library
ANDOVER NEWTON
theological school
PUBLISHED BY
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The Theosophical Quarterly
Subscription price, $2.00 per
annum; single copies, 50 cents
Address all communications
Published by The Theo^phicalSociety
at 64 Washington Mews, New York, N.
July; October; January; April
to P. O. Box 64 , Station O, New York
• Ip ennies may be obtained from and subscriptions may l c j to
CONTENTS OF VOL. XXXIII,
July, 1935
PAGB
. S
notes and COMMENTS. . 16
fragments. . 17
0N TH n Mystery Tr! bl»»»tsiV ”
A LAND OF MYS * ▼ FTTERS of Greeting . 39
T.S. ACTIVITIES: Convention Report, . 8l
reviews..... 87
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
. TO „ at the Post Office at New York, N. Y.. under the
Eotered os second-class matter September S. M
Act of March 3 . i 8 79- k v TVip Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Quarterly
Subscription price, $2.00 per annum; single copies, 50 cents.
Published by The Theosophical Society
at 64 Washington Mews, New York, N. Y.
0
July; October; January; April
Address all communications to P. O. Box 64 , Station O, New York
In Europe, single copies may be obtained from and subscriptions may be sent to John
M. Watkins, 21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, London, W. C. 2, England; or to
Mr, E. H. Lincoln, 9 Beaconsfield Road, Low Fell, Gateshead-on-Tyne, England, from
whom all back numbers may be obtained. Annual subscription price, $2.00, postpaid.
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The principal aim and object of this Society is to form the nucleus of a
Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex,
caste or colour. The subsidiary objects are: The study of ancient and modern
religions, philosophies and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance
of such study; and the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and
the psychical powers latent in man.
The Theosophical Quarterly is the official organ of the original
Theosophical Society founded in New York by II. P. Blavatsky ,
W. Q. Judge and others , in 1875 .
We have no connection whatsoever with any other organization
calling itself Theosophical , formerly headed by Mrs. Besant , nor
with similar bodies , the purposes and methods of which are wholly ,
foreign to our own.
Editors, The Theosophical Quarterly.
JULY, 1935
• ^u- Theosophicol Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion or declaration
in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless contained in an official document.
An Ancient Theory of Evolution
T HE conception of evolution is of dateless antiquity. It is implicit in all
the great religions, for every real exponent of spiritual truth has based
his teaching upon the immediate experience of his own evolution from an
elemental into a real manhood. Moreover, this transmutation of human con¬
sciousness, the birth of the Immortal from the chrysalis of the mortal, was not
interpreted as an isolated supernatural event. According to the mystical tra¬
ditions which descended from India, Chaldasa and Egypt, the Universe, both as
a whole and in every part, is in continuous process of transmutation, as if the
hidden life of Nature were endowed with an alchemical potency which every¬
where and always separates the subtile from the gross.
It would be possible to multiply quotations in illustration of the theme,—
from the Indian Purdnas and the liturgies of Egypt, from the fragments of the
earliest known systems of Greek thought, from the Book of Genesis itself. One
of the noblest expressions of this ancient theory of evolution is found in a poem of
Jaldl Ud-din Rumi, the Sufi mystic of the thirteenth century:
I died from mineral and plant became;
Died from the plant, and took a sentient frame;
Died from the beast, and donned a human dress;
When by my dying did I e’er grow less?
Another time from manhood I must die
To soar with angel pinions through the sky,
Midst Angels also I must lose my place,
Since everything shall perish save His Face.
Let me be naught! I he harp-strings tell me plain
That unto Him do we return again.
Darwinism
The modem evolutionist would scarcely recognize Jaldl Ud-din Rumi as a
precursor. In the first place, it is most unlikely that he would have the faintest
5
6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
notion as to the meaning which the Sufi intended to convey. The modem
hypothesis of evolution is not concerned with the doctrine that the kingdoms of
Nature signify states of consciousness through which the Spirit, or Monad, must
pass on its way to perfect knowledge of Itself. What was the problem which
inspired the remarkable line of scientists who first formulated this theory,
Buff on, Lamarck, Lyell, Wallace, Huxley, above all, Charles Darwin? It was
not the mystery of consciousness, but the nature and origin of biological species.
The range of their interests may seem narrow, but their actual achievements
were of the greatest importance. By the study of geological strata and of the
physical basis of heredity, they and their successors have provided objective
tangible proof that living forms have undergone countless transformations during
the aeons which have elapsed since the earliest fossils were integrated in rock.
Few will deny Darwin’s deduction that the succession of organisms represents as
a whole a progress from inferior to superior types, this progress being determined
in the last analysis by “natural selection”, by the “survival of the fittest” in the
“struggle for existence”. As has been pointed out, Darwin’s years of meditation
terminated in an intuition of a profound and all-embracing spiritual truth, even
though he may have failed to surmise its universal implications. Men may prefer
to forget the fact, but it is true, above as below, that advancement and growth
are the fruit of incessant struggle and effort, of an eternal warfare against blind¬
ness and inertia. Life, all life, is a battle-field.
Emergent Evolution and Orthogenesis
The weakness of Darwin’s hypothesis was that he failed to admit any purpose
or direction within the evolutionary process. He assumed too readily that every¬
thing could be explained by physical causes, by the operation of mechanical
laws. It is self-evident, he argued, that no two creatures of any species are
exactly alike; that there are always variations, however minute, and Nature
relentlessly selects those which are best adapted for survival. Darwin and, until
quite recently, his followers, imagined that variations are produced in the most
haphazard and accidental fashion, generally as a result of the permutations and
combinations of the qualities or “characters” which are transmitted to every
organism by its parents.
This naive view can no longer be maintained. The influence of heredity in
determining many variations is unquestioned, as Mendel showed; but heredity
does not explain the discontinuous variations, known as mutations or saltations,
which are manifested by the sudden appearance of new characters in an organism,
that is, of qualities which are unlike any of those possessed by its ancestors. It
is as if certain potentialities, hitherto hidden beneath the surface of life, abruptly
emerged into visibility, and the attested fact that such mutations occur with
some frequency has provided a basis for the so-called theory of “emergent evo¬
lution”. Many biologists now believe that discontinuous variations have been
more effective as a cause of the origin of species than the slight continuous vari¬
ations which Darwin regarded as sufficient. Experiments in the breeding of
fruit-flies suggest the possibility that some mutations, at least, can be induced
NOTES AND COMMENTS
7
by subjecting these creatures to the action of rays of various kinds and intensities,
the fact is significant, though some of the methods which biologists habitually
a opt m their investigation of animal processes, are coarse and brutal, when
hey are not vicious and sinister. Even fruit-flies presumably have “natural
ng ts , and Nature may yet take some revenge upon man for tampering with
them, merely to satisfy his curiosity.
However, it has been established that the course of animate Nature is marked
y t e appearance, from time to time, of forms which inaugurate new types
distinct not only in degree but also in kind from all that have preceded them.
at is even more remarkable, species seem to have a definite period of growth,
like individuals. There is a tendency, as most biologists now admit, for vari¬
ations of any given character to follow, through successive generations, a deter¬
mined line. Natural selection sets limits to the extension of this line, but it
cannot of itself initiate anything. The primal impulse seems to be given by the
emergence of a new quality which continues to expand during thousands or
mi ions of years until it terminates—as it were—in a completely exfoliated
character, the “form” of which is seen to have been present from the beginning,
as the form of a plant is potentially present from the moment of the construction
of the seed. It is only by such a supposition that the rich beauty of living Nature
can be justified to the reason. If there were nothing but chance variation and
natural selection, the only values in the world would be utilitarian, in the nar¬
rowest sense. We know that this is not so, for the earth contains nightingales as
well as sparrows, and gazelles as well as pigs. To this tendency of organisms to
evolve in a given direction towards a definite goal, biologists have given the name
orthogenesis , which means “to be bom straight”, a vivid phrase, for it suggests
that to be really bom, one must be bom under the dominion of a permanent guid¬
ing principle.
The Exfoliation of Principles
It is a commentary upon the bankruptcy of the so-called scientific imagination,
that the logical and inevitable consequence of orthogenesis is not perceived,
biologist persists in the attempt to interpret in materialistic and mechar^mc
terms, vital phenomena which cannot be adequately conceived apart from the
idea of purpose.
Indeed, the student of Theosophy finds in the facts underlying the theories of
emergent evolution and orthogenesis, a confirmation of certain propositions set
forth in The Secret Doctrine. In many ways, these recall the ancient conception,
celebrated in the Sufi verses, of the pilgrimage of the Monad through the natural
kingdoms. It is suggested that an ascending series of forms in the material
world represents the gradual exfoliation of archetypes, of astral, psychic, spiritual
and divine principles. The Stoics aptly named these principles logoi spermatikoi ,
the “ideas which generate”, or, as defined by Marcus Aurelius, “the germs of
future existences, endowed with the power to produce change, a succession of
appearances and the realization of their essence.” The ultimate cause of a
mutation or discontinuous variation, according to such a hypothesis, would be
8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the descent of a previously discamate “idea” or “entity” from the invisible into
the visible world; and orthogenesis would be the forward movement whereby
the “entity” becomes gradually embodied. In the terminology of The Secret
Doctrine , this creative “entity” is, in its inmost essence, a “Divine Flame”, a ray
of Creative Consciousness, a mode of the One Life which forms and transforms
all the manifestations of Nature. In another sense, it may be represented as the
Monad passing through some particular phase of its progress towards Self-
consciousness. It is said that the human organism is built up by the convergent
activities of myriads of such “entities”, and that the transition from the animal
to the man is produced by the “fall into matter” of the “entity” or principle
which we vaguely name the Soul or Ego. In one aspect, every embodiment of
the Spirit is something new, individual, unique; in another aspect, it appears
to be a recapitulation or repetition of that which has already existed, as the
child is a copy of its parents. Thus we read that the men, that is, the real human
principles, of this earth are emanations or children of beings who attained and
perfected their humanity in other world-cycles upon other globes.
The Occult Doctrine teaches that while the Monad is cycling on downward into mat¬
ter, [the] Elohim, or Pitris—the lower Dhyan Chohans—are evolving, pari passu with it,
on a higher and more spiritual plane, descending also relatively into matter on their own
plane of consciousness, when, after having reached a certain point, they will meet the
incarnating senseless Monad, encased in the lowest matter, and blending the two poten¬
cies, Spirit and Matter, the union will produce that terrestrial symbol of the “Heavenly
Man” in space— perfect man. . . . Spirit and Matter, though one and the same thing
in their origin, when once they are on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them
their evolutionary progress in contrary directions—Spirit falling gradually into Matter,
and the latter ascending to its original condition, that of a pure spiritual Substance.
. . . Therefore, when the hour strikes ... for the formation of the Perfect Man—
rudimentary man of the first two and a half Races being only the first } gradually evolving
into the most perfect of mammals —the Celestial Ancestors (Entities from preceding
Worlds, called in India the Shishta) step in on this our plane, and incarnate in the physical
or animal man, as the Pitris had stepped in before them for the formation of the latter.
. . . Fire alone is one, on the plane of the One Reality: on that of manifested, hence
illusive, Being, its particles are fiery Lives. . . . Every visible thing in this Universe
was built by such lives, from conscious and divine primordial man down to the uncon¬
scious agents that construct matter ( The Secret Doctrine , ed. 1893, I, 267-269).
The Disembodiment of a Principle
One is justified in holding fast to the conclusion that everything in Nature,
without any exception, exists by virtue of and for the sake of a principle. This
principle, in the language of the Platonists, is an Idea in the Divine Mind, and is,
therefore, rooted in the Eternal, as indestructible as the Essence of Nature. But
its successive embodiments are necessarily always changing, subject to the uni¬
versal cyclic law which prescribes that every act of creation, every evolution or
exfoliation, must be followed by an act of assimilation, by an involution or in-
drawal,—as every “day”, of whatever duration, must fade into a “night”.
Observation and experience, however, oblige one to admit that the course of
evolution does not always run smoothly. There are creatures in human shape,
NOTES AND COMMENTS
9
for instance, whose existence may be best interpreted, not as a progressive
embodiment but as a progressive disembodiment of a principle. The “Celestial
Ancestors”, by and for whom the human kingdom exists, may be forced to with¬
draw from “physical or animal man” who persistently perverts the gift of a more
subtile consciousness. But the rejection of its indwelling principle by any crea¬
ture can only result in its disintegration, dissolution and final death. The
essential being of the principle is not affected, but it is no longer represented,
even partially, by any form on this plane.
In an age like the present, when civilization trembles in the balance, one would
expect to find many tragic instances of the disembodiment of the human princi¬
ple. Such a tendency to disintegration is, of course, aided and abetted by all the
dark powers, incarnate and disincamate. However, the worst danger to civili¬
zation would seem to come from good and kind people whose amiable intentions
co-exist with a moral materialism no less devastating because it may be uncon¬
scious.
For example, not long ago, the Dean of a prominent American women’s col¬
lege was quoted as saying that the technique of training character has become
incoherent and confused, “because old principles and standards seem to have
failed”. One may give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she was
using words loosely. The point is that no real principle or standard can ever
conceivably “fail”, for it is as immutable as any of the real laws of Nature. What
can easily happen, is that we fail to recognize it as a principle, and therefore, of
course, fail to put it into practice.
Modernistic educators habitually confuse principles with customs or with
forms of etiquette. Customs and etiquette change constantly, for better or for
worse. The clothes and table-manners of one generation are seldom those of the
next. But these things only possess significance in the measure that they serve
as vehicles for the expression of those qualities of heart and mind which dis¬
tinguish the human part of our nature from the animal. Courtesy, for instance,
is not a specific mode of manners which has no place in the busy modern world;
it is an attribute inseparable from the human being which each of us is enjoiggd
by spiritual and natural law to become. Loyalty, honour, fidelity to a ple^Jrcl
word, are no less real and necessary in a machine age than in an age of chivalry.
They constitute the true man, the soul which is seeking embodiment, and if
orthogenesis is to continue in the human species, these human attributes must
continue to exfoliate until they become dominant and irresistible factors in the
determination of conduct.
Abundant Life
In the Horace Mann School, New York, the theme around which the work of
certain junior high school grades is organized is “The Progress of Man Through
the Ages”. The aim, as the Principal has expressed it, “is to orientate the stu¬
dents in the present-day world and to give them some conception of ‘how we got
this way’.” Horace Mann School is closely identified with Teachers College,
Columbia University, and, in at least one of its departments, is used as a “demon-
IO
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
stration school” for the edification of students of the College. It is probable,
therefore, that the opinions of Professors in the College determine the meaning
given to the term, “progress”, in the School. We quote the following from an
address at the Conference on Educational Activities of the Jewish Centre, by a
member of the faculty of Teachers College, Dr. F. Ernest Johnson:
Our religious and ethical groups and societies can contribute an invaluable aid to
social change by steadfastly maintaining the ideal of an abundant life for every member
of the human family and by relentlessly exposing the conditions in contemporary society
which make its realization impossible.
He added that progress, presumably in the direction of “abundant life”, has
become so rapid, that a doctor of philosophy from any leading university “can
become a hopeless dodo in fifteen or twenty years .... not only educationally
but morally”. One might ask what is the use of becoming a doctor of philosophy
at all, when the risk of extinction is so high. However, what immediately con¬
cerns us is to discover what is this “abundant life”, which, according to so many
optimistic intellectuals, is “just around the comer”.
“I am come”, said the Master Christ, “that they might have life, and that they
might have it more abundantly.” It is impossible to doubt that he was referring
to spiritual life which he had the power to bestow upon those who asked with
their whole hearts for the gift. In other words, a Master can aid his disciples to
increase and strengthen their higher natures, to embody the principle which can
alone make them veritable human beings.
It is painfully apparent that this is not the sense in which the intelligentsia
interpret the term. For them it means an abundance of the things of this world,
a multiplication of gratifications for the physical, personal man, a redistribution
of material goods, so that everybody, good or bad or indifferent, may be assured
a satisfactory minimum of comfort and amusement. The confusion or naivety
of their minds is such that they cannot even imagine the existence of any dis¬
turbing factor in the society which had realized such an “ideal”. In brief, they
share the delusion common to materialists of all degrees, that the sins and evils,
to which mankind is heir—greed, envy, malice, cruelty, treachery, bad faith,
and so on—would disappear, if everyone could be given abundantly the material
goods which he desires. One wonders by what logic they can justify their
imputation of heartless selfishness to the “propertied interests”, for according
to their theory, a man’s wealth should be the measure of his virtue.
It is as certain as anything can be that Nature would never allow such a
“dream-society” to become an actuality, for, in the very process of becoming, it
would be rent to pieces by the inordinate stimulation of those evils which the
dreamers pretend they can so easily cure. As the Indian scripture says, desire
grows by feeding on itself; and it is sheer delusion to believe that the physical
personality can ever satisfy its appetites or try to satisfy them without friction
and conflict with other personalities. Even a little meditation upon the laws of
evolution, upon orthogenesis, should convince us that an abundant material life,
divorced from any spiritual preoccupation, is rendered impossible by Nature,
NOTES AND COMMENTS
ii
because it would be a denial of the rights of the incarnating soul, to which the
demands of material life must be subjected. A soulless life in a human body
implies the disembodiment of the principle which alone can keep any form of
life in the body.
As all the sages have taught from the beginning of history, there is only one
permanent cure for personal misery which, incidentally, is not limited to poverty.
The ultimate goal of every human life is to become self-conscious upon the plane
of the real man, the soul. When purely personal suffering is no longer needed to
keep men from falling utterly asleep, from losing all sense of their spiritual
destiny, its original raison d'etre disappears; but men will then be so interested
in more important matters that they may really care little whether it disappears
or not. Those who teach the contrary—that unhappiness of every kind can be
healed by material readjustments—are evil shepherds of the people, nor is the
perversity of their mission diminished because they may be convinced of their
own goodness and of the badness of those who disagree with them.
Very few understand that suffering, in some form or other, is inseparable from
manifested existence. We are free, however, to choose why we suffer, whether
it be for ourselves or for others. The Masters have testified that the growth of
unselfish love liberates the heart from gross personal pain but also initiates it
into a higher form of pain, the anguish of compassion, the noble sorrow which is
the accompaniment of the soul’s ever-renewed need to give itself utterly to the
object of its love.
An Experiment in Cynicism
Professors are often tempted to take themselves and their studies much too
seriously. This is notoriously true of the reformers, but it also explains the
psychic symptoms of certain savants who are renowned for their sobriety and
self-restraint. A recent book, Adult Interests } by another representative of
Teachers College, Dr. Edward L. Thorndike, illustrates the hallucinations from
which anyone might suffer, if he spent his life collecting outlandish data to prove
grotesque hypotheses.
Dr. Thorndike was apparently convinced, before he began his work, that^t
least one old saying is almost universally true: that every man has his price^Te
organized a campaign of research and succeeded without any apparent difficulty
in establishing to his own satisfaction that he was right. His method was to ask
various people what reward would induce them to perform some debasing or silly
action. It was an experiment in cynicism and undoubtedly proved the cynicism
of the professor. One ventures to suspect that it also proved his gullibility; for
it is almost impossible to believe that the men and women who took the tests
were as serious as they might have been.
A few examples may be mentioned. The women, on the average, claimed
that they would abandon all hope of life after death for $10, whereas the men
demanded $1,000. Half of the young Americans of both sexes said that they
would spit on a portrait of George Washington for Sio. The average man con¬
tracted to choke a stray cat for $2,500. The average woman agreed to practise
12
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
cannibalism for Si,375,000. The average older woman would be willing to spend
eight days in jail, if the compensation were a ride on a camel.
One may make a liberal allowance for the alleged sense of humour of the
“average older woman” and her associates. Nevertheless, the impression which
remains is not unlike that left by a nightmare. It is not encouraging to find that
after millions of years of evolution, a number of students in the largest Univer¬
sity in the world find it amusing to compete in the display of vices and imbecili¬
ties which they have for sale. It proves what so few are ready to believe, namely,
that the animal personality of man, without any guidance from above, easily
assumes the form of an idiot or a monster, possessing enough perverted “reason”
to make itself lower than any of the brutes which in its various moods it resem¬
bles. It is this personality, let us remember, that is to be given an “abundant
life”, according to the plans of Dr. Thorndike’s colleague.
However, the most distressing feature of the whole affair is its manifestation
of unadulterated cynicism. Dr. Thorndike contemplates a pig-sty, and regards
it as an almost perfect symbol of human nature. There is no evidence that he
admits even the possible existence of any fundamental quality of consciousness
which is not essentially base and mean. In other words, refusing to take
seriously the reality, potential or actual, of the soul, he insults the dignity of real
manhood. Let us hope that there are some teachers of youth in the colleges,
who have the courage and insight to affirm that there have been and are human
beings who cannot be bought at any price; that all human nature is not “lower
nature”.
Psychiatric Fatalism
Dr. Thorndike and Dr. Johnson may be said to enunciate two versions of the
same idea. The former suggests that men can be bribed to become bad; the
latter, that they can be bribed to become good. It is doubtful whether many
men of science would agree with either point of view. As far as one can judge,
the general scientific attitude towards the personality is fatalistic. At least,
many psychiatrists seem to be convinced that men are what they are because
they could not possibly have become anything else, given their heredities and
environments. Under such circumstances, they would doubtless argue, not even
bribery could make anyone better or worse than he is. Few of them even raise
the question of the effectiveness of aspiration and moral effort as transforming
agencies.
We quote from the New York Times of April 30, 1935, the report of an address
by Dr. Walter Freeman, neuropsychiatrist, of St. Elizabeth Hospital, Wash¬
ington, D. C., before the American College of Physicians:
Human personality, Dr. Freeman told the physicians, has its roots in heredity and is
determined by the genes carried by the chromosomes in each cell and transmitted
through the germ plasm from generation to generation. Specifying four fundamental
personality reaction types as cycloid, paranoid, schizoid, and epileptoid, he continued:
“Two important functions, as far as the personality is concerned, may safely be granted
to the endocrine system. These are emotional stability and energy drive. . . . Never¬
theless, as far as determining whether an individual shall be a proud, sensitive, suspicious.
NOTES AND COMMENTS
13
paranoid individual; or a timid, shut-in, dreamy, schizoid person; a boisterous, jolly,
hail-fellow-well-met cycloid; or a moody, pedantic, egocentric epileptoid individual, the
endocrine glands would seem to have little to say in the matter.”
From his studies of pituitary glands in 1400 cases, Dr. Freeman said it might be in¬
ferred that the pituitary ‘‘supplies the energy drive that enables the personality to un¬
fold”, but he added: “There is little evidence that it determines the personality, since the
great groups of schizoid and paranoid personalities are almost perfectly balanced.”
Thus, according to Dr. Freeman, the personality which anyone may have is
received, like his body, from his parents. Its growth may be quickened or
retarded by the action of hormones or “chemical messengers”, but otherwise it
cannot be modified from the moment of birth. Whether one be paranoid or
schizoid or half-paranoid and half-schizoid, such one must remain. Dr. Freeman
is not as cynical in tone as Dr. Thorndike; but the assemblage of qualities which
he divides among the various “reaction types” would be depressing—if true.
One cannot discover, on the basis of his classification, how or why any human
being could be capable of a decent or heroic action.
It may be admitted that a fatalistic or pessimistic view is relatively true as
regards the “average man” in his average moments. The “average man” tends
to identify himself with one or another “congeries of elementals”, first of all,
with the image of his body in his mind, then, with his habits, associations, dreams,
hopes and fears, and so on. In a certain sense, it might be said that his actions
and reactions are determined by the particular type of lower nature with which
he was bom; that his idiosyncracies are almost as calculable, in their fixed
repetition, as the revolutions of a machine.
But, as Theosophy teaches, the soul, the essence of man, is not the personality
which the “average man” persistently thinks of as his “self”. The soul tran¬
scends all such distinctions as cycloid and epileptoid, inasmuch as it is not a by¬
product of molecular combinations, but is an informing principle, an entity of
a higher order in process of embodiment, analogous, as it seems, to the vital
principles whose apparent “emergence” in the organic world is a primary factor
in the formation of new species. The soul in complete self-conscious incarnation,
in the life of a Master, for instance, is intensely individual, as the biographies of
the Buddha and the Christ testify, but also its powers and attributes are uni¬
versal, innumerable, and ever-expanding. Even in the world there have
those whose soul-consciousness was developed to the point where it is possible
to be both outwardly alert and introspective, to maintain without confusion a
balance between the powers of thought and the powers of action.
Paul Valery has suggested that the true man of genius is perpetually enlarging
the orbit of his interests; that, in his perfect form, he is the “universal man”.
He quotes a phrase of Leonardo da Vinci:—The great man presides over all his
states of consciousness with “obstinate rigour ”—ostinato rigore.
Physical and Reflective Consciousness
Most of the educators and scientists of to-day have one point in common.
They recognize only one aspect of evolution, the physical or physiological,
14
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
which begins, as they imagine, with some hypothetical protoplasmic globule
and ascends, through a long chain of organisms, to the human species. At
some stage of this journey, consciousness is said to appear, how or why nobody
can imagine. According to the school represented by Dr. Freeman, in the
higher animals, including man, consciousness is linked, in some mysterious sense,
with the genes, the ultimate organic units within the nucleus of the cell which
have been postulated to account for the way in which physical properties are
segregated and are transmitted from parents to offspring. Thus, Dr. Freeman
speaks of the personality as “determined by the genes”.
Theosophy naturally accepts the fact that there is a physical heredity for every
body bom upon earth, just as it accepts the general hypothesis that there is an
evolution of physical substance and form from the mineral to the human king¬
dom. But physical heredity is not sufficient to explain the phenomena of muta¬
tion and orthogenesis. Much less can it explain the transformations of conscious¬
ness. The nature and origin of consciousness as a thing in itself is an absolute
mystery which no prudent philosopher ever pretends to solve. It is the theo-
sophical teaching that wherever there is matter there is consciousness, for these
two are inseparable, being two aspects of one fundamental Reality. But there
are innumerable states or phases, both of matter and of consciousness. With two
of these states of consciousness we are all familiar. There is the objective phys¬
ical consciousness, which pertains to the functions of our bodies and which we
share with all the creatures of the lower kingdoms; and there is the subjective
reflective consciousness which pertains to our mental and emotional natures.
Anyone can discover for himself how much of his consciousness is of this reflective
kind, by measuring the time which he spends each day, dreaming, imagining,
remembering, anticipating. All these operations are reflective, for they are not
concerned with actual physical things but with the images of those things
reflected in the mind, or, more rarely, with the images of ideals mirrored from
higher planes. It may be suggested that these psychic functions are not alto¬
gether peculiar to man, for they are at least foreshadowed in the lives of the
higher animals; but it is only in man, so far as one can judge, that they become
dominant factors in the determination of behaviour.
The human personality, the psychic man, may be described as a bundle of
mind-images. The psychic man depends upon a physical body as its vehicle of
expression on the physical plane. His desires and fears prompt the physical man
to act, and the inherited constitution of the physical man, in turn, reacts upon
the psychic man, stimulating certain proclivities and inhibiting others. But the
psychic man, Theosophy affirms, is not himself a product of physical heredity.
The “seeds” or skandhas , from which he grows, enter the particular physical
body which provides the conditions of material existence best adapted to the
Karma, to the sequence of cause and effect, set in motion by actions in previous
lives, of which those skandhas are the fruit. Skandhas “are being made from
day to day under the law that every thought combines instantly with one of the
elemental forces of nature, becoming to that extent an entity which will endure in
accordance with the strength of the thought as it leaves the brain, and all of these
NOTES AND COMMENTS
i5
are inseparably connected with the being who evolved them” (The. Ocean of
Theosophy , p. 102).
The Higher and Lower Minds in Man
As the quotation from The Secret Doctrine suggests, there is a two-fold creation
of man. “The first Adam was made a living soul (psuche)\ the last Adam was
made a quickening spirit (pneuma).' } The individuality, the spiritual soul or
“higher mind”, cannot be embodied, until a personal nature, a “lower mind”,
has evolved to the point where it can reflect the image of the “higher mind” and
can begin to serve as its vehicle, just as the physical nature must reach a certain
degree of development before it can become the vehicle of a personality. Thus
the incarnation of the “Pitris” is said to precede that of the “Celestial Ancestors”.
These two incarnations, taken together, may be said to be the cause and basis of
the great mutation which was the beginning of the real history of man on this
planet. Everyone who conceives of himself as human, should be actively labour¬
ing to complete that mutation, by purifying his personal nature and also by
insisting that his true Self is not the personal nature but is the spiritual soul,
a ray of divine consciousness transmitted to him by the Master, the Father in
Heaven.
The creative process has continued with varying fortunes for aeons. Universal
tradition testifies that some individuals have become “perfected men”; but as
regards the multitude, the “physical or animal man” has undergone a deforma¬
tion which makes impossible the reflection of an image from above without greater
or lesser distortion. The psychic man has stolen divine powers which belong by
right to the soul, and has used them to build the illusion that he, and not the soul,
is the self. There is tragic truth in the Pythagorean maxim that the soul in the
body is like a man in a tomb. Nevertheless, as Madame Blavatsky remarked:
“That body, so desecrated by materialism and man himself, is the temple of the
Holy Grail, the Adytum of the grandest, nay, of all the mysteries of nature in
our solar universe.” It is within the power of every man to accomplish the
transformation of the soul’s vesture from a tomb into a temple. Our present
personalities are now sowing the seeds which must grow into the experiences of
future existences. We can so live now that when this reconstitution of elements
occurs, a soul can incarnate with them, using them as the substance with wlyA
it can clothe itself. The least that we can do is to begin, wherever we ar^^o
think and to act in accordance with the principles of real human behaviour,
established by the experience of ages.
FRAGMENTS
1 THOUGHT I had a vision in the night:
He stood in the first faint grey of dawning; the sun rose in the west that
day, so pure a light shone from Him.
Behind Him angels trailed, like drifting clouds,—you saw them through the
branches of the trees where His light caught them.
His blood-marked brow was crowned with roses, not with thorns. His voice
came: “I gathered them in your garden for their fragrance”, were His words;
‘‘Saint Catherine made the chaplet.”
In His hand there was a stalk of stately lilies, not the mocking reed. “These
too, I gathered”, He said, “and shall for ever hold.”
This last I heard upon my knees.
The passion and the anguish in His eyes seemed somewhat softened, as if
there were a momentary sense of rest, a momentary easement of a burden, with
a half-stifled sigh.
Faint and sick with shame and adoration, I lay upon my face,—I who had
even found a toil that which brought such a benediction. What guerdon for
my grudging sacrifice!
I thought I had a vision in the night, but when the morning came and sun¬
shine lay about, an opalescent glimmer still remained where He had stood;
there was a special movement in the leaves, and now and then the light touched
for an instant on an angel’s wing,—or seemed to do so, who can say?
All day, all day this lasted.
I found the cut stalk where the lilies grew,—the bush with its missing roses.
Who knows where earth begins and heaven ends; who can fix the boundary
of that inner world and this, determine what is seen and what unseen ?
Why grant a boundary between ourselves and heaven? What boundary can
there be, save sin?
Living in heavenly-mindedness, we shall make earth one with heaven, remove
the veil, nor know which pavement, whether clay or gold, we tread.
Thou who didst deign to bless those roses by their wearing; Thou who didst
bless those lilies by their holding, and in their blessing didst bless us: keep our
eyes open to behold the Real; give us the faith that parts the clouds about us,
and through the opening sees the Everlasting Glory.
Cav£.
16
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
1 HE lesson of the Convention? There were many lessons, as I see it”,
the Philosopher replied; “first and foremost, that we must strive
ceaselessly, each one of us, to improve our standard of values. By
this I mean we must strive, in our lives as well as in our natures, to sift the true
from the false, the eternal from the transitory, the things of everlasting value
from those that, in the light of eternity, are worthless. More than that, we
must not rest content with past analysis or effort; we must continually ‘improve
our product’, as the manufacturer is fond of saying; we must discriminate
between finer and finer shades of value; we must bring before the bar of our
own conscience the manner of our thought about things, about persons, events,
habits. Even if we avoid wrong-doing, are we countenancing it in others, and
thus encouraging it in the world around us, either from our failure to see things
as they are, or from moral cowardice,—from fear of incurring displeasure? To
be tolerant may be a virtue; but it often becomes a vice. Kipling once warned
the Rhodes scholars, at Oxford, against ‘the middle-aged failings of toleration,
impartiality, or broad-mindedness’.
“People do not always realize that if we countenance wrong-doing in others,
we become a party to it: we cannot hold ourselves innocent. This is part of
the meaning of Brotherhood. All the saints have felt the sins of others as their
own sins; the Masters bear the sins of the world: it is this, of course, that makes
vicarious atonement possible.
“Take, for example, the question of divorce: what is the attitude of members
of the T.S. on that subject? Are we indifferent to the immorality of the present
worldly code ?
“Marriage is either a sacrament or a sacrilege and worse. If a sacrament, it
is as close a union as ought to exist between the soul and God, between the per¬
sonality and the soul. ‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man
put asunder’. So, when two people marry, they stand as in the presence of God
and take one another ‘for better for worse’. Any kind of marriage ceremon)^
a most solemn promise, an engagement of honour. A few years later, perh^^,
they tire. Then, according to the modern code, they are justified in breaking
their oath, in obtaining a divorce, in sacrificing their children, in marrying again;
and they can repeat this performance several times, if that be their desire. As
all of us know, it has become a national scandal,—one of the gravest dangers
that threaten our civilization. Surely, in such circumstances, we ought to take
a most positive stand for the old and changeless ideal of marriage. Divorce at
times is undoubtedly necessary. If a husband becomes a drunkard, and amuses
himself by throwing his wife and children downstairs, I should say that the poor
woman’s first duty would be to her children, and that she ought to obtain a
divorce as quickly as possible. But this does not mean that she can be justified
i7
18 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
morally in marrying again. Divorce is a legal procedure; marriage is that, and
something more, much more.”
‘‘I should like to make sure that I have understood you”, interjected the
Student, perhaps not entirely for his own benefit. ‘‘You said that marriage is
either a sacrament or a sacrilege. You would agree, however, that few to-day
are in the least capable of appreciating this in its true and deep significance ?
“I entirely agree”, the Philosopher answered; ‘‘but what they do know, and
are quite able to understand if they choose , is that a promise is a promise, an
oath, an oath, and that changing your mind does not change the facts. And men
must be held to the standard they can recognize, if ever they are to see further.
Closing their eyes to what they know, does not exonerate them: quite the reverse.
Consequently, once a man has committed himself by marrying, he is committed,
and has to see it through or be dishonoured. Divorce does not end marriage;
it only furnishes a possible modus vivendi where grave wrong has been done by
either party, for the protection of the innocent party; but the marriage is not
dissolved: only death can do that.”
‘‘When you say that a man must ‘see it through’, do you mean that if his
wife goes off with another man, and then turns up later, asking to be taken
back, it is the husband’s duty to do so?”
‘‘That is not at all my meaning. Apart from other considerations—and there
are plenty of them—he owes a duty to the institution of marriage as such, and
he would degrade that if he were to encourage by his weakness, or false sense
of ‘charity’, similar misconduct by others.”
‘‘How would you define a spiritual union?” asked one of our visitors. ‘‘Would
you mean a marriage that is celebrated in church ? Would you give the churches
a monopoly of establishing or constituting such a union?”
‘‘I would not”, was the reply. ‘‘A spiritual union would mean to me exactly
what the words imply —a great deal; but such unions are very rare, perhaps one
in a million marriages. In the old days, however, when marriages were prac¬
tically indissoluble, they often became more and more real, more and more
spiritual, as the years passed. Many a marriage has been made perfect in
death,—not before.
“But in further reply to the second part of your question, if we were to grant
our churches the monopoly of which you spoke, we should logically exclude the
millions of Buddhists, Mohammedans, Hindus and so forth, from the possi¬
bility of real marriage: which would be absurd. No student of Theosophy
would do that. Nor would any student of Theosophy claim that only ‘spiritual
union’ in the highest sense can constitute a real marriage: that, as I have already
suggested, would be asking too much of human nature in its present pre-natal
condition. What he would say is that every real marriage must at least begin
with an invocation of the Higher Self, of ‘God’, as witness to the vows being
taken. The result of this invocation should be to lift the two above the plane
of duality, to the apex of the triangle, as it were, at which point there is unity:
a trinity has been established,—and every real thing in this world consists of a
trinity. The marriage service, in a church, provides that invocation. I repeat,
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
19
however, that this does not imply a monopoly, for Quakers can marry in that
real sense just as effectively as an Anglican Archbishop or the Pope could marry
them. The point is that God, the Holy Spirit, the Higher Self, must be invoked
as witness and, in a sense, as participant. In that case, the vows are real; the
marriage has been made real, and a legal divorce will in no way affect that fact.
