[1]This was spoken some weeks before the issue of Mr. Sinnett's extraordinary manifesto, denying "the things most surely believed among us."
[1]This was spoken some weeks before the issue of Mr. Sinnett's extraordinary manifesto, denying "the things most surely believed among us."
There are two futures of the Theosophical Society to which we may address our attention: the immediate future, and a future further off. And I am going to begin with the future further off, because it is only by recognising the nature of that future that we can properly devise the means whereby we may bring it about. For in all human affairs it is necessary to choose an end to which effort should be directed, and the nature of the end will govern the nature of the means. One of the great faults, I think, of our modern life is to live in what is called a hand-to-mouth way, to snatch at any momentary advantage, to try to bring about something which serves as an improvement for the moment without trying to understand, without caring to consider, whether in very many cases the temporary improvement may not bring with it a more fatal mischief than that which it is intended to remedy. And at least in the Theosophical Society, where we try to study tendencies, and to understand something of the forces which are working around us in life, we ought to avoid this popular blunder of thetime, we ought to try to see the goal towards which we are moving, and to choose our immediate methods with reference to that goal. Of course, when I speak of a goal and an end, I am using the terms in a relative, not in an absolute sense—the goal, the end which is within a measurable distance, and so may be taken as a point towards which the roads on which we travel should tend. Let us, then, look first on that goal, and see its nature and the kind of methods which will help to realise it upon earth.
You are all familiar in the Theosophical Society with the theory of cycles, so that you are accustomed to look upon events as tending to repeat themselves on higher and higher levels of what has been called the "spiral of evolution." For while it is true that history does not repeat itself upon the same level, it is also true that it does repeat itself upon successively higher levels, and that anyone who is studying Theosophical teaching as to the evolution of man, the evolution of globes, the evolution of systems, the evolution of universes, may very much facilitate his study by grasping the main truths which underlie each of these in turn. We are continually repeating on a higher plane that which we have done upon a lower. Our terms are a constant series of repetitions, so that if we understand their meaning in one series we are able to argue to their meaning in another. And I have often pointed out to you with respect to these recurring cycles of events, and recurring terms, that especially among Hinḍus, and in the Samskṛiṭ language, you find whole series of terms, the meaning of each of which varies with the term fromwhich the series starts; so that if you know them once, you know them for all occasions. Take a very familiar case. Let me remind you of the word "samâḍhi." That is a relative term, and is the last of a series, which has regard to the waking consciousness of the individual and the plane on which the centre of the waking consciousness is found. So that before you can say what the word "samâḍhi" means for any individual, you must ascertain on what plane of consciousness his normal centre is at work; and when you know that, then you can pass up step by step until you come to the term in the series which is represented by that word "samâḍhi." It is the same over and over again in our Theosophical studies, and especially do we find this to be true in the characteristics—important in this particular relation—the characteristics of the great Races, the Root-Races, as represented in miniature in the sub-races of each Root-Race. If we can find out those characteristics, trace them and see how they are brought about in the course of evolution in the small cycle which is nearer to us, the cycle of the sub-race, then it is comparatively easy for us, as regards the future, to foresee the appearance of those characteristics in the Root-Race that corresponds to the sub-race. And I shall want to use that method in dealing with the future of the Society; it is for that reason that I draw your attention to these continually recurring cycles of times and events. Now if we look back to the Fourth Root-Race, we can study in the history of that Race the evolution of the Fifth. We can see the methods used to bring about that evolution. We can trace the means which were employed in orderthat that evolution might be made secure; and we can see, by studying that which lies behind us, that the fourth sub-race of that Root-Race showed out the characteristics of the Fourth Race as a whole; that the fifth sub-race of that Fourth showed out some of the characteristics of the Fifth Root-Race that was to follow in the course of evolution. And in this way, applying the analogy, if we can trace out to some extent for ourselves the characteristics of the sixth sub-race which is to succeed our own fifth sub-race, then we shall be on the track of the line of evolution which will bring about the Sixth Root-Race when the time for its coming strikes. Let us glance back for a moment to see the main points of the evolution of a sub-race and a Race.
When our own Fifth Root-Race was to be evolved, certain types were chosen out of the fifth sub-race of the Fourth Root-Race, and they were chosen by the Manu who was to guide the evolution of the Fifth Root-Race. Those types showed out in a comparatively germinal fashion the mental characteristics which were to grow out of the selected groups. And you may learn, if you care to do it, how those choices were made, and how the first choice was a failure. Chosen as it was by the wisdom of the highly exalted being whom we speak of as the Manu, none the less the material in which He tried to work proved too stubborn, too little plastic, to adapt itself to His influence striving to shape and to mould it. And in consequence, after prolonged efforts, He threw aside the families that thus He had selected, and began making a new choice, a fresh selection, in order to see if the second choice would prove more fortunate than the first. Andthe way He chose them was a simple and effective one: He selected a certain number of His own disciples and sent them out as messengers to the various nations of the world, that constituted that part of the great Fourth Race which He had chosen for His second experiment. He sent them into nation after nation, with the mission to gather out of that nation those who appeared to be the most promising for the work which He had to carry out. They tried in various fashions, sometimes by direct invitation, where the characteristic that was being sought was clearly developed, namely, the lower mind. It was the development of the lower manas that was the keynote of the selection; for the Fifth Root-Race was to show out that development of the lower manas. I say "lower manas" rather than "manas"; because the full development of the mânasic principle in man is reserved for the Fifth Round, and not for the Fourth, and we, of course, are still in the Fourth Round. That Fourth Round, pre-eminently kâmic, must necessarily color every evolution which goes on during its existence, and high as we may strive to raise mânasic powers amongst us, we cannot escape from the fundamental vice of our birth, from the mânasic standpoint, that we are plunged in kâmic matter, and that the matter in which we work is matter of the Fourth Round, adapted to the kâmic principle, and not matter of the Fifth, adapted to the mânasic. Hence the best thing that we can do is to evolve the lower manas, manas deeply tinged with kâma. Out of that Fourth Race, then, were selected the people who showed most plainly the budding of this intelligence which was needed, the messengersof the Manu striking a note which attracted those in whom this lower mânasic principle was more highly developed than among their comrades and peers. Gradually from different nations groups of men and women gathered round the messengers of the Manu, who then began to lead them away from their own people, from their own nation, from all their surroundings, in order to seek the appointed place where the Manu was grouping those on whom the great experiment was to be made for the second time. Slowly and gradually they were thus gathered together out of the nations into which the fifth sub-race of the Fourth Race had spread. And the flower of those nations, attracted by the