But, having undertaken this large task, the external mind carries 
with it its inherent limitations. It is not equipped, nor was it constructed, 
to perform work of this kind. Therefore, while straining at the task, 
the lower mind cannot accomplish it ; it is fatally pursued by its inherent 
limitedness. 

Seeking to unravel the secret of the external world, the lower mind 
discovers matter; discovers the elements that make up matter, defining 
these elements in terms of weight and measurement, and their inter- 
actions among themselves ; discovers molecules within the elements, atoms 
within the molecules, ions or electrons within the atoms; and, at last, 
is as far from the ultimate solution as it was at the outset. 

In exactly the same way, the lower mind measures the world and 
its girth; goes beyond the earth to the moon and sun and the whole 
solar system, measuring and weighing these; passes beyond the solar 
system to the starry hosts ; and then, as before, comes to a halt ; recog- 
nizes that it cannot conceive the universe either as having a boundary 
or as having no boundary. While ascertaining comparative measures 
and distances, it has learned nothing of realities. Everything is de- 
scribed in terms of something else; there is no finality, or possible 
finality. 

Therefore all rationalistic philosophies end, and inevitably end, in 
agnosticism. That is the one logical conclusion to the search for knowl- 
edge in that way, by that instrument. 

The tragedy, therefore, is this : That, having been inspired and 
set in motion by intuition, which alone puts the questions he seeks to 
answer, the rationalistic philosopher instantly turns his back upon in- 
tuition and commits the task to the lower mind, which is incapable of 
finding the answer. Having begun with intuition, he should go on with 
intuition ; pressing with his whole life-force and energy in that direction, 
he will find it possible, with the co-operation of Divine Powers which 
are waiting to help him, to arouse intuition into a flame of light, a per- 
ceptive power which really knows the Eternal, because it is itself of 
the essence of the Eternal; a power which will know the Eternal as 
Infinite, Immortal; knowing this by the direct experience of spiritual 
consciousness; and, further, recognizing this radiant inner Life as the 
Supreme Self, the Supreme Life of all beings. Spiritual intuition rec- 
ognizes that Life is infinite; in knowing, it therefore at the same time 
knows that it can never be completely known; that it can never be fully 
comprehended, girdled by knowledge. This recognition comes as an 
early experience of intuition, and is testified to by all, in all times and 
lands, in whom spiritual intuition has awakened. Yet, recognizing that 
the Life is infinite, and never fully to be known, intuition at the same 
time recognizes a kindred infinity within its own being, and sees for 
itself the promise of an immortal, infinitely growing Light. 

While the lower mind cannot lay hold on realities, nor grasp what 
belongs to intuition, to spiritual consciousness, nevertheless the lower 



228 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

mind is not in underlying substance different from intuition. It is rather 
a part of intuition, but crystallized, set, specialized; just as the hand is 
specialized, from the general substance of the body, for a limited use. 
But the specialized organ pays the penalty of its specialization and cannot 
re-become the general substance. A bird's wing is, in reality, a five- 
fingered hand specialized for flight; but it cannot rebecome a hand. 
The hoof of a horse is a still more specialized five-fingered hand ; it can 
become neither hand nor wing. 

But the important thing is, that the general substance can take this 
or that special form, because it has in it all that will be developed in 
either special form. So the intuition has in it the essence of all the 
specialized forms and means of knowledge which are crystallized in the 
lower mind. It is a noetic power with infinite power of application. 

We shall miss the real purpose of these considerations if we think 
of them as applying only to forms and means of knowledge. The real 
application is to being rather than knowing only. It is not so much a 
question of spiritual knowledge as of spiritual life; of the awakened 
spiritual will, rather than of new modes of knowing. 

It is not enough to do what has been suggested : to turn backward 
and inward the perceptive powers; we must turn ourselves backward 
and inward, renouncing not so much the lower mind, as the whole life 
of the lower self, with the whole body of corrupt inclinations and ten- 
dencies that make it up. It is a question of repentance, conversion, 
redemption through the divine grace of Spiritual Powers. 

But the life of the lower self is tenaciously defended by the lower 
mind, which is the acute, resourceful, obedient servitor of the lower 
will. Therefore we can make the conflict easier by solving, to some 
degree, the problem of the lower mind, thus weakening its prestige and 
shaking its despotic sway. This is a means, a partial means only. The 
great battle must be fought out in the moral nature, with the light and 
help of Spiritual Powers ; Powers which are constrained by the infinite 
Unity to lend their help. And the name of that constraint is Divine Love. 

Keeping these general considerations in mind, it will be less difficult 
to read the riddle of the sentences translated: 

If thou thinkest: I know the Infinite Eternal well, completely, that 
Eternal Life of which thou art, of which the Divine Powers are, un- 
divided parts, little dost thou know. It is to be searched for and sought 
after in the inner, spiritual nature, which is to be entered by the door 
of sacrifice and aspiration, with the help of the Divine Powers; then, 
indeed, it will be known. 

He who says : I think not that I know it well, so as completely to 
comprehend and girdle it with my knowledge; nor do I not know it, 
since it is the essence of my spiritual nature, and therefore my innermost 
consciousness and will, he, indeed, knows the Eternal. 

With these clues and examples, it will not be hard to read the 
ancient riddle. 



"BY WHOM" 229 

The Eternal, verily, won a victory for the Bright Powers. In the 
victory of That, of the Eternal, the Bright Powers magnified themselves. 
They, considering, said: Of us, verily, is this victory; of us, verily, is 
this might, said they. 

That Eternal knew this thought of theirs. To them, verily, That 
manifested Itself. They knew It not. What apparition is this? said 
they. 

They spoke to the Fire-god: Thou All-permeating, discover thou 
what this apparition is! said they. 

Be it so! said he. 

The Fire-god ran up to That. 

That said to him: Who art thou? 

The Fire-god, verily, am I! said he. The All-permeating am I! 

If that be so, what valour is in thee? said That. 

Even this all can I burn up, whatever there be, here in the world! 
said he. 

Before him That laid down a blade of grass. 

Burn this! said That. 

He went forward toward it with all swiftness. He was not able 
to burn it. 

From That, verily, he turned back. 

I have not been able to discover what that apparition is! said he. 

And so they spoke to the Wind-god: Thou Wind-god, discover thou 
what this apparition is! said they. 

Be it so! said he. 

The Wind-god ran up to That. 

That said to him: Who art thou? 

The Wind-god, verily, am I ! said he. He who rests in the Mother 
am I! 

If that be so, what valour is in thee? said That. 

Even this all can I take up, whatever there be, here in the world! 
said he. 

Before him That laid down a blade of grass. 

Take up this! said That. 

He went forward toward it with all swiftness. He was not able 
to take it up. 

From That, verily, he turned back. 

I have not been able to discover what that apparition is! said he. 

And so they spoke to the Sky-lord: Thou Might-possessor, discover 
thou what this apparition is! said they. 

Be it so! said he. 

The Sky-lord ran up to That. That vanished from before him. 

The Sky-lord there, verily, in the shining ether, came upon a Woman 
greatly radiant, Uma, daughter of the Snowy Mountain. 

To her the Sky-lord spoke: What is this apparition? said he. 



230 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

She spoke: The Eternal, verily! said she. In the victory of That 
ye were magnifying yourselves, said she. 

From her, verily, he knew: It is the Eternal. 

The passage just translated is, perhaps, the most delicious bit of 
Sanskrit prose that has come down to us; fascinating in the great sim- 
plicity of its style, charming in its sense of humour. 

It is, at the same time, one of the deepest passages in all the Upan- 
ishads, the profoundest books of the Eastern Wisdom. 

We can, therefore, hope to discover only a part of its mystery, which 
is, indeed, the supreme mystery of the Eternal. 

We can best seek the meaning of this splendidly vivacious piece of 
symbolism by translating certain sentences from a Vedanta catechism 
attributed to one of the great Masters of the Eastern Wisdom, Shankar- 
acharya, who both edited and commented on the greater Upanishads, 
though the commentaries we have were probably written not by that 
Master but by some of his disciples. 

The sentences are these: 

The Supreme Self, attributing itself to, and becoming self-conscious 
in, the natural body, is called the All-pervading (Vishva, Vaishvanara). 

The Supreme Self, attributing itself to, and becoming self-conscious 
in, the mental body, is called the Radiant (Taijasa). 

The Supreme Self, attributing itself to, and becoming self-conscious 
in, the causal body (Karana sharira) is called the Illuminated (Prajna). 

The Supreme Self (Atma) in its own form, is Infinite Being, Infinite 
Consciousness, Infinite Bliss. 

There is, therefore, on the one hand, the Supreme Self, the Eternal. 
On the other hand, there are the three bodies, counting from below 
upward, the natural body, the mental body, the causal body. And, in 
each of these three bodies, there is the apparition, the presentment, of 
the Supreme Self : the self in that body. In the natural body is the vital, 
natural self; the self common to all living things, the all-permeating, 
all-pervading vital fire. In the mental body is the personal self, in the 
higher sense of personality, the personal man redeemed. In the causal 
body is the self of illumination, the permanent individuality, as dis- 
tinguished from the true personality. 

One might, perhaps, distinguish these three as the self of the ordi- 
nary man, the self of the full disciple, and the self of the Master. 

This seems to be very closely the ground covered by the first, or 
microcosmic, meaning of our ancient parable. 

The victory which the Eternal won for the Bright Powers would 
appear to be the victory of manifestation, of existence in manifested life. 

This manifestation, like the unrolling of a curtain, is let down 
through the Three Worlds, the spiritual world, the mid-world and the 
natural world. 



"BY WHOM" 231 

In the lowest of the three, the natural world, Life is manifested 
as the habitual self, perhaps it would be better to say, the vital self, in 
the natural body. 

On its own plane, natural life, vitality, pervades all things and sets 
all things aflame with vital breath. Through that power, the whole 
natural universe moves and breathes and has its being. 

But, faced with the mystery of Life, the natural self is impotent. 
Even a blade of grass presents an unconquerable enigma. The digestive 
powers even of a rabbit can consume the blade of grass. But the natural 
intelligence even of the wisest botanist cannot solve the ultimate problem 
of the blade of grass, the mystery of the being that is within it. 

For the self of the mental body, which begins where reflective self- 
consciousness begins, but which fully disentangles itself from the natural 
self only when the disciple comes to full self-consciousness in the mental 
body, the ultimate mystery is equally impenetrable. The activity of the 
mental self, like the wind of heaven, sweeps to the uttermost bounds 
of visible space, only to be completely baffled. The intelligence of that 
self cannot take up even a blade of grass, and discern its final secret. 

We come now to deep waters; waters considerably beyond the 
depth of the present interpreter. But, in the writings attributed to 
Shankaracharya, there is what would appear to be a clue. It is said there 
that the causal body has two aspects : on the one hand, it is the vesture 
of the illuminated consciousness of the Master, the immortal; on the 
other hand, the causal body, since it is the basis of individuality, and, 
therefore, of separate existence, of differentiation, is, in a sense, opposed 
to the Oneness of the Eternal. The heterogeneous cannot comprehend 
the homogeneous. The differentiated cannot comprehend the undif- 
ferentiated. 

Looking at this from another point of view : Even when the disciple 
has attained to mastery, fully awakening the illuminated self-conscious- 
ness in the causal body, there appear to be two alternative ways open: 
He may either elect to enter Nirvana, which an august authority has 
called "a glorified selfishness"; or he may renounce his reward, and 
enter the gate of absolute sacrifice. 

Only if he choose the second alternative, has he entered into the 
true mystery of the Eternal. 

It would seem that there are in him the two counterbalancing ten- 
dencies : on the one hand, the causal body which, as the basis of sepa- 
rateness, is biased toward separate existence, individual Nirvana; on the 
other hand, the illuminated consciousness, the very light of the Eternal, 
inspiring him to renounce individual bliss and to throw his whole life 
and being into the continuing struggle of All that lives, the eternal warfare 
for spiritual victory. 

But these are somewhat rash speculations, venturings into too deep 
water. 



232 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Besides its application to the microcosm, to sevenfold man, our 
ancient parable has also its macrocosmic side, referring to the same 
principles in their universal aspect, as principles of worlds and solar 
systems. This macrocosmic side is brought out in the passage which 
follows, and which completes this Upanishad: 

Therefore, verily, these Bright Powers stand in rank above the other 
Bright Pozvers, namely, the Fire-god, the Wind-god, the Sky-lord; for 
they touched That most nearly. And because he first knew that It is} 
the Eternal, therefore the Sky-lord surpasses in rank the other Bright 
Powers; for he touched That most nearly, he first knew That, saying, It 
is the Eternal. 

Of That, this is the teaching: That flashed forth from the lightning, 
like the twinkling of an eye. This concerns the celestial Powers. 

Now, as concerns the Self: To That, intelligence approaches; and 
through That, the will constantly remembers That. This, verily, is named 
adoration of That; as adoration of That, it is to be approached with 
reverence. He who knows That thus, to him all beings are subject in 
loving obedience. 

Thou hast said: Master, tell the Upanishad, the secret teaching! 
The Upanishad is declared to thee; ^ve have, of a truth, declared the 
Upanishad concerning the Eternal; for this Upanishad, fervour, control, 
holy work are the support; the Vedas are its members; truth is its abode. 

He who rightly knows this secret teaching, putting away darkness 
and sin, in the unending heavenly world which is to be won he stands 
firm, he stands firm. 

We have, perhaps, in this last passage, the clue to the most mysterious 
personage in our ancient parable : Uma, daughter of the Snowy Moun- 
tain, Uma Haimavati. 

In the later and more exoteric, but still mystical, tradition of India, 
Uma is the consort of Shiva, Third Person of the Trimurti, the Lord of 
mystical wisdom, whose name signifies the August, the Benign. It is, 
therefore, the hidden wisdom, personified as the child of the Himalaya, 
who reveals the Eternal. 

Curiously, while the inner significance of the name of this Woman 
greatly radiant is lost in Sanskrit, it must have been clear in the older 
tongue which lies behind Sanskrit ; for it remains in a group of younger 
Aryan tongues called Slavonic. Here, the root Um is the common 
word for intelligence. 

Cosmic Intelligence, therefore, on the one hand, the divine power 
which has been called Cosmic Electricity ; and, on the other, that spiritual 
intelligence in man, the first manifestation of which is intuition, which 
steadily grows, as we watch and worship, till it becomes the infinite Light, 
revealing the Supreme Eternal; such would seem to be the significance 
of Uma, daughter of the Snowy Mountain, consort of the mystic Lord. 

C. J. 



LIFE AND DEATH 



THIS morning I awoke to find a bitterly cold blizzard blowing, 
and everything within sight outside, from the mountain tops 
down, thinly covered on their windward side with frozen drifted 
snow, though it is now late spring, and we are in the semi-tropics. 
Not so many days ago a hot dry wind, laden with sand, blew in from 
the Mojave desert, while an almost melting, stifling heat from a blazing 
sun penetrated every shade. Along the great "fault" running eastward 
from here, and for miles on either side, the ground has shaken more 
violently and frequently of late. Everything has seemed as if in 
physiographical revolt, as if refusing to submit to some higher decree, 
or trying to assert itself should the earth be about to shape some new 
feature. 

From the window I saw our lone cypress tree bravely bend from 
the storm, time and again, as with set moral purpose, like some human 
creature stooping to adverse circumstances whilst refusing to break. 
Its nearest companion, a pepper tree, was being shorn of its small 
boughs and leaf and berry filigree; the birds we love so much had left 
their nests and found shelter in the thick vine climbing the house. Our 
flowers, too, were broken, and looked surprised and bewildered as the 
wind ruthlessly stripped them of their blossoms. 

Standing there and musing, similar scenes of storm and restive 
elemental extremes, rebellion, breakage and strain, the possible throes 
of new things in the making came to me, but in human nature and life, 
and passed in widening sequence through my mind as associated ideas 
will do, until I stood in thought, as in like moods before, at the always 
half opened door of death itself, that greatest of all changes. Then I 
thought of a letter, unanswered these many months, eventually to find 
it in my inside coat pocket, where I had put it, intending to write in 
answer soon. 

The writer of the letter described to me Macdonald's last moments. 
How she was with him alone, and that as he sank unconscious toward 
the end, the writer felt what seemed to her like the stillness that follows 
some deeply felt, reverently spoken benediction, which filled the room; 
though the dying man had not said a word, nor given any sign. She 
did not know why, but she thought this might always be, when so 
valourous and strong a soul as Mac was freed by death; that possibly 
we sensed more keenly and directly the soul's finer life and influence 
at the moment of its passing. And she wrote, asking, could I explain, 
or give her some thoughts of my own, to make the cause and reason for 
this just a little more clear? I shall now try to do this speaking to 
you, my friend from the fragments of teaching I have gathered here 
and there, although the incidents of our inner life at death are not made 

233 



234 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

visible to such as you and me, save as we can see them reflected in some 
simile, and then only as in a glass darkened by our own and this world's 
sin and shadow. 

Most of us have read that when one is drowning, the principal 
scenes and events and most intimate associations in the life then seemingly 
closing, unfold to outer memory. Well, this is always true at death, I 
understand, when the soul, to the extent that it had life in us, recalls 
to inner memory, and to deeper, spiritual consciousness its own purpose 
and impulses, and so gathers from the field of our past work and thought 
and imaging, the few small gleanings which reflect its own pure light, 
such as were made aglow with the sacrificial essence of loving deeds ; to 
the end that it may weave, as it were, from the life-stuff of these, a 
white and seamless and more befitting outer garment, suggestive of the 
one He wore, so difficult and costly to make, in which to enter heaven. 
This will be partially unknown to the outer mind, or to that "Raymond"- 
like after-death personality we so commonly mistake for the Immortal 
Self. 

I have often pictured the soul thus pausing in self-examination at 
the close of its life-day, conscious of its spiritual successes and failures, 
victories and defeats, and of the joy and pain of it all, the Master's 
power and love made manifest, and all human affections deepened and 
strengthened. 

Yet, after all, I should like to make clearer the life and actuality 
that no words, least of all my own, can convey, though they may perhaps 
serve to make Mac's parting response more intelligible, and as real and 
lasting as he intended it to be. I think that we should all feel something 
of this when by the side of one who is dying, if only we could be silent 
and still, and not too benumbed by our grieving. 

If we may venture further, where neither words nor similes belong, 
and where time as we know it does not enter, it would seem that the 
moment of our going is known, and that the compassionate Angels of 
Death are there saddened or made joyous by the memory's kaleidoscopic 
record of our life as we and they now see it, divested of its outward 
seeming, its motives, and merit laid bare, and who make of death a 
holy thing, our life's closing sacrament, to some a beatific vision of the 
Master himself. 

If in that bright and searching light, it is seen that we have lived 
as selfishly as most of us have done ; or that we have idled dreamily our 
precious time and life away, which it cost Him so much to give us, as 
you and I and so many alas ! are doing so that we did not fully provide 
for a spiritually conscious life hereafter, and the darkness caused by 
this proves overwhelming at the close, then we shall sleep as in the night, 
but to dream of Him still, where other guardian Immortals in the 
Cause of the Masters keep silent watch and ward over the slumbering 
souls of men, until the Angels of the Dawn shall call us to childhood and 
to outer life, to our daily task once more. 



LIFE AND DEATH 235 

Only in the creative light of day, and by continual hard inner work, 
can we earn and receive in full that wage of holiness, our spiritually 
self-conscious life and immortality. And night and day, our sleeping and 
waking, our nightly journey back to Him, to refresh us for our daily 
heavenward toil, were in the beginning God's given symbol to us of our 
ever-recurring life and death. 

Something of communion with one's own Master in soundest sleep, 
I am told, is in a measure true even for the worst amongst us, so be it 
that we have not sinned altogether beyond pardon. Were it not so, we 
could not go so buoyantly from day to day as we do ; for most men and 
women, deprived of such nightly inner life and daily support, would 
soon fall wholly exhausted by the struggle, or become insane. 

Perhaps the reason why the sacred books, both of the east and of 
the west, invariably allude to after-death consciousness in the metaphors 
of sleep and dreaming, is because only these will adequately express, in 
our psychologically imperfect language, our common spiritual dormancy 
as compared with the fully awakened and divinely illumined consciousness 
of a Master of Life, or with that of a disciple, or saint. These, by virtue 
and strong aspiration, and ceaseless devotion in life, have so far wrested 
the victory from death as to have awakened from their age-long, inner 
slumber to get a glimpse of the eternal morning sun ; to sense something 
of its glory, and of the life and beauty of the Master's world while 
we still sleep maybe, or are scarce half awake to the possibilities of 
inner life. 

That long silent, peaceful-seeming night which we call death, is more 
gestative and more reminiscent of life by far than any dream could be. 
Our loved ones are indeed there, they whom we love and leave behind, 
with those who have gone before. As our beclouded vision then grows 
clearer, we shall see them as in our highest moments we knew them 
inwardly to be, clothed with a radiance not yet visible to us, as so often 
and so truly we have been told. Nor need they be any less living and 
human to us. The seen and unseen worlds, their planes of life, are said to 
interpenetrate, so the way between them is always open. And we have 
only to be sufficiently clean of heart to feel inwardly near one to another, 
or to be conscious of a lost and loved one's presence, and to commune 
inwardly with them. For truly to love and to be loved, and to know how 
to love, are part of our everlasting reward. 

The depth and intensity of our devotion, our daily offerings of 
prayer and self-sacrifice, and the will and endeavour to obey and hourly 
to reach up to our Master while we are here, will be the measure of our 
abiding joy and conscious communion with Him hereafter. 

Here I would like to remind you of the signs at the cross-roads, 
placed there by Masters and Disciples ; their many written warnings, 
all so needful at this time of perilous psychic bypaths leading downwards 
and away from the soul ; and of that "road to Endor," so disastrous in 
the end for all concerned. Yet it tempts the many who selfishly mourn, 



236 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

indifferent to the soul's immediate need at passing, of quiet and recupera- 
tion, a need as great as of our prayers and vicarious intercession. I 
read Sir Oliver Lodge's article on the church and psychical research*. 
Intended as an earnest plea to churchmen and religious to strengthen by 
spiritism their solace of hope and comfort to the bereaved, it would rather 
tend subtly to undermine our essential faith in things of the immortal 
life which, with our physical and psychical eyes, we shall never see. The 
author seems unintentionally to deny by implication the very goodness 
of God, and our hidden approach to Him. To me it is again the echo 
of that far, familiar cry, "Lo here! Lo there!" a cry to worship at 
the shrine of some "borrowed" faith, instead of at Calvary or at the 
altar of the Living Christ. As if merely for the fee paid, we all could 
rise to the plane of life where the Masters are ! 

But what of the personality after death, in whom we are so 
much interested? Our personal life is a borrowed one; it rightfully 
belongs to the soul, as you already know. And at that parting 
of the ways in the "intermediate state," all that in our personal life 
lacked the soul's touch of inner life and virtue and beauty, all which the 
soul cannot then reclaim, continues until the soul's sustaining energies 
are spent; then it, too, will "sleep"; its animated consciousness held 
suspended against the day when the soul, then at rest, shall return to its 
personal life and outer labours. 

We must know that hell, as well as heaven, has its many mansions ; 
and that our after death experiences can never be exactly alike, any 
more than our lives are alike here, though we all live subject to the 
same general laws. 

Still, what of Mac? you may ask. He chose to take up the Cross, 
and to follow wheresoever it led more than most men do, though he had 
only himself to give, so that he passed through life's cleansing flames 
when here, as you may have observed. His passage back to the Master, 
whose ever more abundant life flowed out to him, was thus made 
conscious, swift and sure. 

LABOURING LAYMAN. 



* Hibbert Journal, January, 1920. 



Love God, and walk uprightly; do good, and never mind what others 
say. ITALIAN PROVERB. 



DANTE SKETCHES 



DANTE was a mystic. This word has many meanings ; but choose 
whichever you will, so it be related to true and high things 
and not their counterfeit, and I believe Dante has at once 
fulfilled it in himself, and is its interpreter. For Dante is one 
of the great men of all time, as well as one of the great writers. It 
is my belief that he could not have written as he did without a large 
measure of direct knowledge of the "high fantasies" he described, as 
against imaginative perception of them. He had not merely the capacity 
to transmit a poetic inspiration, which all true poets have, but he was 
self-conscious in that very world of inspiration. Dante knew whereof he 
spoke; and there is repeated evidence that he deliberately set himself to 
interpret divine things to his fellow-men. 

To read Dante is to approach the mysteries of the Kingdom. Only 
the great scriptures of the world exceed him in depth of wisdom and 
beauty of form. He is so far greater than even the best of poets, that 
whole generations of men have failed to catch more than an echo of his 
true message. A host of commentators have busied themselves with the 
intellectual setting, the forms of symbolism, the technique of his art ; but 
though a few have revealed his mind, scarcely one has understood his 
heart. "Dante," says a kindred, though a lesser spirit, Shelley, was 
"the Lucifer of that starry flock which in the thirteenth century shone 
forth from republican Italy, as from a heaven, into the darkness of the 
benighted world. His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as 
a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie 
covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with the lightning 
which has as yet found no conductor. All high poetry is infinite ; it is as 
the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may 
be undrawn, and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. 
A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of 
wisdom and delight; and after one person and age has exhausted all its 
divine effluence which their particular relations enable them to share, 
another and yet another succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, 
the source of an unforeseen ,and an unconceived delight." 

Dante approached very near the Light that Light which lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world. 

"But I already of myself was such as he would have me ; 
Because my sight, becoming purged, now more and more was 

entering through the ray of the deep Light which in Itself is true. 
Thence forward was my vision, mightier than our discourse, which 

f aileth at such sight, and faileth memory at so great outrage." 1 

Because Dante was a great poet he was necessarily an interpreter of 
the spiritual world, and of spiritual laws. All "high poetry", because it 

xxxiii, 50-57. 

237 



238 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

is "infinite", is also divine; it is wisdom as well as knowledge, goodness 
as well as virtue, beauty as well as loveliness. True poetry speaks not 
only with the cadences of an eternal harmony, but also with something of 
its compelling mystery, of its other-world authority. Poetry takes us 
towards the highest poetry into the home of all our aspirations, to the 
source of all our longings. It lifts us by the dynamic power of its own 
contact with creative force, out of our subjection to the chaos of material 
and psychic existence. "Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the 
divinity in man." Dante was more than "the hierophant of an unappre- 
hended inspiration", he was an integral part of that inspiration because 
of what he was, and his poetry interpreted more of himself than is possible 
for most poets. 

Dante's special genius, then, found expression in a sustained and 
determined effort to make the unseen real, the invisible visible. Never 
has a poet used the creative imagination, the image-making faculty, so 
deliberately, to translate the things of eternity into the limitations of time 
and space. He has an extraordinary gift of creating in the hearts of his 
readers the emotions, the aspirations, of his own soul. He has a power 
of sympathy which draws them into his own consciousness; he has a 
bewitching alchemy of words which resolves their intellectual prejudice 
and makes them one with him. His eyes see life as reflecting the soul, 
see nature as the vesture of God's loveliness; his piercing vision pene- 
trates this vesture to the corresponding spiritual life that gave it birth. 

"The dawn was conquering the morning air, which fled before, so 

that from afar I recognized the trembling of the sea. . . . 
At the hour in which the swallow begins to tune her sad complaint 

unto the morning, perchance in memory of her former woes, 
And when our soul, more of a wanderer from the flesh and less a 

prisoner of thoughts, is, as it were, divinely free for her 

visions :" . . . 2 

By such swift intuition Dante connects the breathless hush of dawn, 
the first swallow twittering in a quiet sky, with that moment when the 
soul, burdened with the mystery of renewed contact with the spiritual 
world, pauses before returning to its house of flesh with messages and 
dreams, with "visions of the night". He has caught the soul of dawn, he 
reveals the source of its charm, he tells us why Nature is what it is. 

There is no higher poetry than this. It sees life in terms of the soul, 
for purposes of the soul. It is closest to scripture and merges into it. 

Few have even attempted what Dante accomplishes in every canto. 
Perhaps Aeschylus, the Book of Job, and parts of Paradise Lost and of 
Prometheus are the only conscious efforts to write such poetry that the 
West can show, to which some might add the canticles of St. John of the 
Cross. Where, for instance, has humility, its essence and its symbology, 
been more delicately indicated than in the following lines every word of 

2 Purgat orio, i, 115 and ix, 13-18. 



DANTE SKETCHES 239 

which demands meditation? An Angel, nowhere named but quickly 
recognized, approaches : 

"To us came the beauteous creature, robed in white, and his coun- 
tenance such as the morning star which trembles. 

His arms he opened, and then outspread his wings ; he said : 'Come ; 
here nigh are the steps, and easily now is ascent made.' 

To this announcement few be they who come. O human folk, born 
to fly upward, why at a breath of wind thus fall ye down?" 3 

In these typical passages we see that Dante takes images common 
enough in all imaginative poetry, but that he transforms them by placing 
them in the spiritual world. The setting of his world is not our ordinary 
setting, but lies above it in that of souls. Other poets take us into worlds 
of fairyland and romance, Dante to the real world of our immortality. 
Where the beauties of imaginative creation are with most poets the 
sufficient end, by means of which higher things are only incidentally 
reflected, with Dante they are the premeditated media, the deliberate 
instruments, of his higher revelation. He is always turning within, or 
more truly, his consciousness is so firmly fixed in the spiritual world that 
what he sees has but the one interest, the one relation. His eyes have 
the true vision, and he makes us see with him things which in our blind- 
ness were invisible before. 

As a poet, this faculty gives Dante a right to the highest place; but 
it still remains to be determined how consciously Dante was a teacher 
of spiritual things. In other words, how much did Dante know? Was 
so great a genius a messenger, an agent, of the Lodge? Was he, uncon- 
sciously, an initiate; or did he, perhaps, have some personal knowledge 
of his fellowship and of his high calling? 

There is much in his writings which bears on this topic ; and though 
any precise conclusion must in each case rest with the reader's own 
apprehension of such things, Dante's words and method reveal a cer- 
tainty of conviction which at least ranks him as a' mystic of the highest 
order, if nothing more. After all, if "the natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him : neither 
can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned", it is also true 
that, "he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged 
of no man". 

Before writing the Divina Commedia, Dante started, and never 
finished, a philosophical exposition of certain canzoni of his own composi- 
tion. This book he called The Banquet, a title in itself related to the 
mysteries from Egyptian and Chaldean days, through Greece, to 
Christianity. The key to much of Dante's meaning lies in this Convivio, 
though commentators have too frequently made the mistake of limiting 
themselves to the bare statements of his text, while disregarding the 
whole tenor of his thought, and the more or less obvious undercurrents 
which were his true purpose and intention. 

8 Purgatorio, xii. 88-96. 



240 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"Oh blessed those few who sit at the table where the bread of angels 
is consumed", he writes in the opening chapter, "and wretched they who 
share the food of sheep! But . . . they who are fed at so lofty a 
table are not without compassion towards those whom they see browsing 
round on grass and acorns in the pasture of brutes; and inasmuch as 
compassion is the mother of benefaction, they who know ever proffer 
freely of their good wealth to those poor indeed, and are as a living spring 
at whose waters the natural thirst above spoken of is refreshed." 

We shall return to this use of the phrase "bread of angels" ; but first, 
in order to show the full content of Dante's thought, it will be necessary 
to consider his method of writing. In the first chapter of the second 
treatise he says that "this exposition must be both literal and allegorical", 
and that it not only "may be" but "should be expounded chiefly in four 
senses". The first sense is literal, the second allegorical, which "is a truth 
hidden under beauteous fiction"; and Dante illustrates this by citing 
Ovid's account of Orpheus' power of music, 4 which draws not only 
animals but trees and stones, explaining that this signifies "the wise man 
with the instrument of his voice, maketh cruel hearts tender and humble ; 
and moveth to his will such as have not the life of science and of art." 
Dante adds to Ovid's account of the appellation "wise man," and there is a 
suggestive interpretation of just what he means by "a life of science" in 
the fourteenth chapter, where he shows a series of correspondences 
between "the heavens" and science. He says that "by heaven I mean 
science" using the two together as practically interchangeable, so that by 
science he implies heaven "whereto we must needs consider a comparison 
that holds between the order of the heavens and that of the sciences". 
It is quite possible that by "the life of science" Dante indicated a life 
of, or in, heaven. 

"The third sense is called moral", he continues; and his illustration 
further brings forward the traditional secrecy of the initiate. "When 
Christ ascended the mountain of the transfiguration, of the twelve 
apostles he took with him but three ; wherein the moral may be understood 
that in the most secret things we should have but few companions." 

"The fourth sense is called anagogical, that is to say, 'above the 
sense'; and this is when a scripture is spiritually expounded which even 
in the literal sense, by the very things it signifies, signifies again some 
portion of the supernal things of eternal glory." Dante adds that he will 
always expound his ode first in the literal sense, and after that in "its 
allegory, that is its hidden truth." He also says that the allegorical is the 
(< true exposition" ; and in his dedicatory letter to Can Grande, patron of 
the arts and Lord of Verona, he applies exactly the same canon of inter- 
pretation to the Divina Commedia, merely indicating that "although these 
mystic senses are called by various names, they may all in general be 
called allegorical, since they differ from the literal or historical." Dante 
and his predecessors frequently change the order or sequence of these 

* Metamorphoses, x, 139 to 170, and xi, 1 to 18. 



DANTE SKETCHES 241 

types of exposition, interchanging moral and allegorical for instance, but 
the essential idea remains the same. 

In the face of this, the hostility of critics to a "mystical" interpreta- 
tion of Dante can only be accounted for by their own feeling of 
helplessness when confronted by a claim to knowledge outside the range 
of their experience. It is true that the whole mediaeval mind, receiving 
its impulse from the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists, was given to allegor- 
izing, often absurd and extravagant in the extreme; for, as Dr. Jowett 
says, "they had a method of interpretation which could elicit any meaning 
out of any words." But nevertheless, the presence of counterfeits, like a 
shadow, is proof positive of a reality; and there is too much historical 
and scriptural authority for the evidence of the mysteries, too much 
kabalistic literature, too many saints, for the fact of their existence to be 
reasonably disputed. 

There is no effort here to show that Dante was connected in any 
way with some one of the secret organizations, such as the Rosicrucians, 
and Templars to mention the best known whose reputations, at least, 
have come down to us to-day. But what is suggested is that Dante 
knew enough about the spiritual world, its laws and its phenomena, to 
interpret it into the language of everyday life, and that he uses language 
and symbols, he selected just those ideas, if you will, from his authorities, 
which have always been associated directly with the mysteries. 

Dante's knowledge, his erudition, was enormous. Dr. Moore devoted 
hundreds of pages to an analysis of the use of only the strictly classical 
authors in Dante, which he hoped would "enable students to form a more 
complete idea than was formerly possible of the encyclopaedic character 
of Dante's learning and studies, and of the full extent and variety of the 
literary equipment which enabled him to compose works covering a wider 
range of subjects than perhaps any other writer, certainly any other very 
great writer, ever attempted." 5 Now one of the noticeable things about 
Dante is that he not only used all this erudition to one end and for one 
purpose, but that he singled out for special emphasis authors noted for 
their suggestiveness, and for their reference to the other world. Virgil 
is not only his model and guide through hell and purgatory, but he quotes 
more from the sixth book, which describes the visit to Hades, than any 
other. Ovid's Metamorphoses are full of the Greek mystery traditions ; 
Plato, Aristotle, Statius, Lucan, all make similar contributions ; while the 
Church Fathers, such as Origen, Jerome and Cassian, not to mention 
Augustine, were all known to St. Thomas Aquinas, and would have been 
readily accessible to Dante. 