Further, while only a few will take things on this high (and real) plane, all must
admit, as I said before, that a promise is a promise, and that an oath is taken
to be kept, not broken.”
‘‘But don’t you realize that not one in a hundred couples, married in church,
so much as think of God, or even of their vows, from the beginning to the end
of the ceremony? How many of them have the slightest realization of the
solemnity of what they are doing?”
‘‘So much the worse fonthem. You would not suggest, would you, that their
preoccupation or lack of attention during the ceremony is an excuse for mis¬
conduct later on ? They at least pretend to mean what they say. Why should
a marriage vow be less binding than a ‘debt of honour’ incurred at a game of
cards? What is thought of a man who pleads that he had drunk too much and
that he ought not to be expected to pay? Don’t you know that he is cut by all
his friends for ever after? Yet he has not taken an oath; he has not invoked
God as his witness: he has sat down to play cards on the implicit (not explicit)
understanding that he will pay if he loses. Many a man has sold the roof over
his head and more, to keep his unwritten word in those circumstances. He was
a fool to have begun the game, you say. Of course he was; and most people
are fools to get married as they do. But that does not affect the principle,—or
the resulting obligation.
‘‘The man who breaks his word, who violates his promise, nearly always
pleads in self-justification that he did not know what he was doing when he
gave it; that he had not foreseen the consequences. Monks who repudiate their
vows, who run away and marry, almost invariably do this. But who can ever
foresee consequences? If a business contract could be repudiated on any such
ground as that, there would be an end to all business.
‘‘Fundamentally the evil arises from the elimination of God (I use that term
to cover all formulations) from human life, and from the growing convi<»n,
in which so many of the clergy share, that man has a right to happiness it^his
world. The Declaration of Independence asserted his right to the pursuit of
happiness, which was superfluous and foolish, considering that he had pursued
nothing else, with most rare exceptions, from the time of Adam downwards.
But the modem world has gone far beyond that: happiness itself has come to
be regarded as inherently one of man’s prerogatives—on his own terms into the
bargain. As he has obviously proved incapable of finding it through his own
efforts, it must be the duty, as he sees it, of his government to provide it for him.
In any case, it is his right,—from which it follows that if he lacks anything he
thinks he needs, or if he has a father or mother or wife who does not suit him,
his sense of injury is so great, his grievance rankles so deeply, that no vow or
obligation of duty, no law, either human or divine, can properly be permitted
20
THE0S0PHICAL QUARTERLY
to stand in his way. The married woman, for instance, with whom he hap¬
pened to fall in love yesterday, must be his, because his happiness depends upon
it: and the purpose of life is his happiness. For what else does the universe
exist!
“It is there that Theosophy begins the conflict. The universe does not exist
that he may be happy: far from it. The purpose of his life is to provide him
with opportunities to become, by right self-conquest and right aspiration, a
better, wiser, more enlightened creature as the result of his earthly experience.
Further than that, Theosophy would agree with Gregory the Great, that ‘joys
are reaped in eternity only in proportion to the tribulations suffered in this
world’. The man who makes happiness his objective, will never find it, either
l'n time or in eternity. If, for instance, he loves a woman solely because he is
happy with her, it is proof positive that he does not love her, and that he only
loves himself.”
“Really”, said another of our visitors, “that is beyond me!”
“Read St. Paul’s famous chapter on charity, remembering that the Greek
word translated as charity, really means love. ‘Love suffereth long, and is
kind. . . . Love seeketh not her own. . . . Love beareth all things, believeth
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.’ There you have the real test
of love, as of friendship. Anything less is counterfeit. But there is a further
truth, which cannot be repeated too often, partly because the world refuses to
recognize it, and partly because, unless it be understood, the doctrine of Masters,
the lesson of the Cross, become meaningless: that truth is,—the more we love,
the more we suffer. And yet, to learn to love completely, with all your heart
and mind and soul and strength, without a shadow of self-seeking, is the supreme
purpose of our existence, just as it is the greatest of all rewards, the final recom¬
pense of every sacrifice, the very life and substance of heaven. A paradox, of
course, as all ultimate truths are; but there is no denying the basic fact. You
need only ask yourself whether a mother who is indifferent to her children suf¬
fers as much on their account as a mother who is unselfishly and completely
devoted to hers.”
“The logical inference from all of which is”, commented the Student, “that,
married or single, you suffer in any case: you suffer if you love; you suffer if you
dislike—the closer the relationship, the greater the suffering; and as marriage
is the closest relationship of any, marriage has been divinely ordained to accen¬
tuate the ordinary man’s suffering, thus increasing the pace of spiritual progress,
since, without suffering, man would stagnate and the soul would die. My
inference would be that man’s frantic efforts to escape from unpleasant rela¬
tionships (as by divorce), merely because they are unpleasant, are repudiations,
really, of opportunities devised by his soul, in other words, by the Lords of
Compassion.”
“Exactly”, was the Philosopher’s response.
“But practically”, someone asked, “in what way can members of the Society
take a positive stand ‘for the old and changeless ideal of marriage’, as you sug¬
gested they should?”
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
21
“You might just as well ask in what way can members take a positive stand
for honour and honesty in business. Obviously we must ‘begin at home’: no
marriages of divorced people in the ranks of the T.S., if you please! Divorce,
as I have said, sometimes is necessary or unavoidable (any woman who chooses
to allege ‘mental cruelty’ against her husband can get a divorce in some States,
—and ‘mental cruelty’ may mean no more than inability always to get her own
way); but new marriages of divorced persons are not necessary, and are funda¬
mentally and everlastingly wrong. To that extent we can afford to be dogmatic
and detailed. Beyond that, it is impossible to lay down rules and regulations
covering all circumstances and conditions. Look in any good Concordance of
the New Testament, under Marriage and Divorce, and see what the Master
Christ and Paul his apostle said on these subjects. Priests draw up detailed
rules and regulations about passing people on the other side of the street, about
not eating with them, and so forth; Sages have never done anything of the kind.
Sages enunciate principles, and leave it to you to apply them. A man of
business who is a member of the Society, and whose own methods are above
reproach (which is the essential), will have to decide for himself how to deal
wisely and rightly with threatened or actual deviations, as he encounters them,
either in his associates or in the circumference of his business environment.
He must be courageous and unyielding, but, as the old-time Chinaman said, to
be right without good taste, is to be wrong. In other words, deviations from
right standards are often due to lack of thought, and we must not assume the
worst, or give ourselves an air of moral superiority, in our determination to
stand for what is best. When we are dealing with general conditions and with
principles, we should take every proper opportunity to affirm our conviction
that the least departure from what is right and honourable must result evilly,
in the most practical sense, and that this applies, not only in business, but
especially in the married relation, which involves so much more than contracts
or agreements,—a consummation, preceded by an oath, with, let us hope, God
invoked as witness.”
“Are such trifles as painted faces and ensanguined finger-nails and purple or
carroty lips, beneath your notice, or would you be willing to comment?” asked
the same visitor, meaning to be jocular.
“Once more”, the Philosopher replied, “members of the Society cannotcon-
trol the universe, or women’s fashions, or the perverted taste of men (though I
have yet to meet the man who said he admired such horrors); but we can beg
our own membership to set a right example, and to do their utmost to discourage
every sort of indecency in dress (or in the lack of it), and every other practice
which tends to cheapen womanhood. It is one of the mysteries of feminine
psychology that while, for instance, if a man of the better class goes to a race
meeting, he would never dream of imitating the dress and style of race-course
touts or jockeys, a woman of the better class, and of unquestionable virtue,
will often use such an opportunity to note every detail of the dress and ‘make¬
up’ of women who display their lack of virtue, and will attempt next day to turn
herself into a duplicate, in appearance, of one or another of them. Feeble-
22
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
mindedness may be the charitable explanation. The fact remains that while
vast numbers of women, whose outer behaviour is impeccable, paint their faces
and deform their lips and finger-nails as you have indicated—and do so imita-
tively, unthinkingly, and without evil motive—the practice in itself springs
originally from motives well summarized in the advertisement of some rouge
or lip-salve which a friend noticed recently in a Subway train in New York.
It read: ‘Be as gay as gay Paree! Have that come hither look!’ If any man
wants his wife or daughter or sister to have that ‘come hither’ look, the sooner
he is painlessly put out of existence the better for the world and for him.
“The practice is revolting, is vulgar, is fundamentally immoral. In its less
offensive form, it is an appeal for admiration of which any self-respecting woman
ought to be incapable,—either that, or a perversion (revealing her bad taste)
of a woman’s natural desire to ‘appear at her best’. It cannot be done imper¬
ceptibly. Any man who is not as green as grass can see it yards away. Some
women who have colour naturally, are suspected of ‘make-up’ unjustly, but
only by people whose observation is superficial: natural colour comes and goes;
the other does not.
“What ought we to do about it?”
The Philosopher laughed. “Always this request for rules, regulations, for
specific directions to cover all cases! I have a young relative who married a
girl with those horribly coloured finger-nails—or so I am told, for I have never
set eyes on her or her nails. But they live on the other side of the globe, and
while my opinion of him, for permitting it in his wife, has gone down to zero,
it would never occur to me to protest or to interfere. On the other hand, if they
were to visit New York, where I live, I should come right out with it at our first
interview: ‘Please, as a favour, remove that in my neighbourhood, because,
first, the sight of it makes me ill, and, second, because I will not be seen in
public with anything so compromising’. But I am old enough to be the girl’s
father or grandfather, and, if I knew of their visit in advance, should try to give
warning through a mutual friend. Circumstances alter cases. The degree of
relationship, of acquaintanceship, of responsibility, all must be considered. But
a man who is forced into contact with a monstrosity of that kind, or with any
woman who is ‘made up’, at least can get away from it as rapidly as possible—
and ought to do so. Not only that: he should want to do so. Two of those
carroty lips, flapping within a foot or two of one’s face, make a normally-consti¬
tuted man feel sick.
“I do not see how any man who loved and revered his mother, and who has
been blessed with the friendship of one or more women who represented the best
of their sex, can fail to carry in his heart an image of the ideal or to feel humil¬
iated when he sees those who, supposed to be virtuous, adopt the tricks of those
who are not,—not only humiliated but outraged, for they are a prostitution of
what he holds sacred.
“That is why, in the matter of marriage and divorce, and in directions far less
vital though in no sense unimportant (such as semi-nudity and ‘make-up’), it
must necessarily be one of the functions of The Theosophical Society, through
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
23
its membership, to carry aloft the best standards of the past, the highest ideals
which the world so far has perceived, and, regardless of ever-changing fashions,
to insist that when anything is inherently wrong, it must not be tolerated.”
“May I change the subject?” one of our visitors now asked. ‘‘I heard some¬
one remark the other day that Madame Blavatsky’s writings are a potpourri of
quotations from other people’s books, and no more. Is there any truth in that?”
“Tell your friend to read what Madame Blavatsky wrote: he has not done so”,
the Historian answered. “Genius does not borrow; genius devours, it creates.
Volumes have been written to prove that St. Paul borrowed from the Stoics,
from the Mysteries, from the cult of Mithra. Critics of Madame Blavatsky’s
Secret Doctrine have accused her of borrowing from Buddhism, from Hinduism,
from the hundred authors she quotes. But St. Paul’s religion was his own,
because he had experienced it, not once only, but every day that he lived; and
Madame Blavatsky knew before she had looked at the books she quoted, and
before she understood any more of Buddhism or Hinduism than of the Binomial
Theorem. Neither of them borrowed, and for the same reason,—total lack of
need. They radiated light from within, and borrowing of any kind, except the
borrowing of terms, would have paralysed their genius.”
“Have you any comment on world affairs?” the Recorder now asked.
The Historian again volunteered. “Right and wrong, and considerations of
honour, seem finally to have been thrown into the discard,—quite openly too”,
he said. “Italy, in the matter of Ethiopia, publicly proclaims herself a brigand:
she wants, and therefore will take. England, mildly protesting, calls down on
her head the abuse of the Italian (official) press. Whereupon the Prince of Wales
advocates the fraternization of British and German War veterans,—his action
being justified, in a letter I received from London, on the ground that England
could not fight Germany and Italy together! To this I replied that if any such
motive had actuated him, it would prove that he, too, had abandoned principle,
in favour of a short-sighted expediency, as guide in international affairs, because
clearly Germany had not been made less of a brigand by Italy’s adoption of the
same r 61 e; and that we ought to know by this time what happens when you try
to off-set the scowls of one brigand by currying favour with anothe^#Next
came the Anglo-German Naval agreement, in direct violation of the \^sailles
Treaty, in open repudiation of England’s legal and moral obligations to the
other contracting parties, including France. Anyone who really loves England
must have been grief-stricken. I tried to find comfort in Rudyard Kipling’s
article in the June Nineteenth Century, ‘An Undefended Island’, which shows
there are still some who understand. The New York Times, always friendly to
England, expressed pained surprise. The defence of the British Government
has not improved matters: expediency required the agreement,—not honour,
not righteousness, not fair-play, not any motive worthy of respect, but expe¬
diency: the fancy that she was protecting herself from worse. England! From
every point of view, sheer folly: another ‘scrap of paper’ added to the collection,
—as if anyone, not in an asylum, could be excused for accepting Germany’s
word, or written agreement, as insurance of safety.
24
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
“I doubt if English newspapers will report the effect produced in this country,
not merely the shock to the few who love England, but the triumph of the many
who dislike or are jealous of her, and who are now claiming that what they have
always said is true,—that she is utterly selfish and disloyal. That this country
is as bad or worse, makes no difference, for the average American could not and
would not believe it, but, instead, will derive from the whole incident a further
sense of moral superiority. It is terrible to see either a man or nation under
the control of lower nature, sinning against their own soul (and England has a
soul); so I deplore that Naval agreement as I would the behaviour of a blood-
brother at his worst. France, alas, does not improve the general situation or
her own record by announcing {if our papers report truly) that she will not oppose
Italy by supporting Ethiopia’s plea to the League of Nations,—as she had in¬
tended to do, jointly with England, until England ‘sold her out’ in that agree¬
ment with Germany. Right is right, and to act on a basis of resentment, no
matter how well justified that resentment may be, or for supposed reasons of
policy (the old game of playing off one power against another), is the opposite
of acting on principle,—and there will be no peace in the world, or even its
resemblance, until the leading nations at least try to be guided by their best
vision of what is right and just and honourable.”
‘‘Now I want to change the subject”, said one of our editors, smiling. ‘‘I
want to ask a question which I am quite unable to answer: Why have there been
so few mystics in The Theosophical Society, from its beginning in 1875 to the
present day? Strange that it should be so, but it is the fact. I have often
thought about it, and the ‘Fragments’ of this issue, so obviously written for
mystics, revived the problem.”
‘‘What do you mean by a ‘mystic’?” someone asked.
‘‘I have never yet read a satisfactory definition of the term”, was the answer.
‘‘Negatively, it is the opposite of psychism, of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and
of other astral experiences. Dante was a great mystic; so was St. John of the
Cross; so was St. Teresa of Jesus. Emerson was a mystic, expressing himself in
intellectual terms. Every poet worthy of the name, is mystical at times: he
sees transcendent beauties, sees into the spiritual heart of things; and he does
not see vaguely, but with a lucidity impossible to express except in symbol, in
paradox, or in some ultimate simplicity.
“Mysticism is of the heart, not of the senses. Mysticism perceives clearly,
but is never cut-and-dried. The wider and more penetrating its vision, the
deeper, the more sacred, the more awe-inspiring the mystery which it finds as
the fruit of its search. For the true mystic, everything in unspoiled nature is a
doorway to God. Francis Thompson was a mystic, though in no sense a saint.
He knew, in his better moments,—
“O world Invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
25
“But I come back to the simplicities. Consider Krishna’s statement in the
Bhagavad Gita: ‘I accept and enjoy the offerings of the humble soul who in his
worship with a pure [not self-seeking] heart off ere th a leaf, a flower, or fruit, or
water unto me.’ How many so-called Theosophists really believe and act on
that, I wonder! They know that chela means child; to what extent have they
the hearts of children in their relations with their Master? Some of them call
themselves Christians, and believe, theoretically, in the continued humanity of
Christ. Does this mean that they try to please his humanity, as a child should
try to please his father,—doing things ‘very well’ so as to please him, devising;
ways of pleasing his friends or his other children, so as to please him? Are they
grateful for the gifts he showers on them—gifts not only spiritual, but most,
practical too—or do they accept these as if they had fallen from the sky, with a
general sense that they are in luck, but that it would be conceited to suppose
a Master would bother about them? Well, humility is a great virtue, when it
exists , and nothing should be said to discourage it; but this suggestion may be
in order: if you persistently thank a Master for gifts and blessings he has not
bestowed on you, perhaps you will please him just as much as if he had. The
heart of a child is a synonym for humility, and the heart of a child does not say,
‘My father is too big and important a person to bother about me, or to be ;
pleased with my small offerings of love and gratitude’. Naturally I am not
speaking of the sort of child, the horrible sort of child, who tries to please in-
order to be rewarded—a penny for mailing a letter, ecstatic praise for volun¬
tarily picking a pin from the floor; I am speaking of the loving and devoted
child, whose chief joy it is to give the father a little human happiness in this,
parched desert of a world,—a world which treats him as if he were a wraith, or
a well-meaning fool of long ago, or as identical with God and therefore so far off
as to be negligible, or as a Master to be served at a respectful distance when time
permits, or as a school-teacher with a stem eye and a cane under the desk, or as.
the Only Son who once made a painful sacrifice in order to wipe out our sins,
but who now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven, so all is well and we
need not worry.
“Not many days ago it was said: ‘Children, live for me’. The utmnate.
simplicity perhaps; as old as religion itself. If a man sets out to do it, though
he start with no ray of light anywhere, he will find the heavens opening to
show him the way. ‘ Children , live for me’. Krishna said: ‘In thy thoughts do
all thou dost or me’. The same thing, if you choose; yet, not quite. The
‘Fragments’ supply a commentary based on experience, the fruit of love. Love
is the key, love is the path, love is the goal. And if I am met with the old familiar
wail—How can I love when I don’t love!—my answer is the equally old and fa¬
miliar statement epitomized by Emerson when he said, ‘Do the deed and thou
shalt have the power’, with that recorded by Pascal,—to desire to love, is to
love.
“How blind men are! That which desires, that which seeks, is that which is.
desired and sought. ‘I long for the light of Thy Face, 0 Lord’. And the answer;
‘Thy longing is that light, my child’.”
26 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
There was a pause; then the Recorder said: “We have covered widely dif¬
ferent topics. Will someone please unify them?”
‘‘Perhaps that was best done for us, in anticipation, some five hundred years
ago, by James I of Scotland”, volunteered the Historian. “You may remember
his Kingis Quair. The poem of his which I have in mind as showing the under¬
lying unity of our talk, is the ‘Ballad of Good Counsel’.
“Since through virtue encreases dignity,
And virtue flower and root is of noblay,
Of any weal or what estate thou be,
Its steps pursue and dread thee none effray:
Exile all vice and follow truth alway:
Love most thy God, who first thy love began,
And for each inch He will thee quit a span.
“Be not too proud in thy prosperity,
For as it comes so will it pass away;
Thy time to count is short thou may well see,
For of green grass soon comes the withered hay.
Labour in truth while light is of the day.
Trust most in God, for He best guide thee can,
And for each inch He will thee quit a span.
“Since word is thrall, and thought is only free,
Thou curb thy tongue, which power has and may;
Thou shut thine eyes from worldly vanity;
Restrain thy will, and harken what I say;
Grope ere thou slide, and creep forth on the way;
Thy promise keep unto thy God and man,
And for each inch He will thee quit a span.”
“That is splendid”, said the Recorder. “Thank you.”
T.
The foundations of national glory are set in the homes of the people , and they will
only remain unshaken while the family life of our race and nation is strong, simple,
and pure. — King George V.
4 s the Spanish proverb says, “He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies
must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.’’ So it is in travelling; a man must
carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.— Samuel Johnson.
A LAND OF MYSTERY
These are the last two of a series of four articles under the same title , written by
Madame Blavatsky , and printed in “The Theosophist" (then published in Bojnbay)
in the March , April , June and August issues of 1880. The first two were reprinted
in the April , t’ssne 0/ the i{ Theosophical Quarterly ”, pages 334-346 .— The
Editors.
III.
T HE ruins of Central America are no less imposing. Massively built,
with walls of a great thickness, they are usually marked by broad
stairways, leading to the principal entrance. When composed of sev¬
eral stories, each successive story is usually smaller than that below it, giving
the structure the appearance of a pyramid of several stages. The front walls,
either made of stone or stuccoed, are covered with elaborately carved, sym¬
bolical figures; and the interior divided into corridors and dark chambers, with
arched ceilings, the roofs supported by overlapping courses of stones, “consti¬
tuting a pointed arch, corresponding in type with the earliest monuments of
the old world”. Within several chambers at Palenque, tablets, covered with
sculptures and hieroglyphics of fine design and artistic execution, were dis¬
covered by Stephens. In Honduras, at Copdn, a whole city—temples, houses
and grand monoliths intricately carved—was unearthed in an old forest 0
Catherwoxi and Stephens. The sculpture and general style of Copan are unique,
and no su h style or even anything approaching it has been found anywhere
else, excepy at Quirigua, and in the islands of Lake Nicaragua. No one can
decipher the weird hieroglyphical inscriptions on the altars and monoliths. With
the exception of a few works of uncut stone, “to Copdn, we may safely assign an
antiquity higher than to any of the other monuments of Central America with
which we are acquainted”, says the New American Cyclopcedia. At the period
of the Spanish conquest, Copdn was already a forgotten ruin, concerning which
existed only the vaguest traditions.
No less extraordinary are the remains of the different epochs in Peru. The
ruins of the temple of the Sun at Cuzco are yet imposing, notwithstanding that
27
28
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the depredating hand of the Vandal Spaniard passed heavily over it. If we may
believe the narratives of the conquerors themselves, they found it, on their
arrival, a kind of fairy-tale castle. With its enormous circular stone wall
completely encompassing the principal temple, chapels and buildings, it is
situated in the very heart of the city, and even its remains justly provoke the
admiration of the traveller. “Aqueducts opened within the sacred inclosure;
and within it were gardens, and walks among shrubs and flowers of gold and
silver , made in imitation of the productions of nature. It was attended by
4,000 priests.” “The ground”, says La Vega, “for 200 paces around the temple,
was considered holy, and no one was allowed to pass within this boundary but
with naked feet.” Besides this great temple, there were 300 other inferior
temples at Cuzco. Next to the latter in beauty, was the celebrated temple of
Pachacamac. Still another great temple of the Sun is mentioned by Humboldt;
and, “at the base of the hill of Cannar was formerly a famous shrine of the Sun,
consisting of the universal symbol of that luminary, formed by nature upon the
face of a great rock”. Roman tells us “that the temples of Peru were built upon
high grounds or the top of the hills, and were surrounded by three and four
circular embankments of earth, one within the other”. Other remains seen by
myself—especially mounds—are surrounded by two, three, and four circles of
stones. Near the town of Cayambe, on the very spot on which Ulloa saw and
described an ancient Peruvian temple “perfectly circular in form, and open at
the top”, there are several such cromlechs. Quoting from an article in the
Madras Times of 1876, Mr. J. H. Rivett-Camac gives, in his Archaeological
Notes, the following information upon some curious mounds in the neighbour¬
hood of Bangalore:— 1 “Near the village there are at least one hundred crom¬
lechs plainly to be seen. These cromlechs are surrounded by circles of stones,
some of them with concentric circles three and four deep. One very remarkable
in appearance has four circles of large stones around it, and is called by the na¬
tives, ‘Pandavara Gudi’, or the temples of the Pandas. . . . This is supposed to
be the first instance, where the natives popularly imagine a structure of this kind
to have been the temple of a by-gone, if not of a mythical, race. Many of these
structures have a triple circle, some a double, and a few single circles of stone
round them”. In the 35th degree of latitude, the Arizona Indians in North
America have their rude altars to this day, surrounded by precisely such circles,
and their sacred spring, discovered by Major Alfred R. Calhoun, F.G.S., of the
United States Army Survey Commission, is surrounded with the same sym¬
bolical wall of stones, as is found in Stonehenge and elsewhere.
By far the most interesting and full account we have read for a long time
upon the Peruvian antiquities is that from the pen of Mr. Heath of Kansas,
already mentioned. Condensing the general picture of these remains into the
limited space of a few pages in a periodical , 2 he yet manages to present a mas¬
terly and vivid picture of the wealth of these remains. More than one specu-
1 On Ancient Sculpturing on Rjcks in Kumaon, India, similar to those found on monoliths and rocks in Europe.
By J. H. Rivett-Camac, Bengal Civil Service, C.I.E., F.S.A., M.R.A.S., F.G.S., etc.
* See Kansas City Review of Science and Industry, November, 1878.
A LAND OF MYSTERY
29
lator has grown rich in a few days through his desecrations of the “huacas .
The remains of countless generations of unknown races, who had slept there
undisturbed—who knows for how many ages—are now left by the sacrilegious
treasure-hunter to crumble into dust under the tropical sun. Mr. Heath s con¬
clusions, more startling, perchance, than his discoveries, are worthy of being
recorded. We will repeat in brief his descriptions:—
“In the Jeguatepegue valley in Peru in 7 0 24/ S. latitude, four miles north
of the port of Pacasmayo, is the Jeguatepegue River. Near it, beside the
southern shore, is an elevated platform ‘one-fourth of a mile square and forty
feet high, all of adobes’ or sun-burnt bricks. A wall of fifty feet in width con¬
nects it with another, 150 feet high, 200 feet across the top, and 500 at the base,
nearly square. This latter was built in sections of rooms, ten feet square at the
base, six feet at the top, and about eight feet high. All of this same class of
mounds—temples to worship the sun, or fortresses, as they may be—have on
the northerly side an incline for an entrance. Treasure-seekers have cut into
this one about half-way, and it is said 150,000 dollars’ worth of gold and silver
ornaments were found.” Here, many thousands of men were buried, and
beside the skeletons were found in abundance ornaments of gold, silver, copper,
coral beads, etc. “On the north side of the river, are the extensive ruins of a
walled city, two miles wide by six long. . . . Follow the river to the mountains.
All along you pass ruin after ruin and huaca after huaca” (burial places). At
Tolon there is another ruined city. Five miles further, up the river, “there is
an isolated boulder of granite, four and six feet in its diameters, covered with
hieroglyphics; fourteen miles further, a point of mountain at the junction of
two ravines is covered to a height of more than fifty feet with the same class of
hieroglyphics—birds, fishes, snakes, cats, monkeys, men, sun, moon, and many
odd and now unintelligible forms. The rock, on which these are cut, is a sili-
cated sandstone, and many of the lines are an eighth of an inch deep. In one
large stone there are three holes, twenty to thirty inches deep, six inches in
diameter at the orifice and two at the apex. ... At Anchi, on the Rimac river,
upon the face of a perpendicular wall 200 feet above the river-bed, there are
two hieroglyphics, representing an imperfect B and a perfect D. In a ere\^j
below them, near the river, were found buried 25,000 dollars’ worth of goldiaW
silver; when the Incas learned of the murder of their chief, what did they do
with the gold they were bringing for his ransom? Rumour says they buried it.
. May not these markings at Yonan tell something, since they are on the
road and near to the Incal city?”
The above was published in November, 1878. When in October, 1877, in
my work Isis Unveiled (Vol. I, p. 595), I gave a legend, which, for circumstances
too long to explain, I hold to be perfectly trustworthy, relating to these same
buried treasures for the Inca’s ransom, a journal more satirical than polite
classed it with the tales of Baron Munchausen. The secret was revealed to me
by a Peruvian. At Arica, going from Lima, there stands an enormous rock,
which tradition points to as the tomb of the Incas. As the last rays of the set¬
ting sun strike the face of the rock, one can see curious hieroglyphics inscribed
30
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
upon it. These characters form one of the land-marks that show how to get at
the immense treasures buried in subterranean corridors. The details are given
in Isis , and I will not repeat them. Strong corroborative evidence is now found
in more than one recent scientific work; and the statement may be less pooh-
poohed now than it was then. Some miles beyond Yonan, on a ridge of a moun¬
tain 700 feet above the river, are the walls of another city. Six and twelve
miles further are extensive walls and terraces; seventy-eight miles from the
coast, “you zigzag up the mountain side 7,000 feet, then descend 2,000” to
arrive at Coxamolca, the city where, unto this day, stands the house in which
Atahualpa, the unfortunate Inca, was held prisoner by the treacherous Pizarro.
It is the house which the Inca “promised to fill with gold as high as he could
reach, in exchange for his liberty” in 1532; he did fill it with 17,500,000 dollars’
worth of gold, and so kept his promise. But Pizarro, the ancient swineherd of
Spain and the worthy acolyte of the priest Hernando de Lugues, murdered him,
notwithstanding his pledge of honour. Three miles from this town, “there is a
wall of unknown make. Cemented, the cement is harder than stone itself.
... At Chep£n, there is a mountain with a wall twenty feet high, the summit
being almost entirely artificial. Fifty miles south of Pacaomayo, between the
seaport of Huanchaco and Truxillo, are the ruins of Chan-Chan, the capital
city of the Chimoa kingdom. . . . The road from the port to the city crosses
these ruins, entering by a causeway about four feet from the ground, and lead¬
ing from one great mass of ruins to another; beneath this is a tunnel”. Be they
forts, castles, palaces or burial mounds called “huacas”, all bear the name
“huaca”. Hours of wandering on horseback among these ruins give only a con¬
fused idea of them, nor can any explorers there point out what were palaces
and what were not. . . . The highest enclosures must have cost an immense
amount of labour.
To give an idea of the wealth found in the country by the Spaniards, we copy
the following, taken from the records of the municipality in the city of Truxillo
by Mr. Heath. It is a copy of the accounts that are found in the book of Fifths
of the Treasury in the years 1577 and 1578, of the treasures found in the “Huaca
of Toledo” by one man alone.
First. —In Truxillo, Peru, on the 22nd of July, 1577, Don Gracia Gutierrez
de Toledo presented himself at the royal treasury, to give into the royal chest
a fifth. He brought a bar of gold 19 carats ley weighing 2,400 Spanish dollars,
of which the fifth being 708 dollars, together with i l A per cent to the chief
assayer, were deposited in the royal box.
Secondly. —On the 12th of December, he presented himself with five bars of
gold, 15 and 19 carats ley, weighing 8,918 dollars.
Thirdly. —On the 7th of January, 1578, he came with his fifth of large bars
and plates of gold, one hundred and fifteen in number, 15 to 20 carats ley, weigh¬
ing 153,280 dollars.
Fourthly. —On the 8th of March, he brought sixteen bars of gold, 14 to 21
carats ley, weighing 21,118 dollars.
Fifthly .—On the fifth of April, he brought different ornaments of gold, being
A LAND OF MYSTERY 31
little belts of gold and patterns of corn-heads and other things, of 14 carats ley,
weighing 6,272 dollars.
Sixthly. —On the 20th of April, he brought three small bars of gold, 20 carats
ley, weighing 4,170 dollars.
Seventhly. —On the 12th of July, he came with forty-seven bars, 14 to 21
carats ley, weighing 77,312 dollars.
Eighthly. —On the same day he came back with another portion of gold and
ornaments of corn-heads and pieces of effigies of animals, weighing 4,704 dollars.
“The sum of these eight ‘bringings’ amounted to 278,174 gold dollars or
Spanish ounces. Multiplied by sixteen, this gives 4,450,784 silver dollars. De¬
ducting the royal fifth—985,953.75 dollars—left 3,464,830.25 dollars as Toledo s
portion! Even after this great haul, effigies of different animals of gold were
found from time to time. Mantles, also adorned with square pieces of gold, as
well as robes made with feathers of divers colours, were dug up. There is a
tradition that in the huaca of Toledo there were two treasures, known as the
great and little fish. The smaller only has been found. Between Huacho and
Supe, the latter being 120 miles north of Callao, near a point called Atahuangri,
there are two enormous mounds, resembling the Campana and San Miguel, of
the Huatica Valley, soon to be described. About five miles from Patavilca
(south, and near Supe) is a place called ‘Paramonga’ or the fortress. 1 he ruins
of a fortress of great extent are here visible, the walls are of tempered clay, about
six feet thick. The principal building stood on an eminence, but the walls
were continued to the foot of it, like regular circumvallations; the ascent winding
round the hill like a labyrinth, having many angles which probably served as
outworks to defend the place. In this neighbourhood, much treasure has been
excavated, all of which must have been concealed by the pre-historic Indian, as
we have no evidence of the Incas ever having occupied this part of Peru after
they had subdued it.”
Not far from Ancon, on a circuit of six to eight miles, “on every side you see
skulls, legs, arms and whole skeletons lying about in the sand. ... At Parmayo,
fourteen miles further down north”, and on the sea-shore, is another great
burying-ground. Thousands of skeletons lie about, thrown out by the treasure-
seekers. It has more than half a mile of cutting through it. . . . It extends^)
the face of the hill from the sea-shore to the height of about 800 feet. MM
Whence come these hundreds and thousands of peoples, who are burieaat
Ancon? Time and time again the archaeologist finds himself face to face with
such questions, to which he can only shrug his shoulders and say with the
natives—Qui6n Sr/e?”—who knows?
Dr. Hutchinsoy writes, under date of Oct. 30, 1872, in the South Pacific
Times: —“I am come to the conclusion that Chancay is a great city of the dead,
or has been an immense ossuary of Peru; for go where you will, on a mountain
top or level plain, or by the sea-side, you meet at every turn skulls and bones
of all descriptions.”
In the Huatica Valley, which is an extensive ruin, there are seventeen mounds,
called “huacas”, although, remarks the writer, “they present more the form of
32
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
fortresses, or castles than burying-ground.” A triple wall surrounded the city.
These walls are often three yards in thickness and from fifteen to twenty feet
high. To the east of these is the enormous mound called Huaca of Pando.
. . . and the great ruins of fortresses, which natives entitle Huaca of the Bell.
La compana , the Huacas of Pando, consisting of a series of large and small
mounds, and extending over a stretch of ground incalculable without being
measured, form a colossal accumulation. The mound “Bell” is no feet high.
Towards Callao, there is a square plateau (278 yards long and 96 across) having
on the top eight gradations of declivity, each from one to two yards lower than
its neighbour, and making a total in length and breadth of about 278 yards,
according to the calculation of J. B. Steere, of Michigan, Professor of Natural
History.
The square plateau first mentioned at the base consists of two divisions . . .
each measuring a perfect square 47 to 48 yards; the two joining, form the square
of 96 yards. Besides this, is another square of 47 to 48 yards. On the top re¬
turning again, we find the same symmetry of measurement in the multiples of
twelve, nearly all the ruins in this valley being the same, which is a fact for the
curious. Was it by accident or design? . . . The mound is a truncated pyra¬
midal form, and is calculated to contain a mass of 14,641,820 cubic feet of
material. . . . The “Fortress” is a huge structure, 80 feet high and 150 yards
in measurement. Great square rooms show their outlines on the top but are
filled with earth. Who brought this earth here, and with what object was the
filling-up accomplished? The work of obliterating all space in these rooms
with loose earth must have been almost as great as the construction of the build¬
ing itself. . . .Two miles south, we find another similar structure, more spacious
and with a greater number of apartments. ... It is nearly 170 yards in length,
and 168 in breadth, and 93 feet high. The whole of these ruins . . . were enclosed
by high walls of adobes—large mud bricks, some from 1 to 2 yards in thickness,
length and breadth. The “huaca” of the “Bell” contains about 20,220,840
cubic feet of material, while that of “San Miguel” has 25,650,800. These two
buildings with their terraces, parapets and bastions, with a large number of
rooms and squares—are now filled up with earth!
Near “Mira Flores”, is Ocheran—the largest mound in the Huatica valley.
It has 95 feet of elevation and a width of 55 yards on the summit, and a total
length of 428 yards, or 1,284 feet, another multiple of twelve. It is enclosed by a
double wall, 816 yards in length by 700 across, thus enclosing 117 acres. Be¬
tween Ocharan and the ocean are from 15 to 20 masses of ruins like those already
described.