key-note struck by the messengers, gradually gathered round the Manu, and became the material, the nucleus, of the new Root Race. As you know, He took them far away to the Sacred Land, shutting them away from the masses of the Fourth and Third Race peoples, and dividing them by physical barriers from all that might contaminate and stain. Very, very different were those people from the generations which thousands upon thousands of years later were to spring from them in physical succession; rather, to the people about them were they folk who were developed in an uncongenial fashion, people who were by no means looked up to and admired in the nations amongst whom they dwelt, amongst whom they had grown up. For the building of a new type is not made out of those in whom the type of the old Race, that which is before those who are selected for a changed line of evolution, has flowered. The triumphs of evolution in the Fourth Race, as theFourth Race judged them, were by no means the best material for the building of the Fifth. Those who were most admired in the Fourth, those who were regarded as the flowers of their own nations, were those in whom the kâmic faculty, with its allied psychic powers, was most developed, was most triumphant. For you must remember that in the very different civilisation of those days, psychic powers were playing an enormous part in all the most highly developed people of the time. Where the dawning principle of manas began somewhat to triumph over the kâmic, there the psychic faculties inevitably diminished in their power, and showed themselves very much more feebly than in the leaders of the time, those who were the pioneers of the civilisation of the day. The faculties most valued at that time were least to be recognised in those who were the chosen of the Manu; for what He was seeking was the dawn of the intellectual principle, and where that dawns, the psychic for a time is submerged. I cannot dwell now on the reason for that; the psychism of the time was the psychism of the whole of the astral body, and not the psychism which succeeds the intellectual development, which is the result of a higher organisation of that body into special organs of astral senses—the well-known chakras. The reason is well known among all students of the different stages of evolution, and the only reason I allude to it now is because I want you to recognise a very significant fact: that those who were chosen out of that civilisation by the Manu, in order that he might make a new Race out of them, were not the people who were the leading examples of the highest civilisation ofthe time. Those were left behind in their own environment. Those were left behind to carry on their evolution along the lines already becoming the lines of the past, and not the lines of the future. And these people in whom the psychic powers were less shown, and in whom the less valued intellectual power was germinating, on lines more fitted for the development in future, they were chosen out for the building of the Fifth Race, and carried away from their Fourth Race surroundings into the far-off land of their education. There of course they remained until the time came when the Manu incarnated amongst them—and so on. That is old history on which I need not dwell.
Let us apply those same principles to the choosing out of another Root-Race, and we shall see that just as then, for the fifth Root-Race, the mânasic principle was selected, so in the choosing out for a Sixth Root-Race, the buḍḍhic principle must be the one which must be sought for in order that the material may be shaped in which it will be possible for it in its turn to develop. There again I must remind you that the buḍḍhi of the Sixth Root-Race in this Round will be something very different from the evolution of the pure buḍḍhic principle in its own Round, the Round that belongs to it in the future evolution of humanity: it will be buḍḍhic contaminated with kâma, showing out much of the kâmic characteristics—inevitably, inasmuch as it must work in kâmic matter. Hence you must not take quite your ideal buḍḍhi, such as you may fancy it in its perfection—the magnificent principle of Pure Reason, in its higher intuitive power—but a shadow, a reflexion of it, sucha shadow and reflexion as is able to take its veils, its garments, from the matter of our own Round. None the less, that will be the distinguishing, the dominant principle of the Sixth Root-Race, and therefore I ask you to fix your mind on that as the goal towards which all roads in the present should tend. Far-off indeed it is, counting as we count time; but tendencies show themselves long, long before they appear upon the surface, recognisable to the eye of the flesh. In each sub-race appears a principle which manifests itself more fully, more thoroughly, in the corresponding Root-Race; and therefore, though it will only be possible for us at the present time to work towards the next sub-race of our own Fifth Race, which is already beginning to appear upon the surface of our globe, none the less is it true that in quickening the evolution of that sub-race it is the next Root-Race to which we must look for our guiding principle; that is the far-off Pole-star by which we must guide our ships at the present time, that the point towards which we must steer, however far off we must sorrowfully admit that it is.
Let us then, recognising that fact, that the Sixth Root-Race will be the embodiment of the next principle in us, the buḍḍhic principle, that of Pure Reason—as distinguished from Intellect, which is Reason reflected in Activity—when you realise that, and remember that the note of buḍḍhi is union—not yet unity but union—you will find that as much as you require for your guiding principle in the evolution of the corresponding sub-race, whose foot is now on the threshold. So that in this fashion, though seeming to go so far abroad into thepast and the future, I bring you to the practical question of the next step forward in human evolution.
The next thing you must remember is that the flowering of the Fifth Root-Race will go on long, long after the beginning of the sixth sub-race is seen. For these Races and sub-races overlap each other; and just as at the present time the majority of mankind belongs to the Fourth Root-Race and not to the Fifth, but the Fifth Root-Race dominates the evolution of the world, although still in a minority, so is it of sub-races also. The sixth sub-race will be at first in an almost inappreciable minority, but coloring the whole; then multiplying more and more, until it becomes an appreciable minority. Then, as it grows more and more numerous, and nations are born of it, it will begin to dominate and lead the civilisation of the then world. But even then the Fifth Race will be in an enormous majority for ages and ages yet to come. The fifth sub-race has not yet touched its highest point, has not yet asserted itself to the point to which its evolution will reach in the centuries that lie immediately before us. It is nearing its highest point; it is climbing rapidly now to its zenith; but still many years of mortal time intervene between the present day and the day when it will rule in the height of its power. It is climbing fast in these days; but still, compare it with the corresponding point in the Atlantean civilisation, and you will realise that it has not yet climbed to its highest point. For every Race must overtop the Race that has gone before it, and we have not yet reached even the level of the old Atlantis in knowledge, and therefore in power over the lower nature, although, as Isaid, the climbing now is rapid, and will become more and more rapid with every ten years that pass over our heads. For there is that speciality in evolution, that it ever goes forward at an increasing rate. The more it develops its powers, the more swiftly do those powers multiply themselves; so that, to quote a well-known phrase of a great Teacher, "it grows not by additions but by powers." And this civilisation of ours will rush forward more and more rapidly with every decade that passes. Still, the very fact that it has not reached the highest levels of the Fourth tells you that time lies before us in the building of the sixth sub-race, and that is our immediate work. We need not trouble now any further about the Sixth Root-Race; for whatever builds the sixth sub-race amongst us is contributing to the building of that Root-Race of the future. The same faculties are demanded, although then at a higher level, and we can come down to our humbler level and consider what the sixth sub-race is to be. And in that we shall realise the work and the future of the Theosophical Society.