Together, therefore, with this contact with the best authors of 
antiquity, Dante was brought inevitably into touch with a mystical 
tradition, which in his day had far more standing than it has now. The 
acceptance, for instance, by all the Latin Fathers and the Schoolmen 
after them, of the fourfold interpretation of scripture applied by Dante 
to his own works, and the frequent abuse of it by the ignorant and mis- 

8 Studies in Dante, Edmund Moore, Oxford, 1896, First Series, p. 2. 

16 



242 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

guided amongst them, does not and cannot disprove the validity of such 
a method. All the mystics, those like a St. Theresa, a St. Catherine of 
Siena, or a St. Catherine of Genoa, who were in no way associated with 
any outer organization for the preservation of the mysteries, such as 
existed in Egypt, Greece and Palestine, nevertheless found it impossible 
to retail their spiritual experience except in the form of similes, of 
analogy, of cryptic, and at times almost incomprehensible, language. And 
where a body of people, conscious on such high planes, have sought a 
medium of intercommunication, the same symbolical language and the 
same use of certain physical correspondences have sprung up sponta- 
neously in the most remote parts of the world India and Peru, Greece 
and Egypt, Wales and Easter Island. In the widest sense, it is a study 
of comparative religion ; in Dante's case there would seem to be evidence 
that he not only knew of the traditions and copied their methods by a 
sort of poetic instinct, but that single-handed he attained such rank in the 
spiritual world that he understood the language of such initiates as 
Pythagoras or Plato, let alone St. Paul and the New Testament writers, 
and that he could rightly claim to associate with them in their efforts 
to benefit mankind. One of the most superb claims ever made by any 
man is Dante's in the Inferno, when he describes his meeting, in the 
heathen limbo, with the shades of Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. 

"Thus I saw assembled the goodly school of that lord of highest 

song, which like an eagle, soars above the rest. 
After they had talked together a space, they turned to me with sign 

saluting; and my Master smiled thereat. 
And greatly more besides they honoured me ; for they made me of 

their number, so that I was a sixth amid such wisdom." 6 

Again, in the second chapter of the Convivio, after Dante points out 
that he is preparing a banquet, not as one who sits himself "at the blessed 
table" where "the bread of angels is consumed", but as one who gathers 
"at the feet of them who sit at meat of that which falls from them", never- 
theless adds, "I am moved by the desire to give instruction which in very 
truth no other can give" 

The scriptural authority for a triple, or fourfold, interpretation of 
Scripture itself is found in Proverbs xxii, in the Latin Vulgate, which has 
direct significance as applying to wisdom. The passage reads in trans- 
lation, "Incline thine ear, and hear the words of the wise : and apply thy 
heart to my doctrine. Behold, I have described it to thee three manner 
of ways, in thoughts and in knowledge." The distinction between 
thoughts and knowledge is an interesting one, the Latin word for the 
latter being scientia, the same used by Dante in a passage already quoted, 
a "life of science". 

On these scriptural verses, Origen, the successor and spiritual son 
of the great Clement of Alexandria, comments at length. Origen was 

6 Inf. iv, 94-102. The word senno is often translated "intelligences"; but it really means 
strength of faculty, or wisdom. Note that Dante was one of the six, not the sixth or last. 



DANTE SKETCHES 243 

born in 185 A. D., and the De Principles from which we quote, was 
published before 231. This work was known to St. Thomas Aquinas, and 
could hardly have escaped Dante's omnivorous reading. It js of some 
moment, therefore, to find in this passage explicit allusion to the mys- 
teries. After quoting the verses from Proverbs above, Origen writes : 
"Each one, then, ought to describe in his own mind, in a threefold 
manner, the understanding of the divine letters, that is, in order that 
all the more simple individuals may be edified, so to speak, by the very 
body of Scripture, for such we term that common and historical sense : 
while if some have commenced to make considerable progress, and are 
able to see something more, they may be edified by the very soul of 
Scripture. Those again who are perfect, and who resemble those of 
whom the apostle says, 'We speak wisdom among them that are perfect, 
but not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, who 
will be brought to naught; but we speak the wisdom of God [Theou 
Sophia], hidden in a mystery, which God hath decreed before the ages 
unto our glory/ all such as these may be edified by the spiritual law 
itself (which has a shadow of good things to come), as if by the Spirit." 
Referring to the fact that Clement "who had learned from the Holy 
Spirit, is commanded to announce, not by letter nor by book, but by the 
living voice, to the presbyters of the Church of Christ, i. e. } to those 
who possess a mature faculty of wisdom, capable of receiving spiritual 
teaching" Origin adds words of great interest: "And by 'men', I now 
mean souls that are placed in bodies, who, relating those mysteries that 
are known to them, and revealed through Christ, as if they were a kind 
of human transactions, or handing down certain legal observances and 
injunctions, described them figuratively; not that any one who pleased 
might view these expositions as deserving to be trampled under foot, 
but that he who should devote himself with all chastity, and sobriety, and 
watchfulness, to studies of this kind, might be able by this means to 
trace out the meaning of the Spirit of God, which is perhaps lying pro- 
foundly buried, and the context, which may be pointing again in an- 
other direction than the ordinary usage of speech would indicate. . . . 
By an admirable discipline of wisdom, too, the law of truth, even of the 
prophets, is implanted in the Scriptures of the law, each of which is 
woven by a divine art of wisdom, as a kind of covering and veil of 
spiritual truths ; and this is what we have called the 'body' of Scripture, 
so that also, in this way, what we have called the covering of the latter, 
woven by the art of wisdom, might be capable of edifying and profiting 
many when others would derive no benefit." 7 

It would seem that, included within the political, scientific, moral, 
poetic, and theological interests which fill Dante's works, there should 
also be sought, under "the covering of the letter, woven by a divine art 
of wisdom", a truly mystical meaning, and that Dante intended, and even 
directed, that it should be sought. 

7 De Principals, Bk. iv., sections 11 and 14. We have quoted from the Latin text, not the 
Greek, as the former would have been the one available for Dante. 



244 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

It is true that, as St. Jerome says, "The art of interpreting the 
Scriptures is the only one of which all men everywhere claim to be 
masters. To quote Horace again: Taught or untaught we all write 
poetry/ The chatty old woman, the doting old man, and the wordy 
sophist one and all take in hand the Scriptures, rend them in pieces, and 
teach them before they have learned them." But St. Jerome himself 
follows with a cautious but lengthy indication of the mysteries in the 
Bible : "Exodus, no doubt, is equally plain, containing as it does merely 
an account of the ten plagues, the decalogue, and sundry mysterious and 
divine precepts. The meaning of Leviticus . . . contains the descrip- 
tion of Aaron's vestments, and all the regulations connected with the 
Levites", which "are symbols of heavenly things. The book of Numbers 
. . . Balaam's prophecy, and the forty-two camping places in the wil- 
derness" are "so many mysteries." 8 So that both Origen and Jerome 
give patristic authority to the triple interpretation of Scripture, includ- 
ing the mystical. Cassian, a monk of Gallic birth (r. 360), who went 
to Palestine and Egypt, was the first to see the necessity for, and to divide 
the allegorical interpretation into two the strictly allegorical and the ana- 
gogical, which he defines as follows : "But the anagogical sense rises 
from spiritual mysteries even to still more sublime and sacred secrets 
of heaven. . . . For it is one thing to have a ready tongue and elegant 
language, and quite another to penetrate into the very heart and marrow 
of heavenly utterances, and to gaze with the pure eye of the soul on 
profound and hidden mysteries; for this can be gained by no learning 
of man's, nor condition of this world, only by purity of soul, by means 
of the illumination of the Holy Ghost." 9 

These passages, quoted from three eminent Church Fathers, were 
the basis and authority constantly cited by the Schoolmen to justify the 
fourfold interpretation of Holy Scriptures. Possibly because Neo- 
Platonic allegorizing became so extravagant, Cassian's fourfold distinc- 
tion, including the strictly allegorical and the anagogical, or truly mys- 
tical, was preferred to the earlier threefold division of Origen. Dante 
outlines the fourfold, using Cassian's word, anagogical; though, as al- 
ready quoted, he points out to Can Grande that virtually the two are 
the same, all genuine allegorizing bordering on the mystical. 

The existence of a tradition favouring mystical writing and mystical 
interpretation being established, it remains to be shown that Dante not 
only claimed to be himself both such a writer and such an interpreter, 
but that he used many of the time-honoured symbols, and also in many 
places expressed himself in language almost identical with that of the 
mystical writers of all ages. The "bread of angels" is probably one 
such symbol. MARION HALE. 

8 Letter liii, sections 7, 8 and also ff. 

9 The First Conference of Abbot Nestor es, caps, viii and ix. 



HORIZONS 



A LETTER has reached me from a friend about a mutual friend, 
whom I will call X. "Bad news." X. is in difficulties, and the 
writer of the letter is deeply concerned on his behalf. Will it seem 
unsympathetic if I tell them both what I really think? Perhaps I 
could tell Y., the writer of the letter. Perhaps I could say to him that his 
"bad news" may be read in another light, for it may mean that the whole 
process is being speeded up as far as X. is concerned, that the high gods 
are being infinitely kind to him, that with increased pressure there may 
come increasing light, and that, finally, his entire will may be swung over 
once and for all to the side of the spiritual world. 

But there is a note almost of despair in Y.'s letter. He says : "X. has 
such a limited horizon that he is totally unable to see. . . . And 
although he admits the truth of nearly all of this, I have come almost to 
the point of believing that he will never really be able to see these things 
as they are." 

It interested me enormously, that paragraph, for in it seemed to me 
to be the key to the whole situation. Y. implies, of course, that any one 
who is so restricted by the outward surroundings and circumstances of 
his life, in his opportunities for expansion and "self-expression," to use 
the present popular term, is thereby immediately and automatically 
hemmed in as well, in regard to his inner life ; that while he may be able 
to see certain things with his mind, these same fatal and unfortunate 
restrictions of circumstances are going forever to make it impossible for 
him to do anything more than think feebly and intermittently about them, 
to gaze at this "limited horizon" with a sort of despairing longing. 

"He has such a limited horizon" : what exactly do we mean by the 
word "horizon"? I suppose that it could be defined in general terms as 
the line in one's vision where earth and heaven meet. And that line, to 
the physical eye, will seem near or far away, depending upon the light, 
the atmosphere, the configuration of the landscape. But in any event the 
view that one is going to get of the horizon must depend upon one's vision. 
If one looks clear-eyed, far-sightedly, one sees the outline clear-cut; one 
sees, too, the detail of all the intervening country, the up-sweep of the 
hills to the horizon's line, all the tangle and undergrowth and shadows of 
the valleys where the hills begin. But if one is physically near-sighted 
there is only, and at all times, a confused blur. At best, in certain lights, 
one may get passing glimpses of things slightly more remote. But for one 
so physically unfortunate there must be, in spite of straining and effort, a 
range outside the limit of vision for ever impossible as long as the dis- 
ability persists. 

Surely the parallel is clear. For when the eyes of the soul are near- 
sighted and blurred, when the man himself is self-centred and selfish,, 

245 



246 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

when as a result he is constantly thinking in terms of the material, and of 
how things will affect him personally for good or for ill, then the soul's 
horizon, too, must be contracted and hemmed in. Such a man, missing 
utterly the presence of unselfish or heroic motive in the lives of others, 
must miss, too, the beauty of the lights and shadows and colours in his 
life's landscape. He sees, in the drab and gray atmosphere of his own 
chief motive and interest, not vistas of gladness and sunshine, far- 
stretched to the horizon where earth reaches up to heaven in aspiration 
and yearning, where heaven's blue comes down into and touches earth in 
blessing, but only a cloudy and lowering sky-line without promise and 
without form, the threatening of a storm always about to break upon him. 
And not only is his outlook upon his life's uttermost limit of possibility 
restricted and blurred, but he misses, too, the perspective of all those 
things which go to make up the more immediate surroundings of his soul. 
They, too, are indistinct, unrelated. Now and then, in a moment of 
unselfishness, one or other of them may appear for a time relatively clear 
against the darkness of its background. But for the near-sighted eyes of 
such a soul it will be too great an effort and a strain to hold it for long in 
this proper perspective, and the vision must fade again. 

But when the eyes of the soul see clearly, when the Vision is clear 
and strong, when Love and not self fills the heart, the horizon changes and 
broadens, the man himself is alive to the significance of that which he sees. 
His light is that light which lighteth every man and illumines him who 
desires illumination; his atmosphere, in which he finds all things clearly 
outlined and defined, is the spirit in which he performs his duties. He 
recognizes as part of the configuration of his landscape, the immediate 
surroundings and practical circumstances of his life ; but he sees them not 
as bounds or as limits, but as opportunities ; not as barriers, but as endless 
possibilities. He rejoices in the sunshine and glory and uplift of the hills, 
but he rejoices still more in that tangle and undergrowth of the valleys, 
for he recognizes that there, in the shadows, are those problems and 
sorrows which make for life's fullness and fruition ; he knows, if they are 
used aright, and are not allowed to use him, that therein is the Father 
glorified. 

And he sees, too, in the proper and right perspective: the inter- 
relation of objects is plain. Now in the light of his motive of selflessness 
and of service, in his effort to do all things for his Master and for love of 
Him, he sees that all duties are inter-related and part of a great plan, that 
ach least duty is consecrated and holy and so a joy to perform. And he 
knows, too, that no action is unimportant, that no duty is so trivial as to 
l)e without spiritual significance. Now he comes to see that the Master 
whom he loves and serves can take for His own, and can use in His 
greater work, the spiritual force generated by that consecrated motive and 
effort. And he sees that the help for the world that can be so given will 
must depend upon his own faithfulness and perseverance, upon his 
own courage and energy, upon his continuing effort, upon his holding 



HORIZONS 247 

always the view of his life's horizon and landscape in that right perspec- 
tive. 

X. is so self-centred now as to be astigmatic; his horizon is limited 
by his vision, and by the atmosphere which he himself is helping to create. 
But once let in that Light, and all will be changed. Once substitute love 
for self-love, service of others for concentration upon self, and those 
restricted boundaries will vanish ; all limits for the future will be removed. 

"Not easy," it may be said. But X. already "admits the truth of 
nearly all" of these things upon which I have touched now, and of which 
Y. and I have talked together so often. He already feels his disability 
sufficiently keenly to be discontented about it. He must make a beginning, 
by a conscious effort of will ; he must pray for strength and perseverance, 
and trust that these will come. Perhaps it will not be easy. But Y. might 
be able gradually to help him to more and more concentrated effort, to 
greater inner quiet. And Y. will be able, too, to help him with practical 
suggestions; to remind him that useless and unnecessary talk dissipates 
energy; that if he reads a worthless book he not only fills his mind with 
its worthless contents, but that he wastes time which might have been 
spent in quite another kind of reading, with the resulting benefits. And 
with the deeper peace, with the always improving motive, the desire on 
his part will be ever greater. 

Only let him make a beginning and he will see better, little by little, 
where earth and heaven meet, the line clear and distinct at times and the 
horizon defined beyond peradventure, at others seemingly blended because 
of the glory of tender light suffusing all. And that light will reach first 
those darkest places farthest removed from the horizon itself, as a 
winter's sunrise penetrates first with a rosy glow the recesses of the 
woods and the cold hollows in the hills, before the sun itself beats down 
upon the world. He will see, too, and more and more often as he tries to 
see, the Cross outlined against his horizon's sky, as one sees it so often on 
the hilltops of France. As there, he will see it now dark and clear and 
steadfast against life's sunset sky, now radiant and glorious with promise 
in the beauty of an always resurrected day, of a new opportunity. But he 
must search his horizon. If he only glances up occasionally, he will miss 
it. He must look, and keep on looking. . . . 

Yet perhaps, before I write all this to Y., it would be wise to reinforce 
the written word with a week of intense practice. I want so much to help 
them. Can I afford to preach until I have more perfectly performed? 

STUART DUDLEY. 



He that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with 
himself. CALTON . 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND HABIT 



THEOSOPHY has been summarized as "intellectually an attitude, 
practically a method, ethically a spirit, and religiously a life." 
More than any other modern philosopher, Henri Bergson has 
grasped and utilized the first two elements of this theosophic 
quarternary, so that the technique of his work is of scarcely less interest 
to readers of the QUARTERLY than is the striking theosophic character of 
many of his conclusions. In his most recent volume of lectures and 
essays, UEnergie spirituelle, published in English a few months ago, 
under the less attractive title of Mind-Energy, we have a discussion of the 
fundamental problems of the relation of life and consciousness, mind 
and matter, body and soul, dreams, memory, phantoms, and the signifi- 
cance of intellectual effort, whose study will repay our time and effort, 
and which may serve to continue and to supplement the line of thought 
pursued in our consideration of Dr. M'Taggart's work on Human 
Immortality and Pre-existence. 

Let us look first to the attitude and method which Bergson adopts 
in his search for a solution of the fundamental problems of life, and 
to which he gives us the key in the opening pages of the book. 

"Whence are we? What are we? Whither tend we? These are 
the vital questions which immediately present themselves when we give 
ourselves up to philosophical reflexion without regard to philosophical 
systems. But between us and these problems, systematic philosophy 
interposes other problems. 'Before seeking the solution of a problem/ 
it says, 'must we not first know how to seek it ? Study the mechanism of 
thinking, then discuss the nature of knowledge and criticize the faculty 
of criticizing: when you have assured yourself of the value of the 
instrument, you will know how to use it.' That moment, alas ! will never 
come. I see only one means of knowing how far I can go : that is by 
going. If the knowledge we are in search of be real instruction, a 
knowledge which expands thought, then to analyse the mechanism of 
thought before seeking knowledge could only show the impossibility of 
ever getting it, since we should be studying thought before the expansion 
of it, which it is the business of knowledge to obtain. A premature 
reflexion of the mind on itself would discourage it from advancing, whilst 
by simply advancing it would have come nearer to its goal and perceived, 
moreover, that the so-called obstacles were for the most part the effects 
of a mirage. . . . How much better a more modest philosophy 
would be, one which would go straight to its object without worrying 
about the principles on which it depends ! It would not aim at immediate 
certainty, which can only be ephemeral. It would take its time. It would 
be a gradual ascent to the light. Borne along in an experience growing 

248 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND HABIT 249 

ever wider and wider, rising to ever higher and higher probabilities, it 
would strive toward final certainty as to a limit. 

"I hold, for my part, that there is no principle from which the 
solution of the great problems can be mathematically deduced. Moreover, 
I am unable to discover any decisive fact which clinches the matter, such 
as we expect to find in physics and chemistry. But it seems to me that 
in different regions of experience there are different groups of facts, 
each of which, without giving us the desired knowledge, points out to 
us the direction in which we may find it. Now to have only a direction 
is something. And it is still more to have several, for these directions 
will naturally converge towards one and the same point, and it is that 
point we are seeking. In short, we possess even now a certain number 
of lines of facts, which do not go as far as we want, but which we can 
prolong hypothetically. I wish to follow out some of these with you. 
Each, taken apart, will lead us only to a conclusion which is simply 
probable; but taking them all together, they will, by their convergence, 
bring before us such an accumulation of probabilities that we shall feel 
on the road to certitude. Moreover we shall come nearer and nearer 
to it through the joint effort of philosophers who will become partners. 
For, in this view, philosophy is no longer a construction, the systematic 
work of a single thinker. It needs, and unceasingly calls for, corrections 
and re-touches. It progresses like positive science. Like it, too, it is a 
work of collaboration." (pp. 4-7.) 

These two paragraphs restate for us the theosophic attitude and 
method. Truth cannot be cabined in a phrase, or reality cramped 
into a formula. Each is larger than that in which we strive to contain 
it. Knowledge exists and is obtainable. But certainty can come only 
with experience. Truth is a goal toward which we must grow the limit 
of an infinite sequence. But in advance of the ultimate union that alone 
gives certainty, the truth is pointed to by many converging lines of 
partial experience, each lit by a different facet of truth, yet in their totality 
indicating a symmetry and wholeness greater than we could predicate 
from any single point of view. Thus we can supplement our own vision 
by the vision of our fellows, and reinforce the evidence gained from one 
line of inquiry by that drawn from others. This is the familiar method 
that The Theosophical Society has practised for the forty-five years of 
its existence. 

We can, perhaps, best illustrate Bergson's use of this method, and 
lead our readers to turn to the book itself, by quoting at some length 
from the first lecture, on "Life and Consciousness"; and we may hope, 
also, to draw from these passages a view of the relation of mind and 
matter which will make it apparent that the death of the body, so far 
from destroying consciousness, should but liberate and enlarge it. 

"The first line or direction which I invite you to follow is this. When 
we speak of mind we mean, above everything else, consciousness. What 
is consciousness? There is no need to define so familiar a thing, some- 



250 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

thing which is continually present in everyone's experience. I will not 
give a definition, for that would be less clear than the thing itself ; I will 
characterize consciousness by its most obvious feature : it means, before 
everything else, memory. Memory may lack amplitude ; it may embrace 
but a feeble part of the past; it may retain only what is just happening; 
but memory is there, or there is no consciousness. . . . 

"But all consciousness is also anticipation of the future. Consider 
the direction of your mind at any moment you like to choose; you will 
find that it is occupied with what now is, but always and especially with 
regard to what is about to be. Attention is expectation, and there is 
no consciousness without a certain attention to life. The future is there ; 
it calls us, or rather it draws us to it ; its uninterrupted traction makes us 
advance along the route of time and requires us also to be continually 
acting. All action is an encroachment on the future. 

"To retain what no longer is, to anticipate what as yet is not, 
these are the primary functions of consciousness. . . . Consciousness 
is then, as it were, the hyphen which joins what has been to what will be, 
the bridge which spans the past and the future. But what purpose does 
the bridge serve? What is consciousness called on to do? 

"In order to reply to the question, let us inquire what beings are 
conscious and how far in nature the domain of consciousness extends. 
But let us not insist that the evidence shall be complete, precise and 
mathematical; if we do we shall get nothing. To know with scientific 
certainty that a particular being is conscious, we should have to enter 
into it, coincide with it, be it. It is literally impossible for you to prove, 
either by experience or by reasoning, that I, who am speaking to you at 
this moment, am a conscious being. I may be an ingeniously constructed 
natural automaton. . . . Yet you will agree that though it is not 
impossible that I am an unconscious automaton, it is very improbable." 

Just as we should be entirely mistaken if we assumed that because 
in ourselves digestion was directly connected with a stomach, therefore 
only beings with stomachs could digest, so, "in like manner, conscious- 
ness in man is unquestionably connected with the brain, but it by no 
means follows that a brain is indispensable to consciousness. . . . 
Theoretically, then, everything living might be conscious. In principle, 
consciousness is co-extensive with life. Now is it so in fact? Does not 
consciousness, occasionally, fall asleep or slumber? This is probable, 
and here is a second line of facts which leads to this conclusion. 

"In the living being which we know best, it is by means of the 
brain that consciousness works. Let us then cast a glance at the human 
brain and see how it functions. The brain is part of a nervous system 
which includes, together with the brain proper, the spinal cord, the 
nerves, etc. In the spinal cord there are mechanisms set up, each of 
which contains, ready to start, a definite complicated action which the 
body can carry out at will, just as the rolls of perforated paper which 
are used in the pianola mark out beforehand the tunes which the instru- 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND HABIT 251 

ment will play. Each of these mechanisms can be set working directly 
by an external cause : the body, then, at once responds to the stimulus 
received by executing a number of intercoordinated movements. But in 
some cases the stimulus, instead of obtaining immediately a more or less 
complicated reaction from the body by addressing itself directly to the 
spinal cord, mounts first to the brain, then redescends and calls the 
mechanism of the spinal cord into play after having made the brain 
intervene. Why is this indirect path taken? What purpose is served by 
the intervention of the brain? We may easily guess, if we consider the 
general structure of the nervous system. The brain is in a general relation 
to all the mechanisms in the spinal cord and not only to some particular 
one among them ; also it receives every kind of stimulus, not only certain 
special kinds. It is therefore a crossway, where the nervous impulse 
arriving by any sensory path can be directed into any motor path. Or, if 
you prefer, it is a commutator, which allows the current received from 
one point of the organism to be switched in the direction of any motor 
contrivance. When the stimulus, then, instead of following the direct 
path, goes off to the brain, it is evidently in order that it may set in action 
a motor mechanism which has been chosen, instead of one which is 
automatic. The spinal cord contains a great number of ready-formed 
responses to the question which the circumstances address to it; the 
intervention of the brain secures that the most appropriate among them 
shall be given. The brain is an organ of choice." 

As we descend in the scale of the animal series we can see this faculty 
of choosing still present but less and less pronounced, till automatism 
and choice seem fused into one. "The reaction is now so simple that it 
appears almost mechanical; it still hesitates and gropes, however, as 
though it would be voluntary. . . . This, then, is what we find along 
the second line of facts. It reinforces the conclusion we had come to 
before : for if, as we said, consciousness retains the past and anticipates 
the future, it is probably because it is called on to make a choice. In 
order to choose, we must know what we can do and remember the conse- 
quences, advantageous or injurious, of what we have already done; we 
must foresee and we must remember. And now we are going to see 
that our first conclusion, reinforced by this new line of facts, supplies an 
intelligible answer to the question before us : are all living beings con- 
scious or does consciousness cover a part only of the domain of life? 
. . . It appears to me therefore extremely likely that consciousness, 
originally immanent in all that lives, is dormant where there is no longer 
spontaneous movement, and awakens when life tends to free activity. 
We can verify the law in ourselves. What happens when one of our 
actions ceases to be spontaneous and becomes automatic? Consciousness 
departs from it. In learning an exercise, for example, we begin by being 
conscious of each of the movements we execute. Why? Because we 
originate the action, because it is the result of a decision and implies a 
choice. Then gradually, as the movements become more and more linked 



252 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

together and more and more determine one another mechanically, dis- 
pensing us from the need of choosing and deciding, the consciousness of 
them diminishes and disappears. On the other hand, when is it that our 
consciousness attains its greatest liveliness? Is it not at those moments 
of inward crisis when we hesitate between two, or it may be several, 
different courses to take, when we feel that our future will be what we 
make it ? The variations in the intensity of our consciousness seem then 
to correspond to the more or less considerable sum of choice, or, as I 
would say, to the amount of creation, which our conduct requires. Every- 
thing leads us to believe that it is thus with consciousness in general. 
If consciousness means memory and anticipation, it is because conscious- 
ness is synonymous with choice." 

Looking thus to the movement of life within ourselves, where it is 
most brightly lit for us and most easily traceable, we see it marked by 
two contrasting tendencies and following two divergent paths. The first 
path is that of free will, of conscious choice and purpose, meeting the 
environment about us in a way which we choose anew with each action. 
This is the path of constant creation ; for to each event and circumstance 
we add something that was not there before, an element of our own 
free will, the way we choose to deal with it, and this element of ourselves 
which we put into it makes it other than it was before. Also, it makes 
us other than we were before; for we have chosen to draw, from the 
infinite reservoir of our potential being, a definite element to make 
actual and manifest ; and as this continues in choice after choice, the self 
is created by the self, and the tide of conscious life and volition increases 
in depth and intensity by each new act of will. 

But the second tendency is no less clearly observable in our proneness 
to deal with similar events in similar ways so that when we have once 
chosen and acted in response to any group of stimuli or circumstances, 
their recurrence finds us predisposed to repeat the same reaction. This 
is the path of habit, in which the free and conscious choice which we 
originally brought to bear upon events, progressively gives way to an 
automatic repetition of the past; and our action, which was at first 
free and purposed, becomes the mere mechanical reaction from an 
external stimulus. Here consciousness ceases to function, and, ceasing 
to function, withdraws. 

Bergson suggests that these two tendencies, which we see opposed, 
yet coexisting and reconciled in our own nature, give us the key to the 
universal relation of mind and body, consciousness and matter. 

"Let us then," he says, "imagine living matter in its elementary 
form, such as it may have been when it first appeared : a simple mass of 
protoplasmic jelly like the amoeba, which can undergo change of form 
at will, and is therefore vaguely conscious. Now, for it to grow and 
evolve, there are two ways open. It may take the path toward move- 
ment and action, movement growing ever more effective, action growing 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND HABIT 253 

freer and freer. The path toward movement involves risk and adventure, 
but also it involves consciousness with its growing degrees of intensity 
and depth. It may take the other path, it may abandon the faculty of 
acting and choosing, the potentiality of which it carries within it, may 
accommodate itself to obtain from the spot where it is all it requires for 
its support, instead of going abroad to seek it. Existence is then assured 
to it, a tranquil, unenterprising existence, but this existence is also torpor, 
the first effect of immobility: the torpor soon becomes fixed; this is 
unconsciousness. These are the two paths which lie open before the 
evolution of life. Living matter finds itself committed partly to the one 
path, partly to the other. Speaking generally, the first path may be said 
to mark the direction of the animal world (we have to qualify it, because 
many animal species renounce movement and with it probably conscious- 
ness also) ; the second may be said to mark the direction of the vegetable 
world (again it has to be qualified, for mobility, and therefore probably 
consciousness also, may occasionally be awakened in plants). 

"When, now, we reflect on this bias or tendency of life at its entry 
into the world, we see it bringing something which encroaches on inert 
matter. The world left to itself obeys fatalistic laws. In determinate 
conditions matter behaves in a determinate way. Nothing it does is un- 
foreseeable. Were our science complete and our calculating power infinite, 
we should be able to predict everything which will come to pass in the 
inorganic material universe, in its mass and in its elements, as we predict 
an eclipse of the sun or moon. Matter is inertia, geometry, necessity. 
But with life there appears free, predictable [unpredictable?], movement. 
The living being chooses or tends to choose. Its role is to create. In a 
world where everything else is determined, a zone of indetermination 
surrounds it. To create the future requires preparatory action in the 
present, to prepare what will be is to utilize what has been : life therefore 
is employed from its start in conserving the past and anticipating the 
future in a duration in which past, present and future tread one on 
another, forming an indivisible continuity. Such memory, such antici- 
pation, are consciousness itself. This is why, in right if not in fact, con- 
sciousness is co-extensive with life." 

Let us turn here for a moment from Bergson's pages to follow 
further, and for ourselves, some of the thoughts to which they give rise. 
And first of this inert matter, which is "geometry, necessity," reacting 
in unchanging, determinate ways to determinate conditions, does it not 
now appear as but the forms into which past conscious life has crystal- 
lized, having surrendered itself wholly to habit? We see it as the skan- 
dhas of a past manvantara, the sediment left from innumerable distilla- 
tions of consciousness through an infinite sequence of repeated acts. 
Is this vision purely fanciful? Is it absurd to think that we may see, 
in the various properties of matter, the types of habit into which con- 
scious life tends to pass when choice and volition are surrendered? 



254 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

We have no answer, yet imagination plays upon the theme. Here is 
the solid impenetrable rock, the condensed "no" which consciousness 
has said to the pressure put upon it, until resistance has become the law 
of its being; here, too, the facile acquiescence of the fluid, taking what- 
ever mould and shape it finds around it, till it has none of its own ; and 
locked within them all, in each and every form that matter has, are the 
tremendous energies that have been compressed and rendered latent there 
by the endlessly repeated thrust in one direction of what was first a 
conscious will. The material universe is presented to us as but the fixed 
habits of being, where life acts automatically, and consciousness is dor- 
mant through lack of volition. 

But what is of far more moment to us than such abstract specula- 
tions upon the universe as a whole, is the light which we may find to throw 
upon our own life as conscious beings. To Bergson the very essence of 
consciousness is choice, volition, free, creative will. Where these exist 
and grow, consciousness exists and grows. Where they are surrendered, 
consciousness withdraws; and we have seen that this surrender occurs 
whenever we act from habit rather than from will. 

If we turn to the dictionary we shall find the word "habit" to be 
derived from the Latin habitus, "condition, state, appearance, dress, 
attire," and that it is defined, first, as "a usual or characteristic state or 
condition," and second, as "a usual or customary mode of action, par- 
ticularly a mode of action so established by use as to be entirely natural, 
involuntary, instinctive, unconscious, uncontrollable, etc." The sugges- 
tion is, therefore, inherent in the word itself, that our customary mode 
of action forms the dress or attire of the self, and that in the "involun- 
tary, instinctive and unconscious" action of habit we find all the prop- 
erties of a material body. We are thus led to consider the vesture or 
body of the self, on each plane of being from the most subtile to the 
most physical, as woven by the self from its own past choice and acts. 

In this view, so far from consciousness being a product of its body, 
the body is but a product of consciousness ; and instead of consciousness 
being dependent upon the activities of the body, these activities represent 
with precision the region in which consciousness is limited, surrendered 
or withdrawn, and where the free choice and will of the self have been 
replaced by the mechanical reactions of habit, or of habit crystallized 
into substance. Death, then, can no longer appear to us as the destroyer, 
but as the liberator ; freeing us from the body that limited our conscious- 
ness and confined our power of will and choice, it restores to conscious- 
ness its pristine freedom and completeness. As we look out upon phys- 
ical life and death, in the light of this new concept of the nature and 
relations of consciousness and matter, we see how simple and inevitable 
is the truth of many mystic sayings that before were dark and contra- 
dictory. Quite literally and obviously, "in the midst of life we are in 
death," caught in the snare of matter, held fast in habit, and only as 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND HABIT 255 

"we die daily," abandoning each form as we create it, do we keep the 
freedom which is the life and essence of consciousness. 

It is now no longer Bergson, but the age-old teaching of the saints 
and seers and mystics which holds and guides our thought. The theo- 
sophic attitude and method have played their part and led us to the gates 
which open only to its ethical spirit and religious life. Yet by what 
Bergson has shown us we may interpret more clearly the messages that 
come back to us from those that have passed through who speak with 
the surety of personal knowledge and experience, but in terms which are 
too often foreign to our untrained understanding. 

What is it that they tell us? They waste no time in arguing 
whether the soul is mortal or immortal, whether consciousness survives 
or perishes with the body. They know; there is no question here. 
What concerns them, what they strive with passionate earnestness to 
make clear to all who will listen to them, is that immortal life can be 
entered from where we stand; that we do not need to wait for death 
to set us free, but may claim the freedom of the soul even here and 
now ; that the chains of the body can be loosened, even as a habit can 
be discarded and cast aside. And the way is simple. We have but to 
claim and use again our power of volition; to meet each event, each 
circumstance, not with the automatic, mechanical reaction of old habit, 
but with a new and purposeful act of choice, determining our course by 
the will of the soul, not by the inertia of our past. 

What does it mean when we are told that we must become as little 
children and that of such is the kingdom of heaven? There are many 
meanings ; but one stands out sharply in the light of our present thought. 
To the child all things are new ; and each new event is met by a new 
creative act of will. Therefore the child grows apace in life, and his 
consciousness broadens and deepens year by year, almost moment by 
moment. Growth ceases only where habit begins ; and the secret of 
immortal youth is in the constant pressing forward that rests in no 
achievement, however great, ever striving toward something higher, 
always willing something better, never content merely to remain on the 
level that has been reached. "Recollection and Detachment" magical 
acts that open for us the portals of immortal life; for where they are 
practised no habit can endure, save only the habit that they themselves 
constitute : the habit of growth, the habit of freedom and will ; the body 
of the resurrection, donned while yet we live. "Dying daily," death is 
needless. At its touch the physical drops away; but nothing of the self 
remains imprisoned in it, caught in the circle of necessity, which habit 
constitutes. 

But let us return again to Bergson. Perhaps he does not speak with 
the authority of the theosophic life ; yet freedom of the intellect is won 
by the same process that gains the freedom of the soul, and Bergson's 
intellect is preeminently free. Here he speaks of what he knows 



256 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

though his knowledge be confined to a single plane, so that even his most 
creative and stimulating work seems thin in comparison with the simple 
records of the saints, whose lives were whole. But few people understand 
the records of the saints, and some, who do not, may perhaps understand 
Bergson. Let us consider therefore his description of how life may 
go about the conquest of matter, realizing that it is our own problem, 
if we would follow where the saints and seers have led. 