The Inca temple of the Sun, like the temple of Cholula on the plains of Mexico,
is a sort of vast terraced pyramid of earth. It is from 200 to 300 feet high, and
forms a semilunar shape that is beyond half a mile in extent. Its top measures
about 10 acres square. Many of the walls are washed over with red paint,
which is as fresh and bright as when centuries ago it was first put on. . . . In
the Canete valley, opposite the Chincha Guano Islands, are extensive ruins,
described by Squier. From the hill called “Hill of Gold”, copper and silver
A LAND OF MYSTERY
33
pins were taken like those used by ladies to pin their shawls; also tweezers for
pulling out the hair of the eyebrows, eyelids and whiskers, as well as silver
cups.
“The coast of Peru”, says Mr. Heath, “extends from Tumbey to the river Loa,
a distance of 1,233 miles. Scattered over this whole extent, there are thousands
of ruins besides those just mentioned . . . while nearly every hill and spire of
the mountains have upon them or about them some relic of the past; and in
every ravine, from the coast to the central plateau, there are ruins of walls,
cities, fortresses, burial-vaults, and miles and miles of terraces and water¬
courses. Across the plateau and down the eastern slope of the Andes to the home
of the wild Indian, and into the unknown impenetrable forest, still you find them.
In the mountains, however, where showers of rain and snow with terrific thunder
and lightning are nearly constant during a number of months each year, the
ruins are different. Of granite, porphyritic lime, and silicated sandstone, these
massive, colossal, cyclopean structures have resisted the disintegration of time,
geological transformations, earthquakes, and the sacrilegious, destructive hand
of the warrior and treasure-seeker. The masonry composing these walls, tem¬
ples, houses, towers, fortresses, or sepulchres, is uncemented, held in place by
the incline of the walls from the perpendicular, and adaptation of each stone to
the place destined for it, the stones having from six to many sides, each dressed,
and smoothed to fit another or others with such exactness that the blade of a
small penknife cannot be inserted in any of the seams thus formed, whether in the
central parts entirely hidden, or on the internal or external surfaces. These stones,
selected with no reference to uniformity in shape or size, vary from one-half
cubic foot to 1,500 cubic feet solid contents, and if, in the many , many millions
of stones you could find one that would fit in the place of another, it would be
purely accidental. In Triumph Street’, in the city of Cuzco, in a part of the
wall of the ancient house of the Virgins of the Sun, is a very large stone, known
as ‘the stone of the twelve comers’, since it is joined with those that surround
it, by twelve faces, each having a different angle. Besides these twelve faces
it has its internal one, and no one knows how many it has on its back that is
hidden in the masonry. In the wall in the centre of the Cuzco fortress there are
stones 13 feet high, 15 feet long, and 8 feet thick, and all have been quarried
miles away. Near this city there is an oblong smooth boulder, 18 feet ij^its
longer axis, and 12 feet in its lesser. On one side are large niches cut out, in
which a man can stand, and, by swaying his body, cause the stone to rock.
These niches apparently were made solely for this purpose. One of the most
wonderful and extensive of these works in stone is that called Ollantay-Tambo,
a ruin situated 30 miles north of Cuzco, in a narrow ravine on the bank of the
River Urubamba. It consists of a fortress constructed on the top of a sloping,
craggy eminence. Extending from it to the plain below, is a stony stairway.
At the top of the stairway are six large slabs, 12 feet high, 5 feet wide, and 3
feet thick, side by side, having between them and on top, narrow strips of stone
about 6 inches wide, frames as it were to the slabs, and all being of dressed stone.
At the bottom of the hill, part of which was made by hand, and at the foot of
34
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the stairs, a stone wall io feet wide and 12 feet high extends some distance into
the plain. In it are many niches, all facing the south.”
The ruins in the Islands in Lake Titicaca, where Incal history begins, have
often been described.
At Tiahuanaco, a few miles south of the lake, there are stones in the form of
columns, partly dressed, placed in line at certain distances from each other,
and having an elevation above the ground of from 18 to 20 feet. In this same
line there is a monolithic doorway, now broken, 10 feet high by 13 wide. The
space cut out for the door is 7 feet 4 inches high by 3 feet 2 inches wide.
The whole face of the stone above the door is engraved. Another, similar but
smaller, lies on the ground beside it. These stones are of hard porphyry, and
differ geologically from the surrounding rock; hence we infer they must have
been brought from elsewhere.
At ‘‘Chavin de Huanta”, a town in the province of Huari, there are some
ruins worthy of note. The entrance to them is by an alley-way, 6 feet wide and
9 feet high, roofed over with sandstone partly dressed, of more than 12 feet in
length. On each side there are rooms 12 feet wide, roofed over by large pieces of
sandstone, i l /i feet thick and from 6 to 9 feet wide. The walls of the rooms are
6 feet thick, and have some loopholes in them, probably for ventilation. In the
floor of this passage there is a very narrow entrance to a subterranean passage
that passes beneath the river to the other side. From this many huacas, stone
drinking-vessels, instruments of copper and silver, and a skeleton of an Indian,
sitting, were taken. The greater part of these ruins were situated over aque¬
ducts. The bridge to these castles is made of three stones of dressed granite,
24 feet long, 2 feet wide by i l /i thick. Some of the granite stones are covered
with hieroglyphics.
At Corralones, 24 miles from Arequipa, there are hieroglyphics engraved on
masses of granite, which appear as if painted with chalk. There are figures of
men, llamas, circles, parallelograms, letters as an R and an 0 , and even remains
of a system of astronomy.
At Huaytar, in the province of Castro Virreina, there is an edifice with the
same engravings.
At Nazca, in the province of lea, there are some wonderful ruins of aqueducts,
four to five feet high and 3 feet wide, very straight, double-walled, of unfinished
stone, flagged on top.
At Quelap, not far from Chochapayas, there have lately been examined some
extensive works: a wall of dressed stone, 560 feet wide, 3,660 long, and 150 feet
high; the lower part is solid. Another wall above this has 600 feet length, 500
width, and the same elevation of 150 feet. There are niches over both walls,
three feet long, one-and-a-half wide and thick, containing the remains of those
ancient inhabitants, some naked, others enveloped in shawls of cotton of dis¬
tinct colours and well embroidered. . . .
Following the entrances of the second and highest wall, there are other sepul¬
chres like small ovens, six feet high and twenty-four in circumference; in their
base are flags, upon which some cadavers reposed. On the north side there is,
A LAND OF MYSTERY
35
on the perpendicular rocky side of the mountain, a brick wall, having small
windows, 600 feet from the bottom. No reason for this , nor means of approach,
can now be found. The skilful construction of utensils of gold and silver that
were found here, the ingenuity and solidity of this gigantic work of dressed
stone, make it also probably of pre-Incal date. . . . Estimating five hundred
ravines in the 1,200 miles of Peru, and ten miles of terraces of fifty tiers to each
ravine, which would only be five miles of fifty tiers to each side, we have
250,000 miles of stone wall, averaging three to four feet high—enough to encircle
this globe ten times. Surprising as these estimates may seem, I am fully con¬
vinced that an actual measurement would more than double them, for these
ravines vary from 30 to 100 miles in length. While at San Mateo, a town in the
valley of the River Rimac, where the mountains rise to a height of 1,500 or 2,000
feet above the river bed, I counted two hundred tiers, none of which were less *
than four and many more than six miles long.
“Who then”, very pertinently enquires Mr. Heath, “were these people, cut¬
ting through sixty miles of granite; transplanting blocks of hard porphyry, of
Baalbec dimensions, miles from the place where quarried, across valleys thou¬
sands of feet deep, over mountains, along plains, leaving no trace of how or
where they carried them; people (said to be) ignorant of the use of word [?],
with the feeble llama their only beast of burden; who after having brought
these stones fitted them into stones with Mosaic precision; terracing thousands
of miles of mountain side; building hills of adobes and earth, and huge cities;
leaving works in clay, stone, copper, silver, gold, and embroidery, many of which
cannot be duplicated at the present age; people apparently vying with Dives
in riches, Hercules in strength and energy, and the ant and bee in industry?”
Callao was submerged in 1746, and entirely destroyed. Lima was ruined in
1678; in 1746 only 20 houses out of 3,000 were left standing, while the ancient
cities in the Huatica and Lurin valleys still remain in a comparatively good
state of preservation. San Miguel de Puiro, founded by Pizarro in 1531, was
entirely destroyed in 1855, while the old ruins near by suffered little. Arequipa
was thrown down in August, 1868, but the ruins near show no change. In en¬
gineering, at least, the present may learn from the past. We hope to show it
may in most things else.
w
To refer all these cyclopean constructions, then, to the days of the Incas is,
as we have shown before, more inconsistent yet, and seems even a greater fallacy
than that too common one of attributing every rock-temple of India to Buddhist
excavators. As many authorities show—Dr. Heath among the rest—Incal
history only dates back to the eleventh century, a.d., and the period, from
that time to the Conquest, is utterly insufficient to account for such grandiose
and innumerable works; nor do the Spanish historians know much of them.
Nor again, must we forget that the temples of heathendom were odious to the
narrow bigotry of the Roman Catholic fanatics of those days; and that, when¬
ever the chance offered, they either converted them into Christian churches or
36
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
razed them to the ground. Another strong objection to the idea lies in the fact
that the Incas were destitute of a written language, and that these antique
relics of bygone ages are covered with hieroglyphics. “It is granted that the
Temple of the Sun, at Cuzco, was of Incal make, but that is the latest of the
five styles of architecture visible in the Andes, each probably representing an
age of human progress.”
The hieroglyphics of Peru and Central America have been, are, and will most
probably remain for ever as dead a letter to our cryptographers as they were to
the Incas. The latter, like the barbarous ancient Chinese and Mexicans, kept
their records by means of a quipus (or knot in Peruvian)—a cord, several feet
long, composed of different coloured threads, from which a multicoloured fringe
was suspended; each colour denoting a sensible object, and knots serving as
ciphers. “The mysterious science of the quipus”, says Prescott, “supplied the
Peruvians with the means of communicating their ideas to one another, and of
transmitting them to future generations. ...” Each locality, however, had
its own method of interpreting these elaborate records; hence a quipus was only
intelligible in the place where it was kept. “Many quipus have been taken from
the graves, in excellent state of preservation in colour and texture”, writes Dr.
Heath; “but the lips, that alone could pronounce the verbal key, have for ever
ceased their function, and the relic-seeker has failed to note the exact spot where
each was found, so that the records, which could tell so much we want to know,
will remain sealed till all is revealed at the last day” ... if anything at all is
revealed then. But what is certainly as good as a revelation now , while our
brains are in function, and our mind is acutely alive to some pre-eminently
suggestive facts, are the incessant discoveries of archaeology, geology, ethnology,
and other sciences. It is the almost irrepressible conviction that man having
existed upon earth millions of years—for all we know—the theory of cycles is
the only plausible theory to solve the great problems of humanity, the rise and
fall of numberless nations and races, and the ethnological differences among the
latter. This difference—which, though as marked as the one between a hand¬
some and intellectual European and a digger Indian of Australia, yet makes the
ignorant shudder and raise a great outcry at the thought of destroying the
imaginary “great gulf between man and brute creation”—might thus be well
accounted for. The digger Indian, then, in company with many other savage,
though to him superior, nations, which evidently are dying out to afford room
to men and races of a superior kind, would have to be regarded in the same light
as so many dying-out specimens of animals—and no more. Who can tell but
that the forefathers of this flat-headed savage—forefathers who may have lived
and prospered amidst the highest civilization before the glacial period—were in
the arts and sciences far beyond those of the present civilization—though it
may be in quite another direction? That man has lived in America, at least
50,000 years ago, is now proved scientifically and remains a fact beyond doubt
or cavil. In a lecture delivered at Manchester, in June last, by Mr. H. A.
Allbutt, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society, the lecturer
stated the following:— “Near New Orleans, in one part of the modem delta, in
A LAND OF MYSTERY
37
excavating for gas works, a series of beds, almost wholly made up of vegetable
matter, were dug through. In the excavation, at a depth of 16 feet from the
upper surface, and beneath four buried forests, one on the top of the other, the
labourers discovered some charcoal and the skeleton of a man, the cranium of
which was reported to be that of the type of the aboriginal Red Indian race.
To this skeleton Dr. Dowler ascribed an antiquity of some 50,000 years”. The
irrepressible cycle in the course of time brought down the descendants of the
contemporaries of the late inhabitant of this skeleton, and intellectually as well
as physically they have degenerated, as the present elephant has degenerated
from his proud and monstrous forefather, the antediluvian Sivatherium whose
fossil remains are still found in the Himalayas; or, as the lizard has from the
plesiosaurus. Why should man be the only specimen upon earth which has
never changed in form since the first day of his appearance upon this planet?
The fancied superiority of every generation of mankind over the preceding one
is not yet so well established as to make it impossible for us to learn some day
that, as in everything else, the theory is a two-sided question—incessant progress
on the one side and an as irresistible decadence on the other [side] of the cycle.
‘‘Even as regards knowledge and power, the advance, which some claim as a
characteristic feature of humanity, is effected by exceptional individuals who
arise in certain races under favourable circumstances only, and is quite com¬
patible with long intervals of immobility, and even of decline ", 1 says a modem
man of science. This point is corroborated by what we see in the modem de¬
generate descendants of the great and powerful races of ancient America—the
Peruvians and the Mexicans. “How changed! How fallen from their greatness
must have been the Incas, when a little band of one hundred and sixty men could
penetrate, uninjured, to their mountain homes, murder their worshipped kings
and thousands of their warriors, and carry away their riches, and that, too, in a
country where a few men with stones could resist successfully an army! Who
could recognize in the present Inichua and Aymara Indians their noble ances¬
try?” . . . Thus writes Dr. Heath, and his conviction that America was once
united with Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, seems as firm as our own. There
must exist geological and physical cycles as well as intellectual and spiritual;
globes and planets, as well as races and nations, are bom to grow, proej^fe, de¬
cline and—die. Great nations split, scatter into small tribes, lose allrcmem-
brance of their integrity, gradually fall into their primitive state and—disappear,
one after the other, from the face of the earth. So do great continents. Ceylon
must have formed, once upon a time, part of the Indian continent. So, to all
appearances, was Spain once joined to Africa, the narrow channel between
Gibraltar and the latter continent having once upon a time been dry land.
Gibraltar is full of large apes of the same kind as those which are found in great
numbers on the opposite side on the African coast, whereas nowhere in Spain
is either a monkey or ape to be found at any place whatever. And the caves of
Gibraltar are also full of gigantic human bones, supporting the theory that they
belong to an antediluvian race of men. The same Dr. Heath mentions the
1 Journal of Science for February, Article—"The Alleged Distinction between Mon and Brute”.
3»
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
town of Eten in 7 S. latitude of America, in which the inhabitants of an un¬
known tribe of men speak a monosyllabic language that imported Chinese la¬
bourers understood from the first day of their arrival. They have their own
laws, customs and dress, neither holding nor permitting communication with
the outside world. No one can tell whence they came or when; whether it was
before or after the Spanish Conquest. They are a living mystery to all who
chance to visit them. . . .
With such facts before us to puzzle exact science herself, and show our entire
ignorance of the past, verily we recognize no right of any man on earth—
whether in geography or ethnology, in exact or abstract sciences—to tell his
neighbour, “so far shalt thou go, and no further”!
But. recognizing our debt of gratitude to Dr. Heath of Kansas, whose able
and interesting paper has furnished us with such a number of facts and sug¬
gested such possibilities, we can do no better than quote his concluding reflec¬
tions. “Thirteen thousand years ago”, he writes, “Vega, in Lyra , was the north
polar star; since then how many changes has she seen in our planet! How many
nations and races spring into life, rise to their zenith of splendour, and then
decay; and when we shall have been gone thirteen thousand years, and once
more she resumes her post at the north, completing a ‘Platonic or Great year’,
think you that those who shall fill our places on the earth at that time will be
more conversant with our history than we are of those that have passed? Verily
might we exclaim, in terms almost psalmistic, ‘Great God, Creator and Director
of the Universe, what is man that Thou art mindful of him!’”
Amen! ought to be the response of such as yet believe in a God who is “the
Creator and Director of the Universe”.
Over the Mountains of Time hover the Eagles of Time,—the Vultures also.
The Eagles soar, gazing at the Sun: the Vultures look down, seeking carrion.
Time, the mighty Illusion, raised those Mountains; and, while Time exists, over
them hover the Eagles of Time,—the Vultures also.
Eternity holds them; verily , Eternity holds them all .— The Book of Birds.
On the Housetops of Time twitter the Sparrows of Time; they quarrel, they do not
sing: they make litter and confusion.
The peace-loving drive them away; the earth-bound leave them alone, unheeding.
Time, the mighty Illusion, built those Housetops for man, while yet unborn, to
dwell in; and, while Time exists, on them twitter the Sparrows of Time who quarrel
and do not sing.
Eternity holds them; verily, Eternity holds them all .— The Book of Birds.
REPORT OF THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
Morning Session
The Annual Convention of The Theosophical Society was called to order
at 64, Washington Mews, New York, at 10.30 a. m., on Saturday, April 27th,
1:935, by Mr. Hargrove, Chairman of the Executive Committee, who served
as Temporary Chairman of the Convention. A Committee on Credentials
was appointed, consisting of Mr. H. B. Mitchell, Miss Perkins, and Mr. Kobb6,
to confer and report at once.
Address of the Temporary Chairman
Mr. Hargrove : It is my privilege to welcome all of you, visiting members
particularly, to this Convention of The Theosophical Society. It would be im¬
possible to do that without deep feeling; feeling, first and foremost, of gratitude;
then of pleasure; because I think you will agree with me that the longer we work
together, the closer becomes the bond between us—a bond that is stronger than
death, stronger than any earthly bond can be. From one point of view, we
welcome you to the firing line where desolation and death surround us, ceaseless
danger,—and here in New York that is true in a very objective sense as well as
in the deeper occult sense. We welcome you to Avitchi! But while it is true
that this is the firing line, the front line (not front-line trenches, because a^yet
there are no trenches; they may come later), you must have read of tho^^ho,
during the Great War, left the front line and returned to what had been home,
and then, after an interval, went back to the firing line; and you know that
many of them went back with a sense of relief, went back rejoicing, to what
they had experienced as reality.
There is, however, another way of looking at it. Equally, I may welcome
you to this oasis in the desert of the world, to this harbour in the midst of raging
seas. And we may thank heaven that together, on this day at least, we can
rejoice in the midst of that oasis; grateful from the depths of our souls for the
gift that has been given us from on high.
We shall now hear the report of the Committee on Credentials.
39
40
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
This Report having been submitted and accepted, and the Committee dis¬
charged with thanks, Mr. H. B. Mitchell, President of the New York Branch,
was elected Permanent Chairman of the Convention, with Miss Perkins and
Miss Chickering as Secretary and Assistant Secretary respectively.
Address of the Chairman
The Chairman: To speak first of what is uppermost in our thought, I would
express our gratitude for the welcome which meets us as we come here, and
which Mr. Hargrove has put into words. It floods the heart with gladness,
making us realize that here we have come home. I think we all must feel this
of the Convention,—that it is a return to the united spirit of being from which
we individually draw our strength and inspiration. During the year we live as
fragments of that common, overshadowing life, painfully aware of our inability
to express more than some single facet of its many sided symmetry; but here it is
whole, and, in unison with it, our fragmentary selves are supplemented, and
something of its wholeness passes into us. As we went forth from it a year ago,
so now we return to it, completing an annual cycle. What has that cycle brought
us? What has it brought the Theosophical Movement? What deeper insight
have we gained? How much greater is our power to serve? How much more
significant, do we find the life about us? A cycle has been completed; if there
has been nothing gained, then the year has been wasted. What has been the
gain?
That question and its answer, the question which is repeated and must be
faced as each cycle, great or little, comes to its end, is the theme of all I shall
put before you to-day.
There are many reasons why this theme is of special concern to us. Our
philosophy has taught us the determinative position of the great law of cycles
in all growth, and has shown us that only as we adjust our activities to their
changing phases can we carry our Movement forward from one cycle to another.
From the harvest of the closing cycle must be garnered the seed for the cycle
that is opening. In-breathing must follow out-breathing. Particularly to-day
is our theme pertinent, for with this Convention our Society marks its sixtieth
birthday. In none of its previous incarnations was the Movement able to sur¬
vive the turn of the century. With us, a whole new quarter of a century has
passed since then, and ten years more. We ask ourselves what those years have
brought us. They were sixty years of labour and of sacrifice, as we know when
we look at these pictures on our walls of H.P.B. and Judge, and of our prede¬
cessors who lived and died for the Movement; but also, as we know when we
look to what we have ourselves received,—sixty years in which there have been
poured out upon us the gifts of the spirit and the teaching of the Path, in which
we have been shown wisdom and beauty and holiness and truth, and have been
guided ceaselessly toward the source from which they flow.
If time permitted, I should wish to go back over those sixty years, both in the
history of the Society and in that of the world, and ask you to consider the
character of the vital changes that have taken place. As it is, I shall do no
CONVENTION REPORT
4i
more than note some of the crucial dates in our annals, that we may see in
truer perspective the advantages we have enjoyed.
In 1875 the Society was founded. In 1891, only sixteen years later, H.P.B.
died; and almost immediately the attacks began to which the Society was made
vulnerable by Mrs. Besant’s vanity and ambition,—proving again the age-old
truth that where vanity is, there loyalty cannot be. As they came to a head, they
swept Mrs. Besant and her following from the Movement, to revolve around
it thereafter as a baleful, psychic moon. This was registered in the Boston
Convention of 1895, in which the Society in America became free from Adyar.
But within a year Judge died. He was scarcely forty-five years old, and it was
only twenty-one years since the Society was formed. In that brief time he had
made himself what he was, and had laid the firm foundation upon which all we
have has been built. He did his utmost to live, knowing that he was needed, as
there had not been time in which to make ready his intended successor; but he
was killed at his post; and so, in 1897-8 there came Mrs. Tingley’s debacle, in
which the Society was all but destroyed. It was the end of the cycle, the crucial
period precisely foretold by H.P.B. in her last words to the Society,—the
Message she addressed to the Convention of the American Section held in 1891,
three weeks before her death. The Message was reprinted in the Quarterly
for July, 1934, where all may read her prayer that if the Movement were to fail,
she might not be here to see it. We know that though it was brought to the very
brink, it did not fail, but was carried over the crisis and the end of the century,
into a cyclic phase it had never entered before. This was ushered in, as we know,
through a period of indrawal and of silence, preparatory to the new advance
which was begun with the founding of the Quarterly in 1903, and the resump¬
tion of the meetings here in New York. This period of silence, marking the
transition from one cyclic phase to another, the in-breathing that must come
between out-breathings, has very special significance for us now.
Turning from the Society to the world, we see a remarkable period of tran¬
sition, and in one sense of attainment. All the marvels of our “machine age”,
of modem industrial science, have arisen in the sixty years of our Movement.
In 1875, electricity, save for its use in the telegraph, meant little but a ajAl’s
toy. There were no electric dynamos nor motors, no electric light, norears,
nor telephone. There were no automobiles, nor submarines, nor aircraft.
Africa was “the dark continent”, untraversed, the sources of the Nile unknown.
Our own West was undeveloped, still held by Indians and grazed by buffaloes,
—Custer’s massacre was still to come. The North and South poles had not been
reached; large tracts of the earth were blank on the map.
This is of interest to us for many reasons; for, first, the development of elec¬
tricity and the discovery of the sub-atomic forces with which modem science is
now dealing, took place, and were initiated, along lines indicated by Madame
Blavatsky. Edison was an early member of The Theosophical Society; and so
was Crookes, whose “radiant matter” was the first of the phenomena that led
step by step to our present knowledge of radiation and radio-activity. We still
do not know what electricity is,—as the question was meant when science
42
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
thought it could be explained as a product of physical substance. To-day the
situation is reversed. It is no longer sought to explain electricity in terms of
matter, but rather to explain matter in terms of electricity. In it we touch some¬
thing that underlies matter, exactly as H.P.B. insisted. Here science has
reached a boundary of the physical realm. Of this we shall have more to say,
but we must also note that it parallels the compassing of the earth, the reaching
of the poles, the filling up the blank spaces of the map, the vast increase of
population, the ease and speed of transportation and of communication. Jules
Verne’s Round the World in Eighty Days , the fiction of a generation ago, stands
in contrast to the eight days of present fact. The paper, yesterday, told of a
test performed by the American Telephone and Telegraph Co., in which two men,
in two rooms some fifty feet apart in the same building in New York, talked to
one another over a circuit that spanned the whole globe. The voice of one went
east, the other west. It took less than a quarter of a second to travel round
the world, though in doing so their voices went into to-morrow and back again
into to-day. And when those two men had finished their private conversation,
they talked to the engineers at the relay stations in Europe and Asia, who could
“listen in”, so that a dozen men conversed together from all over the earth, as
though they were sitting in the same office.
The paper called this the “annihilation of the barriers of time and space”;
but in annihilating one set of barriers it has brought us face to face with another,
—the limits of our earth. The same paradox exists here that Mr. Hargrove
pointed out existed in our own lives; for this sweeping away of barriers has
done something that at first seems singular. It has made the earth too small.
It has not made the earth greater, but smaller, so that we have compassed it
about and filled it full. The old mystery that called to us is gone. The old
spaciousness is gone. There is no more room in which to grow.
Many of us will remember a lecture, given by Mr. Johnston at Conven¬
tion time years ago, in which he pointed out that with the reaching of the limits
of our physical globe, man’s life and interests must transcend the physical, or
else turn back upon and stultify themselves. As Mr. Johnston made that clear
to us then, the whole course of events has made it still more obvious now. I
think it to be, as we shall see, the outstanding lesson of both the greater and the
lesser cycle which we complete to-day,—the answer to the question we asked
ourselves, as to what new insight they had brought us.
It is not only we who have completed a cycle; it is equally the whole thought
of the scientific world, for physical science has pressed its explorations, as was
never before possible, into both the very great and the very small, and has found,
in a way quite unexpected by it, but in precise accord with the theosophic doc¬
trine of correspondences, that they link hands. The explorations, moving in
opposite directions, have come together, and together tell us of the limitations
of the physical domain. In the direction of the very large, what has heretofore
been regarded as unlimited—what we have spoken of as the infinitude of space
—is to-day considered limited. The theory of relativity returns to the old Greek
idea of the sphericity of space. Instead of the ray of light going on for ever, in
CONVENTION REPORT
43
a straight line that “goes to infinity”, it is now held to bend back upon itself in
a huge circle, so that, after billions of light years, it would return to the point
from which it started. There is thus a limit to the region from which messages,
or impressions, can reach our physical senses; and our space, like the surface of
the globe on which we live, is conceived as spherical. There is no “end” to the
surface of the earth, no edge over which the waters of the oceans pour; but,
though “endless”, it is none the less bounded. Indeed at every point of the
surface we are in contact with its limits. There is that which is above the sur¬
face, and that which is below it. And this same fact is true, in modem theory,
of all things physical, and of space itself. All things of space and time are
bounded by that which is spaceless and timeless, which presses upon each point
and moment; and all physical things are in contact with what lies above and
below the physical.
As research into the very large seems to reveal the limits of the physical
domain, so also does research into the very small. The atoms, which the chem¬
istry of a generation ago presented to us as indivisible and immutable, have
been both divided and changed; and thereby the old alchemist—so long held
up to scorn for clinging to the principle (which alone can give any of us hope)
that there must be somewhere, some way, a means of transmuting the base
into the fine—has come into better repute. It is not the atoms that are the
ultimate building blocks of physical substance. The atoms have been shat¬
tered, and within them are seen electrons, positrons, neutrons—like the planets
of a solar system, or a galaxy of stars—not “radiant matter”, but rather a radia¬
tion of what has not yet become matter,—something that is at the very bor¬
derland of physical substance, and only partly within the region of space and
time. There, also, science has reached the limits of the physical universe. It
has compassed the whole physical realm, and thereby completed a cyclic round.
It is not one of the great “Rounds” of which The Secret Doctrine tells us, but
it is something that corresponds to it. Within each great cycle there must be
many little cycles, which image, each in its own way and scale, all that the
great cycle contains. Just as The Secret Doctrine points out that each of the
great cyclic Rounds developed a new characteristic of matter (a new aspeqj^fc
the external, physical universe), and a new power of insight (or perceptive
faculty or sense) in man, corresponding to the new quality in matter (the quality
and the perception of it being but different poles of one thing), so in this lesser
round, which science and the thought of the world have made, there should be
a similar gain both in the enrichment of our environment and in our ability
to see within it. What is the gain? Having compassed the whole physical
realm, with what harvest does consciousness come back? What added power
has it developed for itself? What new quality has it found in matter?
It is a very strange harvest, at least at first sight, and one of deep significance
to us. The whole physical universe has been compassed, and from that com¬
passing we have discovered that it is empty. We come back with empty hands,
with a harvest of emptiness.
We used to speak of the solid physical world, of solid matter. It is no longer
44
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
solid. To the eyes of science, as Eddington says, the “solid” matter of this
table top, is like “a swarm of gnats”, of little specks in helter-skelter, rapid
motion. It is like a galaxy of solar systems—a spark, a spark, another spark,
and in between, nothing.
We used to speak of the forces of the physical world. Science no longer
speaks of physical forces. In the physical world there are only the effects of
forces. The forces themselves act from beneath or above the physical plane.
We find them at the borderland of space and time.
We used to speak of the laws of chance, as though “chance” had meaning in
and of itself and constituted some sort of agency that could cause events and
could have “laws” governing its action. Most of the representatives of physical
science still speak in that way, but mathematical science is no longer doing so.
The popular ideas of chance have become, for the mathematician, merely naive
misconceptions of the significance of statistics and average values. The fact, if
it be a fact, that of the population of Manhattan one-third are foreign bom,
has no bearing upon the nativity of any individual resident, though it would be
popularly said that the “chance” is two to one that he was bom in this coun¬
try. Not even chance inheres in the physical world. It is a concept that has
meaning only in relation to our own ignorance, and as applying to averages,
not to individuals. What is the “chance”, as I walk a country road, that the
next house I come to will be on the right rather than the left? Of course, as
roads can be traversed in either direction, it seems fairly obvious that, “on the
average”, there are as many houses on the left side of roads as there are on the
right, and that therefore the “chance” is even. But as a matter of fact the next
house is where it is, and it is only because I do not know where it is that I intro¬
duce the concept of chance. I do not know what factors will be dominant, nor
what causes will be operative, when a race is to be run; therefore I ask what
are the chances that a certain horse will win. All that we call chance is but a
statement of the limitations of our knowledge, and exists only in relation to
our knowledge.
The whole trend of modem physics is to stress this principle of the emptiness
of the physical world. What we habitually call the properties of matter, the
colour, the taste, the smell, the hardness or softness to the touch, are all things
that are not really in the physical world itself, but are rather in its interaction
with man’s consciousness. At most the physical world is but a shadow-world
of effects, as Plato represented it; a world of pointer-readings, as Eddington
describes it.
Yet clearly it is a world capable of speaking to mankind, a world which,
because empty in itself, can be filled from without itself, and can thus be made
a symbol, a vehicle, for something which lies beyond the physical,—a messenger
that can bear messages from the Transcendent Consciousness to the conscious¬
ness immanent in the soul of man.
We can liken it to the type from which a book is printed. Has the type, as
metal, significance in itself? You weigh it and measure it and test it with acids,
and you find no meaning in it. Its meaning is in the use that has been made of
CONVENTION REPORT
45
it by some other consciousness to speak to yours. It tells you of something not
itself: of colour and form, and fragrance and savour; of beauty and truth and
holiness, of the properties of the transcendent consciousness in which the im¬
manent consciousness can share; or, it may be, of things the very opposite of
these, of things hideous and evil.
Thus we come back from the cyclic round that has compassed the physical
realm with, as we said, a harvest of emptiness; and we are beginning to see what
that emptiness may mean to us. Emptiness seems, at first, a strange gain for
so much labour; but that it was to constitute our next forward step was precisely
predicted by H.P.B. in The Secret Doctrine.
On page 251 of Volume I, of the 1888 edition, Madame Blavatsky discusses
“the sound but incomplete intuition” which led to the unhappy phrase “the
fourth dimension of space”, as a means of accounting for many psychic and
physical phenomena, such as the tying of knots in an endless string, and the
entering and leaving of a closed room, without passing through door or walls,—
a power attributed in the Bible to the resurrection body of the Christ. It is
pointed out that such a phrase can only mean the “fourth dimension of matter
in space”, and that even so it is an unhappy and misleading phrase, for it is not
really a question of dimensionality at all, but rather of a new property of mat¬
ter,—or, more accurately, a property of matter which we should now come to
recognize and use. H.P.B. reminds us that each characteristic of matter clearly
bears a direct relation to the corresponding sense or perceptive faculty of man,
and that each of the great evolutionary rounds in the cyclic progress of life
developed simultaneously, and as two aspects of one thing, a “property” of
matter and a perceptive “sense” of man. The next property and the next
sense which are to be developed, she tells us, may be described as “Per¬
meability” and “Normal Clairvoyance”, which is the perception of the spiritual
significance within the material form. As consciousness and matter are but
the two poles of the one reality, so this characteristic of physical being, and the
facility of consciousness which perceives it, are gained together, and both are
correlated with the “emptiness” of the physical to which science is now pointing.
Permeability and emptiness are obviously much the same. There is clearly
free passage through what is empty. A moment’s reflection makes equally clean
the relation between emptiness and significance. As Eddington has put it, tlrc
modern theories of physics make it much easier than before to take a spiritual
view of life and the universe. In the earlier theories, matter was regarded as so
solid that men fancied there was small room within it for anything but itself,
and consciousness and spirit seemed to have no place with it. If you want
anything to hold anything else you must first make it hollow, and this is what
modem thought has done for the whole physical realm. It has made it so hollow
that it can hold almost anything; so empty and without significance in itself
that it can convey spiritual significance. We can look through it to what it
reveals.
Consider how we read a book. In learning to read we began by looking at
the letters, and laboriously spelling out the words. But it is only the proof-
46
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
reader who continues to read in that way, taking conscious note of the letters
one by one. To have learned to read is to have learned not to look at the letters,
but to look through them to the significance of their arrangement, being con¬
scious only of the ideas that are thus conveyed. The letters themselves have
become permeable to our thought; we see through them to the author’s mean¬
ing, unconsciously passing from the physical to the psychic plane in quite
normal clairvoyance.
It is the same when you listen to what is said to you. Waves of air beat upon
your ears. Do you pay heed to them? The scientist could measure them: so
many alternations per second between condensation and rarefaction of such
and such intensities, which to your ears is sound. But that is not the way in
which you listen to a friend’s talk. You listen to his thought, which is not a
physical thing, but which the physical sound opens to your consciousness.
So it should be with all physical things. We must learn to look through them
to what lies beyond them. Thus the emptiness we discover in the physical
world may, and must, be made a new doorway into the spiritual world.
The analogy of speech, which we have here used, is as old as man’s thought
upon creation. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. ... All things were made by him, and without him
was not any thing made that was made.” In it we can trace the twin develop¬
ment of spirit and matter, noumena and phenomena, of significance and of the
form or symbol which embodies and conveys it. As spirit is for ever moulding
and quickening matter to make of it a fitting vehicle for its incarnation, so
thought moulds and quickens speech and manifests itself and incarnates in
speech. But the moulding takes place while the thought is still hidden. It is
only in the completion of the process that its significance is fully revealed.
The verb is at the end, as in Latin construction. The thought builds up the
sentence, word by word, but its active, incarnating principle is only reached as
its final culmination. This is true in all of life. The end is present in the be¬
ginning, is foreshadowed and active and formative throughout, but is incarnated
and revealed only as the vehicle is complete. Thus the next step which lies
ahead of us in the spiritual evolution of mankind must already be foreshadowed
in what is taking place in physical evolution. In this sense the scientific per¬
ception precedes the spiritual attainment,—as we begin to hear a sentence
before its significance appears, though it is this significance that forms the
sentence from its beginning. So science is to-day perceiving the emptiness of
the physical world before the “normal clairvoyance”, which is to use it, has
been gained by mankind at large.
It will be well to pause for a moment to consider how grave are the risks that
are inherent in this method of creative evolution. There is always the possi¬
bility that the form, created in the physical world to be the vehicle of a spiritual
life and truth, may be filled by an incarnation from below and not from above.