The great characteristic of that Race is to be union, and all that tends to union is a force which is working for the coming of that sub-race, no matter whether very often the force looked at from without is often repellent. It is not the outer manifestation of the moment, but the tendency, the direction of the force which is important. There may be many things, more beautiful on the surface, which have accomplished their aim, and are on the downward path towards decay, whilst the things that are rising, still below the horizon, have, as all germinalthings have, much about them that is repellent and that will be used up in the growth of the coming creature, before it really manifests upon earth. It has been said by a Master that if we could see with the eye of the Spirit the generation of the human being, his ante-natal life, we should understand the generation of worlds, the generation of universes. And that, again, is a general principle. Let us see one or two lessons that we may draw from it at the moment.
Take the evolution of a seed into a plant, and what do you find? A tiny germ surrounded by a mass of nutrient matter; and before that tiny germ will show itself in root, and stem, and leaf above the ground and become visible to the eye of the observer on the earth, that nutrient material must be absorbed by the growing germ, and changed into the exquisite tissues of the plant that is to be. And so, if you take the growing germ, animal or human, how unlike is that budding creature from the animal or the man that shall be! How lacking in beauty in many of the methods of its growth, of its nutrition, of its gradual shaping! And by what marvellous alchemy of inspiring life does the living germ gather into itself all the nutrient matter that surrounds it, and shapes it into organ after organ, until the perfect creature is ready to be born into the world. And as in these cases, so with the growth of a sub-race, of which the germ is planted now. How much has to be done before it is ready for the birth-hour, that yet is at a measurable distance from the moment that the germ is planted in the womb of time. Try to realise the analogy by means of the image that I have suggested, and it willnot then seem so unlikely to you, that which is true, that in our own times again many messengers have come out from the Manu of the future, in order that those messengers may strike certain keynotes, which mark the chief characteristic of the child that is to be. That note is well known at the present time: we call it Brotherhood.
Now notice at the present time how many such messengers are found scattered throughout the world, and how the varied organisations of men of every kind are tending in that direction, and are more and more recognising that as the keynote of their progress and their evolution. There are, so far as I know, only two great organisations at the present time that have deliberately taken Universal Brotherhood as their motto, their cry, in the world: the one is Masonry, the other is the Theosophical Society. Those are the only two which proclaim Universal Brotherhood. For although many religions declare Brotherhood, they do not make it universal; it is a Brotherhood within the limits of their own creed, and a man to become a brother must come within the limits of the religion. See how clearly that is declared in the great and universal baptismal ceremony which marks the entrance of the child into the Christian Church. In that sacrament he is "madea child of God." He was not a child of God before, from the Church standpoint. He was born under the wrath of God, in the kingdom of Satan. In the ceremony of baptism he is made a child of God, an heir of the kingdom of heaven; and that is the keynote of the Churches everywhere: those outside are not children of God. And you must remember that it is that Fatherhoodof God which connotes the Brotherhood of man. Only by the rooting in the Father-Life is the Brother-Life intelligible. And because the Theosophical Society knows no limit of creed, no limit of religion, and declares that every human being is, in his own essential nature, one with the Supreme Life and the Supreme God, because of that its Brotherhood is universal, and knows none as outside its pale. Every man, no matter what he is, is recognised as brother. He comes not into the Brotherhood, nor can he be cast out from it. His Spirit, his Life, places him in it: it is a fact beyond us, above us. We have no power either to create it or to destroy. We recognise the great fact, and we do not call ourselves the Universal Brotherhood, but only a nucleus in it—a very different thing; the Brotherhood is as universal as humanity, that is our fundamental doctrine, and it implies that Brotherhood is as universal as Life. So also with Masonry, where it is rightly seen and understood—no barriers of creed, all men equally welcome within the Masonic Lodge. I say "where rightly understood," for there are lands where Masonry has spread, where the Lodge has become exclusive as the creed has become exclusive; and among American Masons, I believe, the negro, as negro, is not admitted into the Masonic Lodge. But that is the denial of Masonry, a disgrace to it, and not a triumph. And although it be true that Masonry has lost widely its knowledge, it still for the most part remains a Brotherhood, and in that it has in it the link of a life that will not die, and that has every possibility of revival throughout the earth.
Quite outside these two, limited brotherhoods are proclaimed in every direction now. The Church asserts it within its own limits. All religions assert it within their respective limitations. Outside religions and churches the same cry is heard. Socialism declares it, and tries to build its policy upon it. Everywhere this cry of Brotherhood is heard, although it has not yet been lived, and that is one of the signs of the coming birth of the sub-race, in which Brotherhood shall be the dominant note of its every civilisation, and in which a civilisation that is not brotherly, in which there are ignorant people, and poor people, and starving people, and diseased people, will be looked at as barbarous, and not really as civilisation at all. Its note is Brotherhood, the dominant note of the coming day. And because we have taken that as our first object, we have a right to call ourselves a nucleus thereof; and because we definitely recognise it, we can consciously co-operate with nature. That is the real strength of our Movement—not our numbers, they are comparatively small, but our conscious working with the forces that make for the future. The Theosophical Society is a fragment of the vast Theosophical Movement which is surging upon every side around us; but this we have that enables us to be on the crest of that great wave, that we know for what we are working, we understand the tendencies which make for the future. Hence in our Theosophical Society we must above all else hold up this word, and work for it in every phase of human activity. That word marks out for your Theosophical Lodges what movements you should help, and what movements you shouldnot help. It is no use to pour water into a broken vessel, and every vessel that has not on it the name or the principle of Brotherhood is a broken vessel that will not hold water for the coming time. But every movement, however mingled with ignorance, with folly, with temporary mischief, which seeks after Brotherhood and strives to realise it, is a living vessel, into which the Water of Life may be poured; and with those movements you should work, trying to inspire and to purify, to get rid of that which comes from ignorance, and to replace it with the wisdom which it is your sacred duty to spread abroad among the children of men. So that in your public work you have this great keynote.
And that leads me to pause for a moment on that spreading Socialist Movement that you see around you on every side. Now, it is making one tremendous blunder that I need not dwell on here, but that I shall dwell on to-morrow night in addressing a Socialist Society. They are forgetting the very root of progress, they are forgetting the building of brothers, out of which to build a Brotherhood hereafter. They think that the future depends on economic conditions, on who holds land, and who holds capital. These conditions are conditions to be discussed carefully, to be worked out intellectually. But whatever ownership you have of any of the means of life, if the life is poisoned, it cannot be healthy in the midst even of a well-arranged society. For society grows out of men, and not men out of society, and until that is realised all schemes must fail, for they are founded on sand, and not on rock. You who have studied and understand, to some small extentat least, the powers which are working in the world of the present, you ought to be able to help to eliminate the evil and to strengthen the good. And the Theosophical Society, among these movements of the day, must hold up firmly a true ideal. It is the function of the prophet, of the spiritual teacher, to hold up the ideal, and point ever towards it, so that individuals may have it ever before their eyes and choose the roads which lead in the right direction.