"Consciousness and matter appear to us, then, as radically different 
forms of existence, even as antagonistic forms, which have to find a 
modus vivendi. Matter is necessity, consciousness is freedom; but 
though diametrically opposed to one another, life has found the way of 
reconciling them. This is precisely what life is, freedom inserting itself 
within necessity, turning it to its profit. Life would be an impossibility 
were the determinism of matter so absolute as to admit no relaxation. 
Suppose, however, that at particular moments and at particular points 
matter shows a certain elasticity, then and there will be the opportunity 
for consciousness to install itself. It will have to humble itself at first; 
yet, once installed, it will dilate; it will spread from its point of entry 
and not rest till it has conquered the whole, for time is at its disposal, 
and the slightest quantity of indetermination, by continually adding to 
itself, will make up as much freedom as you like." 

We may read this as a description of the entrance of consciousness 
into matter at the dawn of the manvantara, or as a commentary upon 
the descent of the Manasaputras into the earth-born bodies prepared for 
them, but it is of far more interest and moment to us to apply it to our 
present position, where we have awakened to aspiration and desire for 
the things of the inner life, but are faced by formed habits which auto- 
matically determine the character of our thoughts and actions even 
against our will. As Bergson points out, were this determination indeed 
absolute, our case would be hopeless. But it never is complete. Always 
there is some point of elasticity, some measure of freedom of choice. 
There we may set our aspiration and good resolution to work. It is, 
indeed, at first a very humbling process. The Lord of Heaven is born 
into the world as a helpless infant, needing to be ceaselessly tended, reg- 
ularly nourished. We aspire to discipleship, to know and serve the 
Masters of Wisdom, to win the secrets of immortal life, and we find that 
we cannot even control our resentment when our vanity is pricked, keep 
our hands away from our face, or cease from mispronouncing a word. 
These are as yet too great tasks for us ; in those directions we are still 
too bound by habit; and we must begin where habit is less compelling 
and our freedom greater. Perhaps the most we can do is to resolve to 
suppress our resentment, even if we must feel it; and we bend our 
energies to keeping silent under provocation. It is a pitiably small thing 
in the light of our great ambition, and it is still more humiliating when 
we fail in it time after time. But each conquest loosens the whole hold 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND HABIT 257 

of habit on our conscious life, and from such a point of entry our will 
may work, growing daily stronger, and little by little extending the scope 
of its effort, till it is able to uncover and attack the central citadel of 
self-love from which the evil comes. Once that citadel falls, and the 
habit of self-reference and self-love is broken, we know a measure of 
freedom that makes us other than we were. We recognize that we have 
found the Path and the power to move, however slowly and haltingly, 
along it. 

We cannot, in the scope of this article, follow Bergson even through 
the first lecture the opening chapter of the book which we have taken 
as the text for our discussion. It is true that we have turned from it 
to follow at greater length our own thought, which it prompted. But 
that is the way in which such writings as Bergson's must be read. Their 
value lies not only in the author's thought, but even more in their power 
to inspire and stimulate the thought of the reader. We pay them no 
higher compliment than when they rest forgotten in our hands, while 
our mind pursues its own search for truth along the avenues they opened 
out to us. We have said enough to show what may be expected from 
the book itself, and something of the bearing of some of its conclusions 
upon the question of immortality and the survival of the personality after 
physical death. But we cannot resist adding two further quotations : 
the one, to correct any impression that because Bergson's own achieve- 
ment appears to have been primarily intellectual, he is indifferent to the 
higher claims of the moral life (and let us not forget that Bergson has 
probably done more than any other modern thinker to restore to phi- 
losophy a just emphasis on the will, and to show that it is the application 
of wisdom, not merely knowledge, which philosophy should give us) ; 
and the second, to contrast Bergson's view of memory with that of Dr. 
M'Taggart, which we considered in a previous paper, and to show .the 
agreement of their conclusion as to the survival of consciousness after 
physical death. 

"The standpoint of the moralist is higher. In man alone, especially 
among the best of mankind, the vital movement pursues its way without 
hindrance, thrusting through that work of art, the human body, which 
it has created on its way, the creative current of the moral life. Man, 
called on at every moment to lean on the totality of his past in order to 
bring his weight to bear more effectively on the future, is the great 
success of life. But it is the moral man who is a creator in the highest 
degree, the man whose action, itself intense, is also capable of intensify- 
ing the action of other men, and, itself generous, can kindle fires on the 
hearths of generosity. The men of moral grandeur, particularly those 
whose inventive and simple heroism has opened new paths to virtue, 
are revealers of metaphysical truth. Although they are the culminating 
point of evolution, they are nearest the source and they enable us to 
perceive the impulsion which comes from the deep. It is in studying 
these great lives, in striving to experience sympathetically what they 

17 



258 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

experience [italics ours], that we may penetrate by an act of intuition 
to the life principle itself. To pierce the mystery of the deep, it is some- 
times necessary to regard the heights. It is earth's hidden fire which 

appears at the summit of the volcano." 

***** 

"I believe that our whole psychical existence is something just like 
this single sentence [which though spoken word by word must be held 
as a unit present to the mind, or the thread of meaning would be lost], 
continued since the first awakening of consciousness, interspersed with 
commas, but never broken by full stops. And consequently I believe that 
our whole past still exists. It exists subconsciously, by which I mean 
that it is present to consciousness in such a manner that, to have the 
revelation of it, consciousness has no need to go out of itself or seek for 
foreign assistance ; it has but to remove an obstacle, to withdraw a veil, 
in order that all that it contains, all in fact that it actually is, may be 
revealed. Fortunate are we to have this obstacle, infinitely precious 
to us is the veil! The brain is what secures to us this advantage. It 
keeps our attention fixed on life; and life looks forward; it looks back 
only in the degree to which the past can aid it to illumine and prepare 
the future. To live is, for the mind, essentially to concentrate itself on 
the action to be accomplished. To live is to be inserted in things by 
means of a mechanism which draws from consciousness all that is utiliz- 
able in action, all that can be acted on the stage, and darkens the greater 
part of the rest. Such is the brain's part in the work of memory: it 
does not serve to preserve the past, but primarily to mask it, then to 
allow only what is practically useful to emerge through the mask. Such, 
too, is the part the brain plays in regard to the mind generally. Extract- 
ing from the mind what is externalizable in movement, inserting the 
mind into this motor frame, it causes it to limit its vision, but also it 
makes its action efficacious. This means that the mind overflows the 
brain on all sides, and that cerebral activity responds only to a very 
small part of mental activity. 

"But this also means that mental life cannot be an effect of bodily 
life, that it looks much more as if the body were simply made use of 
by the mind, and that we have, therefore, no reason to suppose the body 
and the mind united inseparably to one another. . . . But if , as I have 
tried to show, the mental life overflows the cerebral life, if the brain 
does but translate into movements a small part of what takes place in 
consciousness, then survival becomes so probable that the onus of proof 
falls on him who denies it rather than on him who affirms it; for the 
only reason we can have for believing in the extinction of consciousness 
at death is that we see the body become disorganized, that this is a fact 
of experience, and the reason loses its force if the independence of 
almost the whole of consciousness with regard to the body has been 
shown to be also a fact of experience." 

HENRY BEDINGER MITCHELL. 



WHAT WE ALL KNOW 



WHY talk about what we all know? Simply because it is of 
the utmost practical importance to us. It is far more 
important than either the things we are keenly interested in 
finding out, or those in the next further layer which we have 
not yet glimpsed, and so should hail as wholly new discoveries. We 
might as well admit the facts exploration appeals to most of us, 
especially when it can be done at second hand, following someone else's 
account of discoveries. Conquest is another matter. It does not awaken 
the same appeal. The very word makes one begin to feel uncomfortable 
it has such an angular aspect. Perhaps this is one reason why what 
we know lacks interest for us. The next step is so evidently along the 
conquest route. We prefer rather to garner more information. Lean 
and hungry cooks, surrounded with all the materials for producing 
nourishing food, lacking only the will to compound and bake them : that 
is one picture of a condition we should be able to recognize as very like 
our own. You can see, with a little imagination, that ill-nourished cook- 
person running around the garden, looking for new flavours to use, new 
vegetables to add a final dash of excellence to the pot, but never putting 
the pot over the fire ; not quite ready to do the one thing needed, which 
is to use what is at hand. 

WORDS AS SCREENS 

In case the structure of modern civilization should, as some are 
anticipating, be shaken over, and fall into ruins, there will be in it 
one gain for the disciple of the next generation. There will be great 
simplification. Now, we have so many words, so much machinery of 
life behind which to hide; we so seldom face facts as they are, even 
when we are alone with ourselves ! Something or somebody ( for these 
elementals are very personal), in the congeries we call "self", gets 
uncomfortable, and tries to turn the conversation that is going on within 
us, as soon as we begin to deal with fact. Usually it succeeds ; and the 
result is that when we look things over with anyone else, honesty of 
thought and expression are so rare that memory readily holds the record 
of all those fruitful occasions. The other extreme, to which we some- 
times react, is surely equally stupid. We say, Let us face the facts; 
and grimly begin to burrow, like rodents. For the moment, we pretend 
to believe that only the mud and grime and rubble in our natures are 
real; we face them as our realities and have a bad half-hour. Then 
common sense comes to our rescue, we clutch its hand to pull us up out 
of the mire, and quickly drop it and run off, to find some way of 
forgetting what we saw. It would be far wiser to stand by, and to get 
the rest of the picture. Often we get that more clearly by watching 
others. 

259 



260 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

FRIENDS AS SIGN-POSTS 

A sympathetic observation of the struggles of a fellow-student may 
reveal much. Even the attempt is illuminating. Do we hesitate to try? 
Do we say, "Oh, I never know what things mean?" There is a clue; 
why this unwillingness to make the effort? 

I have one friend who would answer : "That is such a slow process. 
My conclusions would be sure to be wrong. Then by the time I had 
discovered where they were wrong and tried another interpretation, so 
much time would be lost. I should never get anywhere." This friend is 
always looking for "short-cuts". Let a new angle of an accepted truth 
be presented, and it is by this person eagerly received as a probable 
short-cut to the acquirement of some quality that is now being painfully 
striven after. Eternity, on this friend's map, would appear to be 
checkered with short-cuts, known to and carefully concealed by the 
elect; effortless approaches to the heights of heaven, the exhilaration 
of the altitude without the struggle of the climb. Surely those are ways 
imagined only by the valley-folk, who have not yet dared the steeps, 
known to them only by sight, and so not known at all. It could not be 
thus that Masters reached their commanding position, nor with such 
ideals that they attempt new conquests, always fresh dangers. My 
friend's eagerness for a deceptive ease of attainment ought not to annoy 
me, as it too often does. It stands out bold and clear, at that particular 
fork of the road like a warning sign-post. It tells me how foolish I am 
when I turn away from the effort and sustained determination which 
right self-identification often require. Is one annoyed with the man who 
nailed up the sign warning of a dangerous quicksand at the side of the 
road? 

Another friend to whom I am much indebted gets stalled at a 
different spot. It amuses me to liken it to the problem of the boy whose 
voice is "changing"; that boy may start a salutation in his nice new 
deep voice, and find it ending in an embarrassingly shrill pipe. It 
happens that my changing-voice friend has been making a special study 
of obedience, as one of the great virtues exemplified in the lives of seers 
and saints, great and little. There is a genuine admiration for the fruits 
of obedience, and a real desire to travel by that road. Indeed much 
ground there has been covered, but beware of any sudden demand ! Let 
conscience, or some natural authority on the outside, give a quick word 
of command and, squeak, squeak goes the childish protest. This usually 
is voiced in the form of a determination to be obedient even to the point 
of martyrdom ; only this, and only that, and as many more onlys as there 
is space for before the tear drops begin to splash. Yet, constantly 
as this little drama is repeated, my friend does not yet see in it the part 
played by self-will ; does not even suspect that none could give command 
to one who has not yet been broken to the obediences of conscience and 
daily custom. It is clear to the onlooker that an obedient heart, a wholly 
obedient heart, would find no problem, no obstacle in the various situations 



WHAT WE ALL KNOW 261 

which to this friend of mine are so cruelly complex and make plain 
obedience seem so impossible. Instead of wondering why she "acts 
up" so foolishly, let me be grateful for another sign post, in the labyrinth 
of our common human nature. This one says, Make sure you are eager 
to obey before you count the obstacles. 

REAL NEEDS 

What do we really need ? Looking within my own heart, or recalling 
the registered demands made by others, the answer is the same. We 
all have teaching enough. Any one, out of dozens of the books we have, 
gives that. They but repeat the truths given out, now from one angle 
and then from another; show them flat, or in relief. They are like the 
maps printed by the railroads, the territory covered by the road is shown 
with all the intersecting lines that cross it ; but broad and clear, as though 
nature's own chosen route, stands out the line of the company that 
prints the map. One sees it as the best possible way to travel. So each 
of our books points out one or more best ways. The desire, however, 
is not so much to induce travelling by that route alone. What the wise 
ones most desire is to awaken the will to set forth, the desire to adventure 
on any charted route. Yes, we have knowledge enough. 

We are rich, too, in examples. Take the simple, unassuming life of 
Mr. Judge, with the light thrown upon it by his Letters, Volumes I and 
II. We have there sufficient applied wisdom to meet every need. Some- 
times I have been tempted to rearrange those two books, with scissors 
and paste pot, on the plan of the old fashioned health guide, called the 
Family Doctor, or some such title. That tells you : "If feverish, stop 
eating; drink a gallon of water; take a big dose of herb-tea, and sleep 
twelve hours." In equally simple fashion, but with far greater dis- 
crimination, Mr. Judge prescribes for the soul's disorders, particularly 
those due to the over-feeding of Lower Manas, and to failure to give 
the will the constant exercise that makes it a supple, responsive instru- 
ment. Our only need, it seems to me, is there, the need of more will, 
more desire. But, after all, that is equivalent to saying that all a house- 
carpenter needs is a completed house. Building houses is his trade 
building will and desire might be called the trade of the disciple; 
neither builds for his own use. He builds that there may be more of his 
commodity for use in the world. 

THREE WISHES 

Suppose you were offered three wishes, as in one of the oldest type 
of fairytale. For what would you wish first? This is not so simple 
as it sounds. The situation is one common to the fairylore of many 
peoples, written in many languages. Suddenly appears the fairy 
magician ; as quickly the three wishes are made ; and the fortunate one 
is soon rubbing his eyes, for he finds that with three fair chances to get 
anything he wished, it is all over, and he has nothing at all. Unlimited 



262 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

as the offer was, he was never left healthy, wealthy and wise. One of the 
oldest versions of this particular story is that in which the gift-fairy made 
her offer to a poor old husband and wife. The wife put in the first 
W0 rd : "I wish", she cried, "that I might always have all the porridge 
I could eat." Annoyed at such trifling with their great opportunity, 
the husband said, as the porridge pots began to run over, "I wish you 
had a bag of it on the end of your nose !" He had meant only to reprove, 
but he had used the fateful words "I wish", and instantly there appeared 
the pudding bag firmly attached to her nose. There was then no choice, 
the third and last wish had to be used to free the wife from that 
unsightly ornament. The fairy vanished, and they faced one another, 
no whit better off than they were before all the treasures of the Earth 
had three times been laid in their hands. Why? Perhaps the fairy gift 
bore the power to call forth the dominating desire, instead of some well- 
calculated, prearranged demand. 

If the opportunity came to us, what would be our "wishes"? Many 
of us might in fact say, with all speed : "I wish to know the Masters." 
What is our picture when we think, with radiant anticipation, of the 
happiness of knowing a Master? Maybe an image of ourselves, in our 
very best guise, both inside and out, standing comfortably in a circle 
of Masters and their chelas, listening reverently to their conversation 
on some lofty theme, after having been welcomed with the kind and 
gracious words in which such loving beings would surely express their 
recognition of a stranger's presence. How smoothly and happily life 
would flow on were one permitted frequent entrance into such company. 
Or if alone with one's own Master, what companionship! All one's 
feelings would of course be understood and respected, all the hurts 
and jars removed. All would be love, sweetness, charm. 

ONE WHO DREAMED TRUE 

How does that dream fit the facts that have been given us? Does 
anybody recall passages in H. P. B.'s writing that lend colour to any 
such idealistic setting? What of the saints who had close personal 
direction by the Master Jesus? One whose name naturally comes to 
mind is the recently canonized Margaret Mary. Her letters, written 
to one or another superior of her Order, are full of references to the, 
as she said, "unmerited" favours and expressions of tenderness that 
the Master lavished upon her. Equally prominent and far more readily 
accepted by her, are accounts of the manner in which she was disciplined 
by the Master for the most trifling infraction of the Rule of her Order, 
for any slightest manifestation of a flaw in the perfect and complete 
obedience that was characteristic of her. There was nothing of democracy 
in that relation between French nun and Master; nothing of that easy 
friendship and readily flowing intimacy which many pictures of such 
privileges require. Unsparingly, and in terse terms, her shortcomings 
were pointed out to her. If told what to do, perfect performance was 



WHAT WE ALL KNOW 263 

expected, and severe punishment followed any delays or lapses, pun- 
ishment devised by wise tenderness to be deeply felt and fully remedial 
in her particular case. It was the combination of tenderness and 
unsparing severity, the incessant demand for one's best effort, richly 
rewarded when fully given, that is, in our human experience, typified 
by the ideal parent and child. There can be no doubt of the allure, 
the consuming desire for complete union which this Master called forth 
in the heart of the one who described herself, as consumed with such 
a thirst for union that nothing on earth could satisfy this longing. 

But who is ready for the terms? We fear that frequently the 
second "wish" would be this "Free me from such companionship. Its 
demands are too much for me!" And the third "wish" might be, 
"Let me forget the sight of myself that came as I stood before the 
Master." Is that the experience of those to whom such companionship 
has been accorded? Not so far as any records go; quite the opposite. 
And naturally so, as it would be vouchsafed only to those who had 
grown out of the nursery, who were able to lose themselves, to give 
themselves, in a profound love. 

To us, still nurslings, what does such a record as that of Margaret 
Mary offer? For one thing, a new type of ideal; a truer, more com- 
pelling picture of what real companionship with a Master means, 
the necessary demand on his part for likeness; the insistence that the 
disciple shall live by the laws of the Master-degree : the rare adventure 
of such an effort, the hunger and thirst to satisfy his demands which 
make the sweetness and delight of toil and pain. That, however, is on 
the heights. Less is demanded of, and so less can be given to, one of 
lower degree. But there is record of one such whose knowledge of 
his Master was equally clear and sure. He was generous enough to 
relate his first distinct consciousness of his Master. It was not some 
lofty or tender interview that was first accorded to him. He had been 
praying, agonizing over a situation that gave him great distress; had 
asked the Master's help had asked for light on his duty. Within his 
heart came, he tells us, the response which he later paraphrased in these 
words : "What do you want me to do about it ? What can I do about 
it ?" It was his Master, and he knew it. The problem so perplexing was 
clear to him now. He saw that he had to pick up his load and carry 
it; that under the intense eyes of his newly-found Master, no shirking, 
no lamenting of his fate could be tolerated. Later, as he told the story, 
that same cross lifted with much foreboding, became his joy, his deepest 
delight. 

This, too, we all know to be profoundly true, far more real than our 
reluctances, fears, hesitations ; and we are responsible for what we know. 

E. 




T 



ESCAPE OR ACHIEVEMENT* 

4 4 /*-f~^ HEY change their skies, but not their natures, who cross the 
seas", so runs the proverb ; and doubtless many of us can 
bear witness that it is as true to-day as when it fell from the 
lips of the wise Roman of old. 

"What must I do to be saved?" was the cry, when tossed on the 
stormy and uncharted ocean of orthodoxy : "Where shall I find a pilot ?" 
signals the vessel, hove-to off the entrance to the fair haven of 
Theosophy. 

One who, while serving his country gallantly on many a hard-fought 
field, yet strove according to his lights to be loyal to Him whom he 
regarded as his Heavenly Master, was wont to say that if he "could just 
squeeze inside of the Golden Gate," he would be entirely content. Before 
indulging in the smile of superiority at this honest, if lowly, confession, 
it might be well to examine whether this is not our own real, though 
possibly unconscious, attitude; whether, when we say "Must I give up 
this?", or, "Is it necessary to do that?", we really do not mean, "How 
much of this world's pleasures may I venture to indulge in? how close 
can I point to windward without being taken aback?" in other words, 
"Can I do this, or enjoy that, and yet just squeeze inside?" 

Assuming, however, that the inquiry is made in sincerity and good 
faith, it is evident that the answer must depend upon the reply that the 
seeker makes to the question addressed to him in turn, "What is your 
object in life to avoid an imaginary punishment, to obtain in the future 
a definite and limited reward? or to enter, now and here, upon a path 
of ever-increasing wisdom, knowledge, and peace, of inconceivable splen- 
dour and limitless extent? is your aim negative or positive? in a word, 
is it Escape or Achievement?" 

Now from the standpoint of official Christianity, the attitude of the 
simple-hearted soldier is not only entirely logical, but thoroughly 
satisfactory: and if we also are of this way of thinking if, as the 
Bhagavad Gita says, we prefer "a transient enjoyment of heaven to 
eternal absorption", doubtless in Devachan we shall find fulness of joy ; 
"Those who worship the Devatas go unto the Devatas". 

But to those strong souls whose passionate longing is to find "the 
small, old path"; who disdain the gentler slopes which the feeble must 

Reprinted from The Path, vol. Ill, p. 150 (August, 1888). 
264 



ESCAPE OR ACHIEVEMENT 265 

needs follow; whose eyes seek the snowy pinnacle rather than the 
smiling valley, though it were the Land of Beulah itself ; who, far from 
desiring the enjoyment of Devachan, regard it rather as a halt in their 
progress, a loss of time, so to speak, and would gladly forego its delights 
in order to reincarnate at once and continue without interruption their 
work for the good of the race; what answer shall be returned them? 
Obviously none; since, for them, such questions never arise. They ask 
not, What shall I give up ? but, What can I ? ; not, What indulgence must 
I deny myself ? but, What encumbrance can I cast aside, that I may the 
more swiftly and easily mount? 

It was said by One of old time, "Ye cannot serve two masters." God 
and Mammon were instances cited by the Teacher, but the saying holds 
true of any given opposite or conflicting aims. And the great trouble is 
that, although we may be unwilling to admit it even to ourselves, very 
few of us are really single-hearted : whether from physical infirmity, 
so-called hereditary tendency, or Karmic environment, matters not so 
far as regards the fact and the inevitable consequences resulting there- 
from. Possibly all that many of us can accomplish in this incarnation 
will be in the nature of a species of compromise, or perhaps, more 
correctly, a net result, a sort of moral diagonal of forces, so to speak, 
the resultant of the opposing tendencies of our earthly attractions and 
spiritual aspirations. 

But he whose aim is single, whose eye never loses sight of the end, 
acts on his plane as the successful man of business on his : do we ever 
hear the latter ask, "Must I stay in my office eight hours a day? is it 
absolutely necessary to miss this race, or forego that dinner, in order to 
close this contract or elaborate that plan?" Does he not rather work 
fourteen, or sixteen hours, give up recreation, literary, artistic, social, 
even to a great extent the joys of the home circle, tax his ingenuity to the 
uttermost to devise new openings, find fresh fields for enterprise? 

Perhaps it might be laid down broadly that any question prefaced 
by "must" should be answered in the negative; for the fact of its being 
put in that form proclaims, louder than words, that not yet is the seeker 
able to free himself from attachment; and until he can do this until, 
as is said in Through the Gates of Gold, he can place the object before 
him, and clearly, coolly, and dispassionately examine it from all points 
of view, fully admitting its attractions as well as recognizing its draw- 
backs, and then calmly, deliberately, without a trace of regret or a sigh 
of longing, dismiss the very idea from his heart, until he can do all 
this, forcible repression by mere strength of will avails nothing; the 
desire, coerced at one point, returns with accumulated strength at 
another ; if not on the physical plane, then on the mental ; if not in this 
incarnation, then in another. This is the teaching of all the ages, from 
the Upanishads to Light on the Path, of the Bhagavad Gita and the 
Bible, of Buddha and Jesus alike. Nothing that is done as a penance, as 
a so-called "mortification of the flesh," or merely out of deference to the 



266 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

feelings, or opinions or prejudices of others, can be of any real value to 
the man himself. 

One who makes a virtue of refusing to play cards in the social 
circle, while still having the desire in his heart, may yet lose money and 
reputation in Wall street; he who, against his own judgment, is persuaded 
to deprive himself of the comfort resulting from the rational use of 
tobacco, may wreck his nerves by inordinate indulgence in strong tea, 
and this without incurring the censure of clergymen, reformers, or old 
women of either sex. In this, as in all things, we may learn from the 
working of Nature. The tree yields fruit not only after its kind, but 
in its own due time. There is neither haste nor delay in her evolutionary 
methods, first the blossom and then the fruit, is her unvarying rule : 
and, knowing this, we do not expect to pluck the matured ear of July 
from the tender shoot of April : we rejoice in the budding sweetness of 
the vineyard in the joyous Springtide, untroubled by any anxiety lest 
the golden glory of September should fail to ripen the purple clusters. 

So in our daily round and occupation, everything comes in its 
appointed time and refuses to be hurried : sculptured granite is no more 
immovable than the Express, a second before its flying wheels begin to 
turn; as the hand on the dial points to the hour, the ingenious 
mechanism of the time-lock swings back the massive doors of the vault 
which, a moment before, would have defied the strength of a hundred 
men to open. 

"And what shall I do with my sword?" asked the brilliant young 
courtier of George Fox, by whose teachings he had become converted 
to Quakerism. "Friend", replied the wise and courteous man of peace, 
"wear it, as long as thou canst !" ; but full soon William Penn counted 
it all joy to exchange jewelled sword and velvet coat for the simple garb 
of the people with whom he had cast in his lot. And when the day comes 
as come it must, in the fulness of time when we are ready, in this 
spirit, to lay everything on the altar, whether choice possessions or 
valued opinions, favorite habits or cherished beliefs, our so-called virtues 
not less than what are termed our vices; when we can do all this, not 
as a sacrifice, but with joy and gladness, when our songs of deliverance 
are borne upon the upwreathing incense; then we, likewise, shall be no 
longer perplexed by the "must" or the "shall", for we shall then be 
treading the King's Highway of Achievement, and not scuffling along the 
back alleys of Escape. 

Let us then be ever on guard lest aught tempt us from that "Middle 
Road" which the Lord Buddha pointed out to us, and in which we know 
our feet to be set; and by following it in all patience and loyalty, with 
dauntless will and unswerving devotion, we shall in his own time which 
is always the best time come to realize the portion which he has assured 
us shall be that of all who truly love and serve him. 
"By few or many steps such shall attain 
Nirvana's blest abode." B. N. ACLE, F. T. S. 



ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 



THE variety of topics covered was amazing. Our visitor was 
young, was feminine, and had an inquiring mind. Let us say 
that the questions scintillated. For lack of space, very few of 
them, or their answers, can be recorded. 

"Do members of The Theosophical Society approve of dancing?" 
That was the first. I heard someone gasp. But he pulled himself 
together, and began furiously to wonder whether he approved of dancing 
or not. He had forgotten. Perhaps to gain time (it was the Engineer), 
he explained that members of the Society are not expected to see, and in 
fact do not see, eye to eye in regard to such matters, and that member- 
ship does not imply belief in any dogma or theory whatsoever. He read 
aloud the first and only binding object of the Society. Then, with 
considerable presence of mind, he turned to the Philosopher and asked 
him what he thought about dancing. The Philosopher glared at him, 
but answered cheerfully : 

"It depends. Modern dancing I abhor. It is not only immodest; 
it is purposely immoral. Go back fifteen years or so, to the days of 
waltzing, and even then it was a queer proceeding. A man was introduced 
to a woman whom he had never seen before. After a preliminary bow, 
he grabbed her round the waist, grasped her free hand, pressed her 
firmly to his side, and did his best to whirl her round the room without 
colliding with other whirlers. If, instead of whirling, they had sat down 
in a similar attitude holding hands, with their arms around one another's 
waists it would very properly have been regarded as an outrageous 
proceeding. Yet everyone danced, and no one thought anything about 
it. I am desperately old fashioned, and was brought up to think of 
women as sensitive and refined and innately modest. Just what they 
felt and thought about waltzing if anything I do not pretend to know. 
Their mothers taught them to do it, just as their mothers taught them to 
appear in public, once the lights were lit, with a large part of their 
anatomy exposed." 

"Don't you approve of low-neck dresses ?" 

"It depends", answered the Philosopher, glaring once more at the 
Engineer. "I can remember the time (it feels like centuries ago) when 
a respectable girl, if her clothing had been torn in a ball room, to the 
extent of exposing her bare knees, would have fainted. It would not 
have been modest not to faint. But that same young lady wore nothing 
on her arms, very little on her back, while her bosom was only a degree 
more than half covered. ... I infer that women are creatures of 
habit". 

267 



268 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"But surely", inquired our visitor rather anxiously, "surely a 
woman's face is as revealing as her arms ; and no one would suggest that 
she ought to keep her face covered !" 

"Lots of people have suggested it, and lots of women do it and prefer 
to do it", the Philosopher retorted grimly. "But", he added, with gath- 
ering indignation, "it is not my business to tell women how to dress or 
how much of their person they ought to exhibit. I am not married. I 
have no daughters. And if other men are willing to let their women 
appear with only parts of themselves covered, it is their affair and not 
mine !" 

We laughed. "There is nothing in the world more beautiful than 
a beautiful woman", said the Philosopher, as if this had some bearing 
on the subject. "Any attitude toward real beauty, which is less than that 
of reverence, is profanation, is a sort of sacrilege. How many people 
are there who reverence anything !" 

But we were getting into deep water, particularly as we were not 
alone ; so the Engineer, who by now had had ample time in which to orient 
himself, reproached the Philosopher with having sidetracked the subject. 
"I thought we were discussing dancing", he concluded. 

"We were", answered the Philosopher. "Or, rather, you were good 
enough to ask me what I thought about it. Have you had time to find 
out what you think?" 

"Yes", said the Engineer. "I have. And I have come to the con- 
clusion that I approve enthusiastically of the Minuet. I am sure you 
would adore the Minuet" (this, to the Philosopher). "It is so graceful. 
And you would never have to touch more than the tips of a woman's 
fingers! . . . Seriously, I do think that such dances as the Minuet, 
while absolutely modest, provide exercise, amusement, and, incidentally, 
admirable training in deportment. They belong to an age when women, 
outwardly, at least, were treated with respect. Their revival might induce 
a similar condition in the women, and a similar attitude on the part of 
the men". 

Our visitor, who has some modern notions, though not many, gazed 
at him suspiciously. "What do you mean", she asked, "by 'inducing a 
similar condition in the women'?" 

"I mean", replied the Engineer, unabashed, "that if women hold 
their womanhood cheaply, men will take it at the same valuation". 

"Young lady", interrupted the Philosopher, who feels strongly on 
this subject, "manners are not without meaning. The best of manners 
may conceal much that is evil, just as entire absence of manners may 
conceal much that is good. None the less, when the standard of man- 
ners deteriorates, you may be certain that loss of mutual respect accounts 
for it. And while the blame for this may be divided equally, in the eyes 
of God, between women and men, I am certain that anything in the 
nature of self-assertion on the part of women, just because it is essen- 
tially unfeminine, robs men, to that extent, of respect for them. A real 



SCREEN OF TIME 269 

man does not admire a man who masquerades in petticoats; and if the 
sex of the man in petticoats happens, biologically, to be female, a real 
man finds it difficult to be ordinarily polite. The trouble seems to be 
that there are not many real men or real women alive at the present 
time. In the old days, if one man called another man a liar, one of the 
two had to die. As things now are, a man can call another man a liar 
and a thief to his face, all day and every day (it has happened among the 
highest officials of New York), and not even ink is spilled in consequence. 
This is partly because men, for good reason, have become indifferent to 
the opinion of women, while women no longer demand that a man shall 
be manly". 

"A Pacifist would find evidence of progress in what you have said", 
the Student remarked quizzically. 

"He would", replied the Philosopher; "and he would be right, if 
progress were to mean progress in Pacifism. Fortunately, it does not". 

"Do Theosophists approve of the theatre ?" inquired our visitor sud- 
denly. 

It was going to be difficult, we could see, to remove from this young 
person's mind the popular impression that members of The Theosophical 
Society accept some new creed, and a creed, presumably, which covers 
mundane as well as celestial topics ! We explained again that, in all prob- 
ability, there were no two members of the Society whose opinion of the 
theatre could be the same. Then, by common consent, we appealed to the 
Historian to answer her question. 

"On the understanding that I speak for myself only", he said, "I 
must confess that I do not like the theatre. The psychic atmosphere of 
most theatres is simply beastly. But even if the effect of a play on an 
audience were innocuous, which I could not admit, the question of the 
effect on the actors and actresses would have to be considered. And the 
effect on them, in my opinion, is very bad. A man who is willing to earn 
his living by making faces and pretending to be someone whom he is 
not, must be a poor creature to start with". 

"Now really", interrupted the Student, "if that be your definition 
of acting, I shall be obliged to emphasize your statement that you speak 
for yourself only. One man paints Hamlet in colours; another carves 
him in stone, while a third acts him, that is to say, brings him to life 
by means of voice, gesture and dress. And, of the three methods, each 
of which is an art, I should say that the third is by far the most vivid". 

"On that theory", the Historian replied, "the woman who served 
as model for the Venus of Milo was as great an artist as the sculptor 
who immortalized her form in marble !" 

"There is no analogy", said the Student. "An actor lives his part. 
He does not simply 'make up' to look it. He embodies the character, the 
feelings, the thoughts, of the person he represents". 

"You mean that he plays at being the subject he portrays. He plays 
at being a hero or a villain as circumstances may require. He plays that 



270 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

he is old or plays that he is young, a Dane or a Moor or an English 
King. He plays to amuse others, for money". 

"A musician who interprets the compositions of others, plays to 
amuse others, for money. What is the difference?" 

"Even if there were no difference and I believe there is you have 
admitted, indirectly, from the very wording of your question, that the 
man who merely interprets the compositions of others, is not to be classed 
with the artist who creates. And, as I see it, art, really to be art, must 
be creative: it must result in giving permanent physical expression to 
something previously unseen or unheard". 

"I doubt whether you are justified in limiting art to the production 
of permanent or lasting things. It seems to me that even a cook may 
be an artist, and the products of a cook are made to disappear !" 

"We are using words in different senses", said the Historian. "You 
would not rank even Ude, who left Lord Sefton's service because on 
one occasion a guest added pepper to his soup, you would not rank 
Ude with Praxiteles or Michael Angelo. Nor can I believe that you 
would rank Sir Henry Irving with Tennyson, or with any of the great 
composers. I am prepared to grant that in one sense a cook may be an 
artist. But would you wish your son to earn his living as a cook, even 
supposing he could become the most artistic cook who ever lived? You 
might be willing to let him cook, as a hobby, a pastime ; but you would 
not be willing to let him turn his pastime into a profession. In varying 
degree you might be willing, and even glad, to let him devote his spare 
time to baseball, or to amateur theatricals, or to playing the violin. But 
you would object strenuously, I believe, if he wished to earn his living 
by means of play. It would be demoralizing, and you know it". 

Very eagerly our visitor asked : "How about women on the stage ?" 
But at this critical moment the Ancient appeared on the scene, carrying 
with him a bulky envelope. "I am sorry to interrupt your discussion", 
he said, "but we ought to consider the recent Convention of the British 
national branch of The Theosophical Society. I have with me the report 
of its proceedings, and a mass of correspondence which has resulted". 