The world of form and manifestation, the physical universe, stands, as we well
know, between two infinitudes, between the spirit that is above and the depth
that is beneath. Every good gift that the world has received, every truth which
CONVENTION REPORT
47
H.P.B. and Judge laboured and sacrificed themselves to teach us, has been
perverted and made an instrument for evil in the world at large. The unity,
which in itself every truth is, has been split apart into two opposites, and each of
these opposites has been misrepresented and misused to the promotion of evil
instead of good. Thus our teaching of Brotherhood was made a vehicle for
envy and the desire of the base to pull down to their own level everything su¬
perior to themselves. In its name were perpetrated the hideous malice and
murders of the Russian revolution, as of the French revolution before it, and in
its name Bolshevism and Socialism to-day preach the gospel of class hatred.
In like manner physiological and medical science have been perverted to Black
Magic, to nameless cruelties upon lower forms of life, and to the grossest ma¬
terialism in their treatment of human life. As we think of these things, we marvel
at the courage of the Great Lodge, who have permitted truth to be given forth
when they must have known the way in which it would be turned against them and
against all for which they work. If we ask why it should be permitted, we can
find but one answer. It must be that if a single soul use the truth rightly, for
self-conquest and the attainment of illumination, as the Buddha, the Christ,
the great seers and saints and sages of mankind have used it and attained,—
that this one victory might wipe out and more than atone for all the defeats,
so great is the value of a single victorious soul.
Surely the possibility of such a victory exists to-day as in the past. It is the
possibility for which The Theosophical Society was founded, and to preserve
which our predecessors gave their lives. Let us not forget our responsibility to
those who have gone before us; for we make the past even as we make the future.
Past and future are one, and the work of Judge, of H.P.B., of the Great Lodge
of Masters in this century and the last, is now in our hands, to be proved by us
a failure or success. Day by day we help to make or mar it, and we shall do
this by the way in which we use all the circumstances and movements of our
time, including our use of this growing perception of the emptiness of physical
being, which modem science is bringing to the confirmation of theosophic teach¬
ing. To use it rightly will be to take the next step indicated in The Secret Doc¬
trine: to make all material and physical things permeable to us: to develop the
power to perceive the spirit within the form,—the power of “normal clair¬
voyance”.
Let us consider what this should mean in our individual lives. First of aJ^
that we should cease to think of circumstances as barriers,—cease to hypnot|#
ourselves into inactivity before imaginary walls of outer conditions. The walls
are taken away; they existed only in our thought, for outer things are empty
things. They are but a vesture, a cloak for reality. They are an open corridor,
through which you may pass freely. Your circumstances are your way. You
look through them, as through an open door, to the divine will for you. You
accept and pass through them as you would travel a path that led where you
would go. For that is what your circumstances are for: to lead you where you
would go. Or, changing the simile, they are the empty vessel that your life is
to fill with significance,—or the plastic stuff that you are to mould into the
48
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
likeness of your own vision of the True, the Beautiful and the Good. Learn to
look within the outer to the inner, to see the spirit within the form, and you see
at once that, whatever the outer form may be, it is always a way whereby to
come to the inner spirit.
That is what we must strive to do. It must involve an indrawal, a pressing
in from outer things to what will seem at first emptiness, a “cloud of unknow¬
ing”, until we develop the new sense that enables us to perceive the spirit that
fills it. Then we shall see that it was just such an “indrawal” as has brought us
together at this Convention, a laying down of outer concerns that we may re¬
turn to the source and centre, an in-breathing instead of an out-breathing,
inspiration instead of expression. This will involve the putting aside of much
that has heretofore occupied us, the surrender of much we may have thought
of value.
We must not only learn to make our circumstances permeable—realizing that
they “really do not matter, since in any we can accomplish our destiny”; we have
to make ourselves permeable as well. The separate personal self with which
you are now so occupied, is taking up room to which it is not entitled. You are
treating it as a solid reality, whereas in fact it is as hollow as is the physical
universe, and, like it, a shadow world of symbols whose only meaning is given
them from beyond themselves, whose only value is in what it can transmit.
You have to make it in your thought what it is in reality. You must perceive
and make yourself empty, that you may be filled from above, instead of, as now,
with your own vain imaginings. You must get yourself out of the way, and
hereafter live with the single thought of making yourself permeable to a life
greater than your own,—a clear channel through which divine inspiration and
life can flow to meet the needs of the world.
Looking forward, as it is our duty to do to-day, to what lies before us, I can
see nothing that seems of greater moment than that we should realize the mean¬
ing and necessity of the indrawal to which the cycle is pressing us. We have to
dispense with the crutches of outer aid on which we have leaned, and learn to
look within instead of without. We have to enter into emptiness and silence,
until we learn to hear the Voice of the silence and to open ourselves to the new
life that flows from above. We are drawing near to the moment of opportunity
and of crisis, when the old personal life must be laid aside and the life of ch£laship
be begun.
Our theme is too large, and has too many facets, for it to be possible to do
more than suggest a few of the many ways in which it is of practical concern to
us. It is illustrated on every side,—in the economic conditions of the world no
less than in its scientific thought. What lies behind our “depression” if not this
same lesson? Our civilization has plundered the physical world, drawing deeply
from its sources of energy and of wealth, only to discover that in their very
abundance they fail us. We have driven wells and drawn forth millions upon
millions of barrels of oil that in the lesser streams of some decades ago meant
riches and power, but in their present volume are all but valueless. For the
value of oil is not in itself but only in its relation to something other than itself,
CONVENTION REPORT
49
to some need of man or nature. And this is true of all things physical, for only
the divine has value in and of itself,—only the True, the Good and the Beau¬
tiful. All else, in and of itself, is empty. So by his very materialism and his
greed, by his over-running and plundering of physical being, man has come to
the experience of its inability to satisfy him,—to the proof that he cannot live
by bread alone, that in the midst of physical plenty his whole nature, even his
physical nature, can starve,—that, holding the whole world, his hands are
empty. He is experiencing this, but he does not understand it; and the empty
silence which presses upon him drives him mad with fear. The world to-day is
mad, not because it has entered the silence, but because it fears to. Yet there
lies its next step, and if it will not take it, our civilization must fail and die, as
have those that preceded it. We find it all set forth in Light on the Path , as it
is set forth also that it is left for the individual to do what the world as a whole
will not do,—to accomplish in himself the needed transformation.
So we come to our opportunity: to the indrawal to which the cycle leads us,
to the silence through which we must pass to a new inspiration and a new order
of life. It is not the first time that the Society has passed through such a period.
Many of us remember the years from 1898 to 1903, and that the Movement
came forth from those years, purer and stronger and with clearer light for the
Masters’ work. So, if we do our part, it should be with us in the years ahead.
“When the half-gods go, the gods arrive.” When the old life is put away, the
new comes to birth; and perhaps, if we could see the truth, we should see that
not since the inception of the Christian era has our western world confronted
greater possibilities for good or ill than we face here to-day.
The report of the Secretary T. S. was then called for.
Report of the Secretary T. S.
I have the honour to submit the following Report:
In the progress of our work, as it becomes more interior in aim and accomplish¬
ment, there is less of significance to be recorded in annual reports. Service of
the Movement cannot be measured by, “how many?”, “where?”, “how often?”,
“how much?”. It is rather in the Convention addresses and the Letters of
Greeting that we shall find the year’s record. A
Branch Activities
The reports from our Branches show a common spirit and purpose which
bring to mind the maxim of St. Paul: “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to
the Lord, and not unto men”. Special consideration was given by most of the
Branches to the questions and answers about a Lodge Messenger that appeared
in the Quarterly. Branches have used in their own gatherings the Reports
of addresses made at New York Branch meetings; they hold special Convention
Day meetings, with the purpose of both giving and receiving. The Arvika
Branch drew material largely from Quarterly articles and New York Reports,
translating these for its weekly meetings. It was reinforced by conferences
with visiting members, one of whom^ave a first-hand account of the 1934
50
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Convention. TheAussig Branch also was greatly helped by a personal report on
the message of Convention and its particular application to the Branch problems.
The Branch Secretary writes: “Through the articles and reports we have studied,
came many suggestions for practical endeavour to which we honestly tried to
respond. At the meetings nearest to the anniversary days of our leaders, Madame
Blavatsky and Mr. Judge, we sought to become aware of what we owe to these
great souls, as to Mr. Griscom, Mr. Johnston and others also.” In Oslo, the
members are working to fit themselves to do effective service, when the tide in
their country no longer sets so strongly toward psychic allurements. The an¬
niversaries of nine T. S. leaders were commemorated with the thought of them
“as still living and working for the Cause they loved so much”. The Lodge
Messenger is a subject which they believe all members will have close at heart
during the Convention. The Branches in the north of England have maintained
their occasional joint-meetings, which give stimulus and a feeling of solidarity.
Mr. Mackey, the Secretary of the Branch in South Shields, reports that they
were particularly interested in the “Screen’s” discussion of the false standards
that are prevalent in modem Christianity; and that the New York Reports
have assisted very much in clarifying their vision and understanding. The
Gateshead Branch goes steadily on with its studies, assisted by members of
neighbouring Branches. The Secretary of the Newcastle Branch, Mrs. Cassidy,
writes that they have been strengthened in determination to carry on the Work
in gratitude for the life and message of H.P.B. Since three of their number are
to have the happiness of attending the Convention, they all expect to share in
the inspiration of it. The Whitley Bay Branch has been emphasizing, in its
studies, the value of discussion, in which all participate actively. Mrs. Ross, the
Secretary, says: “We are progressing, and things that were obscure are now
clear”. The Norfolk Branch is compelled by its scattered membership to hold
meetings by correspondence. Clearly, its members do meet, in a very real sense,
for Mrs. Graves, the Secretary, writes: “Each year shows definite progress in
the comments on our studies that are written for circulation;—also there is a
united spirit which is greatly helped by the Reports of the New York Branch
meetings,—they serve as a real bond between our isolated group of students
and our fellow members at the Headquarters”.
The Cincinnati Branch has continued its study of The Voice of the Silence ,
with emphasis upon the difference between psychic and spiritual interpreta¬
tion,—and has found aid in solving individual and collective problems. Miss
Hohnstedt, the new Branch Secretary, writes: “Miss Agnes McCormack, our
beloved and faithful Secretary, died recently. During the thirty or more years
of her membership, she never missed a meeting except when ill or absent from
the city. We know that she always lived up to the standard of her theosophic
ideals, and have no doubt that she will continue to do so”. The Middletown
Branch, undismayed by the illness of its oldest members, has maintained its
meetings and its studies. The President, Mr. Roberts, writes: “What we most
desire is to develop brotherhood in our Branch; we are trying to make that a
part of our lives, and also to arouse, in others, consciousness of the Soul”. Hope
CONVENTION REPORT
5i
Branch of Providence has successfully carried on its accustomed activities. Its
members have been specially impressed with the need to gain wisdom in order
to be dependable workers. Miss Wallace, the Secretary of the Virya Branch,
Denver, writes: “This year the interest has been less intellectual, centering
more on conduct. The Quarterly provides much material, and the letters
from other Branches, published in the Convention number, were inspiring and
often deeply moving expressions of a close relation to the theosophic body.”
The Branch in Los Angeles began its session with discussion of the near-coming
of a Lodge Messenger and a forerunner. “In the end”, Mr. Box reports, “we all
felt and understood the need for their coming, nor have we ceased to think
about them. In our reading and discussion of the New York Branch Reports,
we found that they were not only intellectually illuminating, but that they drew
us inwardly nearer to the heart of the Movement”. Of the Toronto Branch, Mr.
Harris writes: “Our meetings have been interesting and useful; quite often we
have visitors. At the earnest request of members, we have been studying
Light on the Path”. Members of the Venezuela Branch have worked unremit¬
tingly, to embody, both personally and as a Branch, the impetus which so many
of their members derived from the last Convention.
Book Department
The sale of our books has, of course, been decreased in volume by the wide¬
spread financial collapse, but there is a satisfactory, steady demand for them.
Our publications are not intended to cover the whole range of theosophic teach¬
ing; their purpose is, rather, to make clear certain basic interpretations of The¬
osophy,—and to show that the principles and standards of Theosophy offer the
only adequate solution of the problems now confronting a bewildered and
leaderless world.
Theosophical Quarterly
As one looks at the thirty-two volumes of this magazine, which fulfil the pur¬
pose of its founder and editor, Mr. Clement A. Griscom, that most faithful
follower of W. Q. Judge, one is reminded of the old-time explorers, whose first
act on landing in new territory, was to plant there the banner of their Kig#
Outwardly that banner was a perishable affair, and so are the pages of trus
periodical,—but they have served to plant in the world, teaching which, once
so clearly put forth, surely could not vanish with the crumbling of the paper on
which it was recorded. The magazine has articles that may carry some of us into
rarified atmosphere where our best endeavour results in little or no perception,
but there is stimulation and promise for the future in the vistas thus opened.
Many readers rejoice in the magazine’s militant spirit. One of them writes: “In
these days when so many things seem to be toppling about our heads, when
values seem so distorted,—to find such expressions of truth so clearly and
fearlessly stated, gives one a feeling of sorely needed security, and I never fail
to get help and courage from them”. The appearance of the magazine in
representative libraries, the world over, is assured by interested friends.
52
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Secretary's Office
In some quarters there is a mistaken impression that the Secretary is too
busy” to receive letters. On the contrary, correspondence is welcomed. The
Assistant Secretary stands ready to assist in it as she does in many other ways.
Branches and members have asked that their heartfelt gratitude be expressed
to the Editors of the Quarterly and its contributors; also to those who speak
at the New York meetings and to those who prepare the Reports. All are
indebted to a member who has assumed the routine work of the Book Depart¬
ment; and the distribution of the Quarterly is another happy activity. Two
of our youngest members address the envelopes for it, and also do the lettering
for our membership diplomas. Copies of the magazine printed on “all-rag”
paper are being preserved in public libraries, and for these we are indebted to the
member who originated this provision for permanency. Another member has
again generously reimbursed the Society for the sum deflected from its Treasury
when the Executive Committee directed European Branches to contribute to
some Allied War Relief organization the amount of their annual dues. One
does not know where to begin acknowledgment of what the Society owes to our
older members,—to those so closely associated with Mr. Judge during his life¬
time. It is they who unfailingly note and interpret the significance of what
occurs in the ordinary progress of the work at Headquarters and in the Branches;
they support every whole-hearted effort to serve; they provide against mis¬
understanding before it develops, and are alert to see how all of us can be put
at our best. Thus we of the rank and file, apprenticed to these trained work¬
men, can be used as links in the chain of the Hierarchy. What greater privilege
could there be! No expression can be adequate, but I am sure that the entire
membership of the Society would like me to say that we are increasingly grate¬
ful, and more than ever determined to justify their labours on our behalf.
Respectfully submitted,
Isabel E. Perkins,
Secretary , The Theosophical Society.
This report having been accepted with the unanimous thanks of the Conven¬
tion to the Secretary and to the Secretary’s helpers, the Chairman announced
the following three committees which he had earlier been authorized by the
Convention to appoint:
Committee on Resolutions: Mr. Hargrove, Dr. Torrey, Mr. Gonzdlez-Jimenez.
Committee on Letters of Greeting: Mr. Kobbd, Mr. Carias, Mr. Saxe.
Committee on Nominations: Mr. Miller, Dr. Hohnstedt, Mr. E. Howard
Lincoln.
The report of the Executive Committee was then called for.
Report of the Executive Committee
Mr. Hargrove: Mr. Chairman and Fellow Members , At this time the Chair¬
man of the Executive Committee ought to report to you the various difficulties
which the Committee has overcome in the course of the year in the manage-
CONVENTION REPORT
53
ment of the Society’s affairs. Fortunately there have been no difficulties: you
have not created any. The life of the Society has been serene and successful.
Therefore, I have been deprived of all subject matter when it comes to events
within the Society itself.
However, the Executive Committee has of course experienced outwardly
very much what you have experienced during the past year, and I shall now
attempt to report some of our reactions to those outer events, because the
Society does not exist simply unto itself. Its function is that of leaven, attempt¬
ing to leaven a very large lump, and it is a matter of vital moment to the leaven
to know and to understand as clearly as possible what is going on in that very
large lump.
First of all, let me attempt to deal with the surface of things. There is an
international situation; then each member, depending upon where he lives,
observes a local situation. As to the international situation, it must be evident
to all of us that the world confronts the possibility, if not the probability, of
another great war, probably worse than the last. The fact of the matter is, as
we see it, that there is one country which is literally threatening war. That is
Germany. There is another country in the world (namely Russia) which might
at any time combine with Germany if it suited the policy of both to do so. Both
countries would deny that possibility at the present time, but both of them
being untrustworthy and bad, it is possible that they might unite,—because,
after all, like attracts like. The immediate danger of war undoubtedly comes
from Germany.
From England I have received a newspaper cutting containing information
which has not been published in the American press. (While there is no official
censorship in this country, nothing is given publicity which might arouse “feel¬
ing” and tend to upset the pacifist campaign that is being carried on vociferously
throughout the United States,—this silence being the negative aspect of much
German propaganda.) My cutting is from the London “Times”, and contains
a despatch from Reuter’s correspondent in Munich. It refers to Ludendorff.
We know that Ludendorff is a party all to himself. He is not Nazi. He is not
anything but Ludendorff. At the same time, the Hitler party borrowed from
Ludendorff a good deal of their ammunition, particularly their anti-Jewj^
ammunition. Ludendorff also represents a great deal of the spirit of war-time
Germany. In this interview, which is unquestionably authentic, Ludendorff
said, “lam not merely an opponent of Christianity, but literally an anti-Christian
and heathen and am proud of it.” “Christian teaching is there for only one pur¬
pose, to keep the Jewish people in domination.” That is to say, the Christian
churches—the Roman Catholic, the Greek Oriental, the Protestant churches
of all denominations—exist for the sole purpose of keeping Jews in domination!
I call this to your attention for the reason that it is a clear demonstration of
lunacy. The trouble with Germany is that there is so very large an element of
sheer lunacy in her mental content,—a total inability to recognize any facts
which do not fit into her egotistical picture of herself and her destiny. That is
one of the reasons why they are so dangerous. Unfortunately, another charac-
54
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
teristic of the German people is that they are very easily overstimulated, to a
point at which they go clean off their heads. That happened during the Great
War. It is manifest to-day. They are defying the whole world. From one
point of view, you cannot blame them, because so much of the world seems
to consist of the feeble-minded—not insane as Germany is insane; not drunk
with their own emotions, drunk with self-esteem—but idiotic because of their
timidity and hesitancy and lack of clear resolve to face the facts and deal with
them.
The fact, then, is that Germany is threatening war. Speaking for myself only,
I am more and more inclined to believe that there is no solution except in war.
I may of course be quite mistaken; but considering Germany’s attitude, con¬
sidering the present condition of the German people, as led by Hitler, seeing no
likelihood whatsoever that the feeling or attitude of that people can be changed,
except as the result of a crushing defeat, keeping in mind the deplorable error
of the Armistice and of the failure of the Allies then to complete their victory,—
what other solution is there except war ? England does not want war, and France
does not want war. This country not only does not want war but is announcing
to the four quarters of space that there is nothing that will induce her to go to
war with anybody, at any time, or in any circumstances,—which, incidentally,
is childish, because all that anybody has to do is to step on this country’s toes,
and all the emotion that is flowing into peace talk would flow, over night, in the
opposite direction. America is one of the most “touchy” and quarrelsome of
nations.
War, then, is the likelihood, as I see it. It might conceivably come this year.
It might come in 1936. There is no knowing when. But we ought to prepare
ourselves for it. We ought to face the probability. (I think it is a probability,
and is more than a possibility.) We ought to do what we can as individuals
and as a Society to remind the people of this country—and those who are Eng¬
lish to remind people in England—that there are worse things than war,
and one of those things is a dishonourable, a disgraceful peace.
We live in a materialistic age. Why is it that nearly half the ministers in
this country are urging peace at any price? The explanation is that such men
are rank materialists, merely calling themselves Christians. The terrors of life
for them are death and poverty. Comfort is their God. They would not admit
it; but what are they working for? I will not say for themselves. That would
not be fair. But granting that they are unselfishly working for others, what is
their objective when they work for others? Their objective is to provide others
with more comforts in their homes; to “equalize” wealth; to compel more
hours for recreation; above all, to reduce the death rate,—to postpone death as
long as possible so that we may live in this—“vale of tears” it used to be called,
but they are going to change all that and make it a vale of delight.
Under the head of recreation, this city alone is going to spend three million
dollars during the current year in providing dancing lessons and similar “cul¬
tural” entertainment for the unemployed. All of which is proof (among how
many other proofs!) that the trouble with the churches to-day is that they have
CONVENTION REPORT
55
become contaminated by the spirit of the world. They have become thoroughly
materialistic in their outlook on life. It is for us as members of The Theosophical
Society to do everything we possibly can, first of all to keep ourselves uncon¬
taminated,—clinging in spite of everything to the truth as it has been revealed
to us; holding fast to spiritual values; forming among ourselves a group, no
matter how small, of those who stand for the same principles for which Christ
stands. Whether we call ourselves Christians or not, to-day it is the best of
The Theosophical Society rather than the churches which represent him in this
world, and he knows it. Therefore, for God’s sake let us be true to our trust,
true to our mission—because we have a mission, and that is to stand for what
he stands for and to protest with everything in us against the blasphemies per¬
petrated in his name. It is a chance to make some return for what we have
received. He and the Lodge are one.
Another way in which we should be able to contribute to the understanding
of the world around us, is by suggesting the explanation of what is going on, the
significance of what we see day by day, as reported in the newspapers and as we
observe it in our environment. As students of Theosophy, what clues have we
to the meaning of it ? In the first place, understanding is based upon recognition
of the age-long conflict between good and evil,—as we should say, between the
White Lodge and the Black Lodge: conflict everywhere between good and evil,
as it must always be until good finally triumphs. While, however, we know that
good is certain to triumph in the end, we realize also that the duration of that
conflict depends upon us, depends upon human response. For in our own
natures as well (and our own natures are the key to everything) there is this
conflict between the higher and the lower, between good and evil, and woe
betide us if we are neutral or attempt to be neutral. The White Lodge cannot
and will not interfere with the free will of mankind, either individually or col¬
lectively. Mankind, to make progress, must make right choices, and there must
be freedom of choice. So long as man temporizes and will not choose, all he does
is to prolong the agony and to make the fight fiercer when at last he is kicked into
it—kicked into it not by Masters, but by life itself. But the time and the
counting of days is not in the hands of the gods; it is in our hands, and in the
hands of our neighbours.
Then, the world desperately needs a right basis for the interpretation of his¬
tory, such as Theosophy alone can supply. As Professor Mitchell pointed
the present and the past are one, and to understand the meaning of events to-day,
you have to go back to yesterday and to a thousand years ago—as far back as
you can go—and try to get some clue to the meaning of things. There are in¬
numerable interpretations of history. Take a book such as that by Professor
Flint, The Philosophy of History. He reviews the various schools of interpre¬
tation—the many German schools and French schools among others. Perhaps
only one of them approximates in certain directions the interpretation which
Theosophy gives,—that of Renouvier, the Frenchman, who wrote between
i860 and 1890. He called attention to the characteristic errors of men like
Kant and Darwin and Lubbock, who theorized to the effect that primitive man
56
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
was similar to the savage races of to-day. Renouvier pointed out that there
was no evidence whatever to that effect, but, on the contrary, much to prove
the reverse. Renouvier pointed out that instead of there being evidence that
man had ascended from savagery to virtue, he had, on the contrary, descended
from innocence to vice, starting not with savagery but with innocence (in line
with the teaching of Madame Blavatsky). Discussing the various explanations
of the history of the human race—the economic interpretation of history, the
theory that all progress is the result of economic growth, the theory that it is
due to mechanical necessity, to climatic changes and so forth, Renouvier ex¬
haustively analyses these theories, gives overwhelming proof that none of them
can be true in the light of facts, and concludes by declaring (with much evidence
in support of his thesis) that the underlying cause—not the only cause, for he
gives full recognition to material and other factors—but the underlying cause,
is ethical: that if you want to understand history, you must see it in the light
of moral purpose,—which, of course, is what Theosophy would say. But The¬
osophy would go further than that, because, while it would see moral purpose
back of it all, it would also see the guidance of the Lodge in encouraging every
movement in human life that made for the moral, spiritual benefit of the human
race.
Further, Theosophy would see that the life of a nation corresponds to the life
of an individual,—a most important principle. Nations are far behind indi¬
viduals in terms of growth and of development. At the same time, do not let
us labour under illusions in regard to individuals, because there are not nearly
as many human beings in the world as some people suppose. The vast majority
are elementals in human form. A great many years ago, when H.P.B. was in
London during the last years of her life, she was in the habit of taking drives
in Hyde Park “for the good of her health”. At last she gave it up. She said
she could not endure it,—she saw too many soulless people. Only a few days
ago, a very old student of Theosophy drove in and out of this city and lamented
aloud. The streets were packed with people, and with automobiles of every
kind, and the automobiles were packed with people. And this very old member
of the Society said, Yes, packed with what?—with wolves and foxes, and mul¬
titudes of pigs, and with rats and with iguanas; above all with insects,—insects
everywhere. Do not, therefore, let us labour under too many illusions, either
in regard to mankind as it now exists, or in regard to nations. In the beginning,
there is what we will call a potential soul, and the first purpose of the soul is to
help in the development of a lower personality; to change, as it were, a congeries
of elementals into a personality—that is to say, a person, who stands for some¬
thing. I am speaking of a lower personality, but you have to begin with that
before you can even think of the development of what we will call the enduring
personality. That comes much later.
Now translate this into terms of national life. Going back over the history
of the world, you will see that the effort of Masters in one instance after another
has been to help develop a national personality. For instance, France, prior to
the time of Jeanne d’Arc, was not yet a nation. Sections, waging war this way
CONVENTION REPORT
57
and that: they had not been unified. France had not as yet become a person¬
ality, either good or bad. Even to-day, it takes a war really to unify her, though
France now is France. Anyone can see in the history of England that it took
centuries for that nation to become a personality,—the living “mask” of a soul
(persona meaning a mask). The Lodge cannot do much with a mere congeries
of elementals, typifying nothing, standing for nothing except for confusion.
This country is not yet a personality. It is still very young. It came much
nearer to being a personality fifty years ago than it is to-day. Fifty years ago,
the United States of America stood for something. Some years later, it stood
at least for wealth. Now even that has disappeared. What does it stand for
to-day in the eyes of the rest of the world ? Just a mess! And we who live in
the midst of the mess know that it is a mess, with Father Something shouting
over the radio and Senator Somebody shouting in the Senate—everybody
shouting, but everybody shouting for something different. Just a mess! We
hope and pray that something will emerge out of the mess, but I do not see
what is going to cause that unless it be steady doses of war. During the Great
War this country was united, just for a few months. After there is enough of
that, repeated over and over again, it may develop a personality.
If we will use that clue to an interpretation of history, we shall understand
better the development of a republic here or a monarchy there, or an empire
somewhere else. What is desirable is a form of government that will best meet
the needs, and best express and focus the personality, of any given nation,—
or that will best help to turn a congeries of elementals into a nation. It would
be a calamity if England ceased to be a monarchy. A republican form of gov¬
ernment is utterly foreign to the genius of France; her Revolution was a sin and
a blunder. Russia exchanged a benevolent despotism for a diabolical tyranny,
and may need to be ground into powder before anything good can again come
out of her,—in which case she will do her own grinding, because to-day there is
no nation, except Germany, sufficiently barbarous to do that sort of grinding
properly, and for Germany to do it would make trouble for the rest of the world.
To think of Russia as a republic, or as a democracy, or as a limited monarchy,
would be laughable,—though that is exactly what Russian “liberals” and their
English and French friends were doing in 1915-16. So far as this country is con¬
cerned, it makes no difference whether we call our present rulers despots (thop
are thousands of them), or the free representatives of the great electorate m
the pursuit of its happiness. The facts remain the same, and the Lodge sees
facts, not labels.
Allow me to repeat: if we would understand the present and get some glimpse
of the future, we must understand the past, and must there see the gradual
development of national personalities. When a nation has developed a per¬
sonality, there comes the struggle between good and evil—just as in the case
of an individual—the intelligence of a nation struggling against its blind pas¬
sions; the greed of a nation, trying to push out its soul and its moral purpose; at
one time, the upper classes (the king and the aristocracy) representing the best;
at another time, alas not, but failing in their duty, thinking only of themselves,
58
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
so that the lower classes are more than justified in struggling against the evil
they see embodied in those above them who ought to represent the best. Hence
it is that the Lodge stands at different times and in different circumstances for
different forms of government, but in all times and in all periods, strives first
for the formation and then for the perfecting of nations as personalities.
History is, indeed, not only a fascinating but a most instructive and helpful
study, that is, if we use the key Theosophy offers us, if we interpret national
life in terms of the seven principles of man, if we have so learned to understand
ourselves that we know something at least both of good and of evil; for in that
case we shall be able to use our knowledge in the reading of life as it flows through
time into the present. We must remember, however, that the Lodge prepares
for hundreds of years ahead. The moves it is making to-day are for the future.
I am not a chess player, but I have always understood that a first-class chess
player makes moves in the same way. He plans far ahead. That which he
does now is intended to bear fruit a dozen moves ahead or more. The same
thing is true, of course, of an expert in business. He does not live from hand to
mouth, or from day to day. He plans five or ten years ahead. That is one of
the differences between a big and a little man. It was said of Kitchener that
he was working for a hundred years ahead. In the same way, “moves” made
by the Lodge a thousand years ago or more, which may seem historically to
have been conclusive at the time, in many cases have not come to fruition even
now. This applies to the migration of races as to all else.
Theosophy, then, gives us this manifold opportunity: a chance to understand
ourselves and thus to see beneath the surface of events and persons; a chance
to understand history, and thus to interpret more intelligently both the present
and the signs pointing to the future. We are also given the extraordinary
privilege of defending, in the light of Theosophy, the character and reputation
of a Master such as the Master Christ, in face of the terrible misrepresentations
of his own supposed representatives. What do we not owe to Theosophy?
The trouble with most of us is that while we say and really mean that we are
grateful, we do not in fact even begin to be grateful. Here is this most precious
jewel with which we have been entrusted, this splendour of wisdom, of light
from above. Once in a while it dawns on us, perhaps at these Conventions, how
great our privilege is, how unworthily we have used it; and in a sense we repent
and resolve anew to strive harder than ever, not only to live the life but to read
life intelligently. Every Convention gives us this opportunity for a new start,
for a new appreciation, for a new delight in the gift we have received,—poured
out upon us with inconceivable generosity. When I ask myself what a successful
Convention would be, my reply is: one from which all present returned to their
homes with joy in their hearts, because of the treasure they are carrying with
them; but also with a deep resolve never again to waste their time playing with
the surface of life, clinging with one hand to so-called sociabilities, squandering
their remaining years on trivialities, on feelings that are as evanescent as gnats
and which are contemptible if looked at truly.
Yes, a new life,—not only a new vision of heaven but, as Professor Mitchell
CONVENTION REPORT
59
suggested, a new life in this sense: a clearer recognition than we have ever had
before of the utter emptiness of what most people call life, of what nearly every¬
body calls pleasure; the utter emptiness of that and of the things which we call
obstacles. Without any exception, whether those obstacles be inner or outer,
they are of all empty things the emptiest. It is in our power to walk right
through them. That was the lesson of the story in Pilgrim's Progress —of those
roaring lions that filled Pilgrim with terror—for as soon as he screwed up his
courage to approach them, he found they were chained. All of our roaring lions
are chained, if we have the courage to walk right up to them,—even if they look
like death itself. So what more can one say except, Thank God for Theosophy!
The Convention then adjourned until 2.30 p. m.
Afternoon Session
In continuation of the reports of officers, Mr. H. B. Mitchell, as Treasurer
T. S., outlined the current financial condition in comparison with that of 1934.
and requested recognition of the help he received, not only from Mr. Kobb 6 as
Assistant Treasurer, but also from others including the Secretary of the Society.
After this report had been accepted with thanks, the report of the Committee
on Nominations was called for.
Report of the Committee on Nominations
Mr. Miller presented the following nominations: for re-election to the
Executive Committee, Mr. J. F. B. Mitchell and Mr. Auchincloss; also to suc¬
ceed themselves, Miss Perkins as Secretary T. S.; Miss Chickering, Assistant
Secretary; Mr. H. B. Mitchell, Treasurer, and Mr. Kobb 6 , Assistant Treasurer.
It was voted that the Secretary be instructed to cast one ballot for the election
of officers as nominated, and that the Committee be discharged with thanks.
The report of the Committee on Resolutions was then called for.
Report of the Committee on Resolutions
Mr. Hargrove: Life has been so strenuous during recent weeks that your
Committee has had no opportunity to formulate speeches in advance. The
utmost that I can attempt is to refer to one or two notes, jottings of ideas,
leave it to you to form your own resolutions, if you will. So I begin almos
haphazard, by speaking of an exceedingly kind remark, made to me after
morning’s session, by one of our visiting members. I had referred to conditions
in New York, implying that they were not ideal, and this visiting member ex¬
pressed gratitude for the sacrifice that we make in continuing to live and labour
in such conditions,—sacrifice, presumably, for the benefit of others. To be
frank, it was such a novel idea to me that I was more or less speechless for the
moment, but then of course said the natural thing: that there was nothing of
the kind involved. I mention this because it may suggest ideas to others. What
are the facts? The fact is that instead of sacrifice being involved, I do not know
one of us who would change places with anyone on the face of the earth. I do
not mean that we would not change our inner selves; but so far as environment
6o
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
is concerned, so far as circumstances are concerned, there is no sacrifice involved
whatever. Of course, human nature is human nature, and I do not suppose
there is one of us who does not think occasionally of some spot in Switzerland,
in France, or somewhere else where we have been—thoughts full of beauty and
peace—with longing to be there again. But surely a student of Theosophy
ought to realize that such longings are dreams and no more. Wherever you go,
you take your own nature with you; besides, peace is impossible except in the
place where duty keeps you. I refer to this because it may be that some of
you who live far from New York and who come to these Conventions and who,
let us hope, enjoy yourselves while here, and receive spiritual benefit,—go back
and wish with all your hearts that you lived here. Whatever our sphere of life,
wherever we are situated, granting that our duty keeps us there, it is certain
that that is the place which Karma (which means the Lodge) has selected as
giving us the best opportunity for growth. Do not let us dream dreams of what we
might become if only we were somewhere else. You may sometimes think
of your circumstances as hard and difficult, and so on. If we, in New York,
were to find ourselves thinking of our circumstances in this moral cesspool as
hard and difficult, I pray that we should have sense enough to recognize instantly
the old foul fiend of self-pity, and that we should peremptorily kick it out.
What applies to us applies to you. There may be an intimation of a resolution
tied to that idea.
Next, to pass to my second note, I should like to read something that bears
directly upon what was said this morning in regard to pacifism, war and so
forth. It does not matter who wrote it. Everything, in the last analysis, has
to stand on its own feet, on its own merits.
War is a terrible thing, a monstrous thing: there is only one thing worse, and that is
peace as the world understands it. A great soldier said once: “War is Heir’. He knew
of what he spoke, and meant it. It is the hell of flame and destruction, of torment and
wrath, terrible to contemplate. But out of it rise heroes and heroisms; in its fires great
causes are born, greater heights are scaled, and the record of human achievement in
nobility and sacrifice is raised above itself. There is a deeper hell, which the great mystic
poet has shown us,—the still and frozen hell of selfishness and malice, where men gnaw
the other men frozen with them in the same deadly lake, kept for ever cold by the moving
wings of the arch fiend. Only as the fire of struggle and suffering releases it, can the
imprisoned soul rise above this horror, which is the expression and epitome of its present
self, and shake itself free for its destiny of spiritual growth.
To timid and cowardly souls these truths are unpleasant,—who is there does not shrink
from them at some spot? but truths they remain in spite of any and all unwillingness;
and since God’s relentless mercy pushes us on, we can go to our fate condemned and
dishonoured, or meet it gloriously like men and win our crown. That much of choice
we have. The modern world seems to be making it for the doom of its civilization, and
so will sink beneath the waves of its own blood,—the fate of all who make the Great
Refusal.