And again, the principles that I have put to you may explain to you why this Theosophical Society, so weak, is yet so strong—weak in its numbers, weak in the qualifications of its members, not numbering amongst its adherents the most learned and the most mighty of the earth, made up of very mediocre, average people, not the great leaders of the civilisation of the day; but in them all, else would they not be members of the Theosophical Society, is the dawning aspiration after a nobler condition, and some willingness to sacrifice themselves in order that the coming of that condition may be quickened upon earth. That is the justification of our Society now. We are like the nutrient material that surrounds the germ, and the germ grows out of the love, and the aspiration, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, which are found in our movement, however little developed to-day. And the fact that we recognise it as duty, as ideal, is the promise for the future. We are what our past has made us; we shall be what our present is creating; and if within your heart and mine the longing for the nobler state is found, that marks our place in the future, and our right to be among theearlier members of the sub-race that is now preparing to be born. For our thoughts now are what we shall be in our next life; our aspirations now mark our capacities then. You know how the intermediate life is spent, between the death that will close your present lives and the birth that will open the portal of your next lives. You know that in the heavenly places you will be weaving into faculty, into capacity, every thought and every aspiration towards the higher life which in these days of your weakness you are generating, and are trying to cherish and cultivate. It is not you as you are who will make the future, but you as you shall be, self-created from your aspirations now. And just in proportion as each of you nourishes those aspirations, and cherishes those ideals, and tries, however feebly, to work them out amid the limitations of your past which cramps your present life, just so far will you, in the interval between death and birth, make the nobler faculties which shall qualify you to be born in the sixth sub-race upon earth. That should be your keynote in your lives now, that the inspiring motive, the controlling power. And if you want to assure yourselves that that sub-race is on the threshold, as I said, then look at the world around you, and measure the change which is coming over it. I said we were weak in numbers, that we are only average and mediocre people; but what about the spread of our ideas? What about the way in which, during the last thirty years, these Theosophical ideas have spread through this Fifth Race civilisation, have permeated its literature, are beginning to guide its science, are beginning to inspire its art? That is the proof of the strength ofthe force, despite the feebleness of the vehicles in which that force is playing. Very clearly not to you nor to me is the spread of these ideas due, but to the Mighty Ones behind the Society, who give the forces in which we are lacking. For the whole Movement is Theirs; They are working outside as well as within. And Their outside working shows itself in the innumerable movements which are all tending in the same direction. It is not we who have spread the ideas. The ideas are scattered in the mental atmosphere around us, and our only merit is that we caught them up a little more quickly than other people, and realise that they are a part of the Eternal Wisdom. That is our only claim, our only prerogative—consciously, deliberately we choose these ideas, and however weakly we carry them out, none the less the choice has been made and registered in the books of Destiny. For whether you will or not, you must grow in the direction of your thought; and you cannot be part of this Movement without your thought being more or less colored by the Theosophical ideal.
People often say: "Why should I come into the Theosophical Society? You give us your books. You spread your knowledge broadcast everywhere. I can buy it in the book-shops. I can hear it in the lectures. Why should I come in?" And I always say: "There is no reason why you should come in, if you do not wish to come. Take everything we can give, and take it freely. You are more than welcome to it. We are only trustees for you. And if you do not care to be among the pioneers, by all means stay outside, and walk along the smoother paths which others have carved out foryou." But there is one reason that I may say to you—I do not say it to those outside—there is a reason why you should be within it. You are more in touch with the forces that make the future. You are surrounded, bathed, in the atmosphere in which the future shall grow. All that is good in you is nourished by those forces. All that is harmonious with them is strengthened by their overmastering might. You cannot be amongst us without sharing that inspiration; you cannot be a member without sharing the life which is poured out unstinted through all the vessels of the Theosophical Society. Outside it is not worth while to say this, for that is not a reason for inducing people to come in; but you may rejoice that good karma in the past has brought you into the Society in the present. It has given you the right to have this opportunity of a nobler birth in the coming time, has given you the opportunity of taking part in that great work which is beginning to be wrought among humanity. It gives you, from your life in the heavenly places, touch with powers and opportunities that belong to these ideals in the world of men, and it gives you the possibility there of touch with the Mighty Ones whom here, however unworthily, we strive to follow. So that it is a great thing to be within it, and it means much for the future of you, if you can keep in it. For the immediate future of the Theosophical Society is the work of building that next sub-race which is to come. That is the work for which consciously it ought to be working now. In proportion as you realise it, so will be the strength of your labor; in proportion as you understand it, so should be your share in the gladderwork of that happier time. For the future of the Theosophical Society is to be the mother, and even the educator, of the child sixth sub-race which already is going through its ante-natal life. That is its future, secure, inevitable; yours the choice if you will share that future or not.
You will have seen on the handbill announcing the lecture, that we are holding this meeting in connection with my taking office as President of the Theosophical Society, and it is my purpose, in addressing you to-night, to try to show you, at least to some small extent, what is the value which the Society represents, as regarded from the standpoint of human activities, manifested in the world of thought. I want to try to show you that when we sayTheosophywe are speaking of something of real value which can serve humanity in the various departments of intellectual life. I propose, in order to do this, to begin with a very brief statement of the fundamental idea of Theosophy; and then, turning to the world of religious thought, to the world of artistic thought, to the world of scientific thought, and lastly to the world of political thought, to point out to you how that which is called Theosophy may bring contributions of value to each of these in turn.
Now Theosophy, as the name implies, is a Wisdom, a Divine Wisdom; and the name historically, as many ofyou know, is identical with that which in Eastern lands has been known by various names—as Tao, in China; as the Brahmaviḍyâ, in India; as the Gnosis, among the Greeks and the early Christians; and as Theosophy through the Middle Ages and in modern times. It implies always a knowledge, a Wisdom that transcends the ordinary knowledge, the ordinary science of the earth; it implies a wisdom as regards life, a wisdom as regards the essential nature of things, a wisdom which is summed up in two words when we say "God-Wisdom." For it has been held in elder days—although in modern times it has become largely forgotten—that man can really never know anything at all unless he knows himself, and knows himself Divine; that knowledge of God, the Supreme, the Universal Life, is the root of all true knowledge of matter as well as of Spirit, of this world as well as of worlds other than our own; that in that one supreme knowledge all other knowledges find their root; that in that supreme light all other lights have their origin; and that if man can know anything, it is because he is Divine in nature, and, sharing the Life that expresses itself in a universe, he can know at once the Life that originates and the Matter that obeys.