Our visitor said good-bye. "What is it all about?" asked the Engi- 
neer, who works fourteen hours a day, and whose spare time is limited. 

"It amounts to this", the Ancient replied : "Mr. Lincoln was ap- 
pointed Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions. In that capacity 
he introduced a resolution endorsing the resolution which was passed 
unanimously last April, at the Convention in New York of the Society 
as a whole, the resolution which is given on page 78 of the July, 1920, 
issue of THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, and which reads as follows : 

" 'Pursuant to the action of the Executive Committee, and confirm- 
ing the self-expulsion of certain German members, be it 

" 'Resolved, That the Charters of the Berlin Branch in Germany 
and of the Dresden Branch in Germany, are hereby cancelled, and that 
the Charters of all other Branches of The Theosophical Society, if any, 



SCREEN OF TIME 271 

which adopt or approve the attitude of said Berlin and Dresden Branches 
shall at once be cancelled by the Executive Committee of the Society. 

" 'Resolved, That all members of the Society who have endorsed 
the attitude of said German Branches are hereby expelled, and that all 
other members, if any, who may hereafter take similar action shall at 
once be expelled by the Executive Committee.' 

"It appears that Mr. Lincoln's proposal to endorse the foregoing 
resolution met with active opposition, led by Mr. Kennedy, and that, to 
avoid open conflict, 'it was felt by the meeting that judgment should 
be suspended for a year'." 

"On what grounds", asked the Engineer, "did Mr. Kennedy object 
to the resolution passed in New York?" 

"His objections are exactly the same, in substance, as those advanced 
by Mr. Paul Raatz and by many other former members of the Society 
in Germany". 

"That is interesting", the Engineer commented. "It means that the 
English Branch of our Society, instead of leading the opinion of Great 
Britain, instead of speaking for the crucified soul of the British people, 
is reflecting the conflict and confusion which the lower psychic nature of 
Great Britain has made manifest, in terms of Pro-Germanism and Bol- 
shevism, ever since the Armistice. I am sorry. And I suppose that, as 
usual, it is done in the name of Universal Brotherhood !" 

"Yes", answered the Ancient. "It is done in the name of Universal 
Brotherhood. Let in everyone ; expel no one, we are told. It does not 
seem to matter if women and children are tortured and outraged. The 
men who commit such crimes; the men who condone such crimes; the 
men who refuse to condemn such crimes, with the men who, in the name 
of God and of Theosophy, vehemently denounce such crimes, all alike 
are fitting material for that nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood which 
the Society is trying to form." 

"Are they crazy?" asked the Student. 

"It depends upon what you mean by 'crazy' ", the Ancient replied. 
"That they understand nothing of brotherhood and nothing of Theosophy, 
is obvious. But there is a vast difference between being blind and being 
crazy, unless the blindness be in any way wanton, or due to some deep- 
seated personal bias". 

"But why did those who framed the resolution, agree to suspend 
judgment for a year?" 

"I believe they thought it would be untheosophical to fight it out on 
the floor of the Convention. They went so far, for the sake of peace, 
as to submit to the election of Mr. Kennedy as General Secretary, not 
seeming to realize that, under a strict interpretation of the resolution 
passed by the Convention of the Society as a whole, it might well be 
considered that Mr. Kennedy had already expelled himself from mem- 
bership. The motive in sacrificing so much for the sake of peace, un- 



272 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

doubtedly was sincerely unselfish; but I must say that it seems to me 
to have been a mistake". 

"It reflected the best of England's present attitude", said the Phil- 
osopher. "It was not sure of itself. England's mental confusion; her 
lack of strong, clear-seeing leadership, based on bed-rock principle, is 
deplorable. She is like a ship without a helmsman. See the way she has 
allowed herself to play Germany's game! See the way she is meeting 
Bolshevism, not only in Russia, but within her own household! There 
are many well-meaning and really good people in England, who suffer 
deeply from this lack of leadership, and who see exactly where things 
are drifting, but who lack the experience, perhaps, which would enable 
them to seize the rudder and to steer the foundering ship into port". 

"Not a single point was brought up at their meeting in England", 
said the Ancient, "which had not been thrashed out at the Convention 
in New York. If the report in the July issue of the QUARTERLY had not 
only been read, but had been studied; if arguments had been analyzed, 
and principles had been sought until found, I do not believe that the 
final decision of the English members would have been to suspend judg- 
ment. Mr. Kennedy and his friends are still arguing that the function of 
the Society, and even of the QUARTERLY, is limited to the enunciation 
of generalities. Thus, from their standpoint, so far as it is understand- 
able, it is lawful to say, 'Brotherhood is our ideal' ; but it is unlawful, 
theosophically, to say, 'Brotherhood does not of necessity mean Com- 
munism.' It is unlawful to say this, we are asked to believe, for the 
reason that there are some people who think that community of goods 
(not to speak of community of wives) is of the essence of Brotherhood. 
In other words, what 'some people' think, it is untheosophical to combat". 

"Shades of H. P. B.!" interjected the Student. 

"Hush!" the Ancient retorted. "Leave H. P. B. out of it. There 
might be an explosion. 

"These same people", he continued, "are the victims also of a strange 
delusion about 'polities'. They imagine that the QUARTERLY has become 
'political', and that our constant effort to apply theosophical principles 
practically, not only to the problems of the individual, but to the prob- 
lems of nations, and to the interpretation of history, is intensely un- 
theosophical. In this case also, they do not object to generalities; they 
can endure such statements as, 'Honesty is beautiful' : but if you add, 
'Crime is hideous', you are 'in danger of the judgment', while if you dare 
to say that a judge on the bench may be a good theosophist while sen- 
tencing a criminal to a term in prison, you are in danger of hell fire !" 

"Is it that", asked the Historian, "or can it be that the QUARTERLY 
has ridden roughshod over precious but hidden idols, such as Bolshev- 
ism? Bolshevism, as you are aware, has quite a following in England. 
It appeals to the discontented, and to those whose ambitions have been 
thwarted. It appeals also to those who resent the 'struggle for life'. 
It is a nostrum, and, like certain widely advertised patent medicines, 



SCREEN OF TIME 273 

though it kill, it makes big promises, and will absolutely guarantee 'a 
change'." 

"Suppose", said the Philosopher, "that we try to see the matter from 
the point of view of Mr. Kennedy and his friends. After all, the only 
power for evil which any wrong attitude or action possesses, is the ele- 
ment of truth and right which it has deflected and distorted. If, then, we 
can find the element of right in their attitude, and separate this from 
the wrong, we shall be that much nearer the truth, and, therefore, that 
much further away from the seat of the trouble. 

"It is clear, in the first place, that they are basing their contention 
upon the principle of freedom in The Theosophical Society. We have 
asserted many times that any member is free to hold any opinions he 
pleases in matters of belief, provided he extend equal tolerance to the 
beliefs of others. This is a vital principle, but it is not contravened (as 
they claim) by any resolution passed at the Convention. 

"The Convention declared that, because many people were urging 
pacifism and neutrality in the name of Brotherhood, and because it is the 
first object of The Theosophical Society to form the nucleus of a universal 
brotherhood of humanity, the Society was compelled to answer that war 
is not of necessity a violation of brotherhood. Secondly, it was declared 
that when an individual sees clearly that moral principles are at stake, 
neutrality for him must be impossible. 

"To deny either statement leads immediately to contradiction and 
absurdity. H. P. B. stated constantly that a professional soldier may be 
a good theosophist. But, again, there is no need to drag H. P. B. into it ! 
There is such a thing as common sense, and although there are some 
fanatics who deny that the use of force is justifiable, even to protect 
a woman or child from outrage, I, in my turn, deny them the right to 
attach to such insanity the name of Theosophy or the name of Brother- 
hood. 

"Suppose, for instance, that it were to become noised abroad that 
Theosophy stands for free love, or for some similar horror. Suppose 
that a group of people, daring to call themselves theosophists, were pub- 
licly to proclaim such beliefs. Can it be pretended that our Society would 
not have the right to defend its good name by repudiation and protest? 
It would not only have the right, but, in easily imaginable circumstances, 
protest would be its immediate duty. 

"The second claim of these few English members, as I understand 
it, is that we should welcome all who seek truth and theosophic ideals. 
We should, granting the sincerity of applicants. We exclude no one 
because of past errors. But present actions are different. When it is 
obvious that a member is working for purposes which are the opposite 
of those of the Society, it follows that that member and the Society must 
part company. Usually this is brought about by the resignation of the 
member. But no matter how brought about, the principle is clear that 
while we hold the door as widely open as possible for everyone who 

18 



274 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

desires the opportunity to accompany us on our journey, the Society must 
of necessity retain the right to drop those who pull against its course and 
who oppose its aims". 

"It should not be forgotten", interjected the Scientist, "that a nu- 
cleus is formed by a process of elimination as well as by accretion. These 
English members seem to have paid no attention to the word 'nucleus', 
or to its significance, but seem, instead, to have been carried away by the 
idea of a meaningless, purposeless, characterless conglomerate of human 
beings, the sole function of which is to carry a banner labelled Brother- 
hood. You would not wish me to contribute a dissertation on the subject 
of nuclei, but it would be well at least to remember that a structural differ- 
ence between the nucleus and the rest of the cell-protoplasm is indicated 
by its greater resistance to powerful reagents, and that a nucleus is com- 
posed of (1) a nuclear membrane, (2) nuclear network, and (3) nu- 
cleoplasm, and containing nucleoli, which are the nucleus of a nucleus. 
That a true nucleus controls the character and function of the cell, is 
vital, as I see it, to our entire discussion. The Theosophical Society owes 
it to its Founders and to mankind, to prevent the use of its forces for 
purposes which are antagonistic to its own". 

"That even one of the English members should have failed England 
is profoundly to be regretted", said the Engineer. "England did so splen- 
didly during the war, that her moral collapse, due to reaction, is more 
tragic than all the deaths of her bravest. She needs help sorely, and she 
deserves it. Apart from the hosts of her dead, who have won age-long 
blessings for her, she ought to have found in the British branch of The 
Theosophical Society, her guiding 'nucleus' and strongest spiritual im- 
pulse. More than that, she ought to have found intellectual clarity and 
sure grasp of principle". 

"There is, I think, yet another way of approaching this subject", 
the Scholar suggested finally; "and while our discussion, so far, should 
remove the haze which in many minds still surrounds it, we must 
remember that, while it seemed to have been thrashed out at the general 
Convention in New York, the result, in England, proved that enough had 
not been said. 

"I can imagine that a superficial student of Theosophy might argue 
that because 'all souls are identical with the Oversoul', therefore Brother- 
hood is a fact in nature. Consequently, the function of The Theosophical 
Society is simply to recognize that fact. Consequently, all who recognize 
Brotherhood as a fact, or who say they do, are worthy of membership in 
the Society. 

"The fallacies packed into such a chain of reasoning are innumer- 
able. First, not all men have souls. Second, while a Brotherhood of 
souls already exists in the spiritual world, it does not follow, unfor- 
tunately, that it already exists in this world. We know, on the con- 
trary, that the very opposite of Brotherhood exists, for there are many 
who fight consciously against the purposes of the soul, and there are 



SCREEN OF TIME 275 

many more who fight against those purposes unconsciously. Third, 
instead of the function of The Theosophical Society being simply to recog- 
nize an existing order, its function is to educate its members into a 
realization, not only in understanding but in action, of a spiritual truth, 
and thus to introduce into this world, or to make manifest in this world, 
an ideal as a reality. Fourth, to be a worthy member of the Society 
involves much more than the intellectual and theoretical acceptance of a 
belief in Brotherhood. 

"Suppose, for instance, that a man joins the Society, stating that 
he believes in the principle of Brotherhood. Suppose that he then 
commits a murder, or several murders, and that he advocates murder, 
perhaps on the ground that people are in his way, and that, as they are 
happier in heaven, his understanding of brotherhood obliges him to send 
them there. Question: Would such a man be a worthy member of the 
Society, or would it be the duty of the Society to expel him ? 

"Suppose that another man, who says he is devoted to the cause of 
Brotherhood, does not actually commit murder, but admires the man 
who does; avowedly approves the first man's reasons for 'sending 
people to heaven', and declares that any condemnation of murder is 
unbrotherly and untheosophical. Is he worthy of membership in the 
Society, or ought he to be expelled? 

"Suppose, now, that a man is in no sense a murderer, but is either 
incapable of seeing a moral principle, so that murder leaves him 
indifferent, or has wilfully closed his eyes because of personal or racial 
prejudice, refusing to see murder as murder, and condoning crime by 
phrases such as, 'Why make such a fuss?' 'Don't be disagreeable', 'Don't 
be vindictive', 'We must be brotherly'. Speaking for myself, I have 
more respect for the man who murders, than for the man who thus 
condones crime, or the condoners of crime, under a cloak of charity and 
brotherhood. When, in addition, the cloak of Theosophy is used, I feel 
that not only the Society itself is dishonored, but that every member is 
compromised, and is entitled, therefore, to such protection and vindi- 
cation as the Executive Committee is in a position to afford. The offender 
has a perfect right, of course, to declare that his 'charity' is the only 
genuine expression of Theosophy. In nearly every case, that is exactly 
what he does declare. But if his so-called charity is discreditable to the 
Society, discreditable to its Founders, and discreditable to its members; 
if his charity is a caricature of Theosophy and brings its ideals into 
contempt, then, in my opinion, it is grossly unfair to all concerned that 
they r and, above all, Theosophy itself, should be obliged to suffer for 
his self-gratification. To pretend that freedom of speech requires it, is 
to confuse freedom with license, and license, actually, is just what 
such people mean when they talk about freedom. They forget that 
freedom is impossible without law and order, and without a large element, 
also, of that sort of decency which leads a man to retire from an associa- 
tion (in this case, The Theosophical Society as last assembled in 



276 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Convention) with which he finds himself completely out of harmony." 
"Might we not add", asked the Student, " 'when it is intimated that 
his presence has become offensive'?" 

"One more question," the Student added: "What did this meeting 
of English members at Newcastle represent?" 

"It was a meeting, or convention," said the Ancient, "of the 
British national branch of The Theosophical Society. It is a branch 
of the parent Society. If there were a branch in Chicago with as many 
members as there are in England, both the Chicago branch and the 
British national branch would be entitled to the same number of dele- 
gates, and of votes, at the annual Convention of The Theosophical 
Society, such as was held in New York last April. All branches are 
represented, either in person or by proxy, at such Conventions, and it is 
only then, and in that way, that the Society can express itself. At the 
last Convention, the Society did express itself, unanimously and 
emphatically. All that has happened is that a few English members 
very few, I believe declare themselves, and are declared, to be radically 
alien to the Society as a whole." T. 



As a strong antiseptic prevents the growth of the germs of disease, 
so suffering checks the taint of base and selfish feelings, which so easily 
insinuate themselves into our hearts, and impair the purity of our motives 
and intentions. Suffering chastens the soul and its aspirations, the mind 
and its views, the heart and its affections. Whatever tends to free us 
from selfish motives must help to increase the merit of our thoughts, 
words, and actions. Suffering increases merit by insuring not only greater 
purity, but also greater earnestness of motive. It has a bracing influence 
upon the will, and gives tone and vigour to its exercise. Difficulties and 
sufferings bring out manliness, and strength of will, and nobility of soul. 
They are earnestness of purpose. They are an unmistakable test of solid 
virtue. There is beauty and merit in each least aspiration of virtue 
breathed on the playful wing of joy, but there is greater and more solid 
merit in the depth and vigour of determination evinced in the practice 
of virtue under difficulties, temptations and trials. There is no trial, 
temptation, or suffering which cannot be turned into a blessing by the 
will of a conscious sufferer. GOD AND HUMAN SUFFERING. 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 

July 14th, 1912. 



DEAR 



I also take for granted that you devote at least half an hour 
daily to meditation and to self-examination. This is absolutely essential, 
for it is during this period that we really grow, that we get 
the sustenance that is necessary for growth. While it is hard 
to keep this rule fully and conscientiously, you will learn to look forward 
to this time as the best part of each day. There is no limit to our 
organization. Even the oldest members, the member who has made the 
most progress, and many have made very great progress indeed, tell us 
that the way opens up beyond in an unlimited vista of further heights 
to be scaled, with those standing by who have scaled these further heights, 
and who stand ready to do everything they can to help. 

So make your own ideal high. "Hitch your wagon to a star." We 
cannot hope to reach our goal at once, but at least let us have a great 
goal and not a little one. There is no limit to the progress which you 
can make in just the circumstances that you are in. You may feel that 
it is not so, and that if you had more leisure, or did not have to work so 
hard, or could read and study more, or if circumstances were different 
in some way or other, you could go further and faster; but it is not 
so. It is just the circumstances which we are in that are the very best 
possible for us, and which will produce the conditions we need to sur- 
mount and to conquer, so bringing out the new qualities which we need. 

Of course it is hard, but we are trying to do a great thing, nothing 
less than to anticipate by scores of thousands of years the general 
evolution of the rest of humanity. We must force ourselves ahead, 
because the soul calls us, the Masters call, and are waiting for us to grow, 
so that we can help them help others. It is a great task which we have 
ahead of us, and it has its great rewards. 

I shall be glad to hear from you frequently, and to try to answer any 
questions which you may want to ask. 

Fraternally, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



October 15th, 1912. 

DEAR 

Your letter came while I was in Europe; I returned a week ago, 
and am taking the first opportunity to thank you for your letter and for 
the straightforward way in which you have written. That is most 
necessary if this correspondence is to be really helpful to you as I 
earnestly desire. 

277 



278 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Answering first your question about meditation, for that is the 
most important subject for us all to understand. Yes, I think it is very 
desirable to select some one hour for meditation, and to keep the time 
zealously for it, allowing nothing but an urgent duty to interfere with 
the half hour or more given to it. There are several reasons for this 
counsel ; for one, we thus take advantage of the law of habit, or to put 
it in a different way, the law of periodicity. In this connection, one of 
our members recently cited experiments in which large masses of metal 
were moved by finger pressure constantly and rhythmically applied. 
Think this out and you will see how it applies. 

Most of us have found that it is more important to choose an hour 
that can be kept every day, than to consider whether it shall be early 
or late. In many ways the early morning hours are the most favourable 
for people who are living outwardly in the whirl of things, for in the 
early morning the cares and distractions of the day are less in our 
thoughts, our minds are not so distinctly dominant. . . Our private 
meditations should spring out of our lives, should in fact be our lives. 
Too many times we are inclined to think of meditation as a formal 
exercise to be gone through with because we are told to do it, just as 
listless children may go through an exercise in calisthenics and get no 
good from it. We are told that we get our real knowledge through 
meditation; so evidently one fruitful subject for meditation will be the 
thing or things that we truly want to know. 

There are many steps to be taken before we reach meditation as 
the Great Ones know it, and they have to be passed one by one. With 
our Western habits of thought, it is often easier to learn to pray than to 
learn to meditate; both lead in the end to the same goal. Why not try 
the experiment of giving the first part of every meditation period to 
prayer? Pray to the Master, imagine that he is near you (for it is only 
in your imagination that he is far away from you!), tell him very simply 
about your desire to draw close to him, ask his guidance in any problems 
that you have to meet, resign your will absolutely to him, longing only 
to find out his way that you may do it. Then try to centre your heart on 
him, compel your mind to keep still, and instead of talking to him, 
"meditate" on him. This is only one of many ways; but try it and let 
me know whether you find any help in it. . . 

As you study, the light will come ; here a little, there a little. Unless 
you have a considerable amount of time to give to study, I think you 
would do better to reserve the reading of the Secret Doctrine until later. 
It contains an enormous mass of very valuable material, which is to be 
had by mining, as one digs information out of an encyclopaedia; but 
you do not appear to need that kind of reading at present. 

Now about "practical work"; that is a most sacred obligation, and 
chances to meet it will come, as you look for them. Many of our 
members are actively engaged in church work, not talking Theosophy 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 



279 



as such, but trying to apply the "theosophic method'* to their work, and 

doing it all for the Master. 

******* 

Until we become masters of our minds, they serve us many a bad 
turn. If thoughts come to you that you do not wish to entertain, give 
your mind the antidote as quickly and as firmly as possible. Force it 
every time this happens to dwell on something that is clean and true, 
picture to yourself vividly some noble act, and then go and do something 
for somebody else that you would not otherwise have done. 

I shall be glad to hear from you again when you feel like writing, 
and do not hesitate to ask over again any questions to which I have not 
given answers as explicit as you desired. 

With all good wishes for you, I am, 

Sincerely yours, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



December 1st, 1912. 



DEAR 



Answering your question first, I should say that without 
doubt the experience you describe is psychic and not spiritual. 
It is practically an invariable rule that we feel spiritual things long 
before we can apprehend them through any other sense, such as sight 
or hearing; and by "long before" I mean that we are likely to have 
several years when our only contact with the real inner world will be 
through feeling. If a person has natural psychic gifts they are a barrier 
and not a help, unless they are dealt with very sternly. They must be 
put aside in every possible way, never permitted to function, and kept 
ruthlessly in the background, until we have firmly established ourselves 
in the inner world and then they are no longer necessary, and need not 
be used for our further progress, as we shall have then other and better 
faculties that more than take their place. 

You inquire why we should ask questions of older students when we 
are told to go to the Master for inward light and guidance. The two 
directions are not contradictory, although they may at first seem so. We 
must do both things faithfully; for until we are able to go directly to 
the Master himself, he will send his reply to our request for help through 
other channels. The student, who is so used, may perhaps be unaware 
that the Master is using him as a means of giving you the truth for 
which you have asked the Master ; that does not matter. But the Master 
must use some such means until you are capable of direct communion. 

It is not that, if he wished, he could not reach you in any one of a 
hundred ways, including that of appearing before you in his physical 
body, and talking to you in the ordinary, commonplace way. It is that 



280 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

any experience of the kind, even the slightest, would result in a violent 
reaction which can be directly measured by the height from which the 
force comes. We react from any spiritual truth simply from the power 
that is in it. This is the case whether we read the truth in a devotional 
book, have it communicated to us in a letter, or in a talk, or in any 
other way; and the truer it is, or seems to us to be, the greater will be 
the reaction of our lower natures from it. This reaction is usually so 
indirect that it is very difficult for us to trace it. For instance, we may 
go to a meeting, have a very agreeable and stimulating time, and feel 
that it has done us a great deal of good. Two days later we may lose 
our temper and be very disagreeable to a friend. It is hard to realize 
that the two things are related, but they are. One is directly caused by 
the other. The reaction from spiritual experience may break out in any 
kind of physical disturbance, or on the mental, moral or emotional planes. 
One of the things that we have to do in the course of our training is to 
recognize our reactions, and to learn to look for, and so to control them, 
before they dominate us. 

No, I do not think you are "imagining" the help to which you refer. 
You probably are not yet in a position to trace it back with assurance to 
its source, and that really is not of much importance to you just now; 
but the fact is, that we are all of us given, every day, help and encourage- 
ment of which we are entirely unconscious, and, worse still, opportunities 
to which we pay not the slightest heed. Look constantly for such 
guidance, and do not distrust it when you get it ! 

You ask what "practical work" means whether you should look 
for a wider field. I have not time now to answer that fully, but here is 
a clue to the answer, which you can work out for yourself : remember 
that your surroundings, your work, your duties, are not accidental, 
that they are nicely adjusted to teach you lessons that .you need to learn; 
remember, too, that it matters little what we do, so long as we do it for 
the Master, as a means of serving him and making his will our own, 
and consequently do the thing, whatever it may be, as well as we are 
capable of doing it. 

5JC # * * * * * 

With best wishes, I am 

Sincerely yours, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



January 26th, 1913. 

DEAR 

I was much interested in your letter of January 7th, which 
helps me in my efforts to help you. There is the greatest dif- 
ference in the kind of letters which I receive. No one can 
pour information down another's throat. We must ask in order to 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 281 

receive. We must always make a demand upon the spiritual law before 
it will come to our aid. And I am happy in the knowledge that all my 
deficiencies will be supplemented by those much wiser than I am ; that 
what you need in the way of help and instruction, which I cannot furnish, 
you will get in other ways. Therefore do not depend upon me, but 
go into your own heart for the faith and inspiration and knowledge 
which you seek. It is there that we get our real help and guidance, and 
that is as it should be. 

We all of us have periods of dryness ; we all have times of depres- 
sion ; we all suffer now and again from inability to feel the reality of the 
spiritual world. If you will read the lives of the saints, you will see 
that it is an almost invariable complaint. You will also see many 
suggestions as to how to act at such times. Generally speaking the thing 
to do is to go right on with our regular spiritual exercises, whatever 
they may be, pray regularly, try to meditate our usual time, read our 
devotional books, in a word, act just as if we felt as we should like to 
feel. The power we generate doing these things when we do not want 
to do them, and when it is an effort to do them, gradually wears away 
the barrier which has temporarily come between us and the sun. Then, 
one day, the light breaks through and we are all right again until the next 
attack comes on. We often grow more during these periods of depression 
and dryness, than during the periods of spiritual fervour and light and 
life, because we are trying harder, we are actually making more effort, 
and it is effort that counts, not what seems to us to be the results. Above 
all, we must take these periods with serenity, and must try to realize 
that they are not ourselves but separate from us, something that comes 
from our past, or from outside, from the evil of the world, from any 
lower source, and gradually learn to deal with them impersonally. If 
you have a boil, you recognize it, suffer from it, treat it, are glad to get 
rid of it, but it never occurs to you to identify yourself with it. Treat 
your periods of depression this same way. Study them. You will find 
that they come in cycles, perhaps regular cycles, for we are affected 
by many cyclic laws which we do not understand at all. 

With reference to your question about meditation. Of course, as 
you suggest, we must go to our meditation as a duty to perform whether 
we like it or not. It is only by keeping at it in spite of lack of results, 
of distaste, of fatigue, of inertia, of any hindrance of any kind, that we 
can hope finally to learn how to do it properly. My idea went a step 
beyond that. I wanted to suggest that in actual fact the time of 
meditation is the time we should look forward to in all the day as that 
time when we are happiest and most peaceful and most joyful. If we 
really understood, it would be looked forward to eagerly. 

******* 

With kindest regards, I am Fraternally, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



282 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

April 12th, 1913. 



DEAR 



Of course we all do want a willing and obedient heart, but that 
only comes through love. Now love comes through obedience; hence 
you see the necessity of forcing ourselves to do things which we know 
we ought to do, even when we are depressed and do not feel at all like 
doing them. It is the force we rouse in order to do them, that gradually 
wears away the obstructions to a more perfect performance. So long 
as we feel resentment of any kind, it is proof positive that we need just 
that sort of experience ; resentment being the sign that, in that particular, 
our self-will is very much awake. Resentment means that we want to 
do things our way, and not the Master's way. We resent the interference 
with our own way. Of course this does not always appear on the surface, 
but it always exists underneath. 



No one can find the Kingdom of Heaven unaided. They must be 
helped by those above them, by those who are their fellow-students, and, 
finally, by those below them, at least, to the extent that they pass on 
the teaching which has been given them. It is not sufficient to go on 
plodding year after year. We need personal direction. And the only 
way to get this personal help is to ask for it ; not generally, but specifically, 
in detail. 



If I do not reply to some question of yours, it may be because I 
think the real answer is contained in something else I write. If you do 
not feel so, write again. 

With kindest regards, I am 

Sincerely yours, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



January 21st, 1914. 
DEAR 

Thank you for your letter of the 28th. 

But you must not be reluctant to write me and, if necessary, "pour 
out your troubles". It is a great privilege that you should be willing to 
do so, and, if you feel that it will be of help, please do not hesitate. 

Remember that we cannot hope to get into heaven by ourselves. As 
a matter of fact, at certain points on the road, we need three kinds of 
help: we need the help of those above us; we need the help of our 
comrades; and we need the help of those we have helped of those 
below us. It is well to struggle courageously, indomitably, per sever ingly ; 
but it is also well to realize that we cannot win without the assistance 



LETTERS TO STUDENTS 283 

of others. We need help, all of us : it is a law of brotherhood that we 
cannot do without it. 

I do not think it does any good to change our circumstances ; certainly 
not by doing violence to natural conditions. Life will surely do it for us 
when our soul's good needs a different set. What we must strive to do 
is to live perfectly in any circumstances. Brother Lawrence was a cook 
for thirty-five years, and attained such a degree of holiness in that 
environment, that bishops and cardinals came from all over France to 
consult with him about their problems and their souls. 

The distractions, the lack of privacy, the interruptions of your life, 
provide you with the opportunity you need to cultivate serenity, humility, 
resignation, and the ability to offer everything you do on the altar of the 
Higher Self the Master. That is the true concentration, true continuous 
meditation. 

With best wishes, I am 

Sincerely yours, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 



October 1st, 1914. 

DEAR 

******* 

The emphasis, you will see, is laid upon life, upon how to live. If we 
live properly, it does not matter what we know. Knowledge will come. 

Proper living is a question of detail. The best definition of a saint 
I know is : "A saint is not one who practises heroic virtues ; but one 
who practises common virtues to an heroic degree". 

At the last analysis, what we are all trying to do is to become saints, 
i.e. to practise ordinary, commonplace virtues to an heroic degree. That 
means infinite attention to the details of life: how we sit, how we eat, 
what we eat, how we sleep and how much and when; how we talk and 
what we say ; how we walk and think and act, from morning until night. 
A very good plan is to picture to ourselves how we would behave if 
we were in the presence of a Master, and then act accordingly, in every 
detail of life. 

With kind regards, I am 

Sincerely, 

C. A. GRISCOM. 




India and the West, by C. R. Lanman, Journal of the American Oriental 
Society, October, 1920. 

This is the Presidential Address delivered by Professor Lanman, of Harvard 
University, before' the American Oriental Society, at Ithaca, on April 6, 1920. The 
full title is : "India and the West with a Plea for Team-Work among Scholars" ; 
and Professor Lanman defines team-work with both humour and feeling as " 'work 
done by the players of a team collectively, for example, by the players of a football 
eleven.' These must do each his best for the success of his team as a whole. To 
this end, they must be free from the slightest feeling of personal jealousy, and 
must not allow the hope of personal advantage to influence any thought or act." 
The Address is, therefore, a plea for the study of Indian and othe'r Oriental 
religions and literatures in this generous and gentle spirit. 

Developing his subject, Professor Lanman reminds us that India has for many 
centuries been more or less in touch with the West, as also with the Far East. 
After Alexander's expedition, with the wealth of writings in Greek which flowed 
from it, there were many travellers. Professor Lanman has something to say 
also of the 1 Chinese pilgrims who, inspired by the Buddhist missionaries from 
India, went thither to learn the Indian tongues in order that they might study the 
Good Law at its source. Such was Fa-hien, of whom it was said : "Since the Great 
Doctrine flowed on to the East, there 1 has been no one to be compared with Fa-hien 
in his forgetfulness of self and search for the Law. . . ." 

Western knowledge of Sanskrit began with studious and able members of 
the East India Company's service in Bengal, such as H. T. Colebrooke and Sir 
William Jones, instrumental in founding the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784. 
From Colebrooke, Professor Lanman quotes this amusing comment on Charles 
Wilkins : 

"I have never yet seen any book which can be depended on for information 
concerning the real opinions of the Hindus except Wilkins' 'Bhagvat Geeta.' That 
gentleman was Sanskrit-mad and has more materials and more general knowledge 
respecting the Hindus than any other foreigner ever acquired since the days of 
Pythagoras." 

And we are reminded that Wilkins, such was his zeal for Eastern learning, 
himself cut the punches for the first Indian type. 

Coming to the heart of his subject, Professor Lanman says: 

"An Occidental who would faithfully interpret India to the West must also 
know the life of India from actual observation and experience, and must be able 1 
to look at it from the Eastern angle of vision. . . . And, on the other hand, 
since the Hindus themselves are already actively engaged in interpreting the East 
to the West, it is needful also that they visit us, not merely to learn our way 
of doing things, but also to look at life as we look at it, and thus find out what 
things such, let us say, as repose of spirit or the simple life the West most 
needs to learn from the East." 

With the fullest sympathy for everything that Professor Lanman says, a 
student of Theosophy would be inclined to add this: While it is altogether to be 
desired that the scholars of the West should work cordially with the scholars of 
the East, they must, if they really desire to sound the depths of Eastern scriptures, 

284 



REVIEWS 285 

do something more. They must do all in their power to gain the insight possessed, 
and generously shared, by the living Masters of the East, who are scholars and 
something more, and who really know what the Western scholars seek to know. 

That Professor Lanman has no prejudice against the word "Theosophy," is 
shown by this sentence: "At least four small volumes should be devoted to speci- 
mens from the Rig Veda, the Atharva Veda, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. 
These last might well be entitled The'osophy of the Hindus: their doctrine of the 
all-pervading God.' " 

The reviewer is tempted to supplement this by a quotation from a contribution 
by Professor Lanman to the Journal of the American Oriental Society for June, 
1920, on "Phrase-words and Phrase-derivatives." To illustrate the way phrase- 
words have come into being in Sanskrit and Pali, Professor Lanman quotes this 
modern instance of the creation of a phrase-word admirable in its concise 
expressiveness: A very small boy was asked: "Is that puppy yours or your little 
brother's?" 

Earnestly he replied: "It's both-of-us's !" C. J. 

What is the Kingdom of Heaven? (Scribner's, 1920), by A. Glutton Brock, 
English historical writer and man of letters : a stimulating and provocative 
criticism of Christ's teaching as to the Kingdom of Heaven, ably presented from 
the point of view of one who has studied the New Testament sympathetically and 
intelligently. The style is direct, bold, sincere to the point of being downright, and 
yet in nowise harsh or repellent. 

Mr. Brock purposely assumes the intellectual position of a modern, pagan, and 
cultivated mind, hostile to narrow orthodoxy; but he has himself been irresistibly 
attracted, and won, by the eternal verities of Christ's revelation. His method is 
winning; his enthusiasm is catching; the reader is impelled to agree with his 
penetrating logic. 

The inconsistency and "failure of belief in the world of "orthodoxy" lead 
to a direct appeal to the source of Christianity, to what the writer maintains is its 
central teaching, that of the Kingdom of Heaven. The significance of this teach- 
ing, if men would only accept it, live it, is clearly seen and forcibly presented. "To 
the orthodox," the conduct described in the Sermon on the Mount is "surprising", 
but it "is what God commands ; to Christ it is the conduct natural to man when he 
knows the Kingdom of Heaven, as natural as eating and drinking are to men who 
see food and are hungry" (p. 33). "The fatal error of the orthodox" is that "they 
believe on or in the Lord Jesus Christ, but they do not believe Him ; for they have 
not even tried to understand what He said. It was the Kingdom of Heaven that 
He wished men to believe in, to see, to make . . . Belief in Christ is a burden 
which the world is throwing off, because it has never believed Him" (p. 39). 

Mr. Brock's application of the fundamental principles of the Kingdom "The 
Logic of the Doctrine", both to politics and to the individual, shows unusual pene- 
tration. "The proper function of the Church . . . is to see the Kingdom of 
Heaven to be a fellowship of those who are seeking the Kingdom of Heaven in 
the manner laid down by Christ" (p. 76). "Vox populi is not vox Dei" "It is 
not the voice of the people unless it is also the voice of God," which "is the true 
meaning of the words" (pp. 93-100). "The problem of capital is not, finally, the 
problem of its ownership, but the problem of its use" (p. 104). "Men cannot live 
without either the real Kingdom or a false one. Man is of such a nature that he 
must be in some relation to the Kingdom, a relation of acceptance or refusal. 
. . . Insensitiveness is not, as some suppose, the result of a crude, strong, 
physical organization; it is a weakness, a refusal of the mind that grows with the 
mind's refusal. It is, as it were, a morbid thickening of the mind's outer skin, the 
result of which is, not that the mind is protected from harm, but that it is cut off 
from that relation with the Kingdom of Heaven which is health, so that it breeds 
within itself its own unconscious illusions" (p. 122). A. G. 