Prince of Peace our Lord has been called, echoing the lyric strains of Isaiah;
but the Master affirmed of himself: “I came not to bring peace but a sword”. And while
in his parting discourse with his disciples, he said: “Peace I leave with you”, he called it
his peace, and declared it was not what the world so named. In their after-lives, what
CONVENTION REPORT
61
was that peace for them, but persecution and conflict and torture and death, and a
ceaseless warfare in his name? No, only to the victor can there be peace; never, in all
the seven worlds, to him who refuses the fight.
Needless to say, I did not write that, but I want to read it into the record,
because it reminds us of the spirit of Theosophy and of The Theosophical
Society.
Next, perhaps, should come some reference to the Lodge Messenger. Many
of you will remember the discussion in recent issues of the Quarterly in regard
to the next Lodge Messenger or forerunner, and you will remember also that,
in the “Screen of Time”, several letters were published bearing upon that
subject. Incidentally, I received a letter the other day, thanking me as sup¬
posed author of the communication printed in the April “Screen of Time”.
Care was taken to say in the “Screen” that the writer of that communication,
although a man whose membership goes back to Judge’s day, occupies no
official position in the T. S. In spite of this, my correspondent attributed it
to me. I did not write it.
“Softness”: in one of the earlier letters, which I did not write either, the
astonishing suggestion was made (at least it proved to be astonishing to some)
that the Society contained too much material that was soft—that the member¬
ship was inclined to be soft. There were those who felt almost as if they had
been insulted. Others felt discouraged. In both cases it proved that in any
case they were soft! Others reacted in a different way. They said: “Soft? Oh
dear me! This will never do!” Then, assuming, for instance, that someone in
this category was inclined to be a trifle obstinate, he resolved that “hereafter
I am going to set my teeth—no softness about me!” The result was, he became
about five times as obstinate as he had ever been before. So it went. There¬
fore, the question is, what is the opposite of softness? Let me suggest that
virility is the opposite of softness. Let us examine the meaning of that term,
because there are all sorts of people in the world who would think of themselves
as virile. I am reasonably confident that Hitler, as he looks at himself in the
glass, would say, Now there is virility! So you can go through a list of the prom¬
inent men in the world to-day,—of all nations. Yet, if you ask yourself, ar ^
they representative of virility, I am afraid that your answer will have to be
the negative.
Let us begin at the other end, following the theosophical method, and looking
to Masters for our examples. Gautama Buddha was of the warrior caste. He
was not a Brahmin. He was a Kshatriya. As you read the Buddhist Scriptures,
you will find, as you find in the case of Christ, a marvellous blending, a harmony
of different qualities. For instance, poetry and common sense, the one balancing
the other and making at that point a perfect whole. Strength and gentleness,
compassion and justice, energy and delicacy, dignity and humility,—as part
of the true warrior’s holiness. In the case of each of the widely known Avatars
or Masters, if you will study what has been left to us of the records of their
doings and sayings, you will find that marvellous blending, making up a content
that is the very embodiment of virility.
62
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Now let me try again. Let us examine another word: bigness seems to me to
be of the very essence of virility—bigness of heart, bigness of mind, bigness of
sympathy. Let me suggest that it is a touchstone that we should constantly
apply to ourselves and to our own reactions. Take, for instance, our relations
with other people, with our friends: are we little, are we mean or resentful, are
we self-centered in our reactions to what they do, to what they think, to their
moods and so on? Are we easily offended? Do we find insults, “misunder¬
standings”, in what other people say and do? In any case, let us pray for big¬
ness. We cannot possibly make a mistake if we do that.
Is our response to life generous? Generosity does not mean that you give
away all you possess to the first man who asks for it. Not at all. In what sense
was the Master Christ supremely generous? Consider his attitude toward the
sinful woman: was not that of the very essence of chivalry, of generosity, of
greatness of heart and soul? Yet he did not condone her sin; he did not plead
“mitigating circumstances”,—which is what weak and misguided “charity”
would have done. He was noble, another opposite of softness.
Let us try another approach, because if we are to understand anything theo-
sophically, we must approach it from as many angles as we can. I want to
remind you of the time in Italy, in i860 or thereabouts, when the Lodge was
helping Italy to become a personality. (This is connected with what we were
talking about this morning.) Italy was chaotic. There were the Papal States,
the Austrian Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, the Two Sicilies, the Kingdom of
Sardinia,—and no personality. It is this that is of significance. H.P.B. in
1867, we are told, was present at the battle of Mentana. In i860, Garibaldi
landed in Sicily, at Messala, with his so-called Thousand Heroes. How had he
collected those volunteers? What appeal had he made to them? He had said:
“I call for those who want hunger and thirst and danger and death. I call for
those who love their country with their hearts and not merely with their lips”.
And those who responded to that appeal, fought and died by his side. After
Sicily came the march on Rome, and the battle of Mentana, and I remind you
again that H.P.B. was there. H.P.B. wrote to Sinnett that it was only Gari¬
baldi’s sons who knew the inside of the situation and what she had done. The
Masters were trying to help Italy to become unified, to become a personality.
Here, I am going to digress, because the analytical mind at this point will
wonder: Does that mean that the Lodge was backing Cavour, or Mazzini, or
was it backing Garibaldi ? And the answer to that is—the Lodge was backing
them all! was working that Italy might evolve a personality. And out of this
confusion and conflict, there was evolved a personality. They were all of them
right, and all of them wrong—though H.P.B. happened to be fighting on the
side of Garibaldi. It was the French, unfortunately, under Napoleon III, who,
aiding the Papal States, defeated the army of Garibaldi at Mentana.
Garibaldi’s appeal, then, was for men. Let us apply it, so far as we are able,
to our service in the Theosophical Movement. Let us apply it as a test to our
own attitude toward life. The old soldier who is really one-pointed in his de¬
termination to fight and to win, does not stop even to think about conditions,
CONVENTION REPORT
63
does not care whether he is fed or not. If food comes, so much the better. It
is all in the day’s work. He does not say: I want danger, I want death. He
takes that as all in the day’s work too, as it comes. His mind is one-pointed.
Yet there is that other approach. Unless there be something in a man’s heart
and soul that responds to an appeal such as Garibaldi’s, he is not of the warrior
caste. We need to test ourselves in these ways. To what extent has love of
comfort swamped us? We live in an age of (I suppose it would be called) luxury,
and it is very easy, living in the midst of this civilization, to become a victim
of the desire for comfort. Of course, if we surrender to that, what it means is
that we become soft, so soft that from the standpoint of the Lodge, we are use¬
less,—perhaps a danger.
Virility: I repeat, if every one of us had watched our reactions to what I will
call the accusation contained in that letter printed in the “Screen of Time’’, we
ought to have learned a great deal. We were given an opportunity to check
our own natures, and if our reaction was what seemed to us to be positive,
instead of depressed and sentimental, then we ought to examine the nature of
that positive reaction—because if it merely made us personally aggressive, then
obviously the reaction was wrong. We have not, in that case, even begun to
understand what real virility is, and it is part of our duty, as students of The¬
osophy, to find out what it is. To do this, we must think and meditate about
it, taking examples such as I suggested: the Masters, above all, who, in the
very nature of things, are the embodiment of it; and, instead of taking the
world’s understanding of their natures—and you know how the world has mis¬
understood them—we must use the light of Theosophy to see beneath the
surface. Instead of seeing in Christ the “Pale Galilean” of Swinburne, the
shadow-figure of so many pulpits, let us see that great Warrior and King such
as he was—such as he is —and then let us set to work toward becoming some
reflection (no matter how inadequate) of his magnificent manhood.
The next Lodge Messenger: we must learn of course to see beneath the sur¬
face if we are going to recognize any kind of Lodge Messenger. Suppose we
had been in New York in 1874, and had met Madame Blavatsky as she then was,
and Colonel Olcott as he then was, and Mr. Judge—a very young lawyer, just
beginning, the reverse of prosperous: what would our reaction have been?
Should we have gone through the usual motions of asking for their credentials^
Should we have gone, for instance, to the Russian consul, or inquired from peff
son to person, listening to everyone and everything except our own soul—and
it is one’s own soul alone that can recognize a soul. Therefore we have to learn,
first of all, to listen to our own souls—not to our emotional reactions, but to our
souls—if we are to be able to recognize a Lodge Messenger, or a forerunner, or
any other reality, when we meet it.
No one has said when either forerunner or Lodge Messenger will arrive. Peo¬
ple like to receive notice that they may expect such arrivals on a definite date.
So far as I am aware, the Lodge does not do things that way, and we have to
accept things on their terms rather than our own. It is more than probable
that The Theosophical Society in all its manifestations will have to be cut down
64
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
to the root in order to survive until the Lodge Messenger appears. I said this
morning that we are not at this moment in trenches. I said that the time might
come when we should have to dig ourselves in, when, in other words, the very
existence of the Society will be hidden from the surface of the earth, cut down
to the root. What do you do with a vine ? What do you do with many another
tree or shrub? You prune, prune—and you must prune if you are to preserve
the root alive. And what will be accomplished in this case is to preserve the
root alive, that there may be new branches, and that, in due season, those
branches may bear fruit. Go to the Parable in the New Testament, and you
will see much of the hidden meaning. In other words, to make it specific, the
day probably will come when there will be no more public meetings, no more
Quarterly as we now know it, no more Conventions. There will be something
corresponding to (only corresponding to) that period after the death and res¬
urrection of Christ, when the disciples gathered in an upper room and waited
for the coming of the Holy Ghost, praying, waiting for that which was promised
and which came. These things are spoken of to-day that they may be under¬
stood later. Do not make the mistake of supposing that the Movement has
been snuffed out, or that it has ended in failure, if you find that it is being cut
down to the root. Indrawal means the transference of energy from the outer
to the inner; it means the perpetuation of what otherwise would die. Would
you wish a simulacrum , a decaying shell, to survive? There are enough shells of
that kind, masquerading as theosophical societies, already in existence. It is
we who must “keep the link unbroken”; we who, by living in the root, by keep¬
ing our hearts’ energies in the root, will preserve its life that it may be ready to
put forth branches and to bear fruit when the Master-gardener appears.
Dr. Torrey (supplementing, by request, the report of the Chairman of the
Committee on Resolutions): It is probable that most of us read “The Screen of
Time” in the April Quarterly and will recall a quotation from General Wey-
gand with the comments upon it. Briefly, the General is disturbed by the
growth of scepticism among the educated people of France. He admits that it
may be salutary to have a few doubters in a nation, but that when everybody
begins to doubt, the situation is not so good.
My thoughts had been running along this line for some time, and the Quar¬
terly, as so often happens, brought them to a focus.
It is obvious that the universities are the centres of this prevalent scepticism,
and that from them there spreads out a wave which affects all classes of society.
But when one looks more closely at the matter, it is not so simple First of all,
it is not quite true that the colleges are in the grip of paralysing scepticism.
There are two schools of thought on college campuses, just as there have been
for many years—that of the sciences and that of the humanities. To the first,
General Weygand’s words hardly apply—at least not in the sense he is using
them. Because downright scientific agnosticism is not scepticism. With it
there goes a sublime faith that scientific research is still worth while because of
its very definite pragmatic results. As to the ultimate nature of reality, or the
CONVENTION REPORT
65
philosophical groundwork upon which science rests, the average scientist is
slightly contemptuous, or even actively hostile to such speculations. As one of
them expressed it not long ago: “I don’t see how we can ever know or why we
should ever care.”
One might frame the working policy of science something like this: back in
the last century some of our fore-runners got fully “fed-up” with the vapour-
ings and idle speculations of the metaphysicians and other thought-spinners.
Therefore they took their stand on what the five senses would reveal, not ques¬
tioning any further, but attempting to analyse, to classify, to discover the laws
of nature and to apply them to practical ends. The method worked; the method
gave us progressive control over nature, and the method is still working. Our
colleagues in the humanities accuse us of materialism and of fastening a ma¬
terialistic outlook on the world, but we prefer our success to their tenuities
which, so far as we can see, are barren of all results. They have ended in utter
scepticism. We still believe that nature plays a square game—that we can put
an honest question to her and she will give an honest answer. We find a suf¬
ficiency of beauty and excitement in playing this game, and we are willing to toil
and sacrifice and suffer for it.
Now nobody can deny that science can put up a good case for itself. And I
venture to suggest that its remarkable success is due to the fact that it has
used to perfection the very instrument which was evolved to deal with the sen¬
suous world in space and time. Many of us are familiar with Bergson’s analysis
of this subject. Mind is the instrument of desire; life would bend the material
world to its desire for action. The intellect surveys a given situation and
marshals the cogent facts before the bar of inner judgment. Then the will
sweeps forward to its conquest.
So the scientist has faith—that supreme faith which is based upon repeated
experience that nature will not “let him down”. Obscurantists may say that
scientific laws are only statistical averages—the scientist is undismayed. He
sets up his experiential common-sense. So far water has always boiled at 100
degrees Centigrade and normal atmospheric pressure; so far unsupported
bodies have always fallen toward the centre of the earth, and we are not worry¬
ing about the one chance in a trillion or so that they may do otherwise. I like^
this sturdy common-sense, and I think that Masters like it too, else one of them
would not have written that “science has the right method”, and that they
themselves follow its discoveries with interest. Neither would they have sent
their “Secret Doctrine” into the world, clothed in scientific dress. To be sure,
there is a fringe of scepticism in science, but only when the scientist tries to turn
metaphysician—when he attempts to explain causation, time and space, or
vital phenomena.
Let us turn now to the other side of the picture. What has become of the
devotees of the humanities during these years that science has been sweeping
all before it ? They attempted to meet science with the weapon of intellectual
arguments, and they were routed and beaten on all fronts. And why? Just
because they tried to use sheer intellect in a realm in which sheer intellect
66
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
cannot and should not be the final arbiter. In proportion as the unaided intel¬
lect abandons the field of sensuous study whose goal is action , and enters upon
speculative criticism of faith, morals, ethics, etc. as an end in itself, the result
will be, as it ever has been, increasing doubt and final complete scepticism.
Why again ? Because the only way these matters can be proved to be right or
wrong is through action. Science has the right method, and if this be true of
work upon the physical plane, it should be equally true of researches upon
the psycho-spiritual plane which lies above the physical. But do we find the
disciples of the humanities using the scientific method in this subtiler and richer
field? Not they! That would involve the great battle of man to which Krishna
invites Arjuna upon the battlefield of Kurukshetra, and they would have to
make themselves the instruments of the experiment. A man will change any¬
thing rather than himself. The physical scientist can leave himself pretty much
out of the picture and nature will answer his questions whether he be a good
man or a thoroughly bad one.
The student of the humanities is faced with a far subtiler problem than is the
scientist. He knows it, and he is contemptuous of the crassness of his colleague.
Yet I dare to assert that his influence for materialism is far more powerful than
that of the scientist. The scientist is dogmatically agnostic. Metaphysics is
not my affair, problems of conduct are not my affair, he says. I deal only with
the metrical world. In practice he is generally a conservative who accepts the
conventions of society and lives by the accepted codes of Caesar’s world. His
colleague, however, subjects the conventions to intellectual analysis; he dis¬
sects the principles of morality and ethics and impales himself upon a forest of
homed dilemmas. He writes a “Preface to Morals”, and ends by finding no
moral sanctions whatever. He begins to take delight in destruction—in the play
of his rapier intellect. Faced by a mind which is a match for his own, and
which calls his basic premises in question, he turns ugly and accuses his op¬
ponent of mediaeval credulity, pre-judgment, lack of the critical scholarly
faculty, conditioning in infancy, or a high hydrogen-ion concentration of the
blood (oh yes, they can use the scientific jargon of their colleagues when it is to
their interest).
Now the practical outcome of this attitude toward life is that intellectual
activity comes to be regarded wholly as a mental-emotional diversion. Poetry
is to be studied for the emotional satisfaction which it yields. It is small wonder
that a man who really does things—creates a new synthetic dye, invents a new
and marvellous machine, conquers the stratosphere or the ocean abysses—looks
with contempt upon this group of refined sensualists and aesthetes. He too,
may believe that death closes the account, but he intends to fight a good fight
while he lives.
In their different ways the two disciplines—that of science and that of the
humanities—have both cut themselves off from reality. Science saw at the
time of Huxley, and I think rightly, that speculation leads to sterility. The
humanities have only at long last proved the truth of that contention. Both
disciplines have reached again the conclusions of ancient degenerative phi-
CONVENTION REPORT
67
losophy: naught remains but to eat and drink and be merry, for to-morrow we
die. Science has made possible the existence of a horde of mediocrities who
depend upon it for their parasitic existences, and the humanities are filled with
sentimental and fatuous weaklings who would provide softer straw for the
scientific sty.
Out of the welter a few strong souls may emerge as incipient black magicians
—such will be those scientists who continue to sacrifice sternly for their ideal
of power over nature. They have faith and vision, and they are not going to
perish right away. Some of their spokesmen sense that fact dimly already.
Power is in their hands. One has only to look at the present scuttling to cover
which is going on among the humanists in the universities, at the crack of the
economic-scientific whip. One has small sympathy for their present plight.
They were the guardians of the subtiler values of our racial heritage. They
elected to make it a bridge to build upon and not to pass over. They entered
not in themselves, and those that were going in they prevented. From the
extreme dogmatism of the past, they have swung to extreme scepticism. In
large measure it is they—the priests and putative guardians of the racial heri¬
tage of goodness, truth and beauty—who were responsible for the scientific
revolt: that, too, can be laid at their door.
Thus far I have said nothing about the part which The Theosophical Society
may play in this matter. How often have we been told that in a profound sense
the fate of the world is in our hands. We remember that a few men could have
saved Sodom and Gomorrah, and we recall Paul’s words that “there are a few
names even in Sardis”. Is it expected that the members of the Society by their
much talking and writing will bring about a change of heart in the masses, or
even in any considerable portion of the educated? Try it and see! Lay your
soul’s inmost convictions and your most irrefutable facts before supposedly
intelligent men, and see what happens. Do we expect to do what Masters
themselves have not been able to do?
But perhaps there is a deeper significance in the thought. We are a part of
our nation; we are likewise members of groups within that nation—of the uni¬
versity group, the scientific group, the military group, or what not. Each
group is an entity made up of foolish, sinful and trivial elements as well as wise,^^
good and important elements. In the sifting process to which all forms musj^^
sooner or later be subjected, only that which is worthy of immortality can
possibly survive—only that which can be assimilated by the spiritual purpose,
can become immortal—all the rest must be broken up.
If then, we love our nation, our science, our heritage of beauty from the past
in whatever form it may have been transmitted to us, and if we have main¬
tained our connection with the spiritual purpose which is its living heart, then
it seems to me that it cannot be utterly destroyed. It lives in us, and as its
unworthy vehicle breaks up in the world, we may carry the finer essence, the
subtiler gains, into the inner world, just as the finer essence of our personal
lives is harvested by the soul after each incarnation. Through us, in another
time, the outer vehicle may renew itself. But if we fail, if we go to pieces with
68 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the dissipating skandhas of passion and base desire, then, indeed, there can be
no resurrection. The sacrifices of our predecessors may have saved the earlier
phases of any system to which we may be attached, but each part of a system
must itself come under the laws of the whole. Even as the world is sustained in
all its parts by perpetual creation, so the world must be saved in all its parts
by perpetual aspiration and sacrifice. If we would save the glorious discoveries
of our sciences, and the richness of our poetry and music and painting, must
we not relate them to their divine prototypes, and offer them up enthusiastically
upon the altar?
Finally, why are we offered this mighty privilege? Somewhere under the
sinful smallness of our personalities there is sincerity of purpose, ancient karmic
connections,—and the majestic gods have set us once more at the post of trust
and danger.
The Chairman, after the report of the Committee on Resolutions had been
accepted with thanks, called for the report of the Committee on Letters of
Greeting.
Report of the Committee on Letters of Greeting
Mr. Kobb£ read the numerous greetings to the Convention that had been
received from Branches and from members-at-large. The reading of these was
punctuated with much applause. Extracts from these letters are printed at
the end of this Report of Convention Proceedings.
The Chairman expressed gratification at the way in which not only the letters
just read, but letters from distant members throughout the year, showed unity
of thought and inspiration, so evidently derived from a common source,—proof
of the reality of the guidance with which the Society is blessed.
The Chairman then called upon the delegates and visiting members to ad¬
dress the Convention, beginning with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln from Newcastle-
on-Tyne, England, members of very long standing, but who were attending a
Convention in New York for the first time.
Mr. Lincoln, after expressing his delight in being present at a Convention
following his membership of thirty-three years, conveyed special greetings from
Mr. Crawford and other members in England. He then continued:—As I look
back to the autumn of 1921—the time when the “British National Branch”
ceased to exist and the individual Lodges and Branches began to function—
a number of things, all to the good, have since taken place. Each Branch, for
instance, has had to stand on its own feet and strike its own keynote. This
makes for strength and stability and self-reliance; it provides opportunity for
vision and understanding. As the years have gone by, a certain contraction has
occurred—in some cases by death, in others by change of residence, in others
again by lack of interest or misconception of the Society’s work. Whatever
the causes, the few in each place are now carrying on the work in an earnest,
determined manner; they are eager to be at one with Headquarters in spirit
and purpose; they strive to sense the message and keynote that is put forward
CONVENTION REPORT
69
from time to time and to embody it in their lives. As I have gone amongst the
Branches, I have gathered that in this work and teaching is felt to be the sal¬
vation of mankind. “Man know thyself”, practically applied, is what we need
to-day. In the north of England, where the Branches are more or less close
together, a united or collective meeting is occasionally held, and a paper or an
address is given. This provides opportunity for expression by each Branch, so
that all may benefit from the exchange of experience. In England we are down
to the root, and we should be much stronger in consequence. Propaganda is
neither opportune nor practicable. Most of us have to work for a living, and
that takes up a considerable part of our time and energy. Yet, in such occupa¬
tions, there is plenty of scope to learn and to serve. All this points to individual
preparation and growth as being the essential factor at the moment.
Then there is the other side of the question regarding the step in 1921. We
have received in full measure the spiritual outpourings from Headquarters in
various ways. No labour has been spared (as for instance in the preparing and
issuing of the New York Branch meeting Reports) to keep us in touch with the
* true aim and spirit of the Movement. These Reports have set a keynote and
consecutive chain of thought for us to study and to apply to ourselves as much
as possible. We have had the opportunity to weigh and test them from the
point of view of the soul—that inner monitor which never fails—and so make
the fullest response of which we were capable. The same applies to the Quar¬
terly, which undoubtedly is of great help to members and a power for good in
the world. We have also benefited by being more in touch with the Heart or
Centre, and, by being united to it, have been able to co-operate more fully in
the Society’s work. Everything that can be thought of for our good has been
done; everything that could help us to be more efficient instruments in the
Masters’ service. It was gratifying to learn through a Quarterly of not so
long ago, that never had there been greater unity of purpose, oneness of heart,
in the Society, than at the present time. So we in England have much to be
thankful for, and, though few in number, would strive to do by real work
and real effort what greater numbers with lesser aims could never accomplish.
We were not sure until shortly before we sailed that Mrs. Lincoln would be
able to accompany me on this great occasion, and of course it is a great joy ^
me, as I know it is a joy for her, that she too could attend this gathering and
meet those we have known for so many years. Both of us, and I think many
others present to-day, have received in no little measure a lead and a light and
a vision. Let us determine, then, that we shall more fully embody in our lives
those things which we feel to be true. No doubt we have tried in the past to
embody them, but speaking for myself, I feel that this visit means to me that I
shall try as I have never tried before. I hope to carry back with me something
that will impel me to live the life and to become, in some small degree, more
like unto the Masters we are privileged to serve.
The Chairman, calling attention to the fact that a delegation of eight mem¬
bers this year, and of ten members last year, had come all the way from Caracas,
7 o THE 0 S 0 PHICAL QUARTERLY
Venezuela, to attend the Convention, requested Mr. Gonzdlez-Jim6nez to speak
for the Venezuela Branch.
Mr. Gonz/lez: Our chief work has been to follow the topics discussed at the
New York Branch. The fundamental note has been Christian: a study of Chris¬
tianity in the light of the universal teaching of the Lodge of Masters, so far as
we have been able to assimilate that teaching as expressed in Theosophy. We
have come to understand that the heart cannot throb in love for Christ without
at the same time burning the incense of its loving devotion for Buddha, Quetzal-
coatl and the other Masters of the House of Wisdom. It was significant that
during the year our Branch, that feels itself on the ray of Christ, should have
given a special evening to homage and gratitude to Buddha.
The themes on which special stress has been laid have been humility, dis¬
cipline and purification. Many members are following special exercises and
specific rules with great hopes of pressing forward to the narrow gate of Dis-
cipleship.
World affairs have been considered with poise and definiteness, and the wish
that the gods may descend is the prayer of many. The world cannot get back
to high ideals unless centres of consecration—beacons in the night of Kali Yuga
—be formed.
An understanding of fraternity, not as an equality without distinction, but as
a common effort towards a unique centre, is to-day a possession of the Branch.
Among its members more of an intimate fraternity is being lived, shunning
debasing familiarity.
The Branch as a whole sends to the members of the T. S. assembled in Con¬
vention its most fervent wishes that the Lodge of Masters may look upon this
meeting as an opportunity for the world to know of its existence, and to turn to
it for the light and courage so needed to-day for men to discern the Way, and
discerning, claim their place as sons of God.
The Chairman announced that a cablegram had been received from members
in Caracas who had been unable to attend the Convention, but who wished it
known that they were with us in spirit and in thought. He then called upon
Mr. Cams, President of the Venezuela Branch, to address the Convention.
Mr. CarIas: As Mr. Johnston said in the Introduction of The Crest Jewel of
Wisdom , I believe that “there is Divine Wisdom, Godlike Compassion, that there
are divine teachers, perfect in courage and love ready to impart that wisdom to
all who can receive and possess it”. I believe also that to reach such a great
benediction, the fire of purification is necessary, conquering the personality by
sacrifice, thus gaining the gifts of the spiritual world. . . . Let us remember the
outstanding words of the April “Fragments”; let us engrave this idea as a
mantram in our hearts: Courage to the last.
The Convention then listened with much sympathy and interest to reports of
members from Czecho-Slovakia.
Miss Margaret D. Hohnstedt and Dr. Hohnstedt, welcomed by the
CONVENTION REPORT
7 i
Chairman, spoke for the Cincinnati Branch, which, next year, will celebrate its
fiftieth year of continuous work for Theosophy.
Miss Husby, called upon as the delegate from Pacific Branch in Los Angeles,
spoke of the activities of the Branch as conducted by Mr. Box, and expressed
the highest appreciation of the Theosophical Quarterly, which, she said,
always has a message for the individual reader as well as making a universal
appeal. »
Mrs. Regan, representing Hope Branch, Providence, after mention of its
activities, concluded by saying:—I doubt if there is a member in the Society
to-day who does not love it, who would not sacrifice for it, who is not loyal and
devoted, as he sees loyalty and devotion. We need to learn, however, what
true loyalty is; we must acquire understanding and vision. It seemed to me this
morning, as the keynote was struck, that we had been called to arms. What,
as members of this Society, was our involuntary reaction to that? Was all
the fight in us aroused ? Did we want to stand side by side with those on this
plane whom we call the “Ancients”? We perhaps cannot speak or write, but
we can all be something, can all live according to our understanding of theo¬
sophical principles, can learn to withdraw from the world with The Theosophical
Society, and help nourish the root. That is my desire: to stand firm for this
Society which we all love, and with Saint Paul say: Let us lay aside every weight
and press toward the mark.
Mr. Roy, having reported further for the Branch in Providence, the Chair¬
man requested Mr. Miller to speak for the New York Branch.
Mr. Miller: We were reminded this morning of the cycles—the smaller
cycle of a year, and the major cycle of sixty years—-which we celebrate to-day.
Those of us who have been members of the Society for a number of years and
have attended Convention after Convention, who have been inspired by what
we have heard, lifted above the usual level of our consciousness,—have realized,
by the time the cycle of the next Convention returned, that we have fallen from
the high resolve which we had made. But cycles proceed spirally, and if we
remember that we meet the same difficulties on different levels, it will be helpful,
I think, to prevent discouragement.
Anyone who is privileged to be here to-day must realize that there is a migl^#
force behind this Society. The question is, how are we going to use it? Are
we going to allow it to run to waste ? The answer to that must depend upon the
degree of our “emptiness”, as Professor Mitchell explained. We must empty
ourselves of self, and then we can be victors in the fight and not lose courage,—
because we shall not be thinking of ourselves.
Dr. Clark: In the older literature, the literature of fact which you find in
Edmund Burke, or the literature of fiction which you find in Walter Scott, you
meet with a repetition of such words as “principles”, “loyalty”, “honour”,
“fidelity”, and so on. If you look for such words to-day in literature, or on the
lips of people, you will hardly ever hear them. The older generations knew
that the laws of righteousness had been delivered to them from above, and that
72 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
it was their opportunity, cost what it might, to act according to those laws and
to live by loyalty, to live for principle, to maintain fidelity.
Is it not to-day the opportunity of everyone in our Society to seek to embody
those divine laws which have been passed on to us, to resolve that these precious
things which are so seldom heard from the lips of people to-day: loyalty, fidelity,
life according to principle, shall not perish, but shall find illustration again in
our own lives—we who have been so mercifully brought into this Movement,
this Society, by the compassion of the Masters, and permitted to be present at
this Convention to-day?
Mr. Auchincloss: At the meetings of the New York Branch this winter
we have been talking about Theosophy in simple terms—about Reincarnation,
Karma, Cycles—restating old truths, trying to get back to the heart of things,
and so to reach the heart of others. It seems to me that, as a result, certain
things have happened.
This effort at simplicity has helped us, I think, to define our terms more
clearly. There is always a danger that we, who have been talking and thinking
about these things for years, may talk a language that will not always be com¬
prehensible to one who is approaching Theosophy for the first time. This effort
to keep things simple has helped us to focus the force of our feeling and of our
conviction, and thus to bring home that conviction itself more directly. It has
helped us also to speak more definitely and more one-pointedly to the “con¬
dition”, as the old books say, of those with whom we come in contact in daily
life. Suppose that, entirely outside the Movement, there is someone whom we
are desperately anxious to help. If we are to be all things to all men; if through
us there is to come to that particular man something of the force and the power
and the vision that is Theosophy, we must speak to him in his own terms, in
terms which he will at once understand; and our desire to be able to speak in
this way impels us to turn again, with the heart of a child, in all simplicity, to
our Master, with the prayer that he will help us to find, in our hearts and on
our lips, the words which we should say.
Finally, I think that what this effort at simplicity has done, is—to increase
our faith. It has made us re-examine ourselves as to what it is that we believe,
and, as a result, we find ourselves more firmly rooted and grounded than ever
before, more at one than ever before with the old truths of Theosophy, so
familiar and yet always new; and with this increased faith there has come, I
think, a renewed consecration.
For what does it matter that life, to-day, imposes continuous strain, never-
ending perplexities and anxieties? These things are all opportunities in that
inner world in which we would truly live. What does matter is, that we should
use these things, and not let them use us; that we should go forward with the
fighting spirit, the spirit of the soldier, the basis of which is faith. Forward,
with the heart of the fighting man, and, at the same time, with the faith of a
child; with faith in our Great Companions, that we may do our part in the
carrying out of their purposes.
CONVENTION REPORT
73
Mr. LaDow: I have been thinking this afternoon that perhaps to nowhere
in the world to-day, except to our Convention, could one come and find a reason
for hope—because if one looks at the facts, at the state of our western civiliza¬
tion, one is obliged to admit that all the signs point to a continuation of dis¬
integration and decomposition. Everything suggests that outwardly things are
going to get worse before they get better. Yet, as I say, there is no reason for
anyone here to receive those words in a spirit of pessimism. A previous speaker
referred to the Convention as an assemblage of gods and men, and the term is
striking and true. This Convention can mean little to anyone who is unable
to sense behind what is said here (within the form) a tremendous spiritual,
creative, positive energy. To-day, then, it is perhaps easier for us to identify
ourselves in imagination at least, with that inner creative spirit which is the
life of the Convention; and in so far as we identify ourselves with that, and
cease to identify ourselves with the decomposing substance of the world, we
must have reason for hope. In fact, we are hope itself, because hope is a phase
of creation, an aspect of creative force.
There is an old saying of one of the ancient poets, Lucretius, that nothing is
bom into this world save by the death of some other thing. I believe that we
can live with that saying, that we can discover how true it is, at every moment
of the day. One application of it that can be made is in this very contrast be¬
tween a dying civilization—or an apparently dying civilization—and that
creative power which we feel within the Movement and which we particularly
feel to-day; and to realize that that force, that creative power, can only be bom
into the world through the death of the powers of evil who now hold the citadel.
Mr. Saxe, after describing the procedure at meetings of the New York
Branch, asked: Should we not make more use of the Questions and Answers
Department in the Quarterly? It seems to me that there is an opportunity
there which is not used enough. Does it not often happen that we find some¬
thing in our studies which we do not really understand, and so pass it over?
I think we do not realize how much more we could get if we formulated our
problem as a question and sent it to the Quarterly.
The Chairman then called on members from Venezuela, not yet heard from,
to address the Convention. jd
Mr. Alvarez-Perez: Our first wish is to give thanks for two blessings: our
membership in The Theosophical Society, and our presence in this wonderful
.assembly.
We think that the day of the great ordeal for humanity as a whole is very
near,—ordeals for the individual being almost constant. We pray that when
the moment comes, a majority will make the right choice. For ourselves, may
we always be granted courage and understanding,—though, if our hearts be
kindled with love of our Master, we shall need no more, since all else will be
.added.
Mr. Rivero: “Sainte-H 61 £ne, petite ile”. ... It is said that while yet a
74
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
child, Napoleon Bonaparte, the imperial exile, wrote this single premonitory
phrase on a page of his school notebook. It is also said that the Island of Saint
Helena, seen from a certain point and at a certain distance, seems to trace the
very features of the Napoleonic profile against the horizon.
That reminds me of William Quan Judge, “the greatest of the Exiles”, in
whom General Ludlow used to see the visible peak of “a submerged Continent”
—possibly the Lodge itself covered by The Ocean of Theosophy. Like the Ark,
The Theosophical Society in America rested upon that height.
I also remember, with a feeling of deep gratitude—the most pleasing of all
offerings to the gods—that other lofty peak, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky; and I
believe that each theosophical aspirant to the spiritual life, with love and nos¬
talgia, with the innocence of a child and the faith of a warrior, seeing her rise
like a living rock of salvation out of the shipwreck of western materialism, must
have written in his own heart, in letters of light, evoking the White Yogini:
“Sainte-H 61 £ne, petite lie”. . . .
Dr. Cotton spoke of the past year as one of sacrifice by the Masters for us,
and then suggested this train of self-questioning: To what extent have we tried
to live for them? To what extent do we love and understand them better than
a year ago? Have we perceived at what cost to them this wonderful oppor¬
tunity was given us ? Because, upon the answers to those questions will depend
whether we are helpers or a burden to them.
Mr. A. JiMfsNEZ spoke of this, his first Convention, as a fire-baptism.
Senora Sanchez: The time of Convention is one of exfoliation of the soul
to a new state of consciousness. Our inner lungs are enlarged by the air of the
Lodge which fills them and penetrates to the smallest cells. We want to enter
definitely on the path of discipleship, which means, to fulfil our individual task
in The Theosophical Society, that task which the Masters are anxiously expect¬
ing of us,—because a Convention of the Society has a special message to each
individual soul. All is possible to the valiant heart.
Senorita Cotton suggested that the right response to the Convention would
be a vow of consecration to the service of the Lodge of Masters, and that,
kindled by the Fragments of Cav£, our personalities, our pusillanimity, and even
our sins, should be cast into oblivion by the ever-present thought of our own
Master, which would inevitably lift us to him.
The Convention next listened with great interest and pleasure to Mr. Brush
and Mr. Fisher; as also to Mr. Miller, Jr., Mr. Mitchell, Jr., Mr. H.
Mitchell, Mr. Russ, Jr.
The Chairman then asked Mr. Hargrove to speak again.
Mr. Hargrove: I am anxious that there shall be no misunderstanding on
the subject of indrawal. I spoke of the time, almost certainly coming, when
there would be further pruning to do, when outer activities in more senses than
one would have to be cut down to the root. That is not a negative process. It
is a positive process. What it really means is discipleship. In other words, if
CONVENTION REPORT
75
we would form part of the root and continue to form part of the root, we must
of necessity become disciples, or rather, I should say, recognize the kind of
disciples we already are—because discipleship is a very comprehensive term.