Starting from such a standpoint, you will at once realise that Theosophy is a spiritual theory of the world as against a materialistic. It sees Spirit as the moulder, the shaper, the arranger of matter, and matter only as the obedient expression and servant of the Spirit; it sees in man a spiritual being, seeking to unfold his powers by experience in a universe of forms; and it declares that man misunderstands himself, and will fail of his trueend, if he identifies himself with the form that perishes instead of with the life which is deathless. Hence, opposed to materialism alike in science and philosophy, it builds up a spiritual conception of the universe, and necessarily it is idealistic in its thought, and holds up the importance of the ideal as a guide to all human activity. The ideal, which is thought applied to conduct, that is the keynote of Theosophy and its value in the varied worlds of thought; and the power of thought, the might of thought, the ability that it has to clothe itself in forms whose life only depends on the continuance of the thought that gave them birth, that is its central note, or keynote, in all the remedies that it applies to human ills. Idealist everywhere, idealist in religion, idealist in art, idealist in science, idealist in the practical life that men call politics, idealist everywhere; but avoiding the blunder into which some idealists have fallen, when they have not recognised that human thought is only a portion of the whole, and not the whole. The Theosophist recognises that the Divine Thought, of which the universe is an expression, puts limitations on his own power of thought, on his own creative activity. He realises that the whole compels the part, and that his own thought can only move within the vast circle of the Divine Thought, which he only partially expresses; so that while he will maintain that, on the ideal depends all that is called "real" in the lower worlds, he will realise that his creative power can only slowly mould matter to his will, and though every result will depend on a creative thought, the results will often move slowly, adapting themselves to the thought that gives them birth. Hence, whileidealist, he is not impracticable; while he sees the power of thought, he recognises its limitations in space and time; and while asserting the vital importance of right thought and right belief, he realises that only slowly does the flower of thought ripen into the fruit of action.
But on the importance of thought he lays a stress unusual in modern life. It is the cant of the day, in judging the value of a man, that "it does not matter what he believes but only what he does." That is not true. It matters infinitely what a man believes; for as a man's belief so he is; as a man's thought, so inevitably is his action. There was a time in the world of thought when it was said with equal error: "It does not matter what a man does, provided his faith is right." If that word "faith" had meant the man's thought in its integrity, then there would have been but little error; for the right thought would inevitably have brought right action; but in those days right thought meant only orthodox thought, according to a narrow canon of interpretation, the obedient repetition of creeds, the blind acceptance of beliefs imposed by authority. In those days what was called Orthodoxy in religion was made the measure of the man, and judgment depended upon orthodox acquiescence. Against that mistake the great movement that closed the Middle Ages was the protest of the intellect of man, and it was declared that no external authority must bind the intellect, and none had right to impose from outside the thought which is the very essence of the man—that great assertion of the right of private judgment, of the supreme principle of the free intelligence, so necessary for the progress of humanity.But like all things it has been followed by a reaction, and men have run to the other extreme: that nothing matters except conduct, and action alone is to be considered. But your action is the result of your thought of yesterday, and follows your yesterday as its expression in the outer world; your thought of to-day is your action of to-morrow, and your future depends on its accuracy and its truth, on its consonance with reality. Hence it is all-important in the modern world to give back to thought its right place as above action, as its inspirer and its guide. For the human spirit by its expression as intellect judges, decides, directs, controls. Its activity is the outcome of its thinking; and if without caring for thought you plunge into action, you have the constant experiments, feeble and fruitless, which so largely characterise our modern life.
Pass, then, from that first assertion of the importance of right thinking, to see what message Theosophy has for the world of religious thought. What is religion? Religion is the quenchless thirst of the human spirit for the Divine. It is the Eternal, plunged into a world of transitory phenomena, striving to realise its own eternity. It is the Immortal, flung into a world of death, trying to realise its own deathlessness. It is the white Eagle of Heaven, born in the illimitable spaces, beating its wings against the bars of matter, and striving to break them and rise into the immensities where are its birthplace and its real home. That is religion: the striving of man for God. And that thirst of man for God many have tried to quench with what is called Theology, or with books that are called sacred, traditions that are deemedholy, ceremonies and rites which are but local expressions of a universal truth. You can no more quench that thirst of the human Spirit by anything but individual experience of the Divine, than you can quench the thirst of the traveller parched and dying in the desert by letting him hear water go down the throat of another. Human experience, and that alone, is the rock on which all religion is founded, that is the rock that can never be shaken, on which every true Church must be built. Books, it is true, are often sacred; but you may tear up every sacred book in the world, and as long as man remains, and God to inspire man, new books can be written, new pages of inspiration can be penned. You may break in pieces every ceremony, however beautiful and elevating, and the Spirit that made them to express himself has not lost his artistic power, and can make new rites and new ceremonies to replace every one that is broken and cast aside. The Spirit is deathless as God is deathless, and in that deathlessness of the Spirit lies the certainty, the immortality of religion. And Theosophy, in appealing to that immortal experience, points the world of religions—confused by many an attack, bewildered by many an assault, half timid before the new truth discovered every day, half scared at the undermining of old foundations, and the tearing by criticism of many documents—points it back to its own inexhaustible source, and bids it fear neither time nor truth, since Spirit is truth and eternity. All that criticism can take from you is the outer form, never the living reality; and well indeed is it for the churches and for the religions of the world that the outworks of documents should be levelledwith the ground, in order to show the impregnability of the citadel, which is knowledge and experience.