^QUESTIONS 



( 



ANSWERS 



QUESTION No. 248. How can I tell whether I am making progress along the 
Path? Please give, if possible, some very simple tests. I am so often discouraged. 
The years are slipping by, and I have the very same faults that I had when I 
started. 

ANSWER. Why be discouraged? Are you sure your faults are the same? Can 
you not see them more clearly than when you started? It is far better to have a 
"thorn in the flesh" like St. Paul, and to keep constantly at work on it, than to get 
the feeling of satisfaction that says, "Now I have done something; I have eradi- 
cated that fault." In that very moment another fault has come up. The only 
thing is to keep at the job doggedly and grimly, offering up the results as a 
sacrifice. Ever keep trying; make an offering of any success and even of failure, 
rettiembering that the only failure is to cease to try. I should say, do not trouble 
about tests. Life brings us all such numberless opportunities and tests. If we 
stop to think whether we have any of us succeeded here or succeeded there, we 
have wasted time. Let us try to become simple again. Like a little child let us 
bring as an offering the best we have, and leave the results to Him we serve. 

A. K. 

ANSWER. Would not the surest test be: Have I more, or less, of the will to 
do, the determination to master myself, my desires, my emotions ; and am I better 
able now to get that will on top quickly, in a crisis? Beyond that, why apply a 
measuring rod to our achievements we are no judge of them. The fault that now 
seems the same as some years back, may be the same fault several stages higher 
up; or circumstances may now be such as to provoke it much more severely; or 
the failure to conquer that fault may be the best possible means toward teaching 
us humility, patience, or understanding of another's difficulty. As Saint Teresa 
says, "Leave that to the Master of the house : He is wise and powerful and knows 
what is best for you and for Himself." P. T. O. 

ANSWER. Suppose you are making no progress; what then? Are you going 
to stop trying? Suppose you are, quite unknown to yourself, making great prog- 
ress; what then? In either event, are you going to slacken your effort? Or per- 
haps, if you could know that your progress was disappointingly slow, you think 
you could do better. If you could, why not do it, at once? Is it possible for us 
to make too complete, too devoted an effort to follow and to serve the Masters 
who spare themselves in nothing, to aid us? 

If tests are longed for, if there must be a measure, here is one: Are you better 
able, than in the beginning, to forget self, to lose self in devotion to the work, to 
the cause of Masters? Then there has been progress. Test it by your willingness 
to let go all this testing. Centre your interest in the road ahead, not in the number 
of yards traversed. It is a very long road. Since we know we want to travel it to 
the very end, why use the yardstick? E. 

QUESTION No. 249. What would you advise a new member-at-large to under- 
take, as distinctive work for the Movement ? So far as I know there is nobody in 

286 



QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 287 

my environment who has any interest in Theosophy. My friends are patiently or 
impatiently bored when I talk about it. What can I do that will really help? 

ANSWER. First, translate the ideas and principles which you appreciate in 
Theosophy into terms familiar to all in your environment. To do this, you will 
have to think all these things out for yourself and they will become real for you. 
Then you wiJ shape your life and acts accordingly. As those in your environment 
insensibly appreciate this you will find that they will either lean towards the truth 
you represent or away ^ora it, according to their own natures : at least they will no 
longer be bored. You wiJ1 find you have quite enough to do for some time, and 
meanwhile you will fi ^ ""^t your environment has altered. Do not talk about 
Theosophy, but live it. * A. K. 

ANSWER. It has been said that every member of The Theosophical Society is, 
if he so choose, an ambassador f rO m the Lodge of Masters to his community. To 
represent them properly, he evidently needs to learn all that reading and meditation 
will give him about their ways of dealing with mankind; what they value; how 
they work; how they are best served. One point would be clear from the start 
they have always encouraged men to offer them deeds rather than words. They 
have given an example of their scale of values by ceaselessly working for mankind 
while seldom breaking in upon it with advice or direction of any sort. E. 

QUESTION No. 250. We are living to-day in the midst of such threatened and 
actual social upheavals that it is puzzling to know how principles should be applied. 
When everything slides out of place, as during a storm at sea, what is one to do? 
The carpenter, whom I call in to do some simple repairs, treats me as if I were 
shortly to be his tenant, if allowed a house at all. How am I to treat him honestly, 
and yet get my work done? 

ANSWER. Do what you do in the storm at sea. Then you tie everything in 
place or wedge it there so that it does not shift. You cannot take the ship or your- 
self out of the storm. You cannot take your principles out of the social upheaval. 
So get firm hold of them, and the underlying verities in nature; treat and talk to 
your carpenter or your employee, of whatever grade, from that point of view. It 
is "up to you" to cause him to feel that you are able to give him direction because 
you are what you are, and not because of any accidental position of birth or any 
other enviable possessions. Principle and character are the means by which we 
can weather these social upheaval storms, and there is nothing else firm enough to 
tie to. The "social-upheavalists" are endeavouring to obtain possessions; the first 
things they strive for are money and position and a "good time", which they think 
to secure by means of self-assertion. Well, they strive after the moon that way. 
Your part is surely to give them of your best : yourself, and what you have made 
of yourself through the principles by which you have chosen to shape your life. 
Your carpenter will yield to the force of your character, and respect you for it. 
So will you be your "brother's keeper" and give of your best in your own environ- 
ment. A. K. 

QUESTION No. 251. Is there any way to hold oneself up to the level of con- 
sciousness attained in prayer and meditation, and to avoid dropping back to one's 
ordinary level? 

ANSWER. Surely, there must be: but as surely that way involves constant 
practice, until "practice makes perfect". To avoid dropping back means the attain- 
ment of "continuous meditation," or the stage of contemplation perfected. But this 
involves little short of perfection from our ordinary human point of view. We, 
who are in the midst of ordinary life, have the opportunity of endeavouring to 
practise holding ourselves up to the level with all sorts of distractions around us 



288 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

to divert our attention. We can follow Krishna's injunction, "Think of Me and 
fight" ; can offer up all our acts and thoughts on the altar of the heart, makin.g of 
each an offering consciously made to the Master. Our ordinary life thus 
constitutes a splendid opportunity of practising "recollection", not merely as a 
definite performance at a specified hour, but in each act and thought of the d?.y. A 
life so lived becomes a sum total of consecration, and it is by such m?ans that we 
shall avoid dropping back. A. K. 

QUESTION No. 252. How do you explain Joan of Ar<-'* "Voices"? Were they 
psychic delusions of some sort, or real guidance? t * 

ANSWER. I explain them in the way she expla* MU - n. I think she is the 
best judge. She spoke of them as the voices of hef brotiie rs m p ara dise. I think 
that is what they were. She had given her whole lif e to 4 Purpose. She was used 
as the instrument of divine forces for the working 0^ a miracle. That miracle 
stands forth in history undisputed. There was nothing ii\ a girl, a peasant girl, to 
work that miracle, unless there was a divine power back of her. Quite simply, she 
said her brothers in Paradise told her what to do. She did not want to do it. She 
pleaded to be left alone. Finally, she went ; giving her life in obedience. That is 
one of the tests. M. 

ANSWER. At all times, in all ages, there have been those who have talked with 
their brothers in Paradise. They did not have to die in order to do it. They were 
perfectly wide-awake. They knew what they were doing. Remember again, the 
pure in heart shall see God. The pure in heart, with all that that implies : clearly 
that must mean singleness of soul; singleness of purpose; absolute un-self-con- 
sciousness ; the desire to do what the Masters wish, what the Law wishes, what 
God wishes, to do it without reference to self. They were willing to pay any 
price. The pure in heart have always seen Him, and always will. H. 

QUESTION No. 253. At a recent Theosophical Society Branch meeting we 
were advised, in thinking of the great war, not t,o confine ourselves to its incidents 
or outer causes, but to seek the purpose back of it. The speaker said that modern 
science entirely neglected, and even sought to banish purpose from the universe, 
but that real students of Theosophy sought the purpose in all things. Does this 
mean that there is a purpose in every trivial happening of daily life and that we 
ought to seek to find it? 

ANSWER. We are all of us familiar with people who are perpetually bubbling 
over with talk simply for the love of talking. What they say is a matter of no 
importance to themselves or any one else ; they go through life incessantly creating 
noise for the sake of hearing the sound of their own voices and giving expression 
to the vapidity that arises within them. Are we to imagine that God or the Lodge 
or the Power back of evolution, or whatever term you choose to use for the great 
creative Power of the universe is equally vapid, and creates worlds and events 
the way children break dolls' heads, just to hear the noise they make? 

"The universe exists for the purposes of the soul." It was created by the 
Soul for the soul, and nothing arises or can ever arise that should not be used for 
the growth of the soul. This applies as well to the events that we, in our ignor- 
ance of true proportion, are pleased to call trivial, as to those that we call great. 
One way to learn to see the purpose of daily events, is to set ourselves to find how 
each one may be used to develop character, to help in the acquisition of some 
power that our souls need, patience, sympathy for others in place of irritation, 
humility instead of vanity, endurance and courage instead of fear and self-pity, or 
whatever the lesson may be. Always beneath the outer covering lies Life's gift to 
us, if we will but take it. M. 




APRIL, 1921 

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 DANGERS OF PSYCHISM 

A NUMBER of short treatises, in verse and prose, are attributed 
to the great Indian Teacher, Shankaracharya, though it is prob- 
able that the actual writing was done by his disciples. Among 
these treatises, there is one, Vakya Sudha, which has a partic- 
ularly happy phrasing of the three worlds in relation to the seven prin- 
ciples of manifested life. The three worlds, beginning from below, are 
called "the ordinary world," "the looking-glass world," and "the tran- 
scendent world"; and the forms in which the One Spirit is manifested 
in these three worlds are called, in the same way, "the ordinary life," 
"the looking-glass life," and "the transcendent life," the last being in 
reality one with the Eternal. 

This apt and lucid naming of the three worlds lends itself admirably 
to the purpose of the present "Notes and Comments." That purpose is, 
so far as may be possible, to indicate the character of the psychical world, 
which corresponds to the looking-glass world of our treatise ; to show 
the place which the psychic world holds in normal development; and 
to describe certain morbid developments, which lead to confusion, and 
which are full of danger. The theme, therefore, is the normal and the 
abnormal activity of the psychic world. 

It will be seen at once that the threefold division given above closely 
corresponds with St. Paul's division of man into body, soul and spirit; 
psyche, the psychical nature, being the middle term, somewhat loosely 
translated "soul." 

The most important passage illustrating Paul's use of this threefold 
division, a passage which clearly shows what he means by the middle 
term, psyche, the psychical nature, is in the fifteenth chapter of the first 
letter to the disciples in Corinth. Neither in the Authorized nor in the 
Revised Version of 1881, is the passage satisfactorily translated. A closer 
rendering would be as follows : 

19 28t 



290 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"There are celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial : but the radiance 
of the celestial is one, and the radiance of the terrestrial is another. There 
is one radiance of the sun, and another radiance of the moon, and another 
radiance of the stars. For star differs from star in radiance. 

"So also is the rising up of the dead. It is sown in corruption ; it is 
raised in incorruption : it is sown in dishonour ; it is raised in radiance : 
it is sown in weakness ; it is raised in power : it is sown a psychical body ; 
it is raised a 'spiritual body. If there is a psychical body, there is also a 
spiritual body. 

"So also it is written, The first man Adam became a living psyche; 
The last Adam, a life-giving spirit. But that is not first which is spiritual, 
but that which is psychical; then the spiritual. The first man is of the 
earth, earthy: the second man is of heaven. As is the earthy, such are 
they also that are earthy : and as is the heavenly, such are they also that 
are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall 
also bear the image of the heavenly." 

So we have the threefold division : the terrestrial man, the psychical 
man and the spiritual man; exactly corresponding to the threefold divi- 
sion of our Sanskrit text : the ordinary man, the looking-glass man, 
and the transcendent man. And we have the further point in Paul's 
classification, that the psychical man "bears the image" of the earthy, 
again suggesting the simile of the looking-glass, the image in the mirror. 

What does our Sanskrit text mean, when it calls the middle world 
the looking-glass world? The meaning is, that the middle world, the 
psychical world has, in fact, the character of a looking-glass. It reflects 
in itself both the world which is below it and the world which is above it. 
And, like a looking-glass, it reverses the images which it reflects, so that 
the positions of right and left are interchanged. It reflects and perverts. 

We may think of the ordinary man of our threefold division, the 
terrestrial man of Paul's phrasing, as using directly the energies and per- 
ceptions of the physical body, but using them without being conscious 
that he is conscious. He has direct consciousness but no reflective con- 
sciousness, no true self-consciousness. To use the common phrase, which 
in this case has a sound basis in metaphysics, he perceives and acts, but 
he does not reflect. So far as concerns true self-consciousness, con- 
sciousness of his true self, it is simply not there. 

How is he to be led to this true self-consciousness, this consciousness 
of his true self ? How is he to be led to reflect ? 

It would seem that the universe has provided the looking-glass 
world exactly for this purpose. In order to see what he looks like, in 
order to reflect on himself, to become conscious of himself, he is pro- 
vided with a looking-glass. And that looking-glass is the middle world 
of our threefold division, the psychical world; or, as the Sanskrit text 
calls it, the looking-glass world. 

In our ordinary experience, the psychical world acts in this way: 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 291 

we look at something, for example a tree. Two things happen : first, 
we see the tree outside us, as it grows in the earth ; then we see the tree 
in our minds. We form a mental picture, a mind image, of the tree. It 
is reflected in our looking-glass world. So that there are two trees : the 
ordinary tree and the psychical tree. And we can carry the psychical 
tree away with us when we leave the ordinary tree behind. 

This mirroring, this catching of images in the looking-glass of our 
psychical world, is the basis of memory. Shankaracharya compares the 
mind image to a picture painted on canvas. We actually paint such a 
picture of the tree, and carry it about with us. When we look at this 
picture, we say that we "remember" the tree. 

If we were without desires and appetites, we might carry this process 
on indefinitely, simply gathering a multitude of pictures, and so enrich- 
ing our memories. 

But we are not by any means without desires. There is the desire 
of sensation. There is the desire of life. How are these two desires 
affected by the activity of the looking-glass world? 

First, the desire of sensation. We may imagine the early races, like 
uncorrupted animals, eating to live; using the senses of taste and smell 
to distinguish between things wholesome and unwholesome; and, when 
they had eaten enough, forgetting all about food and turning their atten- 
tion in some other direction. 

And we may compare with this our own procedure. The gourmand,. 
as he eats, rests his consciousness upon the rich flavour of what he is 
eating, pressing each delicate morsel against his palate, and giving it the 
fine essence of his attention. Instantly the activity of the looking-glass 
world comes in. A highly energized image of that attractive flavour is 
reflected in his psychical world ; and, after an hour, or after many hours, 
he can turn to it and savour its relish anew. 

It is a simple thing to see how greed and gluttony, the sins of the 
sense of taste, can grow up in this way. And it is easy to see that this 
process of focussing the consciousness on the activity of each sense, and 
thereby heaping up highly energized images of the things perceived by 
each sense in order to gloat over them, would make the operation of 
each sense morbid and unwholesome, creating a several sin for each 
several sense. The power of sight would become the lust of the eyes; 
and so with the other senses. 

In this way, through the operation of the looking-glass world, the 
psychical man heaps upon himself dynamic images of the things perceived 
by his senses. As Paul says, he makes himself in the image of the 
earthy. 

So much for the desire of sensation. Then there is the desire of 
life, the desire to feel oneself an intensely vibrating living being. Here 
again the looking-glass world comes in, sophisticating the activities of 
the natural man. The natural man would use his powers vigorously and 



292 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

cleanly, when there was occasion to use them, and, when the occasion 
passed, would forget about them, and turn to something else, which 
he would carry out in the same simple way. So, we may surmise, it was 
with the early raceSi 

But, when the activity of the looking-glass world supervened, the 
hitherto unconscious natural man began to rest his consciousness in his 
vigorous activity, to savour it, to make pictures of himself in his mind, 
doing this or that thing admirably well, and to make pictures of other 
natural men doing the same kind of thing. Comparison soon led to 
emulation, jealousy, the ambition to outdo others. And the contem- 
plation of himself in his inner looking-glass had the effect so character- 
istic of looking-glasses. It led to self-admiration and vanity. 

These things are so much matters of our daily and hourly experience, 
that we take them altogether for granted. They seem to us the normal 
order of things; and we call "natural" what is really not natural at all, 
but an inversion of the true order of nature. 

For we conceive that the true order of nature, the original divine 
plan, was that the looking-glass world should indeed be used as the 
mirror, making possible self-consciousness, consciousness of self ; but 
that this mirror should not come into use until we had so far progressed 
as to be able to look into it from above, instead of from below. 

Let us think of the uncorrupted natural man as we have described 
him, the man of the earlier races; and let us imagine that, after he had 
gained a firm possession of the whole range of his natural powers, but 
a possession still unconscious, still without reflective self-consciousness, 
without consciousness of self, he had been transported directly to the 
transcendent world, and had there begun to build what Paul calls the 
spiritual body. Already firmly established in the transcendent world, 
with the essence of immortality, of spiritual life, already in his veins, 
so to speak, he could then, through the mirroring power of the looking- 
glass world, have come to a wise and sane self-consciousness, a conscious- 
ness of himself as an immortal, gaining this self-consciousness by watch- 
ing himself in the mirror; looking, as it were, into the upper side, the 
spiritual side of the mirror, which reflects divine and heavenly things. 

Man would in this way have come into possession of a true self- 
consciousness, a consciousness of his true self, without sin. And, be- 
ginning with this true self-consciousness, he could then have gone for- 
ward, scaling the magnificent heights of the Eternal; carrying into the 
heart of the Eternal this treasure of spiritual self-consciousness, making 
the Eternal realize its own glory, and so fulfilling the divine plan for the 
progress of all Being. 

This is, perhaps, what is suggested by Paul, in the second letter to 
the disciples at Corinth : But we all, with open face beholding as in a 
mirror the radiance of the Master, are changed into the same image from 
radiance to radiance, even as by the Spirit of the Master. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 293 

Let us try to work this out a little more in detail. Going back over 
the steps we took, in describing the psychical growth of man under 
desire, let us see what might have happened, had he approached the 
mirror from above; had he looked down upon the looking-glass world, 
instead of breaking through into it from beneath. 

We have supposed him to be established in the transcendent world, 
and beginning to build the celestial body. But we do not mean that he 
has lost his footing in the natural world, or has left his natural body 
permanently behind him. He still, in our supposition, dwells in the 
natural world, wearing a natural body; but it is a body clean and un- 
corrupted, moving in a world sinless and full of beauty. 

We can conceive, then, this happy, unfallen man moving among the 
things of the natural world, yet using a perception already illumined 
with divinity ; having spiritual consciousness, responding to spiritual law, 
but not yet spiritually self-conscious; being a spirit indeed, but not yet 
knowing himself as a spirit. 

Moving thus in the natural world, with consciousness rooted in the 
spiritual world, he would accumulate a gallery of mind images, but 
without the stigma of sin. From this picture gallery he would gain a 
sense of himself as having duration, of continuity, by storing up mind- 
images of himself doing many things, through many days and years ; 
and, from each memory, he would deduce a corresponding expectation, 
the mind-picture of himself doing the same thing, exercising the same 
energy or power, in some future time and place. Thus looking with for- 
ward and reverted eye, he would come into consciousness of his immor- 
tality, would awake to the reality of his duration; would not only be an 
immortal, but would know himself to be immortal, entering into immortal 
self -consciousness, consciousness of his immortal self. 

Something like this, we conceive, was the divine plan for the evolu- 
tion of man the immortal from the earlier natural man. But, according 
to an ancient tradition of the Eastern Wisdom, as the Powers of Good 
formed each energy of man, the Powers of Evil pierced it with their 
enchantments. As soon as the natural man was formed, the Powers of 
Evil made it possible for him to break into the mirror-world from 
beneath; made it possible for him to become self-conscious before he 
had gained spiritual consciousness; and thus made it possible for him, 
through the operation of the looking-glass world, to develop a sin for 
every sense, instead of developing a luminous, divine power. 

Yet even now, through the operation of the same Powers of Good, 
and by their ceaseless help and guidance, it is possible for him to retrieve 
himself ; possible for him to catch the gleams of heavenly light coming 
down from the celestial world, the light now brought close to him and 
within his reach by the mediation of the Powers of Good. He still has 
the divinely bestowed opportunity to follow the gleam, to trace that stream 
of benignant light back toward its fountain head in the Eternal ; and, 



294 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

in this way, to gain the true self-consciousness that was destined for 
him, consciousness of himself as divine and immortal, an undivided part 
of the supreme Eternal. 

But, because the Powers of Evil broke the way for him prematurely 
into the mirror-world, thus piercing each of his energies with their 
enchantments, he follows the upward path burdened with a terrible 
handicap. He carries the whole weight of the images of the earthy, 
perversely accumulated and heaped upon his shoulders. He is wrapped 
in a false self-consciousness, the consciousness of a false self, the lower 
personality, which is the sum of the images of the earthy which he has 
mirrored and painted upon his psychical nature. 

To take another tradition, also drawn from the Eastern Wisdom, 
unfallen natural man was set in the midst of the garden of the world, 
the world which, but for human sin, would still be in all its parts a 
garden of loveliness. And in the garden grew the tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil, which is the psychical world, the looking-glass world 
of our Sanskrit treatise. He was forbidden to eat of the fruit of that 
tree. It was not intended that, as natural man, he should enter the 
psychic world. This should have come only after he had been implanted 
in the spiritual world, the transcendent world of the Indian teaching. 

But the Tempter showed mankind the way to taste the forbidden 
fruit, to force a premature and dangerous entry into the psychical world ; 
and mankind, doing this, thereupon began to sin, corrupting every sense 
by smearing it with psychic relish and allurement. And, through the 
same power of the looking-glass world, he built up a false image of 
himself, of his own natural body, infusing it with reflective consciousness 
and thus creating the false personality. Thus he built up a psychical 
picture gallery of alluring and clogging images of the earthy, and set a 
vain, self-centred image of himself as king in the midst of the gallery. 

The fall made possible and necessary, the redemption. Because man, 
while unconscious and, therefore, not yet responsible, had been turned 
by Evil Powers into the way of sin, the Divine Powers were thereby 
given the right to intervene to restore the injured work, to bring man 
back to the way of righteousness and immortality. But, because of sin 
which, at first unconscious, was continued with consciousness and delib- 
eration, the divine path, which should have been a path of joy, has 
become a path of peril; there are dangers at every stage of the way 
through the psychical world. 

Even the images from above, the luminous rays of the sun, the 
radiance of the stars, reflected to him by the looking-glass are, by their 
very definition, reflections, inverted images ; pictures, if you wish, in 
which the right hand appears as the left, the left hand as the right. 
And, because of this very nature of the world of reflections, there is 
at each moment the danger of being allured by the reflection, even the 
reflected light of heaven ; the danger of following the bent, reverted ray, 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 295 

instead of tracing the light back to its divine source, and thus gaining 
entrance into the transcendent world. 

It is a perilous journey through this maze of mirrors because there 
is, at every moment, the danger of our being fascinated by the image 
of ourselves in the mirror; when we have caught a ray of light, there is 
the danger of our halting on the way in order to admire the new lumin- 
ousness thereby thrown upon our own faces ; there is the incessant danger 
of self-praise and vanity. 

It would seem that this inherent element of confusion is what is 
indicated in an often quoted phrase of Paul's, at the end of the chapter 
on charity ; the phrase which the Authorized Version renders thus : 

"For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face : 
now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known." 

This translation suggests a comparison which, it would seem, was 
not at all in Paul's mind, namely, the difficulty of seeing through a dirty 
window, or an uneven, semi-opaque pane of glass, which distorts and 
disguises what is seen through it. But the thought in Paul's mind was 
really quite different. He was thinking, not of a pane of glass, but of 
a metal mirror, as the Revised Version recognizes. So that the phrase 
might be rendered correctly, even if somewhat awkwardly: 

"For now we see by means of a metal mirror, enigmatically, per- 
plexingly; but then face to face." 

The enigma, the perplexity, arises from the inversion of the image 
in the mirror; as though, holding a mirror before our faces, we caught 
glimpses of something over our shoulders, seeing right and left reversed. 

It remains to bring the matter to a focus; to speak of a particular 
danger which continually besets us. In essence, it has been indicated 
already, but we may make it more concrete. 

The danger is this : we have come, let us say, to the point where we 
have recognized not only the killing burden of the images of the earthy, 
which we have heaped upon ourselves, but also something of the possi- 
bility of escape and redemption, some gleam of celestial light breaking 
downward to us through the clouds. We realize that the upward journey 
can be made ; that there is a way, a path leading home. 

That fairly describes, perhaps, the experience of nearly everyone 
who, in the almost fifty years since The Theosophical Society was 
founded, has joined its ranks and has caught some realization of its 
ideals. So many have caught a glimpse of the light. But so few remain. 

Perhaps those who have not remained may be divided into two 
classes. First, those who quite lost faith in the light from above, and 
turned their entire attention once more to the images of the earthy in 
their psychical picture galleries. Second, those who, setting out toward 
the goal, catching some gleam of the heavenly light, yet lacked the purity 
of heart to make the journey, and were allured by the images in the 



296 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

looking-glass world, the distorted pictures of the things which are from 
above. 

With two aspects only need we deal : the psychical images of spir- 
itual powers; and the alluring, corrupting image of oneself possessing 
and wielding these powers, to the admiration of oneself and others. 

What takes place then is an abortive birth, a premature and delusive 
outburst of life, which does not belong to the natural world, but which 
likewise falls short of the spiritual world. 

Take the old comparison of the divine life in us, to the sacred lotus. 
Rooted in the earth, it passes through the water, and blossoms in the 
air and sunlight. But what disaster, when the lotus blossom, instead of 
passing safely as a closed bud through the turbid water, prematurely 
opens beneath the water, soiling and rotting its petals, while the pollen, 
the symbol of the renewal of life, is washed away. 

This is an exact picture of what happens in what we may call morbid 
psychical development; this is the danger of psychism. 

It is, if you wish so to describe it, an inflammation of the psychic 
body; an inflammation expressing itself in two ways. 

First, there is an inflamed interest in psychic powers which are, at 
their very best, only looking-glass distortions of the true spiritual 
powers; a peeping curiosity about clairvoyance, clairaudience, messages 
from the unseen world; an inflammation of the surface of the psychic 
body, a hyper-sensitiveness expressing itself in visions and voices. 

It is difficult to say just at what point along this line insanity begins ; 
in all likelihood the inmates of our asylums are people who see psychic 
pictures, and cannot distinguish them from physical things. 

But this wandering in the shapeless land is only the lesser half of 
the penalty of psychism. The greater penalty is an inflamed and assertive 
vanity; the overpowering desire to set up as a teacher, in virtue of these 
voices and visions ; the longing to pose as an authentic bringer of light. 

To state the thing prosaically, these people not only announce that 
their voices and visions are Theosophy ; they further announce that they 
themselves are the inspired leaders of the Movement. 

This is not an essay in history. Yet it will not be difficult to apply 
what has been said to critical phases of the history of our Movement. 
It will not be difficult to identify psychism in action. 

And it may be affirmed, in conclusion, that this single element has 
been the bane of the Theosophical Movement from the outset; that it, 
and its exponents, are the greatest obstacle in the way of presenting 
Theosophy in a sane way to a world that sorely needs it ; that this same 
tendency of psychism, in one or other of its forms, is the menace in the 
future against which we must be ceaselessly on guard not alone in 
others, but in ourselves also. 



FRAGMENTS 



ilGAIN the voice called from long, long distances: Give ear, give 
/-A ear; and I gave ear, and this is what it said to me. 

In the immemorial ages man looked on vanity, and loving 
it, departed from the truth, and departing from the truth, lost 
all knowledge of the light, lost all knowledge of the Way ; and living in 
the darkness he lost his eyes, and he lost his ears, and he lost his touch, 
and all his other senses, save a mistaken notion of them which led him 
further and further astray. 

While in this living death he would have wholly died, save that 
the Great Ones in their compassion came, one after another one, and 
brought light into his darkness, and sound into his awful silences, and 
a quickening touch that stirred a sleeping memory. So that he heard a 
call, a call, a voice calling from long, long distances, across the bridges 
of space, beyond the arches of time. This voice calling, was an agony 
to him, and he fought it in blind fury, cursing the pain of it, crushed 
by the sorrow of it. Then he tried to forget it in darkness again, pulling 
the covers of material life about his ears and striving to sleep. 

But the Great Ones would not let him sleep; they goaded him with 
their call, they flashed their lights into his unwilling eyes, they gave him 
no rest from their harryings and pitiless reminders, they wrote upon the 
walls of his every feast : Beware, O man, thou art immortal, and 
Eternity awaits thee. Thine enemy approaches, and thine house shall 
be desolate and ruined. Listen to the haunting strain of thy lost inheri- 
tance. Arise, the Father calls, turn home. 

This is the history of the world as the Great Ones see it, looking 
across our bridges of space, looking through our arches of time. But 
one hears and follows, and another hears and follows, and then another 
one. Slowly they go, across the bridges of space, through the arches 
of time, dragging weary feet, and sighing heavily. Then a rose-flush 
in the distant sky, a murmur, a pause, a cry of joy that rends the night. 
Those who hear only half believe they were dreaming, they say. 

Then the voice calls and calls again from long, long distances. 

CAVE. 

297 



MATERIALISM AND SPIRITISM 

TO whatever extent a man's philosophy is his own, and not merely 
borrowed from another, it must be rooted in his own experience ; 
and if we examine, in the light of this truism, the conditions 
which marked the western world in the latter half of the 
nineteenth century, we shall see how inevitable it was that they should 
have given rise to a materialistic philosophy. A long period of peace 
and prosperity, in which human life seemed more secure, and human 
comfort more widespread than ever before, enabled life to be lived with 
little thought of death or what might lie beyond it; and the amazingly 
rapid development of natural science, unequalled since the schools of 
Alexandria in the third century before Christ, was revealing such new 
and unsuspected material forces and potentialities, and so subordinating 
them to man's will and enlisting them in the service of his convenience, 
that his life seemed to rest at every point upon matter, and spirit to be 
little more than a metaphysical abstraction of an outworn age. When 
one might work so rich a mine, lying immediately at hand and with the 
ore outcropping over all the surface, there was little incentive to explore 
more distant fields or laboriously to tunnel to deeper levels. 

But with the first decade of the twentieth century it became apparent 
that the same causes which produced this materialism must ultimately 
tend to undermine and wipe it away. The thrusting probe of science 
was penetrating into the hollowness of matter as through a thin and 
brittle crust. Breaking down the material atom before our sight, it 
foreshadowed the revelation of an inner world of force and substance, 
invisible and intangible, but immeasurably more potent than the material 
world which it interpenetrated and supported. And on the other hand, 
the increasing sense of dependence upon material things, and the con- 
tinued confinement of intellectual and acquisitive energy to the material 
plane, had resulted in such loss of hold upon spiritual principles, and 
such blindness to any true vision of life's deeper values and purposes, 
that the war of conquest and plunder which Germany believed she could 
successfully wage against Europe, had come to seem to her people a 
small price to pay for the rapid aggrandizement of their material 
prosperity. 

Thus materialism had but to be pushed sufficiently far to prove its 
own undoing, for no materialistic philosophy can meet the demands of 
the spirit which war entails on those who are unjustly attacked. It is 
not possible for a man to sacrifice all that materialism calls good, in 
obedience to an inner loyalty which materialism either denies or ignores, 
without becoming conscious of something in himself which transcends 
matter and which he feels death cannot touch. With the birth of this 
consciousness he enters a world of new needs and new values, for which 

298 



MATERIALISM AND SPIRITISM 299 

the old order of his thought offers no explanation. Materialism can 
no longer satisfy him, and he seeks instinctively for some deeper and 
broader view of life by which he may orient himself to the new facts of 
his experience. 

Though prompted by the same need and directed to the same end, 
this search led to quite different results in France and in England; and 
the return to the Church, and the revivifying of the established forms 
of religion, which have marked these last years in France, have not 
been paralleled in England. As we recall to memory the character of 
the religious literature the war produced in these two countries, and 
choosing more or less at random from those which circulated most 
widely, compare such books as Donald Hankey's A Student in Arms 
with Antoine Redier's Comrades in Courage, Coningsby Dawson's The 
Glory of the Trenches with Ferdinand Belmont's A Crusader of France, 
or An English Chaplain at the Front with Priests in the Firing Line, we 
become aware of a contrast that does much to explain the failure of 
Protestantism where Catholicism succeeded. As Donald Hankey wrote, 
"In the hour of danger and wounds and death many a man has realized 
with a shock that the articles of his creed about which he was most 
contentious mattered very, very little, and that he had somewhat over- 
looked the articles that proved to be vital." The Chaplains of the Church 
of England seem largely to have forgotten that their creed included a 
belief in the communion of saints and the continued humanity of the 
Master. Institutionalism could not bridge the gap they thus left between 
God and man; and their own devoted self-giving, their own human love 
and touch, however deep and tender, could not lift the impersonality 
of their faith to the needs of those who craved a ministry of the spirit 
and the assurance of a companionship of the soul which death could 
not sever. 

It is perhaps true that something of this note of impersonality is 
inherent in the very genesis of the Protestant churches, but it is difficult 
to escape the conviction that it has been increased by an unconscious 
yielding to the materialism in which it has been immersed ; and that the 
little emphasis it lays upon the continuation after death of that rich 
warmth of personal love and companionship, which makes life dear to 
us, is in part due to a lessened faith. A generation ago men turned 
from the churches because of their "other-worldliness," and Protestant- 
ism sought to meet them with its new doctrine of the Kingdom which was 
to be brought down to earth. To-day, when the tide has changed, and 
it is other-worldliness that men seek, the churches seem to speak with 
uncertain voice, doubting and timid. Perhaps it is this, more than any 
other single factor, that explains why the reaction against materialism 
in England and America has contributed so little to organized religion. 
It has proved easier for France to forget the Vatican than for England 
to forget vacuity. 



300 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

One of the most noticeable results of these conditions is the recru- 
descence of Spiritism which has spread through England and America, 
enlisting the new interest in the life hereafter, and drawing to its support 
not only the uncritical and the superstitious, but some of the ablest 
intellects of our generation. It is easy to understand the appeal of this 
movement at a time when there is scarcely a family in England that is 
not in mourning for its dead, and while the evidence for their continued 
existence is still so new and startling as to preclude all thought of the 
possible cost at which it is obtained. The mechanics of mediumship are 
little understood, but while mediums exist it would be indeed strange 
if millions of men could be taken violently from the physical life to 
which all their desires still cling, without increasing the pressure from 
the astral world to which the medium responds. 

It is not the purpose of this article to attempt an analysis of spirit* 
ualistic phenomena, or to trace the history of the modern movement 
from what are usually regarded as its beginnings in the manifestations 
associated with the Fox family, in Wayne County, New York, in 1847. 
A work purporting to do this lies before us, with references to a bibli- 
ography of close to a hundred books, exclusive of the many volumes 
of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. It is written 
by Baron Johan Liljencrants, A.M., S.T.D. ; entitled Spiritism and 
Religion, "Can You Talk to the Dead?" ; printed with the Imprimatur 
of Cardinal Farley; and with a foreword of appreciation by Cardinal 
Gibbons, which closes with the statement : "This book on Spiritism is 
scholarly; it is scientific; it is sound in its thinking. I consider it a real 
advance in the literature of Spiritism." It represents, therefore, with 
as much authority as anything but a papal pronunciamento may hope 
to do, the Roman Catholic view of Spiritism, and, as such, its attitude 
and conclusions are of interest to us. 