If a man is so immersed in business that he gives his whole heart and soul to it,
all his attention, all his interest, then he is a disciple of, I do not know what to
call it—a friend of mine calls it the Golden Calf, which I suppose is as good a
term as any. All of us are disciples of something, of some idea. We may be a
disciple of an elemental such as the Golden Calf, or we may be a disciple of
“learning” and no more—which is a perfectly respectable form of discipleship,
although some of us are prepared to make a guess as to where it would lead us.
At any rate, we have to determine the nature of our discipleship.
Members of The Theosophical Society are almost alone in the world in know¬
ing that real discipleship, that is to say, a desire to become a disciple of the
L^ge—is an immediate possibility. The Theosophical Society is the outer¬
most door leading toward that possibility; but discipleship is not a matter of
taking degrees or of signing documents. Discipleship is an attitude of the heart,
a spirit, a persistent purpose, a life. If you will turn to the later pages in Volume
I of Letters That Have Helped Me , you will find much said there in regard to the
way in which any individual can constitute himself a disciple. If you will turn to
some of the later Fragments in Volume I, you will find a great deal said on the
same subject. Therefore, no one is left in the dark as to how to begin. And of
one thing you may be certain, that when you are ready, your Master will meet
you more than half way. It was he who started you on that path; it is his life
in you that has carried you forward; it is he who awaits with eagerness the
moment when he can wisely reveal himself to you.
For ever and everywhere, Masters are looking for disciples, for those who
will help them in their work. There is no thought of exclusion, far from it;
but we must make ourselves ready, and we must begin where we are,—not at
the top. A proper understanding of the hierarchical principle in nature will
make it easier to realize that there are steps in the right direction; that it would
be a mistake to suppose we have reached the stage when nothing short of a
Mahatma is really fit to teach us about the inner life. We have opportunities
to learn from all kinds of sources. We are surrounded by books of instructi^
There are plenty of members of The Theosophical Society who probably know
more than we do from their years of membership or study; know something
about the conditions that lead to self-knowledge, to self-understanding, to ulti¬
mate union with the Higher Self.
But the fact remains that wherever we begin, whatever stage we have at¬
tained, that door is wide open for all who would enter,—for all who would enter
if they are willing to pay the price. And that price has been intimated already.
They must leave self behind. They must fight self daily and during every hour
of every day. They must fight depression, and self-assertion; timidity, and
arrogance. They must try to live in the Eternal,—to live for the things that do
not change with time, to live to please their Master, not to please themselves.
Every one of us contains that supreme possibility. It is latent, but it is there
76
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
potentially. We can ask for all that life contains. Everything in nature is open
to us, and, once more, we know (we have been told it so often at all periods in
the history of The Theosophical Society) that the Masters are ready and wait¬
ing and longing. The question is whether we are ready and waiting and longing.
Because until we long with everything in us, body and mind and soul, we cannot
hope to reach them. They will not accept a half-hearted or a grudging or a
bargaining spirit. With them, as with life itself, it is all or nothing. Therefore
it is a question of bringing oneself to the point where one can look them in the
eyes and say: It is all—without reserve—unqualifiedly—now and for ever.
That is their spirit; that is the spirit to which they respond, the spirit that calls
forth from them the infinity of their helpfulness, of their wisdom and love and
power. And while no member of the Society is under the slightest obligation to
do more than listen, we know there are those for whom such ideals are living
hopes, vital incentives, of the deepest import and concern. It is only right,
therefore, before this Convention closes, to speak once more of the glad tidings
which Theosophy brings: that the waters of life are still offered freely, without
money and without price, to all those who love not their lives unto the death,
and who see in Masters the beginning and the end of their hearts’ desire.
The thanks of the Convention having been voted to its officers, to the editors
and contributors of the Quarterly, and to the New York Branch for its hos¬
pitality, the Convention adjourned.
Isabel E. Perkins,
Secretary of Convention.
Julia Chickering,
Assistant Secretary of Convention.
LETTERS OF GREETING
Arvika, Sweden.
To The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled, we send our brotherly and sincere
greetings!
At this great yearly feast, our hearts meet in prayer that the Masters’ work may be accom¬
plished in us all.
“So long as God’s will is our law, we are but a sort of noble slaves. When His will is our
will we are free children”.
On behalf of the Members of the Arvika Branch,
Anna Fjaestad,
President.
Aylsham, England.
To the Secretary, Theosophical Society: .... Understanding of the meaning of Theosophy
was never more needed in the world than it is to-day. We live in dark and troubled times,
and there seems no light ahead. Without Theosophy we could not carry on; with it, we learn
to take long views, and to have patience. I hope that by increasing faith and fidelity, our
small Branch may be of some little use, amid the chaos and difficulty of the present days. We
send our friendly greetings and best wishes for the Convention.
Alice Graves,
Secretary, Norfolk Branch.
LETTERS OF GREETING 77
Mrs. Bagnell of the Norfolk Branch wrote: Convention draws very near and I wish to send
you, and all members of the T.S. who will assemble for it, my most earnest and sincere good
wishes. Looking back over the years it seems almost amazing that year after year it is pos¬
sible to hold the Convention, and so not only give to all T.S. members fresh life and inspira¬
tion for the coming year, but to keep alive in the world a high ideal, a steadfast faith that can
be found nowhere else. We know that this would not be possible if it were not for the Masters
who stand behind us, upbuilding the T.S. which is their creation, and lending us constantly
their strength and light. . . .
In this distracted world, that at times seems to be disintegrating under our eyes, there is
great need for a steady force that is dedicated to the highest service, that strives to embody
the idea of the True, the Beautiful, the Good, and it is because I firmly believe that the T.S.
is such a force, that to me it seems the most important thing in the world to-day. . . .
Miss Bagnell also wrote: I wanted to send this line to take you my heartfelt wishes for
Convention. At this time of chaos in international affairs, when compromise with the enemy
seems the order of the day (instead of a vigorous policy of resistance) one looks to the leader¬
ship given at Convention for the true line of policy, in regard to the guidance of nations and
the government of the world. Yet, so much deeper than the outer turmoil, are the strong,
resistless currents of force flowing from their source in the Lodge; and it is our hope to co¬
operate to the utmost with the power so generously poured out, to cleanse and purify our
thinking (in every branch of study, devotion, philosophy, science) and then to enkindle our
will with renewed ardour. . . .
Denver, Colorado.
The Virya Branch sends most cordial greetings to the Convention, and very earnest wishes
for a true realization of its vital place among all members, and a deep appreciation of the
generous provision made for the training and instruction of our members through all channels.
Anne Evans, President.
Mary Kent Wallace, Secretary.
Oslo, Norway.
To the Secretary, Theosophical Society: .... In one of the New York Branch Reports, Mr.
Hargrove spoke of all the great Avatars as surely co-operating; and certainly we must think
of them as all working together for what is contained in the words, “Thy kingdom come, Thy
will be done”. Now that a forerunner, and later a Messenger from the Lodge, may be ap¬
proaching, I wonder if the hour is also drawing near when “the elect from the four winds,
from one end of Heaven to the other, shall be gathered together”, and mankind learn what
lies behind this co-operation of all the great Avatars. “What is to be, already is. Surelv^
this co-operation which is and always has been a fact in the spiritual world, will become
a fact in the outer world; and if ages may still pass before mankind as a whole will realize the
fact of “all souls being one in the Oversoul”, yet there may be cycles in which those who have
fought and struggled faithfully with hope against hope, never losing their faith in spite of
all odds, those who have died as well as those who are now living, may rejoice in living a life
when “the earth shall be a heaven in comparison with what it is now”—or perhaps ever has
been.
All our members wish to send their most heartfelt greetings, with thanks for all loving care,
and praying that we may all know what is really the Masters’ blessing.
Henning Dahl,
Chairman, Oslo Branch.
South Shields, England.
To the Members of The Theosophical Society assembled in Convention: The Members of the
78 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
South Shields Branch have requested me to convey to you their very sincere fraternal greet¬
ings. We feel we must at this period offer a tribute of gratitude, and do homage to, the Found¬
ers of the Society, and those who have gone before and are still working with the Cause behind
the Veil. They have given us an ideal to strive for by living a life in harmony with the divine
life at the core of Nature; an ideal at once grand and glorious. It is a privilege and honour to
have the opportunity presented to us of working with the Lodge force for the benefit of human¬
ity: it makes our lives purposeful, and also responsible, which is as it should be. We are with
you in aim and purpose and hope that the divine energy that is poured out at the meeting by
the invisible helpers who are assisting us individually and collectively, will be carried round
the world like a torch, and fire the hearts of many who are in darkness and longing for the Light.
The ethics taught by Theosophy is the only true solution of the world’s problems to-day, and
if we remain loyal and steadfast to the trust the Masters have placed in us, Theosophy, in time,
will come from within to the surface, like a fragrant breeze in the early morning, heralding the
sun and the opening day.
Thomas Mackey,
President.
Toronto, Canada.
The Toronto Branch T.S. desires to send fraternal Greetings to the members of The Theo-
sophical Society in Convention assembled and to all others throughout the world.
While it is true that much lawlessness and turbulence is visible in the world to-day, daily
experience leads to the belief that many are seeking a better understanding of life.
The failure of present modes of thought and ways of living to bring the peace and security
which are always desired, is leading many to inquire for a better solution of the problem.
Perhaps some of us have thought how fortunate were those whose privilege it was to be
working for the Movement in the early days when H.P.B. and others were present in person.
This had its advantages certainly, but may we not believe it to be an even greater privilege
to be able to help when the earlier attractions are gone, when the Movement is passing through
a stage when there is so great a need for labourers to tend the growing fields so that the harvest
be assured?
Faith in the Theosophical Movement and in its power to help the souls of men is a need
to-day. All of us can help by allowing that power to work in our own souls, and perhaps that
is the most effective way.
Albert J. Harris,
Secretary.
Whitley Bay, England.
To the Members of The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled , the members of the
Whitley Bay Branch send sincere fraternal greetings. As members of the Society we have each
in accordance with the law, gravitated towards, and finally been drawn into the movement, just
as a mountain stream starts as rain drops, and gravitates towards a river. To-day we are very
glad to be with you in thought and purpose, as part of a movement which may be likened to
the mountain stream, because as the years pass by we realize more fully the great wisdom of
the founders, and the necessity of forming such a nucleus from which the spirit of Universal
Brotherhood may flow. It becomes abundantly clear that this movement, founded upon
fundamental truths gathered through the ages with infinite patience and care, presents the
solution of man’s search for a formula which will provide ultimate peace, and enable him to
rejoice and go upon his way. Our Society has been formed as a channel through which these
truths may flow, and each individual member as part of this forward movement can do much
to help in its growth. Further we can move as a whole, with courage and conviction bom of
the knowledge that the ideal to which we strive is something greater than its component
parts, as it possesses not only movement, but the power of infinite growth. The gathering of
LETTERS OF GREETING
79
the members in Convention to-day is a symbol of the nucleus, and upon its power of move¬
ment and growth depends the welfare and spiritual progress of generations to come.
Fredk. A. Ross,
President.
Oneal, Arkansas.
To the Officers and Members of The Theosophical Society , in Convention Assembled: Most
sincere greetings.
I wish to join with you in a salute to the Corps,—those beings of grandeur in whose light
and love we seek refuge from the turmoil of the world, and to whose Cause we seek to con¬
secrate our lives.
It is a very great privilege and joy to be here—even in thought and in spirit—among
comrades whose presence we cherish, and whose devotion we trust. Perhaps some of us are
looking forward to the arrival of a new Messenger? Might it not be better for us, could we
appreciate those we already have? Were it not for the self-sacrifice, and loyal devotion to the
Cause of some—now in this room—methinks there would be no T.S. Convention here to-day!
Lord, grant that we may be grateful; that we may respond; that we may be true to our trust;
that we may rise to the vast opportunity we face, and to the responsibilities we face.
My deepest thanks are due to the Quarterly, —and to those who make its continued exist¬
ence possible. Also, for the Reports of N. Y. Branch meetings;—these are valuable, and I
greatly appreciate them.
Wm. E. Mullinax.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
To the Convention of the T.S. 1935: Dear Comrades, Please accept from us our kindest
greetings and most sincere wishes for the present Convention.
We deeply feel our inability to be present at the Convention personally, not to be able to
pass at least a day in your midst and in an atmosphere of heaven, and perhaps thereby become
better, stronger and humbler servants of the Great Cause.
All we can do is to try to unite our hearts to yours during the hours of the Convention; to
pray to the Holy Ones that our hearts may become humble and strong to endure to the very
end, that our aspirations may be cleansed and quickened that the force distilled therefrom
may serve the Masters to accomplish Their work for Humanity, and that our insight may
become true and clear and undimmed to pierce the clouds of darkness and blindness which
now, more than ever, are threatening to engulf the world; and, above all, that we may all be
enabled to feel the love of the Masters, and to give ourselves heart and soul to that love in a
great and overwhelming passion where self shall become annihilated for ever.
Leo Schoch.
Elisabeth Schoch.
Trieste, Italy.
To The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled: Dear Comrades,
To’you, who have the rare privilege to meet again in Their name, we send our good wishes
and fraternal greetings. We are in spirit with you, and in spite of the great material distance,
we feel closely linked together in these Easter-Days of the Soul.
We wish to thank those who made it possible for us to receive the “Quarterlys" and the
“Reports”, which are our spiritual bread during the year.
Alberto Plinio.
Lotty Plinio.
So
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Delegates and members showed intense interest in the reading of Letters of Greeting, which
included, in addition to the foregoing, letters from Mr. Arthur W. Barrett (Massachusetts);
Mrs. G. A. L. Dionne (Connecticut); Mr. S. A. Drummond (Oklahoma); Mr. Birger Elwing
(Texas); Mr. Herman Hohnstedt and Miss Hohnstedt, as President and Secretary of the
Cincinnati Branch; Mr. Harry Knoff (Norway); Mr. W. G. Roberts, President of the Middle-
town Branch; Mr. A. Valeddn (Venezuela); Mr. P. W. Ward, President of the Gateshead
Branch (England); telegram from Miss Evans and Miss Wallace, as President and Secretary
of the Branch in Denver; telegram from Captain and Mrs. Hamlen (Augusta, Maine); tele¬
gram from Mrs. Robert L. Redfield (Connecticut); telegram from Mrs. L. Vaile (North Caro¬
lina); cablegram from Mrs. Graves, Mrs. Bagnell, Miss Bagnell (England), and cablegram
from Mrs. Raymond (Japan). Several other letters from abroad were read, which, like all
other letters, were received with applause, but are not acknowledged or quoted in the open
pages of the Quarterly for the reason that unusual political conditions in some parts of
Europe would make this inconsiderate and inexpedient (see the Quarterly, July, 1934; page
33 ).
The Universe is , in fact, full of magnificent promise for us } if we will but lift our
eyes and see. It is that lifting 0} the eyes which is the first need and the first diffi¬
culty; we are so apt readily to be content with what we see within touch of our
hands. It is the essential characteristic of the man of genius that he is compara¬
tively indifferent to that fruit which is just within touch , and hungers for that which
is afar on the hills. In fact he does not need the sense of contact to arouse longing.
He knows that this distant fruit, which he perceives without the aid of the physical
senses, is a subtler and a stronger food than any which appeals to them.
—Through the Gates of Gold.
Convictions and Controversies , by Ralph Adams Cram; Marshall Jones Com¬
pany, Boston, 1935; price, $2.50.
In this age, when one has the impression, most of the time, of wandering
through a lunatic asylum where the inmates are all standing on their heads, it
is a profound pleasure to find a book like this. Mr. Cram, the well-known archi¬
tect, has published a collection of his articles and lectures. He says in his preface
that, although these writings were produced separately, they are related essen¬
tially by unity of thought. There is in them a certain amount of repetition of
ideas, but, far from being tedious, it serves to impress them more forcibly upon
the reader, like a recurring motif in a musical composition.
These ideas, the basic subject of the book, are: the decline and approaching
end of our civilization, the cycles of civilization, and the standards and principles
by which a real culture is built and judged.
Whether he has worked them out independently or not, his conclusions accord
with those set forth by Sir Flinders Petrie. There would seem to be “tides in the
affairs of men”, great waves of culture which rise to their apex and decline in
periods of approximately five hundred years. Mr. Cram, who treats here only of
the Western World, makes these cycles begin with the Third Dynasty in Egypt
about the year 3,000 b.c. It was then, according to him. that one of the world’s
greatest architects, Imhotep, suddenly appeared. Either he came up from the
mass level of Neolithic life, or the elements of civilization were brought over to
Egypt by survivors of the lost Atlantis. Mr. Cram admits the Atlantean tra¬
dition, but seems to think that it survived in very few places, and that, betweej^
it and the beginnings of a new period of civilization, a “pralaya” or dark age or
immense duration had intervened. These five hundred year cycles are easily
traced from 3,000 b.c. to our own day, when we would seem to have ended such
a period and to be plunging into the darkness that follows and precedes a culture.
This theory of cycles is pre-eminently theosophical.
Mr. Cram attacks violently the nineteenth century doctrine of “progressive
evolution”, the optimistic and sentimental notion that every day in every way
we inevitably get better and better. He points out what should be obvious to
every student of history—but, alas, is not—that the ideals and artistic pro¬
ductions of the year 3,000 b.c. are just as good as those of the year 1400 a.d. and
infinitely better than those of the year 1935. If humanity, as a whole, advances,
81
82
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
it is by almost invisible stages. Indeed, he does not think that the mass of men
has advanced in the slightest, but that it is still in the Neolithic state, and he
speaks of it as the Neolithic Mass. This mass, he states, is not human at all.
This suggests the statements of The Secret Doctrine that the animal man does
not become a real human Man until he becomes a Master. According to Mr.
Cram, from the Neolithic Mass arise great beings of genius who do behave like
humans, and by them the achievements of the race are judged. In our time, this
Neolithic Mass is in control. Its representatives sit in our parliaments and rule
the nations.
Now that we have reached the extreme point of our cycle, when all standards
of taste in morals, conduct and the arts are disappearing, when the political
situation is desperate and the economic crisis most acute, what shall we do?
What can we do?< There is a passage often quoted from Through the Gates of Gold
concerning the civilizations which rise to their crest and decline because man
refuses to go on to a higher cycle. Will our civilization refuse to go on ? Will it
too fall back into dissolution ? However, it is in the dark ages that the new cul¬
ture is bom. When the empty forms of the old age are broken up on the compost
heap, the seeds of new life are there germinating. While the Roman Empire
decayed, the splendour of the Middle Ages was slowly growing. Those who
possess the treasures of the heritage of spiritual wisdom can hold them in their
hearts and lives as in an ark, and can hand them on, perhaps in secret, to those
who are worthy to bear them forward into the new day.
Mr. Cram, as an architect, dwells primarily upon the saving grace of Beauty,
and in his essay, Ordeal by Beauty , he suggests that one way of judging and
appraising our productions in all fields is by subjecting them to the question:
Are they beautiful? He says:
Bring up to the bar of the Courts of Beauty any one of the things that offend us
to-day, no matter what this may be, and abide by the verdict rendered. For the sake of
impersonality let it be a modern city, anything from Somerville to Chicago, and what
has beauty to say in the premises? Before its austere regard—for beauty is no tolerant
sybarite—the bold pleading of business efficiency, of plausible economic law, of material
progress, of a mechanistic philosophy of evolution—of modernism in a word, falls thin
and unconvincing. ... Is it unreasonable to urge that by the use of beauty as a standard
of values and as a revelation of ideals, we may perhaps the more easily accomplish the
rejection and abandonment of much that we now, in our heart of hearts, know to be
unworthy, and that through the wise application of the same agency we might succeed in
establishing a more workable method of controlling the vagrant will of man?
Mr. Cram is too much of an artist to consider beauty as separate from the good
and the true. He makes this clear:
The possession of beauty and the function of art are intimately and absolutely an
integral part of life itself, and are neither attainable nor usable—nor even desirable—
unless they are so related. . . . What was the greatest synthesis of beauty made opera¬
tive through art, that man has ever achieved? The answer is very simple, it was a
Gothic cathedral of the thirteenth century during a Pontifical High Mass, and some¬
where about the middle of the fourteenth century in England, or the fifteenth century
in France or Spain. Every art raised to its highest point was here brought into play in
REVIEWS
83
one place and associated in absolute union with the greatest beauty of thought, emotion
and action that have ever been the possession of fallen man. Painting, sculpture, and a
score of exquisite minor arts, as those of glass, needlework and enamel, with the crafts
of the goldsmith, the woodcarver and the bell-founder, were here co-ordinated through
the supreme power of the master-art of architecture in a unity that was almost divine
in its perfection. To this unity entered other arts that they might breathe into it the
breath of life: music first of all, and poetry and the drama through the sublime liturgies
and ceremonial that had grown up through a thousand years of striving and aspiration
and the revelation that is their boon and reward. And all were for the exposition and
realization of the supreme beauty of spiritual things: the durable love of God for His
children through the Sacrifice of Calvary, eternally renewed upon the altar, and the
veritable presence of His Spirit through the miracle of the Mass.
St.C. LaD.
Felicities of Thomas Traherne , chosen and edited with Introduction by Sir
Arthur Quiller-Couch; P. J. & A. E. Dobell, London, 1934; price, 35.
Most of us have long been familiar with Centuries of Meditations , that book of
deep devotion and great beauty which has, by some, been favourably compared
with the Imitation. Now, in Felicities , we have a kind of anthology of Thomas
Traherne’s writings—fragments of his prose, side by side with some of his
shorter poems; a small book, not so much to read straight through, perhaps,
as to dip into when one is quite alone. Thomas Traherne is said to have been a
very retiring and modest man, and his life was both brief and obscure, but like
many lovers of solitude (who are also so often lovers of nature), he had a certain
gift of inner vision; he recognized with a kind of shy passion peculiarly his,
that behind all things lay a marvellous and mysterious unity. His were “the
rapturous aspirings of a joyful and happy soul, conscious of its kinship with God
Himself, and sure of its divinity and of its glorious destiny”. Traherne was a
poet in the truest sense of the word, not because he wrote charming verses in his
youth (for, as a matter of fact, his prose far outstrips his poetry in true value),
but because, whatever he saw or felt was illumined by the light of the spiritual
world. As a child particularly, the most ordinary objects upon which his eyes fell
had a kind of mystical significance—they were always seen as part of the Whole.
Writing of his earliest impressions he says: “The corn was Orient and Immortal
Wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stoo^
from everlasting to everlasting. The Dust and Stones of the Street were as pnu#
cious gold: the Gates were at first the End of the World. The Green Trees
when I saw them first through one of the Gates Transported and Ravished me,
their sweetness and unusual Beauty made my Heart to leap, and almost mad
with ecstasie, they were such strange and Wonderful Things. . . . Eternity was
Manifest in the light of the Day, and something infinite Behind everything
appeared : which talked with my Expectation and moved my Desire. . . . The
Skies were mine, and so were the Sun and Moon and Stars, and all the W r orld
was mine”. There is a lilting beauty in Traherne’s utterances which is charac¬
teristic of almost all he says. Thus in the Centuries we read: “Your enjoyment
of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself
84 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
in your Father’s Palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air, as Celes¬
tial Joys: having such a revered esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels.
How like this in thought are the two lines in an early descriptive poem of his.
“And evry Stone, and Evry Star a Tongue,
And evry Gale of Wind a Curious Song.”
His was a living and a burning faith in the goodness of God the Father; he moved
in eternity and so in celestial realms. In the introduction to this small book,
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch says: “Traherne died young: but the gods at his
Christening must have loved him, to have endowed him with his angelic way of
saying things.” We are much indebted to the editor of this delightful little book
for its carefully chosen selections, and the general arrangement of them.
T.D.
Modern Trends in World-Religions , the Haskell Lectures in Comparative
Religion, edited by A. Eustace Haydon; the University of Chicago Press, 1934;
price, $2.50.
Professor Haydon explains that “when the Haskell Foundation was established
forty years ago the hope of the founder was that a sympathetic interpretation of
religions would yield a spirit of good-will and mutual understanding between
peoples of the East and West”. Good-will and understanding are rare and
precious qualities in this sublunar world, for they are attributes of a highly
evolved state of human consciousness which few individuals have attained. It is
extremely doubtful whether wisdom has increased in the mass during the past
half-century. Certainly there has been an almost universal subsidence of
religious intolerance; but these lectures reveal only too clearly the nature of the
tolerance which now prevails. It is based, not upon good-will and understanding,
but upon scepticism and indifference. The lecturers are simply not interested in
any speculations concerning the eternal truths or the divine revelations which
may be embodied in any religious tradition. Six of these traditions are examined
in this volume—Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hin¬
duism—each by a “specialist”; and the general conclusion seems to be that they
are old-fashioned “patterns of thought and custom” which must be transformed
beyond all recognition if they are to survive. An exception must be made for
Professor Pratt’s admirable rdsumd of Buddhist thought, and there are occa¬
sional flashes of intuition even among those who speak on behalf of Christianity.
However, the net impression remains, that these specialists have the same mea¬
sure of good-will and understanding towards the object of their study which they
might experience in the presence of a stuffed dodo in a museum.
Their active concerns are elsewhere, and within the sphere of these interests
they can become as dogmatic and as intolerant as their ancestors. All of them
speak of modem science with awe, and some of them seem to be obsessed by the
Marxian myth of “social-economic progress”. This is especially true of the
Protestant apologists who seek to remould Christianity nearer to their hearts’
REVIEWS
85
desire. The mission of Christianity, in their opinion, is to change the order of
society, to re-distribute wealth in such a way that everyone will be able without
strain to satisfy all his material wants. They are so immersed in this problem
that they have not enough mental energy left to understand how and why
traditional religious teaching primarily offers comfort and sustenance not to the
body but to the soul.
The presence of ten just men in Sodom would have saved the Cities of the
Plain from fire and brimstone. Surely it is credible that each of the world-
religions still contains a living nucleus of faith in the supremacy of spiritual
values. The word “religion” includes a multitude of connotations. The religion
of the sage or the mystic is not the same in form as the religion of the peasant or
the savage. Nevertheless, religious consciousness of every kind, the lowest as
well as the highest, is marked by some recognition, clear or dim, of the fact that
the material world to which our bodies belong is less real than the invisible world
which is the source of all creative powers, including those of our own souls. Every
religious genius has toiled without intermission to combat the shallow materialism
to which so many of the clergy are to-day reverting. “The darkness of ignorance”,
said Patanjali, “is: holding that which is unenduring, impure, full of pain, not
the Soul, to be eternal, pure, full of jov, the Soul.”
S.V.
I Speak for the Silent (Prisoners of the Soviets ), by Professor V. V. Tchemavin;
Hale, Cushman and Flint, Boston, 1935; price, $2.50.
If any reader of the Quarterly has acquaintances who do not realize the
diabolic cruelty of Soviet rule—who think that “after all there is something to
be said for Communism”, that “things are no worse in Russia to-day than they
were under the Czar”—we recommend, as an act of charity, the purchase and
gift or loan of this book. It is a record, by an honest man, of his own experience.
We have never hesitated to say that Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the rest of the
brood, dead or alive, are devils, and that Sovietism itself is the nearest known
approach to hell on earth. Every additional demonstration of these facts is wel¬
come. The pity of it is that so few people are sufficiently intelligent to see,
beneath the surface of such horrors, the proof that all class hatred, such as th^A
encouraged by the American Federation of Labor, all demagogy, all robbit^
of the few for the alleged benefit of the many,—lead directly to the same abyss.
H.
The Civilization of the East: China , by Rend Grousset, translated by Catherine
Alison Phillips; Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1934; price, $7.50.
Readers of the earlier book, In the Footsteps of the Buddha , know that M.
Grousset, in addition to great knowledge of his subject, possesses to a con¬
siderable extent the faculty of looking within it. He obviously realizes that
a great art lifts a veil and discloses the heart of the people who produced it.
In this discussion of Chinese art, there lies the secret of that enigmatic
86
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
reserve and aloofness with which the East (China particularly) so often baffles
the West. The nation is shown to be, from prehistoric times, impregnated
with the sense of mystery, conscious of a Presence “divined rather than
visible . . . something immanent which refuses to clothe itself in concrete
form”. This fundamental quality in Chinese thought, the author endeavours
to make clearer by comparison with the art of other lands:
Is it that of Greece? The Zeus of Mylasa, the Aphrodite of Cnidus or of Melos, are
but flesh made marble. Or Egypt, with its colossi of the Pharaonic ages imposing
the precision of their lines upon us commandingly in the brilliant sunlight.” Or India,
with the Buddha of Sarnath, the three headed Siva of Elephanta, the Manjusri of Ajanta,
or the tender imaginings of Borobudur? In all of these we have humanity deified and
magnified till it reaches the very bounds of the cosmos, but, in spite of all, remaining
human. In China, on the contrary, we have an intentionally indeterminate quality
making itself felt, . . . only in order to conceal itself the more surely. ... We have
here an ideal of art consisting in mystery expressed in a form that is not concrete, of
mystery in its entirety, dreaded or loved for its own sake, ... an art which succeeds in
suggesting and propounding in an abstract form the whole problem of destiny.
The early art—bronzes, jades or sculptures—is shown to be “eloquent of the
dread power of those visions of terror, whether beasts, monsters or gods, which
haunted the Chinese imagination . . . not so much real creatures as embodied
menace and power.” As the ages passed there came a gradual evolution:
Instead of the mask of terror in which the primitive bronzists thought they saw the
riddle for an instant face to face, we now see how, after ages of Taoist ecstacies and
Mahayanist tenderness, the T’ang poets and their counterparts in painting, the Sung
artists, discerned the soul of the cosmos in the lines of a landscape bathed in mist and
lost in infinite distances, which make it as poignant as a human countenance. . . . The
mystery of terror has become a metaphysical mystery. Terror before the unknowable
All has become transmuted in the course of the centuries into a passionate striving for
communion with it. The Chinese aesthetic ideal, having exhausted all the possibilities
of realism during six or eight centuries . . . was reverting to the most ancient element
in its history: that is, to a conception of nature as animated by an immanent force.
The discussion of T’ang and Sung poetry—prose translations coupled with
photographs of the T’ang, Sung and Ming landscapes which each inspired—is
one of the most delightful portions of the book. While the avowed aim of the
volume is to serve as an introduction to Asiatic art, it possesses an additional
appeal for students of Theosophy, because of its suggestive glimpses of the inner
development of a people (the real source of all artistic expression)—culminating
in that serene atmosphere which the Chinese sages attained, and of which the
poets wrote: “I looked upon the flowers, as motionless as ourselves. I listened
to the birds hovering in space; and I understood the great truth.” “My soul
has soared beyond what is visible, at once wanderer and captive, in a wondrous
ravishment.” J.C.
wv52\
QUESTIONS
[aiiS
Question No. 395 .—In an issue of the Quarterly of several months ago, we were told of a
“great man ” who lived between 1760 and 1844, and who, being slanderously attacked, was presented
with a memorial, as an outraged protest from twenty-eight men in a small town. Would not this
loyal protest, given voluntarily {in contrast to what H.P.B. received), mark them in future lives as
belonging to him?
Answer. —There are so many unknown factors regarding the relationship between the
twenty-eight men who protested against the slanderous attack upon a “great man” that it
would seem to be idle speculation to try to imagine what their connection in a future life might
be. As one of the hall-marks of a member of the Lodge is said to be gratitude for a service
rendered, it may be taken for granted that these men would be rewarded in some way by the
“Good Law”, but whether they “belonged” to any particular member of the Lodge, is a matter
which would involve a much closer and more intimate relationship than that which prompted
an act of common decency by neighbours. G.H.M.
Answer. —The meaning of the question is not clear, for such a phrase as that used—“mark
them in future lives as belonging to him”—has, or should have, a very profound significance,
and it might or might not apply to the case in question. Defence of someone wronged would
not of necessity establish so close a Karmic bond as this phrase implies, for an ardent con¬
demnation of slander or injustice is the obvious moral duty of any and every one of us, and
some kind of Karma would probably be involved. The “loyal protest” might be the uncon¬
scious repayment of a past debt, or it might be merely in obedience to our own individual
standard of right action, thus creating good Karma for the future. But “to belong” to anyone,
in the true sense, suggests hierarchical affinities—a very deep and far-reaching matter indeed..
For instance, the ch£la of one Master might defend the ch£la of another Master if slanderously
attacked, but this would not mean that, because he had been loyal on general principles, h?
would therefore be transferred from his own Ray and from the Master to whom he really did
“belong”, to the Ray of that other ch£la, and to the keeping of that chela’s Master. T.A.
Answer. —This question opens a big subject and one of considerable conjecture. We
know how we are drawn to individuals whom we admire, and whose knowledge and judgment
we respect. We know, too, how we seek them out and arrange to meet with them as often as
possible; how we try to follow their advice, and how we instinctively rise to their defence
whenever they are unjustly criticized or attacked. What is true of our affiliations, desires and
actions in a given incarnation, may be equally true over a longer period embracing many
incarnations. Quite naturally, then, we may reincarnate in groups, drawn together because of
mutual interest and purpose, and thus be privileged to gather around, and to serve under, the
same leader or leaders who already have won our confidence, and who have been an inspiration
to us in life after life. It seems probable, then, that the twenty-eight men mentioned in the
question may have rallied around the “great man” many times before, and will have the
privilege of doing so many times again. Carrying the conjecture farther, it seems reasonable
87
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
88
that their vigorous and positive act on his behalf that time, may merit the opp ^ M ^ K
closer affiliation with him thereafter.
Answer.— It might well give to each of them the opportunity, in a fujure tunity wou id
contact with him again, perhaps to serve him. But the extent of this mi ia P ^ racter
depend, in each case, upon the motive of the signer of the and
and the extent to which it was unselfish. One may have signed because> the oth '
because he wanted to follow along. Another, because it was a pi y 0 iav ,
things so, and the protest would make everything comfortable again. But the ™®
signed because he was ablaze with anger and indignation at injustice, becau
nail a lie ; because he believed with all his heart and soul in this “great man , and wanted to go
on record that he did, and to support him;—that man might well belong in a future life.
Question No. 396 —How may one best begin to serve the purposes of the T.S., when the pressure
of temporal needs is great?
Answer. —In the lives of many people to-day, the pressure of temporal needs is great
indeed, so that it seems and may well seem, as if there were not a moment in which to do any¬
thing for the T.S. Let us all thank heaven that that is no barrier to work for the T.S. Right
action in the face of temporal needs clearly is a duty—and a duty, every duty, is an expression
of the divine will for us. If, when we want to look at the morning paper, it be our duty instead
to write a letter, that duty is the will of the divine for us, at that moment,—the will of our
highest Self; and obedience to that will, instead of following the inclination of the personal
self, is a direct contribution to the T.S. and to the Theosophical Movement. If there be
sacrifice involved, then the greater the sacrifice, the greater the service. We can make our
contribution doubly effective if we choose mentally to direct it, or aim it, at any particular
purpose. The desire that it be a contribution, is an extra gift in itself. The great pattern was
laid down for us in the “Way of the Cross”, to use Christian terms for the moment; the per¬
sonal self must be crucified if the immortal Self is to emerge. There can be no resurrection in
spiritual consciousness, until the personal self is on the way to becoming dead,—until the
demon of self-assertion and self-will and self-love has been dealt with and conquered. The
Way of the Cross: there is no escape from it, and the whole world is trying to escape from it.
To most so-called Christians, all that is left of the Cross to-day is a way, they imagine, to evade
the consequences of their sins. True Christianity teaches no such thing. Christ, like all great
Avatars, came into the world to point the way to victory, to point out how we could become
men, instead of the distorted images that we are. Do not let temporal needs hold us back.
Let us thank heaven for our temporal needs: they are stepping stones toward our own immor¬
tality. Z.
Answer. —Materialism dies hard! “It is not what is done, but the spirit in which the least
thing is done, that counts.” We can serve the purposes of the T.S. by following the Noble
Eightfold Path of Gautama Buddha: 1. Right view's. 2. High aims (or Right aspirations).
3. Right speech. 4. Upright conduct. 5. Right livelihood. 6. Right effort (also translated
as Perseverance in well-doing). 7. Right mindfulness (or Right recollection). 8. Right con¬
templation. We can also serve the purposes of the T.S. by trying to do all that we have to
do—the most ordinary duties of life—with the desire to please the Master whom we believe
to be our Master,—by doing ordinary things as we imagine he would like them done, gladly
quickly, well. Incidentally, most people would never think of the spiritual world or of spirit¬
ual purposes if it were not for “the pressure of temporal needs”. Instead of regarding such
pressure as an obstacle, w’e should humbly admit that we evidently need it just to be kept
going. x.