But in the world of religious thought there are many services, less important, in truth, than the one I have spoken of, but still important and valuable to the faiths of the world; for Theosophy brings back to men, living in tradition, testimony to the reality of knowledge transcending the knowledge of the senses and the reasoning powers of the lower mind. It comes with its hands full of proof, modern proof, proof of to-day, living witnesses, of unseen worlds, of subtler worlds than the physical. It comes, as the Founders and the early Teachers of every religion have come, to testify again by personal experience to the reality of the unseen worlds of which the religions are the continual witnesses in the physical world. Have you ever noticed in the histories of the great religions how they grow feebler in their power over men as faith takes the place of knowledge, and tradition the place of the living testimony of living men? That is one of the values of Theosophy in the religious world, that it teaches men to travel to worlds unseen, and to bring back the evidence of what they have met and studied; that it so teaches men their own nature that it enables them to separate soul and body, and travel without the physical body in worlds long thought unattainable, save through the gateway of death. I say "Long thought unattainable"; but the scriptures of every religion bear witness that they are not unattainable. The Hindu tells us that man should separate himself from his body as you strip the sheath from the stem of the grass. The Buḍḍhist tells us that by deep thought and contemplation mind may know itself as mind apart from the physical brain. Christianity tells us many a story of the personal knowledge of its earlier teachers, of a ministry of angels that remained in the Church, and of angelic teachers training the neophytes in knowledge. Islam tells us that its own great prophet himself passed into higher worlds, and brought back the truths which civilised Arabia, and gave knowledge which lit again the torch of learning in Europe when the Moors came to Spain. And so religion after religion bears testimony to the possibility of human knowledge outside the physical world; we only re-proclaim the ancient truth—with this addition, which some religions now shrink from making: that what man did in the past man may do to-day; that the powers of the Spirit are not shackled, that the knowledge of the other worlds is still attainable to man. And outside that practical knowledge of other worlds it brings by that same method the distinct assertion of the survival of the human Spirit after death. It is only in very modern times that that has been doubted by any large numbers of people. Here and there in the ancient world, like a Lucretius in Rome, perhaps; like a Democritus in Greece; certainly like a Chârvâka in India, you find one here and there who doubts the deathlessness of the Spirit in man; but in modern days that disbelief, or the hopeless cynicism which thinks knowledge impossible, has penetrated far and wide among the cultured, the educated classes, and from them to the masses of the uneducated. That is the phenomenon of modern days alone, that man by hundreds and by thousands despairs of his own immortality. And yet the deepest convictionof humanity, the deepest thought in man, is the persistence of himself, the "I" that cannot die. And with one great generalisation, and one method, Theosophy asserts at once the deathlessness of man and the existence of God; for it says to man, as it was ever said in the ancient days: "The proof of God is not without you but within you." All the greatest teachers have reiterated that message, so full of hope and comfort; for it shuts none out from knowledge. What is the method? Strip away your senses, and you find the mind; strip away the mind, and you find the pure reason; strip away the pure reason, and you find the will-to-live; strip away the will-to-live, and you find Spirit as a unit; strike away the limitations of the Spirit, and you find God. Those are the steps: told in ancient days, repeated now. "Lose your life," said the Christ, "and you shall find it to life eternal." That is true: let go everything that you can let go; you cannot let go yourself, and in the impossibility of losing yourself you find the certainty of the Self Universal, the Universal Life.
Pass again from that to another religious point. I mentioned ceremonies, rites of every faith. Those Theosophy looks at and understands. So many have cast away ceremonies, even if they have found them helpful, because they do not understand them, and fear superstition in their use. Knowledge has two great enemies: Superstition and Scepticism. Knowledge destroys blind superstition by asserting and explaining natural truths of which the superstition has exaggerated the unessentials; and it destroys scepticism by proving the reality of the facts of the unseen world. The ceremony,the rite, is a shadow in the world of sense of the truths in the world of Spirit; and every religion, every creed, has its ceremonies as the outward physical expression of some eternal spiritual truth. Theosophy defends them, justifies them, by explaining them; and when they are understood they cease to be superstitions that blind, and become crutches that help the halting mind to climb to the spiritual life.
Let us pass from the world of religious thought, and pause for a moment on the world of artistic thought. Now to Art, perhaps more than in any other department of the human intelligence, the ideal is necessary for life. All men have wondered from time to time why the architecture—to take one case only—why the architecture of the past is so much more wonderful, so much more beautiful, than the architecture of the present. When you want to build some great national building to-day you have to go back to Greece, or Rome, or the Middle Ages for your model. Why is it that you have no new architecture, expressive of your own time, as that was expressive of the past? The severe order of Egypt found its expression in the mighty temples of Karnak; the beauty and lucidity of Grecian thought bodied itself out in the chaste and simple splendor of Grecian buildings; the sternness of Roman law found its ideal expression in those wondrous buildings whose ruins still survive in Rome; the faith of the Middle Ages found its expression in the upward-springing arch of Gothic architecture, and the exquisite tracery of the ornamented building. But if you go into the Gothic cathedral, what do you find there? That not alone inwondrous arch and splendid pillar, upspringing in its delicate and slender strength from pavement to roof, not there only did the art of the builder find its expression. Go round to any out-of-the-way corner, or climb the roof of those great buildings, and you will find in unnoticed places, in hidden corners, the love of the artist bodying itself forth in delicate tracery, in stone that lives. Men carved for love, not only for fame; men carved for beauty's sake, not only for money; and they built perfectly because they had love and faith, the two divine builders, and embodied both in deathless stone. Before you can be more than copyists you must find your modern ideal, and when you have found it you can build buildings that will defy time. But you have not found it yet; the artist amongst us is too much of a copyist, and too little of an inspirer and a prophet. We do not want the painter only to paint for us the things our own eyes can see. We want the artist eye to see more than the common eye, and to embody what he sees in beauty for the instruction of our blinded sight. We do not want accurate pictures of cabbages and turnips and objects of that sort. However cleverly done, they remain cabbages and turnips still. The man who could paint for us the thought that makes the cabbage, he would be the artist, the man who knows the Life. And so for our new Art we must have a splendid ideal. Do you want to know how low Art may sink when materialism triumphs and vulgarises and degrades? Then see that exhibition of French pictures that was placed in Bond Street some years ago, which attracted those who loved indecency more than those who loved the beautiful, andthen you will understand how Art perishes where the breath of the ideal does not inspire and keep alive. And Theosophy to the artist would bring back that ancient reverence which regards the artist of the Beautiful as one of the chief God-revealers to the race of which he is a portion; which sees in the great musical artist, or the sculptor, or the painter, a God-inspired man, bringing down the grace of heaven to illuminate the dull grey planes of earth. The artists should be the prophets of our time, the revealers of the Divine smothered under the material; and were they this, they would be regarded with love and with reverence; for true art needs reverence for its growing, and the artist, of all men—subtle, responsive, sensitive to everything that touches him—needs an atmosphere of love and reverence that he may flower into his highest power, and show the world some glimpse of the Beauty which is God.