Dr. Liljencrants deals separately with the physical and psychical 
phenomena which Spiritism has produced, but comes to the same con- 
clusion with regard to each, that there is at present no positive proof that 
these phenomena involve the intervention of discarnate personalities, or 
definitely establish spirit-identity. But his pages leave us with the feeling 
that this conclusion is as much forced by the purpose for which he writes 
as by the evidence he examines, and that the defence of his thesis has 
been no easy task. A master of the close and subtle logic which is his 
church's heritage from the mediaeval schoolmen, his argument is often 
a refreshing contrast to the loose thinking that is prevalent to-day; yet, 
though the forms of scholarly detachment and scientific impartiality are 
scrupulously preserved, they do not always convince the reader of their 
complete sincerity, and with each succeeding chapter the impression 
deepens that the spirit of the book is not that of genuine scientific inquiry 
in which the facts are examined with an open mind. It suggests, rather, 
the able summing up of an attorney for the defence, whose duty to his 



MATERIALISM AND SPIRITISM 301 

client requires that he should minimize the evidence adduced by the 
prosecution, and so deal with the residuum, which cannot be ignored, 
as to show that it still leaves a reasonable doubt of his client's guilt. It 
is undoubtedly true that so much of this evidence has proved fraudulent 
as to justify the most suspicious attitude toward the remainder, and we 
cannot blame Dr. Liljencrants for his contention that one must "exclude 
the hypothesis of spirit intervention in the presence of a possibly adequate 
natural hypothesis ;" but it is difficult to follow him to his conclusion 
that all the physical phenomena produced through mediums admit of an 
"adequate natural hypothesis" in hallucination or trickery and fraud. 

In considering the psychic phenomena, and the cross-correspondences 
and other evidence tending to establish spirit identity, Dr. Liljencrants 
wisely points out that we do not yet know the full possibilities of tele- 
pathic communication, or what store of knowledge there may be in the 
"subliminal self," or in some "secondary personality" to which the 
medium may be sensitive. As he regards thought transference as a 
"natural" phenomenon, involving no trespass upon the domain of religion, 
his treatment of it is much freer, and it may be of interest to quote from 
certain of his pages. 

"The spontaneous phenomena of apparitions and voices of the living 
cannot reasonably be denied in the face of the mass of evidence which 
has been gathered. We have dealt with phantoms of the living to exclude 
any hypothesis of 'the dead coming back.' There are only two possible 
explanations since it must be admitted that chance coincidence 
could not adequately cover the ensemble of evidence : either we must 
admit some sort of extra-sense communication between mind and mind, 
unconsciously produced by the transmitter, or we must accept the 
phenomena as indicating the objective presence of his externalized 
double. . . . 

"The actuality of thought transference as we have defined the term 
has been, and is, denied by a number of scientists chiefly on the ground 
that their own experiments have failed. But it is difficult to understand 
this attitude. The evidence furnished by experiments which have suc- 
ceeded, cannot be overthrown by any number of failures, unless it can 
be shown that what was regarded as success depended upon error. We 
do not think this can be shown in the experiments above referred to. 
First of all, a study of the reports, one after another, will convince any 
candid mind that we are not confronted with a series of chance coin- 
cidences and guesses. The experiments with numbers alone would be 
sufficient to carry this conviction. That other causes such as judgment 
from gestures, speech, facial expressions, sound from the movement of 
the pencil on the paper, whispering with closed lips, etc., must be excluded 
in cases of experiments conducted with agent and percipient in different 
rooms, and, a fortiori, in different localities, is self-evident. . . . 

"For our own part we think that failures depend upon our lack of 



302 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

knowledge of the laws and conditions which govern the phenomena. 
For while we grant that an idea has been conveyed from one mind to 
another, we do not know how it was conveyed, whether from brain to 
brain by means of ether vibrations, or whether by externalization of 
'psychic force/ We do not know what process insures its transmission 
from the agent, nor its reception by the percipient. As a fact, we know 
no more than that the agent tried to convey the idea and that it was 
conveyed. . . . 

"We have referred to the activity of 'secondary personalities' and 
of the 'subliminal self/ and also to telepathic communications. As we 
have pointed out, these things do not explain Spiritism. But it is incon- 
testable that these notions cover a number of facts by no means fully 
known or fully explored yet facts of nature, to a large extent capable 
of experimental reproduction. So far as we know those facts, they 
seem adequate to cover the problems offered by the psychical phenomena 
of Spiritism. No doubt we are moving towards a fuller knowledge and 
understanding of these facts, which may in its turn alter their apparent 
relation to the spiritistic phenomena. In the meantime we can form no 
other judgment regarding the psychical phenomena of Spiritism than 
that they have not been proven to be preternatural." 

Few students of Theosophy could wish to quarrel with this con- 
clusion of Dr. Liljencrants, for Madame Blavatsky's insistence upon the 
same point, and the practical demonstrations she gave of the exercise 
of these "natural" powers, are both too well known and too convincing. 
But it may well be questioned whether Spiritism itself contends that its 
phenomena are in any true sense preternatural, or whether the mere 
fact of communication between the living and the dead must be regarded 
as any more of a departure from natural law than is the distant action 
of hypnotic control which Dr. Liljencrants accepts. Our real quarrel 
with Spiritism is not that its results are too miraculous to be believed, 
but that its methods are too degrading to be practised. 

But we must not do Dr. Liljencrants the injustice of letting it be 
assumed that he is himself indifferent to this side of the question, though 
he has not the same reasons as have we to realize its primary importance. 
Thus he writes : 

"And if we admit immortality, which after all is the central belief 
in Spiritism and logically follows upon an acceptance of the spirituality 
of the soul, we must also admit that the purpose for which man was 
created is to be found in a higher, spiritual life, beyond the more im- 
perfect earthly form from which the soul frees itself at death. Now, 
who will say that it is in keeping with such a purpose that the soul, freed 
from the more imperfect material associations to which it was bound 
by its union with the body, and elevated to a purely spiritual life and, 
according to conservative Christianity, to a life face to face with its 
Creator should busy itself moving furniture, producing scents and 



MATERIALISM AND SPIRITISM 303 

little lights, making sundry noises, pulling people's hair, playing pranks 
on clergymen and kissing French and Italian investigators of the occult, 
all at the nocturnal seances of some more or less suspicious character 
who will vie with it in imitating the tricks? A preacher proposing such 
a Heaven would at the most find an audience among the naughty children 
of his town. Or, on the whole, would it be in keeping with such purpose 
that the soul should exhaust itself giving to mankind in the flesh evidence, 
for the most part doubtful, of its continued existence ? 

"And would we expect an infinitely wise Creator even to tempt the 
liberated soul to such retroaction by failing to provide for mankind the 
Revelation it might need in order to attain the end for which it was 
created? Certainly, were a Revelation needed, God would not leave its 
manifestation to chance." 

Spiritism is no new thing. In essence it is not other than the necro- 
mancy whose record is as old as human history, and which was condemned 
in passage after passage in the Old Testament (as witness Leviticus xix : 
31; xx : 6; Deuteronomy xviii : 10-12; I. Samuel xxviii : 9; II. Kings 
xxiii : 24; etc.). Its practitioners were alternately feared and consulted, 
and execrated and burned, not because their claims were proved false, 
but because they were proved true; and because there has ever been a 
right instinct in mankind to hold in abhorrence those who would bring 
back the dead to a world that should hold them no longer. 

The closing chapters of Dr. Liljencrants's book, "Spiritism as a 
Religion," and "Moral Aspects of Spiritism," are both able and interest- 
ing, but the grounds of his criticism are too generally theological for us 
to analyse them here. We could wish that this were not so, for he is 
dealing with matters of primary importance when he points out that, 
"Beside the basic malice of superstition, the spiritistic practices involve 
a direct danger of religious perversion in so far as the lucubrations of the 
mediums are accepted as revealed religious truths"; and that, "Finally, 
although remote, the danger of diabolical intercourse can not be said to be 
absent." That this latter danger is not so remote as Dr. Liljencrants's 
words suggest, is made apparent in much spiritistic literature. If space 
permits we shall return to this point later, in connection with Mr. J. S. M. 
Ward's Gone West, but before we leave Dr. Liljencrants's book we would 
make one more quotation from his pages. 

"If we admit as a possibility that some phenomena might be caused 
by spirits, still this fails to leave a warrant for belief in Immortality or 
for our acceptance of the 'spirit messages' as forming a true Revelation. 
For, granting the existence of a spirit world, must we not also grant 
that it may be and in all probability is inhabited by other spirits than 
human souls? And what assurance do we have that the spirits which 
possibly would communicate have the knowledge, or power, or will, to 
reveal to us the truths necessary for our salvation? 

"To go still further in concessions, even though we should accept, 



304 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

not as a scientific conclusion, but rather as our opinion, that certain spirit- 
messages would show the identity of the communicator with some person 
departed, the most we could logically infer would be that a certain being 
so far had survived bodily death. But from this inference, which can not 
at present be based upon scientific evidence, the step is long to proof for 
permanent persistence or Immortality inherent in all human beings." 

A foot note adds a reference to Sir William Barrett's On the 
Threshold of the Unseen, page 287: "Here let me remark that the 
inference commonly drawn that spirit communications teach us the 
necessary and inherent immortality of the soul is, in my opinion, a 
mischievous error. It is true they show us that life can exist in the 
unseen, and if we accept the evidence for 'identity' that some we 
have known on earth are still living and near us, but entrance on a life 
after death does not necessarily mean immortality, i. e., eternal per- 
sistence of our personalities; nor does it prove that survival after death 
extends to all. Obviously no experimental evidence can ever demon- 
strate either of these beliefs, though it may and does remove the objec- 
tions raised as to the possibility of survival." 

Sir William Barrett enjoys a high reputation among the adherents 
of Spiritism, but in spite of his exposition of its fallaciousness, the 
common impression persists that, if the phenomena of Spiritism are 
genuine, personal immortality is assured to us all, being inherent in 
man as man, irrespective of the character of our life and effort while 
on earth. The pernicious consequences of this "mischievous error," 
contradicting the teachings of every great spiritual teacher and under- 
mining at least one of the corner stones of the moral life, were pointed 
out in a recent issue of the THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, and are, indeed, 
too obvious to need further elucidation. But that it is an error can not 
be too strongly emphasized. Between the maxim of materialism, "Let 
us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," and that of vulgar Spiritism, 
"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we live," there can be little to 
choose, save that in the latter no term is set to its degradation of 
human life. 

Dr. Liljencrants's review of Spiritism appeared in the latter part 
of 1918. In May of the same year, Dr. W. J. Crawford, a Lecturer in 
Mechanical Engineering at the Municipal Technical Institute of Belfast, 
and author of several works on mechanics, published in book form the 
detailed records of a series of eighty-seven experiments in which levita- 
tion, and other physical phenomena, were produced through the 
mediumship of Miss Kathleen Goligher and a circle consisting of the 
members of her family. At the time these experiments were conducted, 
from 1915 to 1916, Miss Goligher was from seventeen to eighteen 
years of age. She was paid nothing for her services, and is "very 
averse to looking upon her mediumship as a commercial asset." All 
the members of the circle were Dr. Crawford's personal friends, for 



MATERIALISM AND SPIRITISM 305 

whose character he vouches, and to whom Spiritism is a religion, the 
seances being "invariably opened and closed by prayer." Dr. Crawford 
states unequivocally, "This is to be thoroughly understood. In no 
experiment which I describe in this book was there any contact between 
any portion of the body or dress of the medium or sitters and the 
material body under psychic action." Yet objects were moved around 
the room, a table levitated, or held so firmly to the floor that it could 
not be lifted by a strong man, and all done, not at haphazard or chance, 
but in accordance with the successive requests made by Dr. Crawford 
to the "operators." He tells us that, "A great many people have been 
invited to visit the circle and witness the phenomena. I think I can 
say that not one of all these has come away from it without the assur- 
ance that 'there is something in psychic force/ be he previously sceptic, 
believer, or a sitter 'on the fence.' Of course, the visitor is not always 
certain that the phenomena are produced by spirits of the dead; but 
at least he is sure of this, that they are genuine and in no way due to 
normal action on the part of the medium or members of the circle." 

Dr. Crawford explored the region within the circle in order to 
determine the nature and intensity of the stresses produced during 
levitation, using for this purpose weighing machines, spring balances, 
manometers and electrical devices. The medium's chair was placed 
on a weighing machine, and the variation of her own weight amount- 
ing to as much as forty pounds noted, as well as the reaction under 
the levitating table at different heights above the floor. From the cor- 
relation of these observations Dr. Crawford is led to the conclusion 
that the phenomena are produced by what students of Theosophy 
might recognize as an extrusion of some portion of the medium's astral 
body, which he describes as "flexible rod-like projections from the body 
of the medium." 

"The principle characteristics of a rod are as follows : 

"(1) It is capable of being pushed straight out from the body 
of the medium and being pulled straight into the body of the medium. 
It has not an indefinite limit of extension, but at its end can reach, 
under favorable conditions, to a distance of about 5 feet from her body, 
and can there act on the table and move it about. . . . The medium's 
end of the rod, as it is pulled back into her body, is absorbed in her; 
perhaps the rod is ultimately made up of great bundles of thread-like 
projections and the whole rod is anchored to her like the roots of 
a tree. 

"(2) The rod is capable of to-and-fro motion horizontally over 
a considerable arc, and can thus move bodies about within the circle 
formed by the sitters ; it has also a limited motion in a vertical plane. 

"(3) The rod, while capable of in-and-out movement from the 
medium's body, can be fixed or locked at any required position within 
its limits of extension, so that in such a position it becomes a cantilever. 

20 



306 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"(4) The rod can transmit pulling and pushing forces. 

"(5) The free end of the rod is capable (at least sometimes) 
of gripping bodies by adhesion. 

"(6) All the motions of the rod are worked from within the 
body of the medium. 

"(7) The dimensions of the rod can vary greatly; its cross sec- 
tion may have different values, and various modifications can be made 
of the shape and condition of the free end. . . ." 

As to the substance of which these projections consist, Dr. Craw- 
ford has no theory to offer, but believes that later experiment may tend 
to identify it with "something that appears to be matter," which he has 
occasionally felt immediately below the under surface of the table 
during levitation. "It has a cold, clammy, reptilian feeling impossible 
adequately to describe in words, but which once felt, the experimenter 
always recognizes again." And Dr. Crawford adds, "I was struck, 
when reading over some of Dr. Schrenck-Notzing's experiments of 
materialisation, to notice that in the first stages of materialisation the 
matter issuing from the medium gave the same or a very similar sen- 
sation to the hand; the feeling being described as cold and clammy, 
one of the assistants even remarking that it felt as though a small 
reptile were lying in his hand." 

Dr. Crawford does not deal with the question of "spirit-identity," 
and though he constantly refers to the "operators," who are utilizing 
and directing this emanation from the medium, he adduces no evidence 
to show that they are "spirits of the dead." 

He does, however, consider the circulation and interchange of 
psychic substance that takes place throughout the circle of sitters 
during the seance, describing a photograph in which it is made visible, 
and finding evidence for its actuality in the sitters' variation in weight. 
As it appears to be this same emanation from the astral, rendered "cold, 
clammy, and reptilian," which is thus circulated through medium and 
sitters, we may understand at least one reason why such seances are 
to be avoided. 

To illustrate a quite different side of the spiritualistic literature, 
we may choose the books of Mr. J. S. M. Ward, Gone West, to which 
we have already referred, and its sequel, A Subaltern in Spirit Land. 
They are not concerned with the phenomena of the seance room, and 
are, indeed, entirely lacking in direct evidential value, but purport to 
give information of the life after death, obtained through trance vision 
and automatic writing from recently deceased members of the author's 
family. They thus belong to the same category as Letters from a 
Living Dead Man, which was reviewed in the QUARTERLY a number 
of years ago, but are much more graphic and sensational. As they 
depict the experiences of a number of different people, they are divided 
into parts dealing respectively with hell, the astral plane, and the lowest 



MATERIALISM AND SPIRITISM 307 

division of the spiritual plane. Lurid though these books are, they 
possess a certain value because, to whatever extent they are believed, 
they must tend to re-emphasize the truth that man's future state 
depends upon his present efforts, and that the desires and habits which 
he cultivates in this life are the forces which move him in the life to 
come, drawing him to the plane to which they pertain. If the common 
conception of Spiritism implies a belief in immortality for all men, 
these visions make it evident that such immortality may be more to be 
dreaded than desired; and one must either read the story of "The 
Officer's" descent into hell, and arduous escape therefrom, as a sort of 
dime-novel of the hereafter, or be prompted to a salutary fear of the 
evil in one's own nature. 

There are many passages suggestive of real experience, such as 
the vision of his past life on earth which confronts man on his entrance 
into the lowest division of the spirit world (as distinct from hell or 
the astral plane). 

"Like a hideous nightmare, on every side visions seemed to press 
me round. They weighed me down. I, who but a moment before had 
seemed so light, now seemed to be crushed under an intolerable weight. 
I saw them not with mortal sight, I perceived them with my whole 
being. 

"I call them visions, but they were in real bodily form, like tab- 
leaux, moving and acting again before me all my past. 

"My past deeds crowded around me, not in any order, but like 
a dream, all at once. Oh ! the anguish as once more rose up deeds 
long since forgotten. At last, after what seemed countless ages, an 
inspiration seemed to seize me, and I prayed. I had not done so for 
years and years, but now I prayed, *O God, help me,' and as I prayed, 
really prayed, slowly the wild chaos began as it were to sort itself out. 
It, as it were, took a kind of chronological order, and the scenes took 
the form, as it were, of a street which stretched far away, far beyond 
my ken; and they will go on increasing as I progress till they reach to 
the judgment seat of God. And among them I saw many visions which 
came as a relief to my tired soul little acts of kindness which I had 
long forgotten, times when I had resisted temptation. So I found, 
as it were, my location." 

Perhaps we may see in this another reason for that constant self- 
examination which all religious treatises enjoin, that we may learn how 
to face our sins and to repent of them, so that they may not over- 
whelm us at the gates of heaven. 

Another point of interest is the frank ignorance these "spirits" 
express, until after they have been at the "spirit school," of the con- 
ditions of life on any other planes than their own and those which are 
immediately above and below it. 

"/. W. 'Is there Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory?' 



308 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

"H. J. L. 'I do not know whether there is a Hell. You see, I 
know nothing at all save about my own set, and the ones above and 
below. There are plenty of old friends I expected to see and have not ; 
but of course they may be and probably are only in another set. Those 
who do not believe are in the set below : after a time they come to us/ " 

In a later communication H. J. L. considers that he has learned 
more, and attempts to impart his new information by the aid of a 
diagram, and a description from which the following is taken. 

"For your general convenience let me tell you that this realm is 
divided as follows : 

"1. Belief with works. 

"2. Belief without works. 

"3. Half belief. 

"4. Unbelief Hell. 

"When the soul has reached the highest plane of the first division, 
it goes through something that is akin to a second death, for there it 
leaves behind its spiritual [ ?] body. But the soul who attains to that 
state rejoices in its coming relief it does not fear it as the mortals 
do death, for those souls who are not yet ready do not cross the 
barrier. 

"Once they have crossed into the next realm, they cannot return. 
There are, including earth, seven such realms, of which the highest 
is to be with God. 

"We who are here know only of the realm we are in, which we 
will call the sixth, the seventh being earth, which includes the astral 
plane. 

"We cannot go to the fifth until our time has come, and then we 
cannot return. 

"Still to this rule there are certain exceptions. Very rarely mes- 
sengers are sent down to us from the realms above, but this only 
happens for some good reason, and is comparable to the visible and 
audible return of one who is dead, to earth. 

"The other and more usual method is through a medium. Just 
as we communicate through you, so those in the fifth realm use a spirit 
in the higher planes of the sixth through whom to communicate. Any 
message from the fifth realm would thus have to pass through two 
mediums to reach the earth." 

The interest of this passage is its assertion that it is only the earth- 
bound spirits, those whose past habits and desires still hold them in 
immediate contact with the earth and prevent their rising to higher 
planes, who generally are able (or willing) to communicate through 
mediums. This would in itself be an ample explanation of the com- 
bination of folly, ignorance and maliciousness, which so many "spirit" 
communications reveal for it would be the ignorant, the foolish and 
the malicious who would be speaking. And we may note that in "The 



MATERIALISM AND SPIRITISM 309 

Officer's" wanderings in hell he meets with communities which are 
entirely ignorant that they are not on earth or in heaven. But he meets, 
too, with those who are fully aware of their condition, and use their 
demoniacal powers for the degradation of men. Even the denizens of the 
astral plane may use their power of obsession to gratify physical desires, 
at the expense of their victims on earth ; and from first to last we have 
a picture of the horrors to which any kind of mediumistic tendencies 
may subject their possessor, that may well make us grateful that, in the 
normal development of mankind, he should rise above these planes before 
his astral senses open to them. 

We have been considering the spiritualistic movement as one of the 
more important forms which the reaction against materialism has taken 
in England and America. But as we reflect upon the actual significance 
of its phenomena, as they concern the dead rather than the living, we 
shall realize that it is in truth an expression of materialism's deepest 
penetration, the evidence of its hold upon the soul, as well as on the heart 
and mind of man confining even the dead to earth, and still chaining 
their spirit to the things of flesh. 

Yet Dante has shown us that the way from hell may lie through its 
deepest depths, and in the beginning of this article we saw that material- 
ism had but to be pushed sufficiently far to prove its own undoing. It 
may well be that Spiritism will prove, in this manner, the means of 
liberating many minds from the dominion of a materialism that they could 
not otherwise throw off ; and though it is a path which no student of 
Theosophy could possibly wish to tread, it must be that those who follow 
it, in honest search for truth and light, will in time be led by it to some- 
thing better. There are many signs of this, and some of the most hopeful 
can be found in the writings of Sir Oliver Lodge. 

Perhaps no recent work on Spiritism has so drawn, and so legiti- 
mately drawn, popular attention, as has Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond. 
The author's eminence as a scientist, his long study of psychic phenomena, 
his scrupulous care to lay bare the exact nature of the evidence with which 
he deals and to avoid all overstatement, together with his transparent 
honesty and patent goodness of intent, combine to elicit interest and to 
give weight to his views. That his book will do harm, and not good, in so 
far as it tends to encourage mediumship and the consulting of mediums, 
needs no further argument. But the sincerity and unselfishness of his 
motive may bear fruit in other ways, and in the closing section of the 
book where he is not dealing with Spiritism itself, so much as presenting 
fragments of his own philosophy of life we find much that is closely 
allied to the teaching of Theosophy, and which should be widely helpful, 
could it be dissociated from Spiritism in appearance as it is independent 
of it in fact. We might fill many pages with quotations from these frag- 
ments of earnest, honest thought. But we shall choose only one : 

"I am as convinced of continued existence, on the other side of 



310 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

death, as I am of existence here. It may be said, you cannot be as sure 
as you are of sensory experience. I say I can. A physicist is never limited 
to direct sensory impressions, he has to deal with a multitude of concep- 
tions and things for which he has no physical organ : the dynamic theory 
of heat, for instance, and of gases, the theories of electricity, of magnet- 
ism, of chemical affinity, of cohesion, aye, and his apprehension of the 
Ether itself, lead him into regions where sight and hearing and touch are 
impotent as direct witnesses, where they are no longer efficient guides. 
In such regions everything has to be interpreted in terms of the insensible, 
the apparently unsubstantial, and in a definite sense the imaginary. Yet 
these regions of knowledge are as clear and vivid to him as are any of 
those encountered in everyday occupations; indeed most commonplace 
phenomena themselves require interpretation in terms of ideas more 
subtle, the apparent solidity of matter itself demands explanation, 
and the underlying non-material entities of a physicist's conception 
become gradually as real and substantial as anything he knows. As Lord 
Kelvin used to say, when in a paradoxical mood, we really know more 
about electricity than we know about matter. 

"That being so, I shall go further and say that I am reasonably con- 
vinced of the existence of grades of being, not only lower in the scale 
than man but higher also, grades of every order of magnitude from zero 
to infinity. And I know by experience that among these beings are some 
who care for and help and guide humanity, not disdaining to enter even 
into what must seem petty details, if by so doing they can assist souls 
striving on their upward course. And further it is my faith however 
humbly it may be held that among these lofty beings, highest of those 
who concern themselves directly with this earth, of all the myriads of 
worlds in infinite space, is One on whom the right instinct of Christianity 
has always lavished heartfelt reverence and devotion. 

"Those who think that the day of the Messiah is over are strangely 
mistaken : it has hardly begun. In individual souls Christianity has 
flourished and borne fruit, but for the ills of the world itself it is an 
almost untried panacea. It will be strange if this ghastly war fosters 
and simplifies and improves a knowledge of Christ, and aids a perception 
of the ineffable beauty of his life and teaching : yet stranger things have 
happened ; and, whatever the churches may do, I believe that the call of 
Christ himself will be heard and attended to, by a large part of humanity 
in the near future, as never yet it has been heard or attended to on earth. 

"My own time down here is getting short; it matters little: but I 
dare not go till I have borne this testimony to the grace and truth which 
emanate from that divine Being, the realization of whose tender-hearted 
simplicity and love for man may have been overlaid at times and almost 
lost amid well-intentioned but inappropriate dogma, but who is accessible 
as always to the humble and meek. 

"Intercommunion between the states or grades of existence is not 



MATERIALISM AND SPIRITISM 311 

limited to messages from friends and relatives, or to conversation with 
personalities of our own order of magnitude, that is only a small and 
verifiable portion of the whole truth, intercourse between the states 
carries with it occasional, and sometimes unconscious, communion with 
lofty souls who have gone before. The truth of such continued influence 
corresponds with the highest of the Revelations vouchsafed to humanity. 
This truth, when assimilated by man, means an assurance of the reality 
of prayer, and a certainty of gracious sympathy and fellow-feeling from 
one who never despised the suffering, the sinful, or the lowly ; yea, it means 
more it means nothing less than the possibility some day of a glance or 
a word of approval from the Eternal Christ." 

HENRY BEDINGER MITCHELL. 

(To be continued) 



So likewise, when Christ that bright Sun has risen in our hearts 
above all things; when the demands of our bodily nature which are 
opposed to the spirit have been curbed and discreetly set in order; when 
we have achieved the virtues in the way of which you have heard in the 
first degree; when, lastly, through the ardour of our charity, all the 
pleasure, and all the peace, which we experience in these virtues, have 
been offered up and devoted to God, with thanksgiving and praise: then, 
of all this there may come down a sweet rain of new inward consolation 
and the heavenly dew of the sweetness of God. This makes the virtues 
grow, and multiplies them twofold if we hinder it not. This is a new 
and special working, and a new coming of Christ into the loving heart. 
And by it a man is lifted up into a higher state than that in zvhich he 
was before. On this height Christ says: Go ye out according to the 
way of this coming. JOHN OF RUYSBROECK. 



We should also rather seek our rest upon Him and in Him Whom 
we mean and love, than in any of the messengers He sends; that is to 
say, His gifts. JOHN OF RUYSBROECK. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



II 

IN the history of the French Revolution by Mrs. Nesta Webster, 
referred to in a previous number of the QUARTERLY, perhaps the 
most important of the given causes of the revolution, next to the 

Orleanist conspiracy, was the activity of the German Order of 
Illuminati, headed by Adam Weishaupt. In the book itself, the mag- 
nitude and the menacing character of the program of this Order are 
strongly emphasized, while comparatively little information is given; 
but in the July number of The Nineteenth Century, Mrs. Webster, in an 
article entitled "Illuminism and World Revolution," gives a detailed his- 
tory of the Order, not only linking it with the events of the French Revo- 
lution, but suggesting the probability of its active influence in the present 
world-situation. 

There are several available histories of the Order. The one from 
which Mrs. Webster apparently draws most largely is the contemporary 
account published in 1798 by John Robison, a professor in the Royal 
University of Edinburgh, and a Mason familiar with Masonry all over 
Europe. The title of his book is The Proofs of a Conspiracy Against 
All the Religions and Governments of Europe Carried on in the Secret 
Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies. The facts 
are these : Dr. Adam Weishaupt (born 1748) was a professor of Canon 
Law in the University of Ingolstadt, Bavaria. He had been educated 
among the Jesuits, but had become bitterly hostile to them an antagon- 
ism which was apparently reciprocated and was actively anticlerical and 
in sympathy with the free-thinkers of the University. He acquired a 
high reputation in his profession, and the number and position of those 
who attended his lectures gave him no small influence. With his students 
as the first members, he founded an Order in 1776, first called the "Ordre 
des Perfectibilistes," but soon changed to the Order of the Illuminati. 
According to Robison, the Order was designed to abolish Christianity, 
overturn all civil government, and rule the world, cloaking the most 
subversive doctrines under the expressed intention of freeing men's minds 
from the shackles of blind and absurd superstition, and bringing about 
a state of universal happiness. The Order was said to abjure Chris- 
tianity and to refuse admission into the higher degrees to all who adhered 
to any of the three confessions. Sensual pleasures were restored to the 
rank they held in the Epicurean philosophy. Self-murder was justified 
on Stoical principles. Death was declared an eternal sleep; patriotism 
and loyalty were regarded as narrow-minded prejudices, incompatible 
with universal benevolence; liberty and equality were considered the 
inalienable rights of man, and accumulated property as an insurmountable 
obstacle to the happiness of any nation whose laws favoured it. The 

312 



FRENCH REVOLUTION 313 

principle that the end justifies the means, is supposed to have shaped all 
their policies. Anything was allowable if the Order could derive ad- 
vantage from it, for the great object of the Order was held to be superior 
to every other consideration. The fact that much of this program 
is exactly duplicated in the French Revolution, is regarded by Mrs. 
Webster as among the conclusive proofs of the influence and activity 
in France of Weishaupt and his followers during all that period. The 
Feast of Reason she regards as the corollary of Weishaupt's teaching 
that "reason should be the only code of man". In the destruction of 
manufacturing towns, the burning of libraries, the guillotining of La- 
voisier, and the feeling against scientists in general, she sees the direct 
outcome of Weishaupt's teachings against the "mercantile tribe," against 
the sciences, and against civilization in any form. She quotes Robison 
as stating that the "actual ceremonies which took place when women of 
easy morals were placed on the high altars, were modelled on Weishaupt's 
plan of an 'Eroterion' or festival in honour of the god of Love." And 
from the same source she draws the statement that the Jacobin Clubs 
all over France were organized by the revolutionary committees under 
the direct inspiration of the Bavarian Illuminati, who taught them their 
"method of doing business, of managing their correspondence, and of 
procuring and training pupils." 

Everything about the Order was protected by the strictest secrecy. 
Not only was its existence concealed, but within its ranks no member 
was acquainted with anything beyond his own grade, and advancement 
came only to those who were tried and tested, doctrines that were 
likely to revolt a man, being withheld until a safer time. The members 
adopted the names of noted persons of antiquity, Weishaupt, for instance, 
being known as Spartacus, a man who headed an insurrection of slaves in 
Rome in the time of Pompey. (Mrs. Webster, in substantiation of her 
theory that the Order is still active, sees significance in the fact that 
"in the very city where Spartacus-Weishaupt founded the first lodge of 
the Illuminati, the German World Revolutionists have adopted the name of 
Spartacists.") Weishaupt, who had long been interested in Freemasonry, 
but, according to one authority, could not afford (financially) to become a 
Mason, was finally admitted, together with Zwack, his closest associate 
in the Order, to the lodge in Munich. The advantage of combining the 
Order with Freemasonry soon became apparent to him, his plan being 
to have his first degree, the Minervals, identical with the Masons, and 
the higher degrees, secret. The explanation was given that those in the 
higher, secret degrees adhered to the Strict Observance, while the Munich 
Lodge did not. Dissension, just prior to this time, in two of the lodges, 
aided his plan, the dissenting members and Weishaupt's own adherents 
establishing a new lodge in 1779. As their numbers increased, the Order 
contrived to place its members in positions that would give them influence 
and power either directly, as in the case of those who held prominent 
public offices, or indirectly, as in the case of tutors to youths of distinc- 



314 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

tion. Membership grew rapidly, until there were branches in practically 
all the European countries and also in America. 

It was not long before suspicion was aroused. The Elector of 
Bavaria became alarmed, and an investigation was begun. At first 
nothing could be discovered. The majority of Freemasons had no 
knowledge of the Illuminati. Some had heard of them, but knew nothing 
more. In 1783, before a court of inquiry, two professors admitted mem- 
bership, gave considerable information whether true or false and as 
a result, the Order was suppressed and Weishaupt banished. The most 
extreme measures were taken against the members, trials being carried 
on with the severity, and with some of the methods, of the Inquisition. 
No papers of the Order were found, the members claiming that the latter 
were burned since they had no need of them after the Order was sup- 
pressed, claiming also that whatever information transpired could not 
be correctly interpreted, since all their teachings were expressed sym- 
bolically or were intentionally disguised. Much of the correspondence 
between Spartacus (Weishaupt) and Cato (Zwack) was seized, from 
which the following extracts are indicative : 

"The head of every family will be what Abraham was, the patriarch, 
the priest and the unlettered lord of his family, and Reason will be the 
code of laws to all mankind. . . . True, there may be some disturbance ; 
but by and by the unequal will become equal." Elsewhere it is stated 
that family life, national life, all the ties and restraints which civilization 
imposes, must cease to exist. 

"The allegory on which I aim to found the Higher Orders is the 
fire worship of the Magi. We must have some worship, and none is so 
apposite." Members in the earlier degrees were told that the religion 
contained in the Order was the "perfection of Christianity" and would 
be imparted in due time. 

"Jesus of Nazareth, the Grand Master of our Order, appeared at a 
time when the world was in the utmost disorder. ... He taught them 
[the people] the lessons of reason. To be more effective, he took in the 
aid of Religion of opinions which were current and, in a very clever 
manner, he combined his secret doctrines with the popular religion and 
with the customs which lay to his hand. . . . Never did any prophet 
lead men so easily and so securely along the road of liberty. He concealed 
the precious meaning and consequences of his doctrines, but fully dis- 
closed them to a chosen few. . . . Let us only take Liberty and 
Equality as the great aim of his doctrines, and Morality as the way to 
attain it, and everything in the New Testament will be comprehensible ; 
and Jesus will appear as the Redeemer of slaves." 

Further portions of the correspondence which are made a great deal 
of, are plans for a Sisterhood connected with the Order, and a confes- 
sion of immorality on the part of Weishaupt himself. 

Much of the account as given by Robison exposes a deplorable state 
of affairs deception, double dealing, espionage, coupled with a plan that 



FRENCH REVOLUTION 315 

would reduce the civilized World to chaos if carried on without hindrance. 
"It is impossible," writes Mrs. Webster, "not to admire the ingenuity of 
the system by which each section of the community was to be made to 
believe that it would reap untold benefits from Illuminism princes whose 
kingdoms were to be reft from them, priests and ministers whose religion 
was to be destroyed, merchants whose commerce was to be ruined, women 
who were to be reduced to the rank of squaws, peasants who were to be 
made to return to a state of savagery, were all, by means of dividing up 
the secrets of the Order into watertight compartments, to be persuaded 
that in Illuminism alone lay their prosperity or salvation." Mrs. Webster 
emphasizes the idea that Rousseau had merely paved the way for revolu- 
tion, while Weishaupt constructed the actual machinery of revolution. 
She goes on to point out the supposed connection with Robison again 
as source between the Bavarian Illuminati and the leading men in 
France : Cagliostro was an Illuminatus, and he, in the well-known affair of 
the Queen's necklace, dealt the first blow at the monarchy ; Mirabeau, sent 
to Berlin by the French government in 1786, became initiated into the 
highest mysteries of the Order, while later, on his return to France, he 
combined with Talleyrand in work for the Order which resulted in "illum- 
inising" all the masonic lodges of France (this, with the aid of Bode and 
the Baron de Busche, two Illuminati called from Germany for the pur- 
pose) ; the Due d'Orleans, who was a Grand Master of Freemasons and 
apparently an Illuminatus ; the Jacobin Clubs, organized under the direct 
inspiration of the Bavarian Illuminati, finally supplanting and suppressing 
the masonic lodge in France ; the Reign of Terror, in instigation, inspira- 
tion and method, regarded as the direct outcome of Illuminism. 