STANDARD BOOKS
Blavatsky, H. P. Isis Unveiled, Vois. I and II. 7.50
Complete in one book .. ^ 25
SEC^ ”3
Theosophical Glossary.•.* 7 ..’
Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge.‘ ’
Voice of the Silence... .:*~r’
Cave. Fragments, Volume I . ••••••; ;£££
voiZe iii! ^7
§Kd' «"secret b« .£
Johnston, Charles. Bhagavad Gita .TranJotad. limp leather,
Crest Jewel of Wisdom, The. ..
Great Upanishads, The, Volume I.“V;
o. T s»»s»v.» g«a- :::: .eem; »•»> ^
Culture of Concentration . Mper>
Mb, Volume IiU XU*-
Ocean of Theosophy
cloth,
doth,
KeighSy?ArchS A3 AN ™ ^ .m
LaDow/Stanley V. Plotinus
Mitchell, Henry Bedinger. Meditation
2.25
2.50
1.00
1.50
1.50
1.50
1.75
3.00
lo25
1.75
1.25
1.50
.50
1.25
.76
1.50
.25
.25
1.00
1.00
1.00
.20
.50
.50
.20
Special edition, .20> paper,
and~Theosophy, The ....
Mitcheli, J. F. B. Collegiate Education and Standard ^
Sinnett^L P.' Esoteric Buddhism.. • •.££
TorreyTB2y^E. RL S ciencb and it's Function in Education
Walker, E. D. Reincarnation. *.■//”//.. doth.
Idyll of the White Lotus .“ '. leather,
Light on the Path.. _ ... doth,
Through the Gates of Gold.
the quarterly book department,
P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York.
.10
2.50
2.50
.50
1.75
1.35
.85
1.20
_^
(bvotional: Bliagarad Gita; L.'Lettere cm the Path; The Par-
blea of the Kingdom, The bong * rwerSne- Iris Unveiled; Eqr to ThWMfphy;
•bilosophical; Abridging oHhe Religion; Theosophical Glowary;
>lotinu»:Reincarnation; The^crei
[•ransactions; Patanjali 3 ga _ irom the Orient; Esoteric Buddhto;
Founded by 15* P* Blaoatsky
T ^—^ HE Society does not pretend to be able to establish
"it once /universal brotherhood among men, but
only strives to create the nucleus of such a body.
Many of its members believe that an acquaintance
BflBMEH with Y the world's religions and philosophies will
£=£==* reveal, the common and fundamental P ri “«ple
underlying these, that “spiritual identity of all Souls with the
Oversoul “which is the basis of true brotherhood; and many
rf them also believe that an appreciation of the finer forces
of nature and man will still further emphasize the same idea.
The organization is wholly unsectarian, with no creed,
dogma, nor personal authority to enforce or impose; neither
is it to be held responsible for the opinions of its members#
who are expected to accord to the beliefs of others that
tolerance which they desire for their own.
The following proclamation was adopted at the CJonvea*
LIBRARY
ANDOVER NEWTON
theological school
PUBLISHED BY
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
Applications (or membership should he addressed to the
Secretary T. S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York.
The Theosophical Quarterly
Act of?F&?s£. 0nCU, “ S ' natter September s - I9J 3- 01 th» Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the
Copyright, 1936, by The Theosophical Society
Subscription price, $2.00 per annum; single copies, 50 cents
Published by The Theosophical Society
at 64 Washington Mews, New York, N .Y.
July; October; January; April
Address all communications to P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York
In Europe, single copies may be obtained from and subscriptions may be sent to John
M. Watkins, 21 Cedi Court, Charing Cross Road, London, W. C. 2, England; or to
Mr. E. H. Lincoln, 9 Beaconsfield Road, Low Fell, Gateshead-on-Tyne, England, from
whom all back numbers may be obtained. Annual subscription price, S2.00, postpaid.
CONTENTS OF VOL. XXXIII, NO. 2
April, 1936
PAGE
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 91
FRAGMENTS. ioi
THEOSOPHY. 102
CORNWALL AND ITS MAGIC. no
CONFUCIUS, 1 . 117
THE OAK AND THE NUTHATCH. 126
HISTORICAL MYSTERIES. I29
“NATIONS CAN LIVE AT HOME”. 136
WITHOUT CENSOR, VI. I40
INDRAWAL, OUR GREAT OPPORTUNITY. IS0
FLOWERS. IS3
REMARKS BY THE WAY. IJ9
REVIEWS. l68
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. I?4
IN MEMORIAM. I?s
T. S. ACTIVITIES: Notices . 176
• I
*
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The principal aim and object of this Society is to form the nucleus of a
Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex,
caste or colour. The subsidiary objects are: The study of ancient and modern
religions, philosophies and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance
of such study; and the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and
the psychical powers latent in man.
The Theosophical Quarterly is the official organ of the original
Theosophical Society founded in New York by II. P. Blavatsky,
IV 0 Judge and others, in 1875 . . .
We have no connection whatsoever with any other organization
calling itself Theosophical, formerly headed by Mrs. Besant, nor
with Similar bodies, the purposes and methods of which are wholly
foreign to our own.
Editors, The TnEOsopnicAL Quarterly.
NOTES*™ COMMENT?
APRIL, 1936
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.
Natural and Artificial Death
E VERYTHING flows, nothing abides.” All forms are fugitive and
evanescent, subject to perpetual change and final decay. This is vis¬
ibly true in the physical world, and experience testifies that our habitual
states of consciousness are as fluid as water. As the Buddhists have taught,
death is the necessary complement of birth. There is a twilight, it is said, even
for the gods.
The spectacle of this universal flux has suggested many sad thoughts to the
poets especially to those who have been captivated by the loveliness of so many
earthly forms. It has always been a favourite, almost a conventional theme of
lyric verse Eheu fugaces! Very few men in any age have discerned the stable
and changeless noumenal Reality beyond the veil of phenomena. The vast
majority including many who should know better, refuse to think of these mat¬
ters at all except under dire compulsion. Even among the clergy, there are
those who’shun the idea of death like the plague, and who, in this respect, there¬
fore are morally inferior to the ancient Stoic whose doctrine of self-control
prepared him to die, perhaps without hope but nevertheless with dignity an<^
without shameful fear. # ^
However Time is a moving image of Eternity, as Plato said. According to
the Mvster’y Tradition which the Master Christ and other Avatars and Sages
we illustrated before the world, “God did not make death”. Dens non fecit
In, What may be called natural death is thus merely the transition from
rLseofSto another, the end of an old eycl, which blends into the
° . P ■ T of a new It is, therefore, as “natural” as the indrawal of a tree s
hfeto the roots during winter, or as the suspension of the body’s outer activities
sl It is not death at all, if by this term we signify some loss of real
Seriousness some permanent atrophy of creative power.
The death which man dreads and which he identifies with the destruction of
91
92
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
all he holds dear, may be described as artificial in the sense that man has made
it himself. It has, so to speak, entered like a foreign body into the organism
of Nature. It seems evident that this artificial death is the logical consequence
of an artificial life. It is the end to be expected for the “personality” which man
fashions out of a congeries of illusions and false notions concerning himself and
the Universe to which he belongs. Theosophy teaches that it is this “person¬
ality” which fades out after the death of the physical body, and that there must
ensue a series of such deaths followed by as many reincarnations, each involving
a lapse of memory, an eclipse of the sense of continuous identity, until “cyclic
evolution has re-established the broken harmony between the two natures—
the terrestrial and the divine”.
The Two Aspects of Shiva
In the light of this teaching, one can perhaps begin to understand, in some
slight degree, part of what the Buddha meant when he referred to Nirvana as
the place from which there is no return. The Bodhisattva transforms himself
without cessation into an ever more perfect image of the “Buddha-ideal”, but
he is freed from the dominion of “artificial death”, from the particular type of
reincarnation to which man must conform as long as he tries to live outside the
order of Divine Nature.
In Hindu mythology, the great god Shiva, one of the principles of universal
Nature (the third person of the Hindu Trinity), has two aspects. He is the
Destroyer, and also the Regenerator. As the former, he often seems to rep¬
resent for certain fanatics and perverted minds, what has been named the
“night-side of Nature”. He is, in this aspect, a personification of destruction
conceived as an end in itself. He presides over every calamity, devouring what¬
ever he touches, whether it be good or evil. But as the Regenerator, he is the
patron of Yogis and ascetics, of all who seek, through the elimination of evil from
their natures, “to re-establish the broken harmony” in their lives. Like Y&ma in
the Katha Upanishad , he is the Lord of Death who can bestow the gift of con¬
scious immortality.
There is a saying of the old magicians, that “man is the thaumaturge of the
earth”. He can evoke any force in Nature, and according to the quality and
strength of his imagination, desire and will, that force will operate in and through
him, for good or for ill. It is well to remind ourselves that, at every instant of
the day, we are calling upon Shiva for re-inforcement. To which aspect do we
appeal, to the Destroyer or to the Regenerator?
The Creators and the Destroyers
Madame Blavatsky points out what should be obvious, that life is main¬
tained by a balance between creative and destructive powers. “Nothing is
bom into this world, save by the death of some other thing.” Within every
organism there is a continuous process of molecular displacement and cellular
change. The form of the body can only be built and preserved, if its substance
be unremittingly consumed by living fire.
NOTES AND COMMENTS
93
We are taught that every physiological change, in addition to pathological phenomena,
diseases—nay, life itself, or rather the objective phenomena of life, produced by certain
conditions and changes in the tissues of the body, which allow and force life to act in
that body—that all this is due to those unseen “Creators” and “Destroyers”, which are
called, in such a loose and general way, microbes. It might be supposed that these Fiery
Lives and the microbes of Science are identical. This is not true. The Fiery Lives are the
seventh and highest subdivision of matter, and correspond in the individual with the
One Life of the Universe, though only on that plane of matter. The microbes of Science
are the first and lowest subdivision on the second plane—that of material Prana, or Life.
The physical body of man undergoes a complete change of structure every seven years,
and its destruction and preservation are due to the alternate functions of the Fiery Lives,
as Destroyers and Builders. They are Builders by sacrificing themselves, in the form of
vitality, to restrain the destructive influence of the microbes, and by supplying the
microbes with what is necessary, they compel them under that restraint to build up the
material body and its cells. They are Destroyers also, when that restraint is removed,
and the microbes, unsupplied with vital constructive energy, are left to run riot as
destructive agents {The Secret Doctrine , ed. 1893, I, 282-283).
“As above, so below.” The laws of evolution are fundamentally identical upon
all planes. The creation or destruction of a human character illustrates these
principles as clearly as the transformations of the human body. There is an anal¬
ogy between the “Fiery Lives” and the “seventh and highest subdivision” of every
individual consciousness, the plane of the purest ideals which, like the “Fiery
Lives”, make manifest the “One Life of the Universe”, the ideals which we
most truly love and which kindle into flame our will and aspiration. We know,
even from our limited experience, that moral and mental disintegration is held in
check whenever there is a sincere aspiration by any man to embody the highest
purpose which he can conceive. As the Sages have taught, he who is afire with
disinterested love of an ideal, does not decay with his physical body. Fie is, in
his own individuality, immune to “microbes”, for he subjects to a creative
purpose whatever enters the field of his consciousness. Is it not the secret of
real growth, that throughout all cyclic mutations it progressively illustrates an
ideal form, a noumenon, an inner principle, a Logos?
Microbes in the Body Politic
For the race and nation, as for the individual, creative action depends upojn
the recognition of such an inner principle and upon the continued act ol se^
sacrifice, “in the form of vitality”, which makes possible the impression of an
ideal form upon “matter”. It is painfully apparent that the general average of
so-called human beings has always been incapable of individual creative effort.
But the elemental state of this “Neolithic Mass”, as Mr. Cram calls it, has only
effectively checked the growth of a civilization, when authority and control
over it have been taken away from the few who have preserved some under¬
standing of its inner principle. When the standards of the “Neolithic Mass”
become dominant in a society, a condition occurs which seems to correspond
to what happens when a physical body is delivered to the unchecked ministra¬
tions of the microbes that populate it. The body politic serves as the host
for myriads of undeveloped entities which, left to themselves, cannot build but
94
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
can only tear down what already exists. When the process of the re-distribu¬
tion of wealth” is completed, even the simulacrum of civilization disappears.
Whatever was real in the old civilization will have resumed its series of rein¬
carnations elsewhere.
When the inner principle of a civilization ceases to act effectively, because
there is no longer a vision or an aspiration or a spirit of self-sacrifice which
responds to it, the “body” which is left can only live as long as it can feed upon
itself. This is made clear in a passage from The Secret Doctrine , following what
has just been quoted. Incidentally, this passage suggests an interesting parallel
between the effects of the “re-distribution of wealth” upon the life of a nation
and the physical corruption which ensues when the cells of the body begin to
rob one another of oxygen.
The restraining influence of the Fiery Lives on . . . the microbes is confirmed by
the fact mentioned in the theory of Pasteur . . . that the cells of the organs, when
they do not find sufficient oxygen for themselves, adapt themselves to that condition
and form ferments , which, by absorbing oxygen from substances which come in contact
with them, produce their destruction. Thus the process is commenced by one cell rob¬
bing its neighbour of the source of its vitality, when the supply is insufficient; and the
destruction so commenced steadily progresses.
Inflammation of the Intellect
It is commonly stated to-day that we are living in the most vital age since
the beginning of history. The idea is, of course, suggested by the extraordinary
achievements of applied science, which are still multiplied almost daily, as well
as by the ever-accelerated tempo of social change to which we are obliged to
adapt our fashion of living from hour to hour. A little reflection, however,
should bring the realization that rapid change is not necessarily a sign of rapid
growth. Decay can proceed at least as quickly as growth.
Destruction may wear the appearance of creation, as a fever may impart to
its victim a semblance of renewed animation. Several observers of contemporary
societies have felt obliged to conclude that the moral life of modem man is con¬
stantly agitated because it is actively disintegrating. It is as if his creative
faculties had become over-specialized by their excessive concentration upon
problems of physical invention. So much mental energy has been devoted to
the exploitation of the material world that when men are compelled by circum¬
stances to decide even a simple moral problem they find it increasingly difficult
to think clearly or to make any decision. To excuse their failure, they fre¬
quently find it convenient to pretend that no permanent ethical standards exist.
Certain modern educators issue statements from time to time, which suggest
that their chief objective is to undermine any faith in moral values which the
youth entrusted to their charge may possess. ‘‘My idea of education”, the
President of the University of Chicago was recently quoted as saying, “is to
unsettle the minds of the young and to inflame their intellects.” So one might
argue that the aim of a physician is to make people sick. Dr. Hutchins’s remark
is unfortunately typical of the sort of reasoning which prevails among the more
NOTES AND COMMENTS
95
vocal educators of to-day, if not among the majority. It indicates the degree
to which destructive has displaced constructive thinking in all branches of
human activity, with the exception of the exact sciences. Men do not try to
“inflame their intellects” when they compute strains and stresses. The engineer
is one of the very few stabilizing influences in the modern world, at least in so
far as he confines himself to the sphere of his science, where he recognizes eternal
principles and obeys them. When he ventures to discuss ethics or sociology,
he is, of course, capable of uttering as many imbecilities as anyone else.
A Defence of Nightmares
The ancient Hindu psychologists taught that there are three primary states
of consciousness in Nature, the waking, the dreaming and the dreamless. All
men know the first two which correspond to the physical and psychic or subjec¬
tive phases of our ordinary life. Only a few, a very few, have knowledge of
dreamless consciousness in a personal sense, although, according to this Eastern
doctrine, every soul enters this condition in deep sleep. Before dreamlessness
can be understood, the dream-world must be conquered. That is man’s imme¬
diate task as it has been for ages.
To dream means more than to pass into the state, best known during sleep,
when the outer senses are numbed and the subjective world of our mind-images
assumes a temporary objective form. To dream, in the broader sense of the
term, is to imagine, to reflect in a mental image, usually more or less distorted,
some actual existent thing in physical nature, or some spiritual reality which
has its being in the Nature above and beyond the sphere of dreams. Men
dream continually, whether their eyes be open or shut. Everything depends
upon the substance of their visions, upon the quality of the things mirrored.
There are nightmares, for instance, states of delirium, which have been tra¬
ditionally supposed to be undesirable. It remained for an Episcopalian Bishop
to assure us that nightmares are better than no dreams at all, that the important
thing is to dream about something, no matter how terrible. We quote from
the New York Times , July 29, 1935 :
The Right Rev. Warren L. Rogers, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Ohio, in a serm^
at St. Bartholomew’s Church, after asserting that America needed a more definite social
faith, praised Communist Russia, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy for setting definite
social objectives. After referring to patriots who had the faith to make their dreams come
true, Bishop Rogers said:
“So men dream in our day. They are dreaming in Russia that way now. We may
not like their dream, but certainly it is giving a meaning, a purpose in life the Russian
peasant never had before. It is the audacity of his faith. They are doing the same thing
in Germany and Italy. We do not have the same type of imagination, or else the dreams
of our patriots have ceased. But we will one day dream in America. We will have the
audacity of faith, the daring faith to believe.”
One wonders whether the Bishop has the least notion what Christianity is
about, or what is really occurring in Russia and Germany. If one were to seek
illustrations of the destruction of the body politic by “microbes”, one would
9 6 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
instinctively turn first of all to those unhappy lands. They are examples of
living death, of a moral decay which has taken place under the eyes of the world
and has virtually run its full course during one generation. How has all this
come to pass? By the power of dreams; but of what dreams! Dreams of envy
and malice, of revenge and wounded self-esteem, of blood-lust and sadist cruelty!
The Germans and Russians appealed to the Destroyer, and he has answered.
The Chemical Revolution
It is not fair to say that Americans do not also have dreams of social objec¬
tives”, although they are less proficient in the art of generating nightmares
than the Germans and Russians. It is characteristic of the American’s attach¬
ment to concrete tangible goods, that he tends to look to applied science for the
final solution of all social problems. It is seriously believed by many that tech¬
nological improvements, coupled with new discoveries, will ultimately make it
possible for every member of society to live in security and comfort, with a
minimum of labour and a maximum of leisure, his most burdensome task being
to choose how he will amuse himself.
There is an article in Harper's Magazine , August, 1935, which lends a certain
appearance of substantiality to the notion that before many years will have
elapsed the food supply of the world will be greatly increased by chemical means.
It bears the formidable title: ‘‘Chemistry Wrecks the Farm”. The authors,
Messrs. Wayne W. Parrish and Harold F. Clark, do not consider the possible
effects of this chemical revolution upon human consciousness. They are con¬
cerned with what is actually happening to agriculture and with certain imme¬
diate economic effects.
As they suggest, the productivity of the soil has been greatly increased during
recent years by intensive cultivation, and it is estimated by experts that Amer¬
ican agriculture is ‘‘only 11.3 per cent efficient to-day on the scale of the most
efficient methods”. Also there is a steady increase of synthetic foods produced
in the laboratory and the factory. Finally, there is the most serious threat of
all to the farmer, the transfer of farming itself to the laboratory and the factory.
Controlled agriculture . . . opens the way to fresh crops every few weeks all the
year round. Since soil is almost useless anyway, the plants are grown without it in
metal trays in ovenlike cabinets. The plants supply their own heat, and only a few
hours of work daily are needed to supply water to the trays, in which have been placed
a few ounces of chemical food in powder form, there being a different chemical food for
each kind of crop. These cabinets, each containing ten trays, providing a fresh crop
every day with a ten-day rotation, are finding increased popularity on farms in England,
Denmark, and Germany, where they are used for growing fodder crops. . . . The crop
grows miraculously. A tray of seed-corn begins to sprout within a few hours and in ten
days is a foot high. The seed germinated is said to produce five times the volume of
seed planted in the ground. . . . Experiments are being conducted in England in the
growing of fresh vegetables, with the prediction that the time is not far off when the
householder can grow his own year-round supply of greenstuffs in his kitchen or base¬
ment in a cabinet resembling an ice-box or electric refrigerator.
There are some people who find the whole process of growing plants without
NOTES AND COMMENTS
97
soil or sunlight repellent and fundamentally unsound in principle. It is at least
plausible to assume that certain indispensable properties are imparted to vege¬
tation by direct sunlight, which can be imparted in no other way. It is not
improbable that time itself, however inconvenient it may be, is likewise a factor
in developing the nutritive values of plants. We know very little about these
things, far less than we think we do. It is conceivable that a race of men living
upon this metal-tray diet, would shortly become as abnormal, as sunless as the
poor vegetables themselves. Incidentally, it might be argued, whenever man
converts a plant or animal into a monstrosity, he fails in his duty towards the
lower kingdoms and sins against the order of Nature.
Nature is capable of many ironies. It is not unimaginable that the last act of
this civilization might be the apparent settlement, once for all, of the age-old
problem of providing sufficient physical food for everybody. It would then be
necessary for men to prove that they could continue to live without spiritual
food, for there is no sign that the chemical revolution will help them in this
respect. As a matter of fact, the worry and strain which follow through life
the man who must somehow earn his bread, may be his only preservation from
insanity. If he be delivered from these, he can lose his sole claim to human
dignity. In any event, even our own declining civilization would be preferable
to one where material abundance seemed to be assured for ever, but counter¬
balanced by an equally assured condition of spiritual dearth. Imagine a gov¬
ernment whose primary function would be to regiment “recreation” for every¬
body! If the citizens of that Utopia did not find relief from boredom by tearing
one another to pieces, a natural calamity, like that which destroyed Atlantis,
would be reserved for them.
The Ideal of the Knight-Errant
Certainly a real civilization may be said to be always the creation of a dream,
but this dream cannot be of a mere physical Utopia, communist or fascist or
scientific. A civilization is not an easy thing to create, as becomes evident if
we reflect upon the labour and pain which alone made possible the re-birth of
Europe during the centuries of night that separated the twilight of the Roma^
Empire from the dawn of mediaeval culture. The labour and pain were assurqi^
by those who were willing to sacrifice themselves, “in the form of vitality”, for
the sake of a positive Christian ideal which they never lost from view in the
midst of the blackness. Legend, which may reveal facts that academic history
overlooks, recorded this victory of light over darkness in the chansons de geste ,
the great Arthurian cycle, and the tales of knight-errantry.
It is significant that the knight-errant or his counterpart appears in the epic
poetry of all races as a light-bearer in some age of darkness. It is he who is ever
ready to respond to the call of beauty and truth in distress, and who fights
alone and unaided against the dark powers personified by sorcerers and dragons
and giants. But though he is most often seen as a solitary figure traversing a
wilderness, he is yet not as lonely as he seems, for he belongs in fact to a brother¬
hood, to a fraternity of heroes. Some of the most moving scenes in the romances
9 8
THE0S0PH1CAL QUARTERLY
of chivalry represent two of these men meeting, recognizing each other, ex¬
changing a few grave courtesies, and then riding off again on their separate
ways.
Centuries passed, and the dream of the knight-errant, the ideal of selfless
dedication to the beautiful and true and good, began to seem unreal. The
genius of Cervantes has left an enduring record of this fading of a vision. Don
Quixote, the Knight of the Sad Countenance, is one of the most tragic figures in
literature. He tried to re-live the chansons de geste , and failed amid universal
ridicule and contempt. Even his creator dared not represent him otherwise
than as a lunatic. But the mediaeval audience did not imagine that Percivale or
Roland or Amadis de Gaule was insane. Herein lies one distinction between
the mediaeval and the modem points of view, a distinction which has become
increasingly manifest since Cervantes’s time. The men of the twelfth century
were guilty of cruelty, violence, treachery, of any and every vice; but even the
worst of them seem to have conceded some superiority to gentleness and honour
and loyalty. Thus the ideal of the knight-errant was respected, though it was
very rarely pursued. The men of the Renaissance had other dreams. They
were bewitched by the possibilities of aggrandizement and sensuous gratifica¬
tion, which the re-discovery of forgotten arts and sciences, and the conquest of a
new continent, opened before them. Any chivalric code which blocked their
purpose inevitably became a subject for satire. To-day the exigencies of chiv¬
alry rest so lightly upon us that they are not even a subject for satire.
The Lost Canon of Proportion
One finds many references to-day in books, periodicals, newspapers, even in
economic bulletins, to analogies between the political and social changes which
we are undergoing and the phenomena of decadence as revealed by the study of
earlier historical cycles, notably in Greece and Rome. It would be well to bal¬
ance the thoughts thus suggested by a course of reading which might help us
to understand how the genius of civilization can be revived. We need only turn
to a few of the greatest classics,—Confucius, the Zend Avesta , the Bhagavad
Gita , the Buddhist Suttas, Homer and Hesiod, Plutarch, the Romances of
chivalry, St. Augustine, Dante, the New Testament.
What do these classics reveal? What is the “lost canon of proportion” which
we vaguely sense in Gregorian music, in the temple at Paestum and the cathedral
of Chartres, in the painting of Giotto, in the life of St. Francis of Assisi? We
must contemplate beauty and truth in a spirit like that of the knight-errant
before we shall find the answer or be able to understand it, if it be given to us.
A penetrating study of the spiritual deficiency of the modem mind is pre¬
sented in an article by M. J. Fiolle on “Machinism and the Spirit of the Con¬
temporary Sciences”, Le Machinisme et VEsprit des Sciences Contemporaines , in
the Mercure de France , July i, 1935. M. Fiolle suggests that the excesses of
applied science, the horrors of the machine age, are not an accidental by-product
of pure science; that, on the contrary, the spirit of pure science and the spirit
of applied science are identical because they originated in the same state of mind,
NOTES AND COMMENTS
99
in the humanism and rationalism which began definitely to colour European
thought during the fourteenth century and became dominant in the sixteenth,
through the two-fold medium of the Renaissance and the Reformation. His
most interesting point is that humanism and rationalism did not begin as ex¬
pressions of revolt against “medicevalism”, although later they clearly assumed
the appearance of rebellion. They came into being rather as the result of men’s
desperate efforts to find some substitute for a metaphysical vision which they
had lost. They were invented, as it were, to satisfy the human need for some
kind of religion. As the intuition of the Divinity in Nature and man became
dim, there began a frantic search for some object upon which devotion could
be lavished. The object which they found was human nature as a thing-in-
itself; and it is to human nature that the leaders of Occidental thought have
burned incense ever since, even when there has been the pretence that homage
was being offered to the Divinity. It might be noted that the same substitution
of man for God has occurred many times in history, in China, in Egypt, in India,
in Greece. It marks the moment when a civilization begins to decline, because
it signifies an obscuration of the purpose for which that civilization exists. “The
age of retrogression commences, and the work of the Fiery Lives exhausting
their strength, the work of destruction and decrease also commences.”
We quote some of M. Fiolle’s reflections, suggesting that special attention
should be paid to his explanation of the principal cause of the failure of mediae¬
val man to preserve the spiritual treasure which he had accumulated.
We cannot explain the sixteenth century by the too easy assumption that there was a
“monstrous development” of the sciences, for this development came only three cen¬
turies later. No, the spirit only had changed, though hesitantly as yet and merely
sketching a tendency. . . . For profound reasons, the soul of the Middle Ages was
exhausted, and when man finds himself deprived of one of the necessary elements of his
life, he always discovers in himself or about himself a means of supplying what he lacks.
. . . Let us see if it be possible to discern the reasons for the enfeeblement, if not the
total disappearance of the spiritual forces which leave so unique an imprint upon the Mid¬
dle Ages. First, let us recognize that what is called “spirituality” does not always have
an isolated existence or . . . precise contours. Spirituality impregnates, in various de^
grees, the most realistic conceptions, our most positive science, and even the acts of tho#
who, if they paid any attention to it, would despise it the most. There is no human act
absolutely withdrawn from this dominion, just as absolute blackness apparently does not
exist. . . . But there is a form of spirituality which is characterized by a certain inten¬
sity in the attitude of the soul, by a determined metaphysical point of view; and the
supreme expression of this attitude is realized in ecstasy, that is to say, in the “direct
knowledge” of that which escapes the reason. . . . This mysticism and this spirituality
[of the Middle Ages] were bathed in the atmosphere of Catholicism. Certainly, it is
without doubt true that human thought was never more free than during these centuries
which we understand so little. . . . But the liberty of mediaeval man was exercised,
without his even suspecting it, within the limits and under the action of religious dogma;
although there was not even here any restriction, for there is no restraint where there is
free acceptance. . . . Spirituality and Catholicism were virtually one. Thus one ends
by suspecting that if spirituality underwent a decline, the cause must be sought in an
internal, perhaps momentary disorganization of Catholicism during that epoch. . . .
To proceed directly to the point, I shall simply remark that at the end of the Middle Ages
IOO
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the Church sufered from an excess of temporal power. . . . The spirit of the Middle Ages
disappeared or was temporarily eclipsed, because this spirit, devoted to direct knowl¬
edge”, was identified with the structure of Catholicism, and because Catholicism itself,
the victim of its too brilliant success in the temporal domain (which is not its proper
realm), lost in secret vigour what it gained in material authority.
Materialism thus entrenching itself at the summit of mediaeval society, grad¬
ually conquered, virtually, the whole domain of the Western mind, with the re¬
sult that to-day we have “religions” of science, of social-mindedness, of fascism,
of communism, of racism, of pacifism, of everything except the Real. As M.
Fiolle points out, there is but one way of escape. We must recover the art of
“direct knowledge” of spiritual things. We must regain the use of the intuitive
senses which we have allowed to become dormant. This does not mean the
disappearance of science any more than it means the suppression of the faculty
of reason. It merely signifies that science must cease to be a “religion”, that
it must return to a secondary position in the scale of values, where it will no
longer usurp the prerogatives of intuitive wisdom.
The Quest of Direct Knowledge
There are more advantages than we realize in being alive during this age of
the world. If we so will, the quickened tempo of decay can be converted into
an equal tempo of creation. It is most significant also, as has been said, that
men of science themselves, after centuries of materialistic speculation, have
reached the conviction that the material world is not a thing-in-itself but a
void, which must be filled by consciousness before it can be said even to exist.
Such a conception of the voidness of the world has come to other men in other
epochs, most often towards the end of a cycle before the commencement of
another period of exfoliation. One recalls the doctrine of sunyata or emptiness
which inaugurated the most brilliant period in Buddhist philosophy, and the
Neoplatonic identification of “pure matter” with absolute non-being.
“Spirituality in its religious as in its other forms, is a rare flower which can
only open in the atmosphere of concentration.” That is what Theosophy,
under many aspects, has taught through the centimes. The modem world,
with all its plans and agitations, is as empty as the “elementals”, the “microbes”,
which are disrupting the dead forms from which the Spirit has departed. But
the eternal principles upon which all living forms of beauty and truth are based,
can be found now as always by those who*seek ardently enough, enveloping
themselves in “the atmosphere of concentration”. They can never be found by
social planning or by regimentation of any kind. The quest of “direct knowl¬
edge” can only be accomplished by a group of free individuals united, like the
knights-errant of the Dark Ages, by a common devotion to an ideal and to a
Master. Then once again it will be possible to fill the void with true dreams,
with images of the divine possibilities in man and Nature, for a new under¬
standing of the “lost canon of proportion” will have been acquired. Thus man
may advance one stage further towards the attainment of “Normal Clairvoy¬
ance” which, according to The Secret Doctrine , is the next sense to be developed.
FRAGMENTS
B LESSED are those who, in advancing years, see with dim eyes a light on
their horizon, hear with dim ears a Voice that calls and calls; and seeing,
hearing, rise and seek and follow, though their steps be slow and wavering,
—groping hands outstretched in the gathering darkness, while the chilled heart
beats fitfully.
Blessed are they; for those of the eleventh hour received each man his penny.
Blessed are they who, in the meridian of life, in the heat and dust of the
market-place, catch a reflection of the light that never was on sea or land, or the
echo of a melody played on a Shepherd’s pipe to lure some wandering sheep back
home again. And who then arise and follow, leaving their dreams of ambition
and wealth, leaving the familiar, the attained, the long-desired, for more distant
dreams, and vaguer,—for sounds heard only within, and often lost.
Blessed are they, whatever their toil, for great shall be their reward.
Blessed, aye blessed are they, who, in the early dawn of life and consciousness,
turn eager eyes and ears and hearts to the lights they see in the rippling lights of
sunshine, to the Voice which is the undertone of all sweet sounds, piercing with
inner joy each opening sense, thus closing them all to outer expression for ever!
Blessed, aye blessed are they, whatever burden of sorrow they carry; for my
burden, saith One, is easy,—who should know, who makes it easy; since the
sense of Him, in presence or absence, is the essence of all delight.
Cav£.
ioi
THEOSOPHY
INSPIRATION AND INCARNATION*
I T HAS been our custom, at the opening meeting of each season, to speak of
the Society itself, of what it is, and particularly of what it is not, and also
to speak, in a very general sense, of Theosophy, and what we, who are
members of the Society, mean by that term.
First, of the Society: it is quite venerable now, even if we look only to its
present incarnation, going back to 1875. It has often been pointed out that the
intervening years have revolutionized the intellectual atmosphere of Western
culture, and that one result of this has been partially to obscure the significance
of the principles on which our Society was founded. It is easy to-day, when
the world is largely indifferent to all matters of religion, to command religious
tolerance. It was not so easy a half century ago, when matters of belief were
matters of moment—to the world, even as they have always been of profound
moment to us—and The Theosophical Society had to grow up in the middle
ground of very bitter controversy between the dogmatism of religion and the
equal dogmatism of an adolescent and very bumptious science, each vociferous
with the most definite assertions as to what was, and what was not, eternal
truth. It is the more noteworthy, therefore, that the Society has, from its
foundation, sought to get behind all self-assertive partisanship, and to establish
and maintain a free and open platform. It has no dogma, nor creed, nor per¬
sonal authority, nor set forms of belief which it desires to impose. No member
can commit it in matters of belief. Each of us speaks here for himself, pre¬
senting his own individual view of life and truth. None of us can say with
authority, “This is Theosophy; this is what the Society believes.”
But this does not mean that we have not, in these sixty years, arrived at
some very definite conclusions from our studies and experiments, or that we are
ourselves without proof of what we may advance, to others, as but a possible
hypothesis. The exact opposite is the fact, and our restraint of statement is
more properly attributable to the awareness and experience we have gained of
something which we find too big to be expressed to our satisfaction in any single
set of terms or formulas. The word “Theosophy” signifies Divine Wisdom,
or wisdom of divine things, and The Theosophical Society is a society formed to
seek such wisdom, which must be something much more than a mere collection
of words. The more that we gain of wisdom, the less willing we become to sub¬
stitute formulas for it, and we strive to use words only as pointers to a Truth
which lies behind them, and which every man must learn to see for himself
before it can be of value to him. A fourfold activity results, which has been
described as beginning in an intellectual attitude toward truth, and passing
* From the stenographic notes of a recent address by Mr. H. B. Mitchell at a meeting of the New York Branch
of The Theosophical Society.
102
THEOSOPHY
103
thence into a practical method of looking for it, and an ethical spirit of obe¬
dience to it, until at last it becomes a religious life, in unison with it.
“Theosophy”, Divine Wisdom: to-day neither “wisdom” nor “divinity” are
words that the world commonly uses, or that it understands very well. “Worldly
wisdom”, yes. It thinks it knows what that means; but “Divine Wisdom”, or
“Wisdom” in and of itself, how can the world know of that? What is meant
by “divine”? We may well hesitate to attempt a definition; but there are at
least certain ways in which we, as members of the Society, would not use it, and
one of them is the way in which I heard it used the other day in a restaurant:
“Is not this chicken salad too utterly divine!” Yet even this devotee of salad
would doubtless have given intellectual assent to the proposition that it could
not be more than one aspect of divinity, that there was something more to
divinity than had been compacted in the dish before her; and as we reflect upon
the other uses to which we hear the word put, we see that the same comment
applies to them. However we use it, we are but using part of it. Whatever else
divinity may be, whatever else we may mean by a body of divine wisdom
which the Society seeks to serve, we must recognize that the word always points
to something that transcends our ordinary life and experience and our ordinary
formulas; and that though it may permeate them all, and be truly nearer than
hands and feet, yet it can never be confined, never be wholly revealed in any
one of its manifestations. There is always more beyond what we reach. Tran¬
scendence and infinitude are thus characteristics which divinity cannot lack,
and this is why our Society, which seeks the divine, cannot have dogmas or
creeds, nor be content with formulas. For the thing we seek, and the thing
we have found , in part at least, in these years of search, is something which we
know transcends the form in which we have found it. It transcends, and we
know it must ever transcend, our capacity to hold it, or to express it; and though
it may live here to-night in what each speaker says, we know that it is infinitely
greater than what any man can ever say.