And the world of science—perhaps there, after the world of religion, Theosophy has most of value to offer. Take Psychology. What a confusion; what a mass of facts want arrangement; what a chaos of facts out of which no cosmos is built! Theosophy, by its clear and accurate definition of man, of the relation of consciousness to its bodies, of Spirit to its vehicles, arranges into order that vast mass of facts with which psychology is struggling now. It takes into that wonderful "unconscious" or "sub-conscious"—which is now, as it were, the answer to every riddle; but it is not understood—it takes into that the light of direct investigation; divides the "unconscious" which comes from the past from that which is the presage of the future, separates outthe inheritance of our long past ancestry which remains as the "sub-conscious" in us; points to the higher "super-conscious," not "sub-conscious," of which the genius is the testimony at the present time; shows that human consciousness transcends the brain; proves that human consciousness is in touch with worlds beyond the physical; and makes sure and certain the hope expressed by science, that it is possible that that which is now unconscious shall become conscious, and that man shall find himself in touch with a universe and not only in touch with one limited world. That which Myers sometimes spoke of as the "cosmic consciousness," as against our own limited consciousness, is a profound truth, and carries with it the prophecy of man's future greatness. Just as the fish is limited to the water, as the bird is limited to the air, so man has been limited to the physical body, and has dreamed he had no touch with other spaces, to which he really belongs. But your consciousness is living in three worlds, and not in one, is touching mightier possibilities, is beginning to contact subtler phenomena; and all the traces of that are found in your newest psychology, and are simply proofs of those many theories about man which Theosophy has been teaching in the world for many a century, nay, for many a millennium.
And physics and chemistry is there anything of value along Theosophical lines of thought and investigation, which might aid our physicists and our chemists, puzzled at the subtlety of the forces with which they have to deal? Has it never struck some of the more intuitive physicists and materialists that there may be subtlersenses which may be used for investigation of the subtler forces? That man may have in himself senses by the evolution of which he will able to pierce the secrets that now he is striving vainly to unveil? Has it never even struck a physicist or a chemist that, if he does not believe in the possibility of himself developing those subtler forces, he might utilise them in others in order to prosecute further his own investigations? They are beginning to to do that in France. They are beginning to now try to use those whom they call "lucid"; that is, people who see with eyes keener than the physical; they are beginning to use those in medicine, are using them for the diagnosis of disease, are using them for the testing of the sensitiveness of man, are beginning to use them to try to discover if man has any body subtler than the physical. And while I would not say to the scientific man: "Accept our theories," I would say to him: "Take them as hypotheses by which you may direct your further experiments, and you may go on and make discoveries more rapidly than you can at the present time." For there is many a clairvoyant who, put before a piece of some elemental substance, could describe it very much better than is done by your fractional analysis. And along other lines—chemical and electrical—surely there is something a little unsatisfactory, when a few years ago men told us that the atom was composed literally of myriads of particles, and during the last year it has been suggested that perhaps one particle is all of which an atom is composed. Might it not be wise to try to get hold of your atoms by sight keener than the physical, as it is possible to do, whether by the ordinary clairvoyant who is sometimes developed up to that point, or by an untrained sensitive whose senses are set free from the limitations of the physical brain, and from that sensitive try to gather something of the composition of matter which may guide you in your more scientific search? I realise that what one, or two, or twenty people see, is no proof for the scientific man; but it may give a hint whereby mathematical deductions may be made, and calculations which otherwise would not be thought of. So that I only suggest the utilising by science of certain powers that are now available, keener than those of the ordinary senses—a new sort of human microscope or human telescope—whereby you may pierce to the larger or the smaller, beyond the reach of your physical microscopes and telescopes, made of metal and not of intelligence showing itself in matter.
Is there anything of value in Theosophical ideas, shall I say to the science of medicine? Some say it is not yet a science, but works empirically only. There is some truth in that; but are there not here again lines of investigation which the physician might well study? For instance, the power of thought over the human body, all that mass of facts on which partly is built up such a science as Mental Healing, or what is called Faith Cure, and so on. Do you think that these things have been going on for hundreds of years, and that there is no truth lying behind them? "The effects of imagination," you say. But what is imagination? It does not matter of what it is the effect, if it brings cure where before there was disease. If you put into a man's body a drug that you do not understand, and find that it cures adisease and relieves a pain, will you throw the drug aside because you do not understand it? And why do you throw the power of imagination aside because you cannot weigh it in your balance, nor find that it depresses one scale more than the other? Imagination is one of the subtlest powers of thought: imagination is one of the strongest powers that the doctor might utilise when his drugs fail him and his old methods no longer serve his purpose. Suggestion, the power of thought. Why, there are records of cases where suggestion has killed! That which has killed can also cure, and man's body being only a product of thought, built up through the ages, answers more rapidly to its creator than it does to clumsier products from the mineral and vegetable kingdoms. Here again I only ask experiment. You know that you can produce wounds upon the body of the hypnotised patient, in a state of trance. By suggestion lesions are made, burns are caused, inflammation and pain appear by the mere suggestion of a wound. A blister is placed on a patient and forbidden to act; the skin is untouched when the blister is removed: a bit of wet paper is given by thought the qualities of the blister, and it will raise the skin, with all the accompaniments of the chemical blister. Now these things are known. You can see the pictures of wounds thus produced, if you will, in some of the Paris hospitals, for along this line the Frenchman is investigating further than the Englishman has done. And along that line also lies much of useful experiment to be brought to the relief of the diseases of humanity.
But as I have touched upon medicine, let me say—forI ought here to say it—that there are some methods of modern medicine which Theosophy emphatically condemns. It declares that no knowledge which is gained from a tortured, a vivisected creature, is legitimate, even if it were as useful as it has been proved to be useless. It declares that all inoculations of disease into the healthy body are illegitimate, and it condemns all such. It declares that all those foul injections of modern medicine which use animal fluids to restore the exhausted vitality of man are ruinous to the body into which they are put. Here again France, by the very excess of its methods, is beginning to recoil before the results which have come about. Only two years ago I was told by a leading physician of Paris that many of the doctors had met together to look at the results which had grown out of the methods that for years they had been following without hesitation and without scruple, and that they feared that they had caused more diseases than they cured. Why are these things condemned as illegitimate? Because the building up of the human body is the building by a living Spirit of a temple for himself, and it is moulded by that Spirit for his own purposes. The higher powers of intelligence have made the human body what it is, different from the animal bodies out of which, physically, in ages long gone by, it has grown. Your delicacy of touch, the exquisite beauty and delicacy of your nervous system, these things are the outcome of the higher powers of the Spirit expressing themselves in the human body, where they cannot express themselves in the animal form. And if you ignore this, if you forget it, if you forget that thissplendid human temple built up by the Spirit of man through ages of toil and of suffering, to express his own higher qualities—compassion, tenderness, love, pity for the weak and the helpless, protection of the helpless against the strong—if you forget the whole of that, and act as a brute even would not act, in cruelty and wickedness to men and animals alike, you will degrade the body you are trying to preserve, you will paralyse the body you are trying to save from disease, and you will go back into the savagery which is the nemesis of cruelty, and ruin these nobler bodies, the inheritance of the civilised races.