To approach the subject from a somewhat different angle : a few 
years ago, Monsieur R. Le Forestier wrote a volume entitled Les Illu- 
mines de Banner e et la Franc-Mat; onnerie Allemande, in which he goes 
into the matter at great length. He claims that John Robison (who, by 
the way, is discredited by Madame Blavatsky as "an apostate Mason") 
was honest in his belief in his own statements, but that he knew little 
German, consequently misunderstood at many points, and drew wrong 
conclusions continually. 

According to Le Forestier, the Order, recovering from the first blow, 
sprang up again as Reading Societies which were in their turn promptly 
suppressed. In Bavaria, measures were carried to an extreme (by some, 
the Jesuits are regarded as the chief instigators of this). Warnings were 
sent to all the governments of Europe, but comparatively little effect was 
produced, for the excessive zeal of the prosecution had reduced the whole 
matter to an absurdity. Weishaupt, who had fled first to Ratisbonne and 
then to Vienna, later entered the service of the Duke of Saxe Gotha, who 
was himself an Illuminatus. Here, under the name of Basilius, he under- 
took to reconstruct his work, this time with the aid oi Bode, so able an 
assistant that in 1787 the Order was thought to have been re-established. 
It died out completely, however, shortly after that date, and Weishaupt, 



316 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

a completely broken man, spent the remainder of his life in the territory 
of the Duke of Saxe Gotha, for years in constant dread of seizure 
by the Elector of Bavaria, and after the death of the latter, petitioning 
the Bavarian government for a pension which, in time, was granted. 

In general, Le Forestier apparently considers Weishaupt himself 
guilty, in desire and intention, of the charges brought against him, but 
regards his followers as simply dupes, ignorant for the most part of the 
real aim of the Order. Such alarm as was felt concerning its revolution- 
ary character, was due to the sensational stories of two men. In 1790, 
the Journal politique de Hambourg, edited by Schirach, published an 
article accusing the Illuminati of intriguing through the lodges of Paris 
and of Germany. It was declared that a club called Propaganda, masonic 
in character and directed by the Due d'Orleans as Grand Master, met 
regularly in Paris, and that it had divided all Europe into sections to 
which revolutionary names had been given, and had assigned a repre- 
sentative to each section. 

Shortly afterward, numerous accounts of the same nature appeared 
in the Wiener Zeitschrift, written by Leopold Aloys Hoffmann, a former 
professor in the University of Vienna, a Freemason, and at one time a 
strong adherent of the Illuminati. Turning on the latter, he became con- 
vinced that the spirit of Freemasonry was being changed through their 
influence, and with the object of combating their work, he started a 
Review. In the French Revolution, he saw full corroboration of his 
suspicions, and he wrote various articles denouncing the Order, declaring 
that its principles and its membership had spread throughout Europe, 
and warning governments and rulers of the menace. He declared that 
Herzberg, the minister of Frederic II, was one of the chiefs of the 
Order, and that he had placed the whole organization at the service of 
the Prussian state. In addition, he claimed to reveal a network of 
intrigue against Joseph II of Austria, accusing the Freemasons of insti- 
gating the Turkish war, fomenting strife in Hungary, attempting to 
give the regency in France to the Due d' Orleans, and finally as a means 
of striking at Joseph II promoting the affair of the diamond necklace 
and the calumniating pamphlets against Marie Antoinette. One of the 
leading German Illuminati was declared to be secretary, in Paris, of a 
committee of the National Convention. The Bavarian Government was, 
of course, interested in these accounts, and in the list of Illuminati which 
it drew up were included the names of the Due d'Orleans, Necker, La 
Fayette, Barnave, Brissot, La Rochefoucauld, Mirabeau, Payne and 
Fauchet. 

At length, Hoffmann published an article accusing not only the Illu- 
minati but, above all, the Protestants and the Protestant Universities. 
This did much to discredit all that he had previously written, an effect 
which was considerably heightened when he proceeded to argue that the 
blind attachment which the French had always had for their king, was 
proof in itself that republicanism must have come from outside France; 



FRENCH REVOLUTION 317 

that the events of the French Revolution were likewise sufficient proof 
of the influence of the doctrines of the Illuminati, especially as these 
doctrines were unknown in France before 1788 and were the property 
of the Illuminati as early as 1782. With these rather hysterical asser- 
tions, Hoffmann overshot the mark, and Le Forestier, scarcely taking the 
trouble to prove or disprove the various claims, regards them as dis- 
credited by their own extreme nature. 

Placing certain statements of this historian side by side with those 
of Mrs. Webster, it is interesting to see the manner in which diametrically 
opposite conclusions may be drawn from the same fact. Perhaps the best 
example of this is in the case of Bode, who came from Germany, accord- 
ing to Mrs. Webster, at Mirabeau's request to aid in the illuminising of 
French Freemasonry. She says that he was alleged to have come for a 
meeting of the Philalethes, an organization of Martinistes interested in 
occultism, alchemy, and theurgy, but she explains that, in reality, Mira- 
beau borrowed this name for the time being, as a ruse, in order to avert 
suspicion. And "at the lodge of the 'Amis Reunis/ where the members 
of the masonic lodges from all over France were congregated, the mys- 
teries of Illuminism were unveiled by the two German emissaries [Bode 
and Baron de Busche], and the code of Weishaupt was formally placed 
on the table. The result of this was that by March, 1789, the 266 lodges 
controlled by the Grand Orient were all 'illuminised', and in the follow- 
ing month the Revolution broke out." 

Le Forestier, as already stated, does not believe that there was any 
interchange of emissaries, and, in regard to Bode, writes that Bode made 
one trip to Paris connected with the organization of the Philalethes (in 
this case regarded as the genuine organization), and arrived too late for 
the meeting. Yet several years afterward, his visit took on great im- 
portance in the eyes of the enemies of the Order, for whom it sufficed 
to know that Bode was sent to Paris two years before the taking of the 
Bastille, to know, further, just what he was sent there for, and to deduce 
the information that he had enrolled the Due d'Orleans and that the 
group then inaugurated was the father of the Jacobin Club. Similarly, 
Le Forestier explains away the importance of Cagliostro and Mirabeau. 
The former he considers a charlatan, without doubt connected with the 
Order, judging from his own testimony when on trial, but for a number 
of reasons which it is needless to go into here, not at all likely to have 
served as a go-between. As for Mirabeau, Illuminatus though he was, 
there is an equal number of reasons why it is improbable that he spread 
Weishaupt's doctrines. 

Mrs. Webster, in her claim that Illuminism has spread to America, 
Scotland, Ireland, and through many European countries, and is showing 
its head in one event after another of the present day, denounces what 
she calls the deception of interested historians, Le Forestier among them, 
anxious to suppress the truth about the subsequent activities of the Order. 
"One cannot help wondering/' she writes, "why it should be thought 



318 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

worth while to devote large and expensive volumes to this view of the 
case. If Illuminism was of no importance to the world, why bother to 
write about it? If it really died in 1785 that is to say, at the time of its 
suppression in Bavaria of what interest can its dry bones be to us today ? 
Does not the idea inevitably suggest itself that these exonerations may 
be held necessary because in France at least illuminised Freemasonry 
has been recognised as a real and living danger ?" Her theory is that the 
deception referred to is practised merely to allay suspicion, while under 
its protecting cover the Order is more actively working abroad than ever 
it was able to work in Bavaria. 

Standing alone, or coupled with her book, Mrs. Webster's article is, 
for the most part, really convincing. But in the light of contrary accounts, 
neither point of view has conclusive proof. The same fact that fills one 
man with panic, and in consequence is obviously overemphasized, will 
perhaps, by another, be explained away entirely. What the real situation 
was and is, is an open question, and a question that takes on added interest 
when coupled with many of the events of the present day. One situation 
which would seem to have a possible bearing on the subject, was brought 
out in an article in the New York Times of February 24, 1918, with 
subsequent letters and comments. Here it is stated that the Caillaux 
element in French politics was aided by the influence of French Masons, 
and reference is made to the gigantic system of espionage organized some 
years ago by General Andre, then minister of war, with the aid of officials 
of the Grand Orient of France. The writer says : "There are in France, 
as in Italy, two bodies each claiming to be the representative of Free- 
masonry. There is, on the one hand, the body affiliated with the Ancient 
and Accepted Scottish Rite, which was established in Paris, I believe, in 
1804. This is so distinctly a religious body that many lodges will accept 
only professing Christians as members. But there is, besides, an older body, 
whose spy system I have touched on, the body which, on September 13, 
1877, erased from its rules the paragraph declaring that the existence 
of God and the immortality of the soul were the basis of Freemasonry; 
which, on September 10, 1878, expunged from its ritual the symbols of 
the Grand Architect of the Universe." 

Various other recent incidents naturally suggest themselves as 
having possible significance, and yet one must take care not to see signifi- 
cance, or at least not to see connection, simply because of the juxtaposi- 
tion of facts or events. This is an unfortunate characteristic of the 
Webster article, for the author writes: "Is it a mere coincidence that 
the first of May, the day on which Weishaupt founded Illuminism, was 
chosen at the instigation of the Spartacists, Liebknecht and Bebel, as 
'Labour Day,' on which to celebrate the social revolution? Is it an acci- 
dent that the dechristianization of Russia has been carried out on iden- 
tically the same lines as the dechristianization of France, even to the 
detail of tying the Bible to the tail of an ass?" Merely to ask these 
questions is one thing, but to proceed to regard them as conclusive argu- 



FRENCH REVOLUTION 319 

ment is a mistake is a form of argument every school boy is warned 
against in his earliest acquaintance with rhetoric and it takes the fine 
point off the author's conclusions in a number of cases. 

To many of us any word of Madame Blavatsky's on this question 
would be of the greatest interest and significance. She has made quite 
clear her attitude regarding Cagliostro and his associates in the Work, 
and these statements, coupled with the historic accounts of Cagliostro's 
connection with the Illuminati, afford several possible clues. But that 
is a subject in itself. J. C. 

(To be continued) 



Faithful words are often not pleasant; pleasant words are often not 
faithful. Good men do not dispute; the ones who dispute are not good. 
The learned men are often not the wise men, nor the wise men, the 
learned. The wise man does not hoard, but ever working for others, he 
will the more exceedingly acquire. Having given to others freely, he 
himself will have in plenty. TAG TEH KING. 



The wise man lives in the world but he lives cautiously, dealing with 
the world cautiously. He universalizes his heart; the people give him 
their eyes and ears, but he treats them as his children. TAG TEH KING. 



Life is a going forth; death is a returning home. TAG TEH KING. 



IN THE HOUSE OF DEATH 
KATHA UPANISHAD 



TRANSLATED FROM THE SANSKRIT WITH AN INTERPRETATION 

I. 

Seeking for favour, verily, Vajashravasa made a sacrifice of all his 
possessions. He had a son, named Nachiketas. Him, being still a boy, 
faith entered as the cattle for the sacrifice were being led up. He thought: 

These have drunk water, they have eaten grass, they have been 
milked of their milk, they are without strength. Joyless, verily, are those 
worlds; to them he goes, giving these. 

He said to his father: 

Then to whom wilt thou give me? said he. 

A second and third time he asked him. 

To Death I give the el said he. 

IF the essence of the Upanishads dwell in those parts of the com- 
plete documents which have the form of drama, then it may be said 
that, of all the dramatic dialogues in these ancient Books of Wisdom, 
this Upanishad is, in many ways, the finest and most beautiful. 
It is also the most universal, embodying the most universal truths 
of life in the most universal symbolism. 

The central symbol is this : The Father sends his Son into the realm 
of Death. After dwelling three days in the House of Death, the Son 
rises again and returns to his Father. 

It needs no emphasis to make clear that the theme of this ancient 
Upanishad is the central theme of Christianity. But it is also of the 
deepest interest that the Western Avatar again and again uses one or 
another variation of the same symbolic story in the Parables of the 
Kingdom, which are the most characteristic part of his teaching. 

Take, for example, the parable of the man who planted a vineyard, 
and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. After he 
had in vain sent servants to receive the fruit of the vineyard, having one 
son, well beloved, he sent him also, saying, They will reverence my son. 
But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, 
let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him, and 
kilted him, and cast him out of the vineyard. 

Here, the Father sends the Son to the husbandmen, and the Son is 
put to death. And the context makes it quite clear that the Western 
Avatar is, in this parable, speaking of his own mission. 

320 



IN THE HOUSE OF DEATH 321 

The first three Gospels record this parable. The fourth does not. 
Yet the fourth gospel conveys exactly the same thought, expressed 
directly and without parable : 

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life." 

All four Gospels thus make it clear that the Father sending the 
Son, with the death of the Son, is, among other things, an accepted 
symbol of the mission of the Avatar ; and that the Western Avatar thus 
used this symbol. 

But he uses the symbol of the Father and the Son in another way, 
also, in what is, perhaps, the greatest and most beautiful of all the 
parables : the story of the Prodigal. 

Here, it is not the Son of man, but man himself, who is symbolized ; 
man himself, who goes to the place of penitence, and returns thence to 
his Father. 

Using the phrase in one of the texts that bear the name of Shan- 
karacharya, we may say that the Father is the supreme Self, Parama- 
atma, who sends the Son, the personal self, Jiva-atma, into the world. 
The personal self dwells there three days. And these three days represent 
"three times," past, present, future; for the personal self, entering the 
world, falls under the dominion of threefold time. Only when, over- 
coming the world, he reaches liberation, does he "pass beyond the three 
times," as another Upanishad puts it. 

In one sense, then, the Son whom the Father sends into the world 
represents the human soul suffering the universal fate. In another sense, 
the Son is the Avatar. 

But there is no contradiction, since the Avatar of set purpose subjects 
himself to the universal fate ; he takes our nature upon him, and is in all 
points tempted like as we are, becoming subject to death, in order that 
he may show the way of resurrection. As the profoundly philosophical 
Epistle to the Hebrews puts it: In that he himself hath suffered being 
tempted, he is also able to succour them that are tempted. 

The whole of the second chapter of this Epistle sheds a flood of light 
on the purpose with which an Avatar incarnates, thus making himself 
subject to death; that through death he might bring to nought him that 
had the power of death. 

This last sentence might serve as a superscription for the Upanishad 
which we are considering. It represents the victory over death, gained 
through the teaching of Death. 

The Avatar, the Master, subjects himself to the power of death ; he 
takes upon himself the general fate of mankind, and lives a life which, 
at every point, shall be representative of that universal fate; all this, 
in order that he may show mankind the way to overcome the common 
fate, to gain the victory over death. He creates situation after situ- 

21 



322 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

ation, performs act after act, in order that, as Christ expressed it, the 
scripture might be fulfilled; in order that his life might be perfectly 
symbolic of the journey of the soul through death to liberation. 

As has been said before in these comments, it would seem that, on 
its way toward liberation, the soul of the disciple passes through definite 
ceremonies, the frame for which is set by those who have already attained, 
those who have been spoken of as Masters; and that these ceremonies 
not only represent the upward journey of the soul, but also give the soul 
vital help and inspiration on that journey. 

It would appear that this Upanishad is the dramatized record of 
such a ceremony of initiation; that it records not only the fate of 
Nachiketas, son of Vajashravasa, who descended into the House of 
Death, but also a ceremony actually passed through by disciples who, in 
such an initiation, die to the outer world and awake to the world of 
immortality. 

And, curiously enough, there is still evidence of this character of 
the Upanishad as the record of a ceremony of initiation, in the Sanskrit 
text itself. For, toward the end of the first half, which completes the 
story of Nachiketas, there occur these words : "Arise ye ! Awake ye ! 
Having obtained your wishes, understand ye!" all three verbs being 
in the plural imperative, and therefore obviously not addressed to 
Nachiketas alone; exactly the words that might be expected to close a 
ceremony of initiation. 

This, then, is an outline of the symbolism of the whole Upanishad. 
It represents the journey of the soul, descending into the House of 
Death, the world of our mortality; dwelling there three days, which 
represent the "three times," threefold time, perceived as past, present and 
future ; and finally rising again from the House of Death, and returning 
to the Father. And at the same time this symbolism represents the 
initiation of a disciple, which initiation is a representation and summing 
up of the soul's journey to its divine consummation. 

There is one point of symbolism still to be considered in the passage 
translated : namely, the sacrifice of cattle, which preceded the sacrifice of 
the Son. And it happens that we can once more find the clue of the 
symbol in the deeply mystical Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews, and 
especially in the tenth chapter : 

"For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the 
very image of those things, can never with those sacrifices, which they 
offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. 
For then would they not have ceased to be offered ? . . . For it is not 
possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. 
Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering 
thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me : in burnt offerings 
and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. . . . Then said he, 
Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may 



IN THE HOUSE OF DEATH 323 

establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the 
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all . . ." 

Here, we have exactly the same sequence as in the Upanishad : first 
the sacrifice of cattle, an imperfect and ineffectual sacrifice; then the 
sacrifice of the Son, made once for all. 

What then is the significance of this sacrifice of cattle? We may 
find the clue in the Upanishad itself, in the verse which may be translated 
thus: 

"Those of old have called the powers of sense the horses, and the 
objects of these powers the pastures, or the roadways." 

The cattle, then, are the bodily senses, the natural powers of per- 
ception and action, while the things which they perceive, the things 
upon which they act, are the pastures in which the cattle graze, or the 
roads on which the horses travel. 

The sacrifice of cattle symbolically represents a stern asceticism 
which restrains the natural senses and powers, holding them back from 
objects of sense; yet without the full sacrifice of self, without the true 
subjection of the heart to the divine law, expressed in the words : "I come 
to do thy will." For the motive of this asceticism may well be spiritual 
ambition, the desire that oneself may excel, that power may be gained 
for oneself ; an ambition full of vanity and evil. 

Therefore there is but one perfect and effectual sacrifice : the sacri- 
fice of the personal will to the divine Will, the offering of the human 
heart to the supreme Heart, the sacrifice of the Son to the Father. 

As Nachiketas says, the imperfect sacrifice of asceticism can gain 
only joyless worlds; as Paul says, it is not possible that the blood of 
bulls and of goats should take away sins. Sin lies in the will, and can be 
taken away only by complete obedience to the divine Will, through the 
absolute offering up of all the wills of self. 

So we come back to the dramatic story of the son of Vajashravasa. 
Nachiketas has been sacrificed, sent by his father to the House of Death. 
Standing on the way of death, that all mortals tread, he thus considers : 

Of many, I go the fast; of many, I go the midmost. What is this 
to be done of Yama, which through me he will today accomplish? 

Look after those who have gone before; look toward those who are 
coming; as it was with those, so it is with these. As grain a mortal ripens; 
as grain he rises again in birth. 

Nachiketas is standing on the road of death. Many are following 
him; of these he is the first. But he sees also that many have already 
gone before him ; therefore he stands in the midst of a perpetual stream 
of pilgrims. 

The symbol of seed corn sown in the ground, and there losing its 
form and character, yet through that very change giving birth to new 
life, would seem to be as old as ancient Egypt, in the days of Osiris. It 



324 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

is used here, as it is used in the New Testament, as the symbol of resur- 
rection from among the dead. This is the spiritual resurrection, the 
birth of the spiritual man, the immortal. 

Nachiketas goes forward to the door of the House of Death, to seek 
admission, and speaks thus : 

As Vaishvanara, a sacred guest approaches dwellings. Therefore 
they give him this greeting of peace : Bring water, oh Son of the Sun ! 

Hope and expectation, friendship and pleasant words, sacrifice and 
good deeds, sons and cattle, this destroys, of the man of little wisdom in 
ivhose house a sacred guest dwells without eating. 

The meaning of Vaishvanara, a title of Agni, god of Fire, was 
discussed in a former comment. There is the one universal, divine Fire, 
which, in heaven, appears as the sun; in the mid-world, appears as 
lightning; on the earth, appears as fire on the altar. But the human 
body is also the altar on which this fire burns. This fire is the breath of 
life which is common to all men; common, indeed, to all living beings 
upon the earth, animals and plants as well as men. The human being, 
therefore, as the abode of this sacred fire, is sacred, and must be received 
as representative of the god. When the guest comes to the door, god 
Agni conies to the door. In him, the guest must be greeted. 

And here there is a touch of humour in the tradition. The guest, 
representative of the Fire-god, must be greeted with an offering of water, 
lest the Fire-god burn up the dwelling. The universal presence of this 
obligation throughout the East is testified to, by a sentence from another 
sacred book : "I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for 
my feet." 

Water at least must be offered to the guest; and failure to make 
this offering, because it is a slight offered to the divinity in the guest, 
burns up the hope and expectation, the friendship and pleasant words, 
the merit earned by sacrifice, and even the sons and cattle of the inhos- 
pitable man who spurns the guest. Friendly words toward him cease, 
because even the poorest may greet the stranger with friendly words, 
and he has failed to do this. 

Nachiketas, kept waiting three days and nights outside the door of 
Yama, utters this reproach against Death's inhospitality. Or, as an 
Indian commentary suggests, the reminder comes from Yama's wife, who 
recalls to him the duties of hospitality. The text itself gives no indication 
as to who is the speaker ; but it seems more fitting to assign the words to 
Nachiketas himself. 

We come now to Yama, Lord of death, who is addressed here as 
Death, and also as Son of the Sun. Concerning this mysterious personage, 
there are many traditions in the ancient books of India, from which, 
perhaps, we may be able to elicit a consistent meaning. 



IN THE HOUSE OF DEATH 325 

Yama, with his twin sister Yami, are children of Vivasvat, the Sun. 
They thus represent the Solar Pitris, the conscious and intelligent souls 
of mankind. They are represented as twins, perhaps to indicate the 
early races which were two-sexed, before the separation of the sexes. 
And the tradition that Yama was wedded to his twin sister Yami, no 
doubt refers to the period after the separation of the sexes, when sex 
union began; the epoch of the later Third Race. The fact that Yama 
is also called Lord of the South may likewise refer to this Third Race, 
which had its chief development on the southern continent, as the Second 
Race seems to have had its chief development on the northern continent. 

Yama was also the first, according to tradition, who died a physical 
death; another reference to the same period of the later Third Race. 
When the time for death came, Yama, as king of the men of that time, 
volunteered to be the first to taste of death, to descend into the world of 
darkness. Therefore Yama became Lord of the House of Death, and 
Judge of the dead. According to their deeds, they were sent to one or 
another of the twenty-one provinces of Yama; and, when they had 
received the reward of good works, or the punishment of evil works, 
they were born again. 

This tradition will explain the various names of Yama : Son of the 
Sun, Lord of Death, Lord of Judgment. As Son of the Sun, represen- 
tative of the spiritual nature in man, Yama is also the great Initiator, 
who reveals to men their spiritual powers. Therefore, he is both the host 
of Nachiketas, as Lord of the realm of Death, and his Initiator, as Son 
of the Sun, which here, as so often, is the symbol of the Logos, the 
Sun of Righteousness. 

"~It~Vould be easy to draw parallels with the traditions of Egypt, 
where Ra is the Sun, while Amen-Ra, the hidden Sun, the sun after sun- 
set, is the Lord of the realm of Death. So also Osiris, the great sacrificial 
victim, is Lord of the realm of Death and Judge of the dead, and is, at 
the same time, Lord of the hidden wisdom, Lord of Initiation. 

After the passage of three nights, which, as has been shown, stand 
for the "three times," past, present, future, the forms taken by Eternity 
in this our place of pilgrimage, Yama, at last greeting his guest, speaks 
thus to Nachiketas : 

Because thou hast dwelt three nights in my house without eating, a 
sacred guest, worthy of reverence reverence to thee, holy one, and may 
it be well with me therefore, in return do thou choose three wishes. 

Nachiketas answers : 

That the descendant of Gotama, my father, may be of quiet heart, 
well-minded, without resentment toivards me, O Death, when I am sent 
forth by Thee; that he may address me gladly this I choose as the first 
wish of my three! 
Yama replies: 



326 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

As before, Uddalaka Aruni's son will be well-disposed toward thee 
through my grace. Happily by night he will sleep with resentment gone, 
having beheld thee released from the mouth of Death. 

There are different shades of meaning in this first wish, accord- 
ing to the different layers of the allegorical story. First, taking the story 
as a simple narrative of the father, Vajashravasa, who, because of his 
son's insistence, was forced to sacrifice him to Death, there is the simple 
wish that that father should be without resentment toward his son, 
without sorrow; that he should receive his son with all his former love. 
Then there is the deeper meaning, where the Son is a symbol of the soul 
which has descended into the world of death; that the Father should 
once more receive this Son, taking him to himself with love as of old. 
This is the meaning indicated in the parable of the Prodigal. And there 
is a third meaning, having to do with the disciple, the candidate for 
initiation. The father here represents the whole past Karma of the 
disciple; the web of limitations which he has imposed upon himself by 
his past acts and faults. After his initiation, a part of his task is, to 
conquer these limitations, to bring order out of this web of confusion, 
to bring reconciliation between the past and the new future which is 
illumined by the light of initiation. 

The name of Uddalaka Aruni deserves comment. In a passage in the 
Chhandogya Upanishad, it is said that: "This sacred teaching Brahma 
declared to Prajapati, Prajapati to Manu, Manu to his offspring. This 
sacred truth was declared by his father to his eldest son, Uddalaka 
Aruni." Shankaracharya, or the disciple who writes in his name, thus 
interprets this : "Brahma Hiranyagarbha declared it to Prajapati Viraj ; 
he to Manu ; and Manu declared it to Ikshvaku and the others." 

We may compare with this the passage at the beginning of the fourth 
book of the Bhagavad Gita. "This everlasting teaching of Union I 
declared to the Solar Lord; the Solar Lord declared it to Manu; Manu 
revealed it to Ikshvaku. Thus handed down by spiritual succession, the 
Rajanya sages received this revelation." 

We are concerned here with the succession of the Divine Hierarchy, 
guardians of the greater Mysteries and revealers of the great Initiation. 
Having its heart and origin in the Logos, it is imparted to the Regent 
of the Solar Pitris, who are the bearers of the souls of men; the Solar 
Lord reveals it to the humanity of our own race, to whom it comes through 
the line of the Solar Kings, at the head of which traditionally stands 
Ikshvaku. And from the Solar Kings come the Upanishads, as they 
themselves abundantly testify. 

Therefore the name, son of Uddalaka Aruni, given to the father of 
Nachiketas, would appear to point directly to the line of transmission of 
the greater Mysteries, and clearly to indicate that this story is a document 
of the greater Mysteries: the thought with which the present interpre- 
tation is undertaken. C. J. 



"WHY DO I FAIL?" 



IF you know a man who thoroughly believes that he is a really per- 
fect husband, you have the misfortune to know an unmitigated cad. 
If you know a man convinced that he is letter-perfect in the 

knowledge and in the conduct of his business, his art, or his pro- 
fession, you know him now, or you will know him soon, as a recognized 
failure in addition to his being already an unalloyed ass. If you think 
that you know of a saint or a" mystic, who did not feel that he or she 
was a failure, you have been wasting your time upon one who is an 
impostor according to all rules and to all teachings. 

Yet thousands of wives know that there are good husbands, who 
do make their homes happy. Thousands of successful men in business, 
in the arts and in the professions attest that consciousness of imper- 
fection is not incompatible with achievement. The lives of the great 
saints and the great mystics cry aloud that there is power in humility 
and its consciousness of self-helplessness ; indeed, that from humility 
alone does power spring. 

Hence, consciousness of imperfection is not incompatible with 
progress, or even with a degree of success. The husband who does fail 
is the one who quits trying to be better than he knows he is. The man 
in the world, who refuses to strive, just because he does not attain to 
his ideals, does fail. The aspirant who does not feel the "fear of God," 
as he measures his own life, has yet to take the first step on the Path. 
What the world calls success in any direction seems to rest upon con- 
sciousness of imperfection on the part of the one acclaimed successful. 

The first rudimentary animal that felt fear for itself, in the face 
of a superior force, perhaps attained the first step in self-consciousness. 
True, it was only reacting to what biologists call "the first law" that 
of self-preservation. Whether it acted from instinct, or from initiative, 
is immaterial. It acted in itself, as itself, and for itself. 

The first rudimentary animal that fought for its own mate, offspring 
or ally parental or tribal took the first step in consideration of others. 
It had enlarged its self-consciousness to include another. It had taken 
the first step towards universal brotherhood. Biologists would say it 
had followed their "second law" that of the preservation of the 
species. 

It is interesting perhaps it may be suggestive and helpful to note 
that the rudimentary species that stressed the first law, and slighted the 
second law, became extinct. Only the species that followed and obeyed 
both laws, survived. If we rest inactive in the consciousness of failure, 
perhaps there is nothing immortal in us we fail utterly. If we use 
the fear that the consequences of our failures will fall upon others, 
perhaps the second law of biology will prove as operative today, as it 

327 



328 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

has in the past, and our "species" will survive a first step taken towards 
immortality. Whom do we hurt when we fail? 

However slightly we touch it, however much of a load or drag upon 
it we may be, yet we know that we are part and parcel of the great Theo- 
sophical Movement. We sense its power : yet we see that even it seems 
to fail perhaps because of us. Nevertheless it continues wave after 
wave. Again, and again, and yet again, the impulse is received by the 
world. The world rouses ; tries ; fails. Then again the impulse is given. 
Charlemagne's sons disrupted his kingdom, set back France, found no 
successors for the Paladins but France lived. Ignatius gave himself 
as the spear-head. Neglected, as he lay dying, his cold corpse was 
glorified and the Jesuits were already off the track. Yet Christ did 
not give up the fight. To St. Margaret Mary was soon revealed the 
sacred heart to be received by the world with sleepy apathy. Incident 
after incident may be enumerated. They will prove repeated failures. 
This is true. Also is it true that they will also prove the unflagging will 
and inflexible determination that failure upon failure shall not result in 
giving-up, in quitting, in surrender to odds, however great they may be. 
The Master himself remains undismayed; and fighting. The work of 
Madame Blavatsky and Mr. Judge has not stopped the T. S. still func- 
tions after their death. 

Perhaps there is danger in this thought that failure has been recur- 
rent. It is dangerous if it be allowed to destroy will. How dangerous 
it is the recent war has already shown, and, alas, may have yet to show. 
France failed to hold back the Germans, but France fought on. Belgium, 
England, Serbia, Italy and other Allies failed in turn. But each fought 
on. America failed at first even to awake. Awakened at last, America 
began to fight. The Germans felt their own failure in France's will to 
fight on. The Germans stopped fighting. They offered surrender. The 
Allies refused to carry-on to complete and uncompromising victory. 
They themselves surrendered in accepting the proffered German peace. 
The people of the Allies cried aloud that war is failure. The demand 
became that war be stopped, not that victory be won. The world may 
yet pay a fearful price for accepting the pacifist dictum that war is the 
worst of evils; that war in itself is the final failure. Are we, who are 
in the Movement, to come, also, to regard continued necessity for combat 
as failure? Is it not opportunity? 

So much for some of the universal aspects of our problem. How 
about the particular where it affects you and me? I echo your plaint, 
"Oh! why do I fail?" If I did not recognize that I have failed I would 
not be for I could not be with you in the great Movement. Together 
do we seek guides, adjusters, teachers, and the Path. We do not belong 
here, if we do not see ourselves in each other and thus find the truth 
about ourselves. How does Light on the Path put it? 

"9. Regard earnestly all the life that surrounds you. 



WHY DO I FAIL? 329 

10. Learn to look intelligently into the hearts of men. 

11. Regard most earnestly your own heart." 
And, in the "Note" to "10," we shall find : 

"From an absolutely impersonal point of view, otherwise your 
sight is coloured. Therefore impersonality must first be under- 
stood. 

"Intelligence is impartial: no man is your enemy: no man is 
your friend. All alike are your teachers. Your enemy becomes a 
mystery that must be solved, even though it take ages : for man 
must be understood. Your friend becomes a part of yourself, an 
extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read. Only one thing is more 
difficult to know your own heart. Not until the bonds of person- 
ality are loosed can that profound mystery of self begin to be seen. 
Not till you stand aside from it will it in any way reveal itself to 
your understanding. Then, and not till then, can you grasp and 
guide it. Then, and not till then, can you use all its powers, and 
devote them to a worthy service." 

Is not the first step, in knowledge of our own hearts, that first step 
of the rudimentary animal fear in the face of a superior force? We 
simply cannot beat God, or the Absolute, or Karma, or the Divine Law. 
[What difference does it make by what name we call "That"? How 
often men go astray through words mere trifling masks of basic ideas. 
Let us always try to get hold of what is within not grab at the flimsy 
trappings.] God does know what is best for us. He does know what 
is best for each of us. Let us make the best of what He gives us 
here and now; just as we are; and especially just exactly as we are 
circumstanced call it circumscribed, if you like. Our personal opinions 
will not move God. He has given us what He knows is best for us, and 
for each of us. 

If we linger too long in the Valley of the Shadow of Death (Failure), 
surely we shall stay there. "Fear is a force to be used." It is not a 
force to be allowed to master us, as it mastered the Germans, for a time, 
and now threatens to master the democracies of the world. Remember 
that the species that used fear only for self-preservation, ultimately 
became extinct. The only immortality lies in the power of the fear of 
hurting others. Hence Socialism will not survive. Perhaps we had 
better swallow some painful truths about ourselves, making them pith 
and fibre of our substance. 

Truth (or food) first : In one sense, it is utterly unimportant 
whether our personalities fail or not. It is, indeed, quite likely that they 
ought not to survive. The Universe managed, somehow, to exist a year 
or two, at the least, before our personalities appeared upon the scene. 
It is a fair assumption that it will so continue, when they are gone. Yet, 
while our personalities are so utterly unimportant, the use or misuse we 
make of them may be vitally important to others. According to the 



330 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

teachings of science and religion alike, we have energy entrusted to us 
to expend. How do we use this ? There is nothing alone in the universe. 
The law of the correlation and conservation of energy is universal. How 
does what we do or fail to do affect others? 

Truth (or food) second, is that we are really and truly not so extraor- 
dinary as we like to think ourselves. We are even ordinary. Neither 
our sins nor our difficulties are brand-new. Only our dates are Twentieth 
Century. Have you ever read that letter of the Assyrian schoolboy, 
cut on a clay tablet thousands of years ago, in which he threatens to 
stamp and "holler," if his father does not grant his request? You and 
I are not the first fathers to fail. We shall not be the last. Yet this 
will not excuse us, if we should quit because we may not attain to our 
ideal of fatherhood. Our very pet sins, our own special failures, were 
undoubtedly vulgar in the days of the Lemurians and the Atlanteans. 
Let you and me cease glorying in our uniqueness. Let us stop consid- 
ering our sins to be the first to be irremediable. Let us remember that 
the Christ cured "incurable" lepers even though only one of the ten 
thanked him ! Sin is as universal as God and far more commonplace. 

Why do we fail? Perhaps if we study great failures we may find 
pitfalls to avoid and barriers to be surmounted. We are never alone 
in the universe. We merely express within ourselves the workings of 
the Law. Therefore, we may expect to find the same experience on the 
universal and on the particular planes. What hint is there in the T. S. 
the current, organized expression of the great and unceasing effort of 
the powers-that-be to lead the children of men into that land of promise, 
sought for through all the ages, in all climes, by all peoples? It would 
be an incompetent guide that warned not of dangers. Of what dangers 
was the T. S. given warning? Were the warnings heeded? 