I pass from that to my last world, the world of political thought. Now Theosophy takes no part in party politics. It lays down the great principle of human Brotherhood, and bids its followers go out into the world and work on it—using their intelligence, their power of thought, to judge the value of every method which is proposed. And our general criticism on the politics of the moment would be that they are remedies, not preventions, and leave untouched the root out of which all the miseries grow. Looking sometimes at your party politics, it seems to me as though you were as children plucking flowers and sticking them into the sand and saying: "See what a beautiful garden I have made." And when you wake the next morning the flowers are dead, for there were no roots, but only rootless flowers. I know you must make remedies, but you should not stop at that. When you send out your Red Cross doctors and nurses to pick up the mutilated bodies that your science of war has maimed, they are doing noble work, and deserve ourlove and gratitude, for the wounded must be nursed; but the man who works for peace does more for the good of humanity than the Red Cross doctors and nurses. And so also in the political world. You cannot safely live "hand-to-mouth" in politics any more than in any other department of human life. But how many are there in the political parties who care for causes and not only for effects? That is the criticism we should make. We see everywhere Democracy spreading; but Democracy is on its trial, and unless it can evolve some method by which the wise shall rule, and not merely the weight of ignorant numbers, it will dig its own grave. So long as you leave your people ignorant they are not fit to rule. The schools should come before the vote, and knowledge before power. You are proud of your liberty; you boast of a practically universal suffrage—leaving out, of course, one half of humanity!—but taking your male suffrage as you have it, how many of the voters who go to the poll know the principles of political history, know anything of economics, know anything of all the knowledge which is wanted for the guiding of the ship of the State through troubled waters? You do not choose your captains out of people who know nothing of navigation; but you choose the makers of your rulers out of those who have not studied and do not know. That is not wise. I do not deny it is a necessary stage in the evolution of man. I know that the Spirit acts wisely, and guides the nations along roads in which lessons are to be learned; and I hope that out of the blunders, and the errors, and the crudities of present politics there will evolve a saner method, in which the wise of the nation will have powerand guide its councils, and wisdom, not numbers, shall speak the decisive word.
Now there is one criticism of politics that we often hear in these days. It is said that behind politics lie economics. That is true. You may go on playing at politics for ever and ever; but if your economic foundation is rotten, no political remedies can build a happy and prosperous nation. But while I agree that behind politics lie economics, there is something that lies also behind economics, and of that I hear little said. Behind economics lies character, and without character you cannot build a free and a happy nation. A nation enormous in power, what do you know of the way in which your power is wielded in many a far-off land? How much do you know about your vast Indian Empire? How many of your voters going to the poll can give an intelligent answer to any question affecting that 300,000,000 of human beings whom you hold in your hand, and deal with as you will? There are responsibilities of Empire as well as pride in it, and pride of Empire is apt to founder when the responsibilities of Empire are ignored. And so the Theosophist is content to go to the root of the matter, and try to build up for you the citizens out of whom your future State is to be made. Education, real education, secular education, is now your cry. They tried secular education in France; they destroyed religious teaching; they tried to give morality without religion. But the moral lessons had no effect: they were too cold and dull, and dead. Is it not a scandal that in a country like this, where the vast majority are religious, you are quarrelling so much about the triflesthat separate you, that the only way to peace seems to be to take religion out of the schools altogether, and train the children only in morality, allowing an insignificant minority to have its way? Why! we have done better than that in India, we Theosophists. Hinḍu Theosophists have founded there a College in which, despite all their sects and all their religious quarrels, they have found a common minimum of Hinḍuism on which their children can be trained in religion and morality alike. I grant it was a Theosophical inspiration that began the movement; but the whole mass of Hinḍus have fallen in with it, and are accepting the books as the basis of education. Government has recognised them, and has begun to introduce them for the use of Hinḍus in its own schools. That is the way in which we Theosophists work at politics. We go to the root to build character, and we know that noble characters will make a noble and also a prosperous nation. But you can no more make a nation of free men out of children untrained in duty and in righteousness, than you can build a house that will stand if you use ill-baked bricks and rotten timber. Our keynote in politics is Brotherhood. That worked out into life will give you the nation that you want.
And what does Brotherhood mean? It means that everyone of us, you and I, every man and woman throughout the land, looks on all others as they look on their own brothers, and acts on the same principle which in the family rules. You keep religion out of politics? You cannot, without peril to your State; for unless you teach your people that they are a Brotherhood, whether or not they choose to recognise it, you are building on the sand and not on the rock. And what does Brotherhood mean? It means that the man who gains learning, uses it to teach the ignorant, until none are ignorant. It means that the man who is pure takes his purity to the foul, until all have become clean. It means that the man who is wealthy uses his wealth for the benefit of the poor, until all have become prosperous. It means that everything you gain, you share; everything you achieve, you give its fruit to all. That is the law of Brotherhood, and it is the law of national as well as of individual life. You cannot rise alone. You are bound too strongly each to each. If you use your strength to raise yourself by trampling on your fellows, inevitably you will fail by the weakness that you have wronged.
Do you know who are the greatest enemies of a State? The weak, injured by the strong. For, above all States, rules an Eternal Justice; and the tears of miserable women, and the curses of angry, starving men, sap the foundations of a State that denies Brotherhood, and reach the ears of that Eternal Justice by which alone States live, and Nations continue. It is written in an ancient scripture that a Master of Duty said to a King: "Beware the tears of the weak, for they sap the thrones of Kings." Strength may threaten: weakness undermines. Strength may stand up to fight: weakness cuts away the ground on which the fighters are standing. And the message of Theosophy to the modern political world is: Think less about your outer laws, and more about the lives of the people who have to live under thoselaws. Remember that government can only live when the people are happy; that States can only flourish where the masses of the population are contented; that all that makes life enjoyable is the right of the lowest and the poorest; that they can do without external happiness far less than you, who have so many means of inner satisfaction, of enjoyment, by the culture that you possess and that they lack. If there is not money enough for everything, spend your money in making happier, healthier, purer, more educated, the lives of the poor; then a happy nation will be an imperial nation; for Brotherhood is the strongest force on earth.