One of the greatest of the guides of the T. S. is only known to most 
of us by tradition, and intuition. Nevertheless many of us dare to feel 
that we owe him much and love him dearly, all unseen by us though he 
has been, despite the love he has poured out for us. He is the Master 
designated "the Master K. H.," in the early Theosophical literature of 
the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. How early he began his 
guidance and ministrations, it would take an older member to say. His 
first intervention is chronicled, for some of us, in those truly marvellous 
letters, to be found in The Occult World. It was, apparently, in 1881, 
late in the first heptad of the Society, that he wrote : 

"You seek all this, and yet, as you say yourself, hitherto you 
have not found sufficient reasons to even give up your modes of life, 
directly hostile to such modes of communication. This is hardly 
reasonable. He who would lift up high the banner of mysticism and 
proclaim its reign near at hand must give the example to others. He 
must be the first to change his modes of life, and, regarding the 
study of the occult mysteries as the upper step in the ladder of 



WHY DO I FAIL? 331 

knowledge, must loudly proclaim it such, despite exact science and 
the opposition of society. The kingdom of Heaven is obtained by 
force,' say the Christian mystics. It is but with armed hand, and 
ready to either conquer or perish, that the modern mystic can hope to 
achieve his object." 

It will pay us to read those words with care. We should find 
guidance. We may find explanation of our own failures. Let us be 
quite honest with ourselves have you and I yet been ready even "to 
give up your (our) modes of life"? What are we to give up? What 
nonsense! Is there a single number of The QUARTERLY that has not 
told us? Have you and I been "the first to change his (our) modes of 
life"? Sobbing with self-pity we may say that we have but have we? 
Let us take that "absolutely impersonal point of view," laid down in 
Light on the Path: how much have we given up that we, or our lower 
natures, wanted to retain? I should "hate awfully" to be compelled by 
a recording angel to express in terms of percentage what I "have found 
sufficient reasons" to give up of my modes of life. 

At the beginning, I, for one, most cheerily skipped over the "hard 
places." I saw only the "loudly proclaim it." I liked that. Without 
obeying the order to change, without heeding the hint in that use of the 
word "upper," I followed my personal inclinations. Have you ever seen 
a very little child try to run away from its nurse, before it had really 
learned to toddle alone? Have you ever seen it smash on the pavement 
and get all cut and bruised? Yet what would you have thought of the 
child, or of its nurse, or of its parents, if it had then and there renounced 
all effort to learn to walk because it had failed to run and had been 
hurt? I failed then. I fail daily. Should I quit? Must I not learn 
to walk, and even to run, despite my spills and bruises? And shall I 
not keep getting spilled and bruised until I learn to walk? As a father 
I kept my children at the task. I wonder if I know more than God ? 

What is it, that the Master K. H. wishes us to conquer? Go through 
those letters, see if I presume unduly, when I say that the Master meant 
our lower natures each to himself a menace, and, in even an unknown 
union with other lower natures, becoming the peril of the soul of the 
world. The Master speaks frankly, while retaining the divine courtesy 
of the royal gentlemen of the inner world. Note what he says, further 
along in that same letter, about motives ; closing with that never to be 
forgotten sentence: 

"Perhaps you will better appreciate our meaning when told that 
in our view the highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity be- 
come tainted with selfishness, if, in the mind of the philanthropist, 
there lurks the shadow of a desire for self-benefit, or a tendency to 
do injustice, even where these exist unconsciously to himself." 

Do not we, you and I, think that it would be easier for us, if only 



332 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

we could get rid of this ever-lasting necessity for fighting? Do we ever 
ask if such a peace would be working injustice to the Master's cause? 

I have spoken of the Master K. H.'s outstanding courtesy. Let 
us use a possible hint in his reference to "Christian mystics," at a time 
when many of the early and temporary members of the T. S. seem to 
have conceived the erroneous idea that it was meant to be a missionary 
society for the spread of dogmatic Buddhism. We may find a recognition 
of the law that, in the objective world of differentiation : 

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, 
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat ; 
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, 

When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the 
ends of the earth." 

The Master K. H. and the Master Christ, being in the world 
of union, as well as working in the world of men, must "stand 
face to face" (and how they must love each other!). We have not 
attained such meeting. Yet we may learn from the East and the Eastern 
Master. That is an advantage we have in the T. S. We are urged to seek 
help everywhere. Still, for us, do space and time rule. Earth and sky 
have not yet met for us. So it is, possibly, that, all through the Master 
K. H.'s writings, one seems to find an urging to Westerners to seek in 
the West for direction with the illumination of the East, but never the 
substitution of the East. Were substitution advisable for us, you and 
I might well be wearing dusky skins and snowy turbans. Let us use 
the truth of the East to find truth in the West. Likewise: let us take 
our schooling just where and as we are even if it seem to us to be 
a school of war. Do we not follow a fighting Master? What is the 
truth that we may find in the West, that will help us to face and over- 
throw our failures? 

Do not stop to get out Bible and Book of Common Prayer try 
thinking it out from what we have in our hearts of their lore and law. 
What is the great practical method of the Master Christ, as he taught 
it to his children? There! He called us "his children." Instinctively, 
almost automatically, have we not expressed the crux of his preliminary 
training? I do not mean his teaching, summed up for us in his "two 
great commandments," and in his Passion. Let us limit ourselves to the 
essence of the practice he enjoined. Is not the first step and, indeed, 
in a very real sense, at once the final (irrevocable) step to be found 

in 

"But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children 

to come unto me, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom 

of God. 

"Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom 

of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." 



WHY DO I FAIL? 333 

Shades of the suffering mothers, who have thought of their innocent 
but unbaptised babes as eternally damned, how we hard-minded people 
of the West have distorted those key-words! How it must grieve the 
heart of a most tender, as well as a most gallant Great One, that he, 
the lover of children, should be deemed to have damned them, untried 
and untested. We do not teach the calculus and Sanscrit in the primary 
grades. Of course, as seems obvious, little children should be taught 
and guided in religion, as they are today in "commercial geography" and 
"Americanization" sans any "taint" of religion, alas and as they ought 
to be, but are not being, taught in courtesy and manners. Nevertheless, 
while this famous teaching of the Christ does apply to children, yet we, 
who pretend to study Theosophy, should be the first to recall that, as in 
the case of all great truths, as with all great Laws, these teachings of the 
Master must cut through all strata. Obviously they are not to be limited 
to any one plane. Obviously they are to be used on each and every 
plane even that altitudinous one, as we view it, that we are upon. 

Therefore we, too, we "grown-ups," as we call ourselves, should 
recognize that we are told that we must approach the kingdom of 
God as "little children." There is nothing new in this statement. We 
have heard it, we have read it, we have said it, and each over and over 
again, ever since our earliest childhood. We are, to be honest, all but 
bored by it. You and I say, impatiently, "I know all that, but what I 
want to know is why do I, a grown man, with strength and will and 
powers and ability, fail ? Please stick to my problem." Do we "know all 
that" ? It is true that we have said it with our lips, but have we shown it 
forth in our lives? Have we acted accordingly? Have you? I have 
not. But we must, if we would answer that call through eternity 
"Follow me." 

Just how are we to approach the kingdom of God as "little chil- 
dren"? But, first, why do we wish to approach it? If we are honest 
with ourselves, we shall probably admit that we find a lack of clear cut 
apperception in our brains regarding this question. If we are equally 
honest, shall we not find that we have an instinctive, hardly formulated, 
yet none the less real, desire to reach a higher being, a helper, a "God 
the Father and Saviour and Inspirer" ? Someone akin to us, yet infinitely 
higher? Perhaps, "the Higher Self" of the Eastern teachings? Do we 
not want to reach Him rather than to achieve a state ? We long to find 
the King, not merely to enter his kingdom. I believe this to be true of 
all of us. I believe that this quest is the keynote of all helpful teachings. 
I believe that if we really try to think, we shall find it to be true of you 
and of me however diaphanous or amorphous it may seem to be now. 

May we not find here that "essential point of contact" that we must 
have, if we are "to sell ourselves," the idea that we, even you and I, 
must actually become as little children, if we are to change that negative 
"Why do I fail?" into the positive "What must I do, to do better?" 



334 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

Suppose we use our eyes to look about us. Surely, if we are to follow 
this practice or process on this plane, we shall find familiar correspond- 
ences, or analogies, or at least hints, around us? Do we know fathers 
and mothers who love their children and are loved in turn by them? 
We, each of us, must have someone or something that we know right 
well that we do love. Let us, then, begin our research by conceding that 
this higher being, whom we do seek to reach, has powers at least equal 
to the highest human powers of which we know. What is the attitude 
of the right human parent towards his little child? What is the attitude 
of the right little child towards his human parent? Is it not important, 
however, to make a seeming digression at this point, to see if there may 
not be deep meaning for us, in the Master's use of that adjective "little"? 
A child's point of view is very different from that of a "little child." 
Self-assertion has already become active. There are attempts to use a 
reason that is inevitably and inescapably limited. In short, there is a 
purity, a simplicity, and an essential sweetness about a little child, lack- 
ing in an older child. New and attractive qualities may develop. There 
remains a difference which it seems important that we keep in mind in 
our study. 

Before, however, we undertake to find out how we are to behave 
as "little children," would it not be well to determine if we are really and 
honestly ready to be considered as "little children"? You and I take 
pride in our knowledge, our experience, our training, our strength, and 
even in our achievements ! We are not children in body. Far from it- 
would that I were! We know that we are full-grown personalities. 
Why then undertake to "make believe" ? Did not St. Paul say something 
about his having "put away childish things"? Could anything be more 
"childish" than for you and for me to seek to re-become little children? 
This seems to be an almost unavoidable stage of doubt, or a common* 
place temptation of the Devil. Like other stages, it has to be passed 
out of and left below. Like all temptations, it is only a desire to let go, 
which may be overcome by hanging on. It is neither a unique doubt 
nor a new temptation. 

Where may we find an analogy in ordinary life that may show us 
what we are to do, to become men and no longer to be self-recognized 
failures ? Something over twenty millions of men, throughout the world, 
have just passed through army training. Shall we not find help in their 
experience, apparently needed under the Karma of our own day? 

The Colonel of an American militia regiment, in the days before 
the war, knew himself to be a good deal of a person just as you and 
I feel now. Despite this self-knowledge, when the day for battle came, 
he found himself as helpless as a child. Like unto a child, if he were 
patriotically wise and unconceited, he had to learn his first lessons. 
Even then, compared to Marshal Foch, for instance, he was, relatively, 
as utterly unimportant as a little child. To the Generalissimo the care and 
conduct of a single regiment was a little child's task. It must be done 



WHY DO I FAIL? 335 

aright, or confusion and possible injury might result. But so it is with 
a little child's assigned task. 

Step down the scale in rank to a regular subaltern, even, and 
measure his importance on the battle line with that of a Petain, or a 
Haig, or a Pershing. Is not a little child, a very little child, of more 
relative importance in a household? Of course, it is true that failure in 
a subaltern may bring on a disaster. So may a very little child's wrong 
act. Step down again to a veteran non-commissioned officer, and, then 
again, below him, to a private how would he be appraised in terms of 
a Field Marshal? What small enough unit or microscopic percentage 
could you find to express a raw recruit? 

Dare you and I lay claim to rank in the Army of the Lord? If we 
do, must it not be militia, tinsel, peace-time-and-pompous-parading rank, 
or do we call ourselves tried veterans? You and I know the answer. 
The very way in which we face our failures shows that we are untrained 
under fire. We are the rawest of raw recruits undisciplined, unreliable, 
panic-infected, despite all our swagger and braggadocio. We are ripe 
grumblers and, even, ready whimperers, when we think that the supplies 
are inadequate, or when we have to sleep out of comfortable barracks. 
We are not fit for the Front and its dangers and hardships and glory. 

Are you and I not about ready to admit that our "positive rank" 
towards a Master and his disciples his "friends," who do "whatsoever" 
is commanded them is such in fact that it will be most rapid, and cer- 
tainly undeserved, promotion, if we dare to consider that we have already 
reached to the state of being his littlest children? We know that we 
have not : let us grant, nevertheless, that by reason of our connection 
with the Theosophical Movement, we are somehow, by grace and by 
miracle, a link, if the very lowest, in a guruparampara chain, reaching 
up through all the degrees of discipleship to our Master and the Great 
Lodge. 

Shall we not agree now to return to the relations between parent 
and little child, in order that we may at last learn to fight and so to cease, 
once and forever, to act like raw conscripts? What is the first quality 
that a parent seeks for in a little child? Is it not love? Those of us 
who have had children will recall that we sought eagerly for the first 
recognition of love towards us. An unloving child is most unlovely, 
almost monstrous. If we are to concede to the Master whom we seek, 
qualities only equal to the best human qualities, which we admit we 
have not attained for ourselves, may we not expect him to be desirous, 
equally desirous with us, that he be loved? Like unto ourselves, would 
he not wish this, not for his own sake, but to prove that his child is 
not unloving, unlovely and monstrous ? 

Perhaps this is the first test how much do we love the Master? 
Not merely instinctively, but in expression and manifestation, resulting 
from our memory, understanding and will? What have you and I done 



336 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

today or given up doing consciously and deliberately to express and 
manifest our love for him? Have we even done this in thought, to 
say nothing of deed ? What parent has not cherished crudities that were 
the work of little hands to please "Papa" or "Mamma" ? Do we not recall 
the glowing pride and even thankfulness we felt when a little one said 
that he had done or had not done something for our sake? Great 
Heavens, is the Master less than you or I? May we not give him the 
pleasure that we had? Shall we not give it to him today and keep on 
giving it to him? We should not be happy if our child stopped loving 
us. This would not be selfish in us, either, for it would prove that our 
child was becoming spoilt. Is a Master less loving? 

Next to loving, what marked good trait do we find in the little child 
the child that the Master told us to imitate and emulate? Is it not 
faith? Does not the little child, the right little child, regard its parents 
as the wisest, the biggest, the strongest, yes, and the richest "in all the 
world"? My own father was a man of small income in fact, yet I still 
recall, down the corridor of nearly half a century, my own simple faith 
that he could have bought me anything and everything, if he had thought 
it best for me. It was the limiting power of his judgment that I then 
recognized, not the limits of his means that recognition came later and 
"is another story". Is there any limit to the Master's means, save those 
we determine for ourselves, under our right to choose? 

Have you and I real faith in the Master? How about my attitude 
towards "that state of life to which it has pleased God to call me ?" How 
about yours, regarding your own lot in life? 

This seems to shade into trust. Who does not recall, across the 
years, the joy that was ours, when our own little ones trusted us? It 
may have been when a little son took his first free steps for me, when 
he refused to trust his nurse, devoted though she was. Mayhap you 
will recall when your little girl unwhimperingly held your hand while 
the doctor set her broken arm. Or perhaps you remember when your 
boy's life was saved, that evening the beach house was burned, because 
the tiny little fellow crept through the narrow window and down the 
fragile trellis, because his father told him what to do? Only last year 
my younger son confessed that the lancing of a boil was less painful to 
him when he could hold my hand. Have you and I equal trust in the 
Master? I, for one, trust my own "loving wisdom" in training and 
guiding my sons, just because they are allotted to me am I really 
greater, wiser, more loving than the Master to whom we have been 
allotted, or by whom we have been called? 

Is this seemingly incomprehensible outer failure of mine injustice, 
or is it, somehow, just the discipline that I need? Are the lines of work 
that you or I happen to be engaged in, the worst things for us, as we 
sometimes seem to assume, or are our "studies", so to speak, being directed 
and differentiated according to our immediate and individual needs, as 
I direct and differentiate those of my sons for them ? 



WHY DO I FAIL? 337 

By the way, is it not possible that our very attitude towards our 
duties, our difficulties, our "problems," proves that we do already 
function, rather perfectly, as little children? Do we not see bugaboos 
and ogres, conjure up mountains, and create all manner of horrors before 
us, just like little children going through dark woods at night? And 
have we not even less warrant so to act than they? All of which should 
remind us of those twinly-paged "gateposts" in the first volume of 
Fragments: 

"Duty is not an ogre, but an angel. How few understand this. 
Most confuse it as they do conscience." 

"Sorrows, crosses, these are our opportunities, could we but 
see it so. But he is far along who does so see it. He has attained 
who fully realizes it." 

As I have endeavored to study my own childhood, my own parent- 
hood, and my own children and their associates, for light on this problem 
of how a grown man or woman may approach the Master and his 
Kingdom as a little child, I seem to find a quality required that is all 
but forgotten in our day, and one too little used in our own efforts at 
discipleship. I mean a "child's obedience." Need I dwell on its nature 
unquestioning, unreasoning, immediate, sweet-tempered, and aspiring 
ever towards a desired perfection? Is a child ever genuinely attractive, 
and a cause for pride in its parent, who is not obedient? Is it really 
happy? Do we care to live with a spoilt child? What hidden wisdom 
and frank judgment of the parenthood there is in that very phrase. Has 
a disobedient child any certainty of future, if it maintain its attitude? 

How obedient are you and I to what we have been taught and to 
what we know ? We expect of a child, even a little child, a great deal of 
recollection. "I forgot" was not accepted in my own childhood, nor 
should it be by any really loving parent today, as an excuse for dis- 
obedience. I wonder if our own chronic forgetfulness, our own lack 
of recollection, is less excusable? I also wonder if it is handled with 
less than our own human loving firmness? 

How would that same standard apply in regard to our daily duties? 
When I gave a little son a task, what attitude on his part did I hope 
for? What attitude did I insist upon? Was I satisfied, for his own 
sake, with a sulky, angry, reluctant and essentially cowardly attitude? 
I call an attitude cowardly that means obedience to circumstances instead 
of by will. Thus was I trained by a most wise and loving mother, who 
called and treated half-hearted or tardy obedience as worse than open 
disobedience, because it was disobedience in heart and spirit, plus 
cowardice. Was I satisfied with half-hearted, inattentive efforts by 
my little sons? 

"Why do I fail?" Is it not indeed, because I have not been as a 
little child? Have I not thought I was "a great, big man", "entirely 

22 



338 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

different from any one else in the whole, wide world". Have I not even 
thought, figuratively, "I know more than my Daddy"? These are crude 
statements; rude utterances from even a little child; but dare I deny 
that I have, in all essentials, paralleled them ? 

How do parents wise, human parents use direction in sending 
children out into their own little world? When our own little ones were 
to meet other little ones, what did we expect? What line of conduct did 
we teach ? What standards did we insist upon, under penalty of punish- 
ment for transgression? Did we encourage fault-finding, tale-bearing, 
personal remarks, bickering, quarrelling, self-reference, selfishness in 
any form, food-grabbing, attention-monopolizing, best-chair-taking? 

While a little child learns something from everybody and every- 
thing with which it is permitted to come into contact, it has those 
specially assigned to train it. What is my own attitude towards those 
called in on one plane or another to train me spiritually, mentally and 
practically? We surely are not neglected foundlings. What has been 
my attitude, and what is yours, towards our associates of varying degree ? 
What should it have been? What attitude did I insist that my little sons 
maintain towards maids, nurses, doctors and the several varieties of 
teachers? How did I expect them to act towards their relatives and 
friends? What hint is there in this for you and for me? Am I to 
regard a man in my business, whom I may dislike, as an "accident", 
to be ignored, or is there a lesson to be learned from and through him, 
as suggested in those quotations from Light on the Path? How do I 
seem to others? Do I reflect credit or do I bring shame upon my 
spiritual family? Who is blamed when I appear like a spoilt child? 

"What must I do, to do better ?" We have not taken up one of the 
most potent forces that a child uses, and uses with a larger degree of 
consciousness and deliberation, I have come to believe, than most of us 
have been in the habit of crediting. This force is the habit of imitation. 
Ignatius used only two books to supplement the intuitive knowledge he 
had at his command, after his awakening to consciousness at Manresa. 
One was the Bible and the other was Thomas a Kempis' famous work, 
The Imitation of Christ. In our self-centred attitude, combined with our 
recognition of our own unworthiness, are we not apt to think that it 
would be presumptuous, and even impossible, for us to "imitate" the 
Master? Children, even children who have grown beyond little children, 
have none of this falsity, this cowardice. They frankly strive to imitate 
a beloved and admired parent, even if that parent seem to the world not 
a fit subject for imitation. Children play and enter into their play 
that they are heroes and kings, "perfect even as the Father is perfect". 
Grown-ups, who have failed to obey in their own lives the Master's 
injunction to be "as little children", usually take great pains to destroy 
the creatively imaginative faculty, and the power and readiness to imitate, 
instead of making the effort to train and guide them into right channels. 



WHY DO I FAIL? 339 

Earlier in our consideration of why you and I fail, in fact at the 
very start, we found that only a consciousness of imperfection leads to 
success. Does not a little child know that it is dependent and helpless, 
yet remain unaffrighted ? Does not a little child early learn that it must 
try, and keep on trying, and that "I do not want to" does not lessen 
pressure, but, instead, increases it? This, let us note, comes from wise 
and loving, but merely human, parents. Is not the answer to "Why do 
I fail?" to be found in our failure even to try to follow the Master's 
key-words, and in our persistent refusal to seek to enter his kingdom 
as little children? 

Therefore, is not the answer to the positive "What must I do, to do 
better?" the use of the positive aspect of that same answer? that we 
should read within the Master's key-words definite directions, which we 
must at once set out to obey. This means that you and I must deliberately 
adopt the attitude of little children. Is it as difficult and as impracticable 
as our lower natures will try to make us believe ? Is it not the easy and 
successful attitude of every eager military and naval cadet, every earnest 
student of any science or art, every sincere disciple of any cult? Shall 
it not be your attitude and mine from now on ? But there is one caution, 
which it would seem, we must follow in what is otherwise a perfectly 
reckless adventure; reckless because, child fashion, soldier fashion, we 
must follow our Leader without thought or questioning, forgetting all 
thought of our own safety, when once he has accepted us as followers. 
This caution is to keep and to maintain the little child's unfailing faith, 
its blind trust, its unflinching hope, its unwavering loyalty, its calm 
sense of personal helplessness (humility), and its ever-growing love. 

I gleaned this warning from studying the Master's own teaching, 
as follows : 

"Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, 
If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which 
is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, 
Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. 

"And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing 
ye shall receive." 

Must we not, therefore, steadfastly maintain the powers of a little 
child, in order that we may "doubt not" (even once) and may keep on 
"believing" as we pray? Do we grown-ups not fail at these two points? 

There are many of us who owe our desire to cease to be failures 
to that great-hearted, child-hearted, brave, wise, and fearless disciple 
and student, Mr. Griscom. Had you and I ever even started to do, 
what he so often told us to do, would we not be nearer now to all that 
he loved? As we read those guide-books and manuals of arms, that he 
has left for us in his writings, we shall each of us, find our own answer 
to the question "Why do I fail ?" I have been trying to think what he 



340 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

would have said. I have gone back over our talks, and have reviewed, 
in mind, his QUARTERLY articles. He never gave too strong meat to 
babes, so perhaps he never used the exact words I am going to suggest; 
but it seems to me that the attempt to use his fearlessness, in a search to 
find, at all hazards, the truth about oneself, might give us warrant to 
say that his answer to this question might well have been "Because you 
choose to be a failure". 

Let us, in love of his Master, and as a belated tribute to his loving 
efforts for us, make a new, a right, an irrevocable, choice today! Let 
us "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us 
free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage", remembering 
that "the things which are impossible with men are possible with God", 
whose plenary delegate is our Master. 

If we do this, shall we not get some inkling of the powers that lie 
within Mr. Griscom's oft-repeated: "We can do nothing without the 
Master's aid. I do not believe we could even make a bare living", 
which has often been so meaningless to some of us? 

Shall we not prove, with saint and mystic, "that there is power in 
humility and its consciousness of self -helplessness ; indeed, that from 
humility alone does power spring"? 

G. W. 



God makes known his will to those who ask him in simplicity. Let 
him zvho has a state of life to choose, or who would desire to know what 
he should do for the sanctification of his soul, renounce, first, all natural 
inclinations, and place himself generously in the hand of God, firmly 
resolved to obey him. Let him then weigh the pro and con, meditating 
on some truth of Scripture, drawing the consequences which are the 
result, and applying them to the end for which God has created us. If 
he still doubt what part he should take, let him suppose himself on his 
death-bed, or at the last judgment, and then determine to do what he 
would wish then to have done. IGNATIUS LOYOLA. 



FROM A JOURNAL 



I WAS thinking of Eldridge today, and of his disappointment at 
being removed still longer from the centre of things theosophic. 
At any rate, he is fortunate in being where he is, close to Nature, 
listening to the whisperings of the pines and hemlocks, drinking in 
the clear, crisp air, and breathing the serenity of those wooded slopes. So 
he would seem to have compensations for being removed so far from the 
rest of us, in being able to fortify himself inwardly against the day when 
he will return to this heavy, murky atmosphere, and the sensuous, psychic 
whirl and pressure of city life. In some respects he is rather to be 
envied than pitied in his temporary isolation, but he knows as well as 
I do that I would not change places with him. He would give a great 
deal to be here too, I know, where the fight is hotter, but where at the 
same time we have the encouragement and inspiration of so many fellow 
members to aid us in our efforts to "live the life". 

A number of us met for lunch to-day, it was missing him there 
which brought him to my mind and as we sat and smoked over our 
coffee, a discussion took place regarding the significance of some of the 
events happening in the world. It was agreed that the Germans have 
succeeded in having the attention of practically every nation but France 
drawn off from enforcement of the terms of the Treaty. The activities 
of the Bolsheviki, which we have every reason to believe Germany 
instigated and has continuously aided and abetted, have resulted in a 
crushing defeat of the anti-Bolshevist forces in the South; but it was 
agreed that a far more serious and far-reaching development is the 
growing tendency to compromise with the Bolsheviki, and apparently to 
abandon all intention of outlawing them from any relations with civilized 
nations. It was pointed out that the present Ministry in Great Britain 
is reported to be about to conclude a trade agreement with Soviet Russia ; 
also, that while it is true that our own Administration sometime ago 
announced to the world that it would not recognize Soviet Russia and 
would have nothing to do with the Bolsheviki, should other countries 
follow the lead of Great Britain, it is decidedly a question how steadfastly 
the powers that be would adhere to that admirable profession, to say 
nothing of carrying it out by positive action, instead of maintaining 
a negative attitude of aloofness, and disinclination to do anything to put 
out the fire that we, by precept, example and encouragement, helped to 
start. So many of our bankers and business men are anxious to establish 
trade relations, not only with the Bolsheviki, but with the Germans, that 
there is every reason to fear that the Administration will be unable much 
longer to withstand the pressure being put upon it to follow Great 
Britain's example. We also discussed the disgraceful manner in which 
politicians are hedging and compromising, not only with this menace 

341 



342 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

from without, but with the fearfully ominous murmurings from within, 
from a people weary of war, whose labouring class, as a unit, has come 
out in open defiance of any attempt on the part of their Government to 
drag them into war not even war in defence of righteousness and for 
the life of civilization itself and have threatened completely to tie up all 
industry if their demands are not heeded. One of our number remarked 
that these things are causing cold chills to run up and down the spines 
of many people, but that he feared that this was due to apprehension as 
to what might happen to their pocket-books, rather than to any anxiety 
lest the forces of evil should run amuck once more. Before we parted, 
we all agreed that the root of the trouble lay in a lack of knowledge of 
the fundamental principles of right living, and of the inspiration and 
help to make a sincere effort to carry them out, which Theosophy sup- 
plies ; that it was a pity that the rulers of the nations did not possess some 
of the wisdom and insight of the QUARTERLY, which from the day of its 
signing declared that the Armistice was a hideous mistake worse, a 
great wrong, because it was a compromise with evil; and that if the 
evil with which Germany had identified herself had been crushed as it 
should have been, this latest monster would not have dared to raise 
its head. 

Thinking about this luncheon conversation afterward led me to 
re-read the resolution passed by the Convention in 1919 : 

"And whereas in the conduct of that war when victory was within 
reach, a truce was declared by an armistice whose conditions were 
designed to preclude the possibility of further aggression of evil, but 
not designed to crush that evil ; 

"And whereas the armistice has been followed by the growth of 
anarchy and Bolshevism, the spread beneath the surface throughout the 
allied nations of the very evil that Germany personified, 

"Be it resolved that compromise with evil is as wrong as is neutrality ; 
and that Bolshevism is the very opposite of Brotherhood and of all for 
which The Theosophical Society stands." 

One sees on every hand evidences of a disposition to compromise 
with evil to do anything and everything to avoid becoming embroiled 
in another war. The "war to end all wars" has been officially declared 
ended, but the world is beginning dimly and in dismay to realize some- 
thing of the truth of the prophetic words of this resolution. Our own 
country, alas ! seems to have learned little from the Great War. We were 
suddenly awakened from our sleep of complacent self-indulgence to 
forget our selfish interests and to throw ourselves unreservedly into a 
great Cause for a few short months ; but, as a nation, we seem to have 
relapsed into a worse condition than before, fatuously believing that we 
have performed a noble and unselfish service to humanity! Oh, the pity 
of it, that this beloved country of ours was so blinded by self as not to 
see the light sooner, resulting in our shamefully tardy entrance into the 



FROM A JOURNAL 343 

War, and then to have lacked the insight and courage to insist upon no 
compromise with evil when the end was in sight! It occurred to me to 
ask myself : To what extent is the United States responsible for the 
present conditions in Russia, for our example, aid and encouragement 
given to a "Revolution", which, under the guise of freeing its people from 
the shackles of autocracy, has rapidly developed into a wild orgy of 
anarchy and murder? How far has the preaching of "Democracy" as 
the panacea for all the ills of the nations, fanned to a flame this mad 
desire to throw off all restraint and discipline? Men say that the good 
common sense of the American people will prevent Bolshevism from 
making any headway here, and that the "staunch Americanism" of our 
people, as a whole, is untainted by the poison introduced, as they think, 
by a few foreign agitators. But students of Theosophy know better. 
We know that every one of us is tainted with this thing; that the battle 
is raging in the hearts of men everywhere, and that far from Americans 
being "separate" from this malign influence, we are completely enmeshed 
in it. Men shudder at the horrors perpetrated by the unrestrained 
Bolshevist; but is not the same evil spirit active in us, resulting in our 
daily committing offences which on their plane are fully as serious, if 
not more so than those we abhor in the Bolshevist ? "Remember that the 
sin and shame of the world are your sin and shame; for you are a part 
of it; your Karma is inextricably interwoven with the great Karma." 

Recently I have read a most interesting little book by Mr. Judge, 
entitled: Echoes from the Orient, which has something to say bearing 
upon this subject. "The first Echo from the burnished and mysterious 
East which reverberated from these pages sounded the note of Universal 
Brotherhood. Among the men of this day such an idea is generally 
accepted as vague and Utopian, but one which it will do no harm to 
subscribe to; they therefore quickly assent, and as quickly nullify the 
profession by action in the opposite direction. For the civilization of 
today, and especially of the United States, is an attempt to accentuate 
and glorify the individual. The oft-repeated declaration that any born 
citizen may aspire to occupy the highest office in the gift of the nation is 
proof of this, and the Mahatmas who guard the truth through the ages 
while nations are decaying, assert that the reaction is sure to come in a 
relapse into the worst forms of anarchy. The only way to prevent such 
a relapse is for men really to practise the Universal Brotherhood they are 
willing to accept with the tongue. These exalted beings further say that 
all men are as a scientific and dynamic fact united, whether they 
admit it or not; and that each nation suffers, on the moral as well as the 
physical plane, from the faults of all other nations, and receives benefit 
from the others also even against its will." (The italics are mine.) This 
book was published in 1890, but the prophecy therein stated to have been 
made by the Mahatmas of "a relapse into the worst forms of anarchy* 
is being fulfilled before our eyes today. It does not require mucl 



344 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 

elaboration of the fundamental principle involved to discover, among 
other things, that the "attempt to accentuate and glorify the individual" 
inevitably leads to its logical sequence the accentuation and glorification 
of classes of individuals as against other classes, and the desire of one 
class, not merely to dominate, but to crush all others that do not 
servilely submit to it. The poison of "envy, hatred, malice and all 
uncharitableness" has pervaded the thoughts and hearts of large bodies or 
factions of men, who are seeking control of, or who temporarily hold, 
the reins of government, so that the thing has assumed a quasi political 
aspect. We know that it is one of the rules of the Society to have 
nothing to do with politics as such, but that nevertheless its members 
are pledged to loyalty to Truth and to principle. What are some of the 
eternal principles which are being so flagrantly violated today? Does it 
occur to us that the besetting sin of the age in which we live is separate- 
ness? The root of separateness is self-will, self-assertion, selfishness. 
Surveying the actions of men in the world today we run through the 
whole gamut of self-will, from the Bolshevist who aims to impose his 
will upon others at whatever cost even murder to the boarding-school 
girl sighing for "self-expression." Educators are encountering the same 
problem in their work, and are beginning to realize that the appalling 
amount of self-will exhibited even in very young children is a menace 
to all discipline and a barrier to the development of character. Physicians 
have found that one of the most frequent causes of insanity in children 
is self-will. In whatever direction we turn we find the tendency to 
"accentuate and glorify the individual" developed to a truly alarming 
extent. 

We have seen some of the effects produced by the "glorification of 
the individual" in the events that are happening in the world today, and 
some of the results arising from compromise with evil. We, as students 
of Theosophy, should see more deeply into the spiritual significance of 
these things, both in our own lives and in the lives of those about us. 
Mr. Judge has told us that individuals as well as nations suffer from the 
faults of others; also that they receive benefit from the others even 
against their will. In times like these, when multitudes of men every- 
where are throwing off all restraint, submitting to no authority whether 
of God or man, and seeking to promote only their own selfish interests 
as individuals or as a class, it is clearly the duty of those of us who have 
been permitted to see a little even if only a very little of the Light, 
to stand firm, to resist this flood of self-glorification and self-seeking 
which is all but engulfing the world, and thus to "try to lift a little of the 
heavy Karma of the world, and to give our aid to the few strong hands 
that hold back the powers of darkness from obtaining complete victory." 
The disciple who is filled with a sincere desire for unselfish service of 
humanity, knows that before he can help others he must, as Light on 
the Path puts it, have acquired some certainty of his own, must have 



FROM A JOURNAL 345 

discovered the seed of disobedience lurking within himself, and earnestly, 
diligently and prayerfully have set about its eradication. 

This little primer of Theosophy Echoes of the Orient contains 
so much that explains present day problems their causes and 
their remedy that it is only another bit of evidence of what all 
students of Theosophy know, that the world today stands in great 
need of knowledge of the fundamental spiritual laws revealed by 
the Wisdom Religion, and through that knowledge to discover 
that all sin, and its consequent sorrow and suffering, arises from 
violation of those laws. Theosophy teaches that the only way in 
which the selfish, self-willed personality can be suppressed is through 
unselfish love of humanity, and, as Mr. Judge writes, "for men really to 
practise the Universal Brotherhood they are willing to accept with the 
tongue". (By the way, I think that this little book, the sub-title of which 
is : "A Broad Outline of Theosophical Doctrines", is an excellent one to 
place in the hands of those inquiring about Theosophy.) 

In the silence of his forests and hills, Eldridge can look down upon 
all this beastly mess of which I have been writing. His physical sur- 
roundings, it seems to me, are typical of those we should all have inwardly, 
giving us the impetus to "lift up our eyes unto the hills, from whence 
cometh our help". Having obtained all the help and inspiration we are 
capable of receiving, we should then turn steadfastly to the task of doing 
what we can to "lift the heavy Karma of the world", and this, as we know 
very well, can only be accomplished by making a persistent, earnest 
effort to eradicate in ourselves those tendencies which we see reflected in 
the world about us. 

H. 



// thou sin once, thou hast nee