So much for the word “divine”, the first half of our name. What of the second
half, “wisdom”? Mr. Johnston used constantly to remind us that theou sophia
did not mean divine knowledge, but divine wisdom. The word for knowledge is
gnosis , not sophia , and if we try to distinguish between the two, we shall find
that wisdom of necessity involves an implication of wise action. Wisdom can^
never be mere theory. A man is not wise who has only acquired knowledge. To
be wise by virtue of being learned, he must have reached the point where he has
so assimilated knowledge as to have made it part of himself, and to have distilled
from it a spiritual essence that guides his acts. Therefore our name “Theosophy”,
theou sophia , implies two things: first, the power to reach up to something which
is truly divine, and which, as such, transcends our ordinary being; and, second,
the power to bring that something down into wisdom, into manifestation and
action, to concrete application in the affairs of everyday life. These twin powers
are, respectively, the power to be inspired, and the power to incarnate our
inspiration, and by coming to understand them we can come to an understanding
of Theosophy.
104
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
To avoid any appearance of reasoning in a circle, let us make a new approach
to our theme, which will not start from the Society, but rather lead us to it from
the broad starting ground of our common human nature. If we ask ourselves
what is the most fundamental characteristic of human life, the answer might
well be that it is alive. Now the more we study life, the more obvious it
becomes that it is never wholly self-contained or limited to the vehicle which,
for the time being, manifests it. Whatever the present vehicle may be, the
indwelling life is somehow capable of transcending it, of reaching out beyond
it and drawing into itself, from without, influences that modify the vehicle, and
little by little transform it. In short, we see that the most notable feature of our
human life is that which it possesses in common with all of life—that which dis¬
tinguishes life from death—the ability to open itself to the influx of energies
from above itself, which, in terms of the human heart and mind and will, is the
capacity or power to he inspired. That is not the aspect of human existence
which is to-day most discussed and considered, but it is one which is well worthy
of most careful consideration, for it leads us straight to the deepest potential¬
ities of our personal lives and to that which alone makes them worth the living
—their ability to open themselves to inspiration.
Let us pause long enough to clarify our use of the word “inspiration”, as we
had to pause over “divine” and “wisdom”. It has a very long reach and rises to
great heights, but to begin with, I shall not mean anything that is of necessity
great or particularly remarkable. We shall not limit its use to a saint’s inspiration,
or a poet’s or an artist’s. It is something that acts also in and concerns you,
whoever you are and just as you are. You yourself are entirely capable of
reaching up to perceptions that you had not had before, and to will that you had
not had before, and you daily do this, drawing into yourself understanding and
will and truth that were no part of you a short time ago. You do it as naturally
as a plant draws from the heat and light of the sun. You, too, and on every
plane on which you are alive, draw into yourself something from without your¬
self,—something which you vitally need. You get new ideas, even as you get
new energy.
Many years ago, in a meeting such as this, a friend asked us to consider whence
came the ideas that were struck out in our discussion. If there had been a
Customs inspector of mental luggage stationed at the door, who had opened and
gone through our minds as a Customs inspector on the docks goes through one’s
trunks, he would not have found in our consciousness the ideas that we later
expressed. How did we gain them? Whence did they come? The genesis of a
new idea may seem a trivial thing, because it is so commonplace; but the very
fact that it is commonplace makes its significance the greater. As the everyday
phenomenon of a ray of sunlight falling on a single point, tells us of the whole
blazing face of the sun, and of how all the heat and light are drawn that support
life on earth, so in the birth of a new idea we may see, in little, the workings of
the most momentous power in human existence,—the power to be inspired,
whereby the human mind and heart and soul are lit and filled from above.
It is, as we have seen, to this power of inspiration that the name of our Society
THEOSOPHY
105
points, and it is with the aspect of human nature that gives us this power, that
The Theosophical Society and Movement are concerned. Whatever else
divinity may be and man may be, there is clearly this connection between them,
—there is in us something to which divinity can speak, something within our
hearts or souls or consciousness which divinity can illumine with a beam from
its own nature. It is, alas, true that not all that reaches us comes from above.
There is inspiration’s obverse, that we can be moved from below, and the
patent fact that we are pressed upon and swayed by the psychic currents that
really neither rise nor fall, but sweep aimlessly through the levels on which we
choose to live. But none of this alters the outstanding fact that concerns us here
—the fact of inspiration. There is nothing in the world more worth while than
to pay heed to this fact, that we may learn how to utilize it and develop the
power that it reveals. What do you do when you need new truth? What do
you do when you need new strength or will or love? How many of you know
what you actually do, let alone what is open to you to do? Truth comes to
people, will comes to people—how? We have schools that teach all sorts of
things—mostly at somebody else’s expense—music and dancing and such
economic theory as that “Society” owes you a living, and that the way to get
rich is to spend; but how many schools teach people how to find their own
inspiration, and how to develop the innate capacity, which they share with all of
being, to draw from above and beyond themselves the quickening, transforming
life they need? Here is one of the primary functions that our Movement was
inaugurated to perform. As we have already pointed out, it can be correlated
with the first half of our name, theou, that which is of God.
Whenever there is genuine inspiration, there is something that ought to be
done about it. When you have been troubled over a friend, and have thought
about him, and prayed about him, and done something for which there is no
English verb but which means loved about him—so that you have somehow come
to a better understanding of him through the sort of touch and union with its
object which love can give—the whole process has its value for you through the
light it sheds on what you ought to do. Inspiration always has that significant
characteristic; it leaves with you an unequivocal imperative. If there is new^
truth that you have reached, it is, somehow or other, truth that must be obeyed
or must be expressed. If there is beauty, it, too, is compelling. Somehow
or other you must change that which is ugly into the likeness of this new vision.
In inspiration you reach up to something which is dynamic and potent, and it
insists on flowing down into you, and into the world around you, transforming
whatever it touches, and making right what is amiss. There is always this
compulsion to action, to manifestation, to the incarnation of inspiration (for
that is what it actually is), so that what has inspired you may live in you and in
what you do. One cannot observe one’s inspirations, even casually, without
being forced to realize that the spiritual world is indeed the causal world, the
world of creative origins and causes, and that to come into contact with it is to
broach a mighty force which acts, through the contact, upon oneself and one’s
whole environment.
io6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
If, as before, we associate this second, active, incarnating and transforming
aspect of inspiration with the second half of our name —sophia or wisdom we
have a picture, which, however inadequate, is nevertheless essentially true, of
the Theosophical Movement as concerned primarily with the central fact of
human life: the capacity for inspiration, and the need to incarnate it.
If we go further, and examine in actual experience the effects to which this
twin process leads, we see how the reaching up and the drawing down constitute
an alternating cycle of inbreathing and outbreathing, of looking for guidance
and of obeying it, which includes and exemplifies successively not only the
intellectual attitude and practical method and ethical spirit that have been
so often described as characteristic 6f Theosophy, but also and most strikingly,
its religious and transforming life. For that sort of constant practice and
discipline, the ceaseless looking for inspiration and then the whole-hearted effort
to obey and incarnate it, does transform the whole being. It cannot help but
do so. We are stubborn; we are slow; we are stupid; we are fixed and hardened
in old habits; we are laden with matter which is resistant and does not respond
easily. At times we are so incredibly light-minded that a mere passing breath of
interest can divert us from our most momentous concerns. But nevertheless,
little by little, the reaching up above ourselves, and then striving to act on the
vision there attained, does transform our being, and we know it.
Here again, therefore, we are able to trace in our own experience, even if it be
but on a very small scale, the action of a transforming power whose importance
and ultimate potentialities for the destiny of humanity surpass all imagining; and
we recognize it as the present, visible action of the Creative Spirit, of which all
religions tell. It is part of the whole cosmic process of evolution and incar¬
nation, which brought the manifested universe to being, and which, having
made us what we are, must continue to act to make us what we are meant to be.
It is the process of growth and of creative transformation, and here and now it
acts, if men will but open themselves to it, to transform the natural man into
the spiritual man, bom from above, of which St. Paul speaks. For what deter¬
mines the character of a man’s being, save the centre from which his life is lived,
save the character of that which fills and holds his heart and mind and will—the
ideals which he pursues, the motives which animate him, and the character of
his acts? And if all these be of the spirit, descended from above, is not the man’s
life drawn from the same centre?
If we give thought to following in detail the cycle of inspiration and incar¬
nation as outlined above, we find that it involves, no longer as theory but as
representative of immediate and practical factors with which we have to deal,
all of the doctrines or postulates of what has come to be known as the theosophic
philosophy. As it is said that in each atom the whole universe contrives to
integrate itself, so in each genuinely creative act the whole of creation is reflected,
and it is fascinating to watch a whole philosophy unroll with the movement of a
single spiritual cycle. But that is a theme which we cannot pursue now, and I
touch upon it only to the extent of a single example,—its bearing upon the theo¬
sophic doctrine of the seven principles of man. We encounter these principles,
THEOSOPHY
107
practically, as the seven sheaths, or strata, through which consciousness has to
rise to reach inspiration, and as the media, or vehicles, through which its incar¬
nation and application must be made. All aspects of our nature have to be
attuned to the truth we would know, and wherever the nature is not attuned, the
truth we reach is, in that particular and to that extent, limited or distorted.
The sevenfold nature of man is thus something like a lock, with seven wards,
upon the door to the shrine of truth. Each must be passed before the door opens.
But the simile is poor, in that, in reality, as each ward is passed, admittance is '
gained to some limited domain or aspect of truth. What must be specially
stressed, however, is that the Divine Will—the inspiration of Truth or Beauty
or Holiness—must be sought, not abstractly, but in order to incarnate and
obey it. It is not sufficiently realized that the process of inspiration and incar¬
nation is a single process whose two halves cannot be separated from each other.
The cycle is a single cycle, through which the Divine Spirit acts like water
flowing through a pipe. Block the pipe anywhere, and the flow stops everywhere.
“I come to do Thy will; to know Thy will that I may do it.” No other attitude
can gain us access to the courts of Truth; and where inspiration fails we shall be
wise to look to our willingness to obey. The readiness to put the whole of one’s
nature at the disposal of one’s inspiration is essential to the reaching of truth—
real truth and the whole truth.
How misleading and absurd the phrase is! To speak of reaching “the whole
truth”, as though, on the one hand, truth could be exhausted so that we had it
all, or, on the other, as though truth could be anything but whole! In each
fragment of truth there is the whole truth, as in each ray of light there is all light.
The thing you get is whole unless you make it fragmentary. It mirrors Divine
Truth unless there is some part which your nature rejects, something false to
which you cling and which you will not open to truth. 11 is you yourself who make
your truths limited and partial and false. Yet even if you did not so limit and
falsify it, so that for you it was whole, even so it would not mean that you had
exhausted truth, that what you had gained was exclusive, or that there was not
more beyond.
Our subject is so large, and of such obvious and vital moment, that it is dif¬
ficult to confine its discussion to such limits as our time must set, resisting the
temptation to pursue any of its manifold ramifications. “In the beginning wa^
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All^
things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was
made. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” The
passage from the idea to its manifestation, from the potential to the actual,
from the word to the deed, from inspiration to its incarnation, is the immemorial
symbol of the action of the Creative Spirit, and it is this because it is more than
a symbol; it is the thing itself. In it, there before us and within us, the Creative
Spirit works. All of the great religions of humanity set forth ways in which
man may co-operate with this action and open himself to it. Perhaps it matters
little which way is followed. But it matters supremely that a way be employed,
—that you do daily and steadfastly seek to gain inspiration and to incarnate
io8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
it in all you do. Perhaps any way will work if it be honest, and faithfully followed,
and made your own; but some way each man must find, and use, and make his
own, or else he shuts himself away from his highest heritage.
It is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles that the speech of those upon whom
the Holy Ghost descended, the speech of the Spirit, was heard by each listener
in his own language. As we look back through the records of mystical religion,
we find this verified. To the saints and seers and sages of mankind, we find
Divinity speaking in their own native tongue, and in terms and symbols familiar
to them from their childhood,—and this whether it be to the Chinese lawgiver
or the Rajput king, to the Hebrew prophet or the little French nun. The great
overshadowing Spirit speaks to each in the wonted terms of his daily use and
thought; but is there not tragedy in the realization that there are those who
have no familiar images of spiritual things through which the Spirit can reveal
itself and make known its will ?
Think for a moment: you put out a letter box, and your friends, who have
come to seek you and who find your door closed, drop their notes into that box,
because that is what it is there for, and that is where you look. Because it is
where you look, it is where messages intended for you are put. If you abandon
it, and move elsewhere and no longer use the box, messages are no longer put
there for you. It is the same in the inner world as in the outer. If you have an
address, your friends use it—whatever it is. If you have no address, if there is
nowhere that you look for messages, how are you to receive any?
This does not mean that any way of seeking inspiration is as good as any
other; but it does mean that any way is better than no way. The great majority
of men to-day have no way. They have no thought of inspiration, no belief in its
possibility. The only speech to which they have habituated themselves, contains
no words for the things of the Spirit, or that the Spirit could use. They have no
letter box in which they ever look.
It is to such that the Theosophical Movement calls, and calls again, that
Divine Wisdom exists and is obtainable, that inspiration is a fact, that the inner
world of the Spirit, the kingdom of the heavens, is literally at hand. But largely
it calls in vain; and the world sinks deeper and deeper into a cycle of materialism
and darkness—Kali Yuga, as we call it—and a little handful of people are almost
all who, in our Western civilization, are consciously concerned with this, the
paramount fact and most momentous potentiality of human life.
Yet for this, too, Theosophy offers us explanation and reassurance. All things
are under the great Law; all things move in cycles; and though a wave recede,
the tide will rise. We must take long views if we are not to mistake the one for
the other, or forget that even if the tide be ebbing, the flood will again follow it.
We have spent our time this evening tracing the cycle of inspiration and its
application in action. It mirrors for us cycle upon cycle of alternate inbreathing
and outbreathing—of days and nights that mark the revolution of the earth or
of the ages of Brahmd. We are in the indrawing phase of a great as well as of a
little cycle, and we should try to follow the current in,—not lament that it is not
flowing out.
THEOSOPHY
109
The process of inspiration is itself a process of indrawal. Always, to open
your consciousness to Truth, you have to leave behind you your pre-occupation
with the host of lesser things that have held your attention in the outer world,—
your personal concerns, your little griefs and joys. You have to put away,
equally, your prejudices and predilections, your ambitions and desires. You
have, above all, to put away your fears. Your fears are deep, and persist, and
rise up again and again after you think you have faced and fought and killed and
buried them. This Path of Divine Wisdom is the warrior’s path of courage. Its
tradition is the heritage of a warrior race. You have to put fear away before
you can follow it, or receive and obey the Divine Will for you in the place and
the moment where you stand. All things of self must be put away, even, at
times, what you think of as your duties. It was alone that Moses climbed mount
Sinai to receive the Commandments. He left behind him the people for whom
he was responsible and for whom he sought guidance. There has to be a Law¬
giver in one’s nature which can leave all else behind it and ascend alone up the
mountain and into the cloud, and come back with the law and enforce it. Inspira¬
tion from above is not drawn down by town meetings; the voice of the people
was never yet the still, small voice. It is the lonely seer, the sage, the prophet,
who goes apart into the desert, abandoning all else, who hears the Voice that is
heard only in the Silence. And it is not our clamouring, personal natures, but
the lonely seer within us, that is alone capable of receiving the descent of Wisdom
from above. It is the spark of the Divine, hidden deep within, that has somehow
to be freed from all the rest, until it rises back toward its source, and is again
illumined by the Father’s Will. Then, and then only, it descends again into the
maelstrom which it must rule and order.
The Christian Master, speaking to his disciples, said that they had been called
to be the salt of the earth. In each age there are, and must always be, those who
have, to one degree or another, been taught of Truth that they may hold it as a
trust for the need of the world, against the time when the world shall seek it, as
now it rejects it. It is to this end, it seems to me, that those in the Theosophical
Movement have been taught, and that in fulfilment of the trust that has been
imposed in them, they, of all men, are called upon to live by the truth they ha\j|
been shown, and to incarnate in their lives and actions the inspiration they haW
received. As we have been taught of the cycles, so should we try to live in
accordance with them, and, in this indrawing cycle, learn to turn back from the
world and its vagaries, its follies and confusion, to something that is eternal and
sure, rising from the world of effects to the world of causes, from the self to the
infinitely greater than self, to seek and find there the Divine Wisdom whose name
we bear and whose servants we aspire to be. That trinity of search and finding
and obeying, that twin process of inspiration and incarnation, is Theosophy.
CORNWALL AND ITS MAGIC
Strike for the King and live! his knights have heard
That God hath told the King a secret word.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.
Strike for the King and die! and if thou diest,
The King is King , and ever wills the highest.
Clang battleaxe , and clash brand! Let the King reign.
The King will follow Christ , and we the King
In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.
Fall battleaxe , and flash brand! Let the King reign.
Tennyson: Idylls of the King.
I T has never seemed to me necessary to go to a place physically, in order to be
there actually, in the truest sense. Quite the reverse. We think of the
glory of a sunrise seen many years ago from the peak of some high mountain,
and we can live it all again with an added sense of glory, perhaps, because now
we are no longer looking at it with our physical eyes, and to that extent we are
free from the hindrances of the flesh. All must have experienced this. We
read of the “fourth dimension”, and many of us are saddened by the feeling that
it is not for us; in some future incarnation, perhaps,—alas! not yet. But are
we not experiencing at least a good imitation of “fourth dimensional life” a great
part of the time, although we may not think of it in that light? Whenever
imagination carries us backward from the trivialities of daily routine into the
glowing atmosphere of ancient romance, or forward to some heavenly vision of
the future, may we not think of it as in some sense a transfer in time and space ?
We may be sitting in an armchair, alone at our own fireside, quietly reading,
and the memory of some loved spot may suddenly invade our consciousness. In
a moment we have passed through the solid walls of our room; we have traversed
great oceans and wide continents and are there —there at the old trysting place,
gazing once more at all we loved and still love so well; moving silently amid old
scenes. And when that moment comes, then we may hold real converse with our
friends across the world—old, old friends and dear comrades, perhaps of centuries
ago.
Once, on a summer afternoon (how vividly I remember it!) I wandered along
the crests of the wild, dark cliffs which bound the ancient, sea-girt Duchy of
Cornwall. It had been a fine warm day when I started, and I rejoiced in my
solitude—I was alone with the sea and the sky. League on league of ocean,
serenely infinite, stretched far away to a dreamy horizon; an infinite mid-summer
sky brooded tenderly overhead. There is no place in the world, I think, where
no
CORNWALL AND ITS MAGIC
hi
you find waters so deeply sapphire as those which encircle this archaic land of
magic and of mystery. The sunshine glanced brilliantly on the surface of the
water, and as the great waves came rolling in they dashed themselves at the base
of the mighty, towering cliffs, throwing up splendid fountains of spray—spray
which the wind blows back like a fairy mist, and where rainbows linger and then
vanish quickly, as dreams vanish. Entranced, I watched the sea gulls (there
were hundreds of them); I watched the beautiful curve of their long wings, the
beauty of their flight as they wheeled and turned, now near, now at a distance,
weaving themselves into a lovely, rhythmic, aerial dance. They were a dazzling
white in the clear sunshine, and sometimes, when they flew low, I could not
distinguish them from the pure whiteness of the foam, as the waves broke far
down on the jagged rocks which formed the coastline.
Anyone who knows Cornwall, however, also knows that anything may happen
there at any moment (that is part of the magic), and before I realized it, a strong
wind had sprung up, and, with it, heavy, sea-born clouds came racing in from the
ocean, as though driven by Merlin himself; the sun was blotted out in the space
of a few moments, and I found myself enveloped in an impenetrable fog. It was
so dense that I could not see a yard ahead of me—I was indeed alone, and with
the sense of complete isolation which a dense fog always seems to bring. It is
very dangerous to walk along the top of those cliffs unless you can see every
step of the way, for the ground is full of deep crevasses down which the unwary
may easily tumble and never be heard of again; you may even walk right off
the edge and fall from the dizzy height into an unimaginable abyss, a seething
cauldron. The prospect was not enticing! So, doing the only sensible thing left
to do, I sat down on a friendly, close-at-hand rock (I believe Merlin had put it
there on purpose), quite realizing, none the less, that I might have to remain
there all night, held a prisoner in Merlin’s enchantment. A feeling of awe crept
over me. No sound reached me from the unseen skies above, but from far
below in the boiling, churning depths, the waves roared and broke and pounded
at the base of those lonely cliffs on which I was sitting. Would they withstand
the terrible impact of the giant strokes ? Down there, I knew, under that surgin|^fc
water, lay the ancient, long-lost country of Lyonnesse, once a happy, sunny lan Wr
peopled by busy, ancient folk who had perished in a moment of time when those
very waves had swept so mercilessly over them—they say you can still hear
the church bells ring on star-lit nights when the wind blows inland. Lyonnesse
was the country of Sir Tristram, one of the staunchest of King Arthur’s knights,
and I wondered where he was now. But I wondered most about King Arthur
himself, that perfect flower of knighthood—was he perhaps still in the island-
valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,
—was he still there, remembering the glories of the past, lamenting the deadly
wound which had not yet healed—biding his time?
z ! 2 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
More than any other, perhaps, this is King Arthur’s country. He*must often
have knelt before the high Celtic crosses which are scattered in the fields and at
the waysides. It is a land of eternal romance, and when you are there, it is not
difficult to believe that Cornwall was chosen (surely by the Lodge itself), for
chivalry’s new venture in the unending warfare for the salvation of mankin ,
because it is a land of mystics. We sometimes speak, perhaps with a shrug, of the
“visionary Celt”, but it is this very Celtic nature, capable of living in two worlds
at once, which must have seemed so promising: was it for that reason that the
message was sent there with the hope that it might be heard and understood?
Traditionally, it was Cornwall that saw King Arthur’s “coming”—it was here
that he was bom. Here it was that Excalibur, with the inner power which accom¬
panied it, was given him. And Cornwall it was which, sorrowing, watched the
King’s “passing”. All the rest (“many-towered Camelot”, Caerleon, “Joyous
Guard” and the others), played each its several part, but only during the years
that intervened. It may be thought by some that this world of the Order of the
Round Table is a vanished world—why try to return to it now? A vanished
world ? How near it seems to some of us! It is still a realm of intense reality, and
always will be, and you cannot pass a single day in Cornwall without meeting
old friends:
There stood the knights! stately, and stem, and tall;
Tristan; and Percivale; Sir Galahad;
And he, the sad Sir Lancelot of the lay:
See! where they move, a battle-shouldering kind!
Massive in mould, but graceful: thorough men:
Built in the mystic measure of the Cross:—
Their lifted arms the transome; and their bulk,
The tree, where Jesu, stately stood to die!
Thence came their mastery in the field of war:—
Ah! one might drive battalions, one alone.
See now, they pause;—for in their midst, the King!
Arthur, the son of Uter and the night;
Helmed with Pendragon; with the crested crown;
And belted with the sheathed Excalibur,
That gnashed his iron teeth, and yearned for war!
Stern was that look: high natures seldom smile:
And in those pulses beat a thousand Kings.
There can be little question, I think, that more than any other of the many
and varied aspects of the Arthurian Romance, the Quest of the Holy Grail
is the most haunting—no doubt because, unrealized in general by an over-busy
world, that Quest continues to-day: under other forms, behind many disguises,
perhaps—but it is the same Quest. It was not alone the romantic spirit of the
Middle Ages which fostered it. So long as the heart of man thirsts for the Ideal,
so long will the Quest endure; it is immortal, imperishable.
In making a closer study of the “Morte d’Arthur” than has been perhaps our
wont, however, many of us come upon an obstacle which, at first, greatly puzzles
CORNWALL AND ITS MAGIC
113
us, and past which we cannot seem to go. Why is it that, with the introduction
of a theme so marvellous, so lofty as the Quest, the first foreboding note is heard,
presaging something dark and fateful for the Order of the Round Table, as well
as for King Arthur himself? Why is it that the knights of the Round Table—
those men who, when the Order was founded, bound themselves by vows so
strict, so exalted, “that when they rose knighted from kneeling, some were pale
as at the passing of a ghost, some flushed, some dazed”,—how is it that they
could forget those vows, or allow their knightly code to fall into disuse? Arthur
had told them that they were fighting for “our fair father Christ”. With that
understanding they had first taken their vows, and it was a result of forgetting
these that King Arthur and the work he had tried to do was frustrated—it was
not Arthur himself who forgot. We remember the first appearance of the Grail,
though only one man actually saw it: how at Camelot “on a summer night it
came to pass”, that all were assembled in the great banqueting hall, the King
alone being absent on a mission of mercy. It is Sir Percivale who, according to
Tennyson, tells us of it:
And all at once, as there we sat, we heard
A cracking and a riving of the roofs,
And rending, and a blast, and overhead
Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry.
And in the blast there smote along the hall
A beam of light seven times more clear than day:
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail
All over-cover’d with a luminous cloud,
And none might see who bare it, and it past.
Hut every knight beheld his fellow’s face
As in a glory, and all the knights arose,
And staring each at other like dumb men
Stood, till I found a voice and sware a vow.
I sware a vow before them all, that I,
Because I had not seen the Grail, would ride
A twelvemonth and a day in quest of it,
Until I found and saw it, as the nun
My sister saw it; and Galahad sware the vow,
And good Sir Bors, our Lancelot’s cousin, sware,
And Lancelot sware, and many among the knights,
And Gawain sware, and louder than the rest.
When Arthur returned he was filled with consternation because, having learned
to know his knights so well—their weaknesses and follies, despite their knight¬
hood—he realized that most of them had taken vows which they could not and
would not be able to keep, thereby making their failure the more serious. “Sir
Gawaine, Sir Gawaine”, he mourned, “Ye have set me in great sorrow, for I
have great doubt that my true fellowship shall never meet more here again.”
Yet the knights who had sworn to seek the Grail were determined to keep that
vow (and, of course, the King was the first to uphold their purpose, since, after
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
114
all, they had pledged themselves), and they set out upon the Quest, but Sir
Gawaine, who had sworn “louder than the rest”, was the first to fall a victim to
the pleasures and vanities of the world. Individually, many did not survive
the Quest at all: it was the working of the immemorial Law which demands that
each must win through to the Kingdom of God for himself, or perish on the way.
Many went in search of the Grail and never returned: too early they had made
the attempt. Others started hopefully only to turn back or meet with failure
at the last. Four only ever saw the Grail even from a distance, and for a moment
—Sir Lancelot, Sir Bors and Sir Percivale, but it was impossible for them to
speak of it to anyone; one alone actually found it: Sir Galahad whose purity
had made his vision clear, and with that holy vision he passed from this world of
darkness into the world of spiritual Reality. It was the searching purity of the
Grail which was the undoing of all the others—they were not ready, and could
not live in its blinding light. So, of all the knights who originally set out, but a
few came back, and when they did return, they found that everything was
altered, the old order of things had changed, and eventually, with the sinister
entrance upon the scene of the treacherous Sir Mordred, the end quickly followed:
the Battle of the West, the last great combat on the Cornish coast where King
Arthur, with the knights who had remained true about him, faced the hordes of
Sir Mordred, that traitor knight:
So all day long the noise of battle roll’d
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur’s Table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
“The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep
They sleep—the men I loved. I think that we
Shall never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by the people which I made,—
Tho’ Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more—but let what will be, be.”
These words seem despondent enough! But Arthur confides to Sir Bedivere
that, as a result of the failure of so many of his knights, and because of this last
combat with Sir Mordred which seems to have ended everything, his “mind is
CORNWALL AND ITS MAGIC
115
clouded with a doubt” concerning the ultimate outcome of the venture that he
started. He is bewildered.
I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I mark’d Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
Then he makes his last request: he asks for prayer; not for himself alone —all
must be reached:
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
Then as a last act Excalibur is returned to the enigmatic source from whence it
came, and the mysterious companions from another world appear, and carry the
sorely wounded King away. Such is the “passing” of Arthur.
There are many, I know, who feel that the end of the Arthurian Romance is
beyond words sombre, mournful, hopeless; that the sun which rose in such
splendour upon an ideal venture, sinks at last in profound gloom. I have to
confess that it has never seemed so to me. There can be no doubt that all which
King Arthur set out to do was not accomplished, but he dealt with men of very
uneven character, men with passions which warred all too successfully against
the spiritual man within. For the most part they were not extraordinary men,
but at least they had that within them which enabled them to recognize an ideal,
to be fired by it, and to make an attempt to respond wholeheartedly to it. These
would-be disciples (for we may surely consider them as such), were raised above
the former level of their lives, and even if they were incapable of understanding
to the full the greatness of King Arthur’s mission, at least they made an attempt
to serve it and to serve him. The radiant, blinding light of the Grail, so search-
ingly pure, precipitated their downfall; few could live in it. Yet when the end
came (and this has always been a comforting thought), those who were left
fought to the last man around their King; they died literally at his side— surely,
some good must have resulted from that! And something had been created—^
something which has continued to grow throughout the centuries. For it has
often been remarked that the Age of Chivalry is not dead—the great War
showed us that; men can still die nobly for a Cause they love; knighthood still
lives on this earth.
There is an old tradition in Cornwall, often called to mind by the common
fisher folk—a tradition which you may hear at any time for the asking: that
King Arthur did not die; that he is alive to-day—somewhere unknown to men,
and that in an hour of England’s most desperate need he and his knights will
come again, and that this time it will be an overpowering victory. These simple
fisher folk believe it, just as Merlin himself believed it—why should not we?
What we know of the Arthurian Romance was but one attempt: need we think
of it as the only one ?
The fog had lifted, but still I sat dreaming on that friendly rock. Over there
n6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
in the west the sun was setting in a blaze of glory, and soon it would have dropped
beyond the rim of the world, and night would come, just as night had fallen on
King Arthur still fighting on his last battlefield, close to this very spot. The
strong, sweet air from the Cornish sea, the evening sights and sounds of the
Cornish coast—everything reminded me of him. I was saddened by the remem¬
brance of the glories of the past, even though I knew it was not possible that they
could really have perished; they had only been withdrawn for a space, and they
would come again. I got up from where I had been sitting all these hours and,
climbing a grassy slope not far off, I looked out over an illimitable ocean, bathed
in the evening light, and I remembered some lines which I had always loved, and
which now seemed to hold a special promise—one I was eager to grasp:
Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
Then reach out with thy thought till it be drown’d.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
Wayfarer.
Not of the sunlight,
Not of the moonlight,
Not of the starlight!
0 young Mariner,
Down to the haven,
Call your companions,
Launch your vessel
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow the Gleam.
Tennyson.
CONFUCIUS
I.
To find the central clue to our moral being which unites us to the universal order ,
that indeed is the highest human attainment. People are seldom capable of it for long.
Chung Yung.
T HE Chinese Empire outlived Chaldaea and Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Chinese civilization has possessed, in eminent degree, what the biologists
call “survival value”. The future may be dim and incoherent, but it is
none the less true that the essential continuity of Chinese history was virtually
unbroken for at least four thousand years. There were dark intervals in that long
cycle, but no prolonged “dark ages”. In spite of plague and flood and famine, in
spite of barbarian conquests and dynastic revolutions and recurrent political
chaos, the nucleus of the racial life remained intact, and loyalty to the racial
tradition was never wholly suspended.
Historians have suggested various reasons for the extraordinary stability of
Chinese culture. Doubtless, as many argue, one very important factor was the
isolation of China. Its neighbours were strong and warlike, but uncivilized.
They might enter China as conquerors, but China quickly and easily assimilated
them to the native population. Even when a powerful foreign influence like
Buddhism penetrated the barriers of the Himalayas and the Gobi, its pervasion
of Chinese thought was slow and gradual. When Buddhism finally established
itself under the T’ang Emperors, it had lost its Indian appearance; it had become
as characteristically Chinese in form as Confucianism or Taoism.
European and American traders and missionaries accomplished what Genghis
Khan could not do. They destroyed the Empire as an entity, opening the gates
of China to a flood of influences alien to its most fundamental traditions. We
perceive the results in the chaos of to-day. The danger is that the most deep^
seated of all Chinese traditions will be damaged beyond repair. Ever since the
beginning of their history, the Chinese have emphasized the sanctity of the family
bond. If they have survived so many disasters, it is largely because the insti¬
tution of the family has endured, without fundamental change, from century to
century. In a certain sense, all human responsibilities have been regarded as
extensions or amplifications of family duties. As the Book of Filial Duty affirms,
“The duty of children to their parents is the fountain whence all other duties
spring and the starting-point of education”. It was believed that no one could
become a loyal subject of the Emperor, unless he had first learned the principles
of loyalty in the home, in his daily intercourse with father and mother and
brothers and sisters. Whenever the Empire sank into decadence, the root of the
trouble was sought in some corruption of the tradition of filial piety. If that
tradition could be revivified, the reform of the State was expected to follow as a
118
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
matter of course. The history of China confirms this judgment. Because the
present upheaval in the Far East threatens the whole conception of family unity,
one must admit the possibility that Chinese civilization is on the verge of death.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, a similar danger threatened it. It was saved
then by the great moral and spiritual movement which was inaugurated by Con¬
fucius. Will another Confucius come before it is too late? Does modem China
deserve another Confucius?
In the Sixth Century b. c. the state of the Empire appeared desperate. The
Chou Dynasty, founded six hundred years before by the sage Wen Wang, had
lost dignity and authority. The nominal Emperor was defied by the great nobles
who had practically transformed their feudal domains into independent states.
The strong annexed and plundered the property of the weak, using the methods of
open brigandage when craft and bribery failed. Moreover, the disloyalty of the
nobles to their lord paramount had disrupted the feudal system in its entirety.
No man could trust the members of his own household. Each little state was
threatened from within by the conspiracies of ministers and soldiers, by ambitious
vassals who awaited any opportunity or excuse to weaken the authority of the
ruler, or to usurp his title. Meanwhile, the people were left without shepherds
to restrain or to guide them. A complete and final moral collapse was imminent.
Confucius was bom in 551 b. c. and died seventy-three years later. With the
exception of a brief interval when he became the principal adviser of the Duke of
his native state of Lu, he took no active part in the stormy political life of the
time. For ten years he was an exile, wandering from one petty court to another,
seeking some prince or minister who had the qualifications of the “Superior Man”.
There were moments of discouragement when he felt that he was wasting his
time; that the only thing which the wisest man could do under such conditions
was to do nothing. But the sufferings of China were his own, and he could not
dismiss them from his consciousness. Gradually a group of disciples was formed,
and these disciples were able to transmit to others his teaching and the memory
of his example. The leaven began to work, with the sureness of all natural proc¬
esses. Family life recovered its vigour, and, as if in response to this re-stirring
of life, great men reappeared, and restored to the Chinese an awareness of
national destiny. In 206 b. c. the Han Dynasty was established, and the great
mediaeval age of China began.
Thus was justified the prophecy of a government official recorded in the
Analects.
The prefect of the frontier in the town of I, asked to be introduced to Confucius,
saying: I have never failed to obtain an audience of any sage who has visited these
parts.—He was thereupon introduced by the Master’s followers, and on coming out he
said: My sons, why grieve at your Master’s fall from power? The Empire has long
been lying in evil ways, but now God is going to make Confucius his herald to rouse the
land.
There are obvious correspondences between the China which Confucius knew
and the China of to-day. Anarchy, disintegration and decay are essentially the
CONFUCIUS
119
same everywhere and always. But for that very reason, we can discover in¬
structive analogies between the moral desolation of the Sixth Century b. c. in
China, and the general conditions of our own century, not only in China, but
wherever there is supposed to be civilization, and particularly in Europe and
America.
Confucius was confronted with the same basic problem which bewilders the
modem reformer. There had been a rupture in the consciousness of his race,
a loosening of the bonds which united the past with the present. In the literature
of the late Chou period, there are curious traces of all sorts of subversive move¬
ments. Sophism was becoming fashionable. In other words, China was attacked
by the disease of reckless thinking which has killed so many civilizations. Its
traditions were questioned, its moral standards were ridiculed, its history was
misrepresented. A vague Utopianism was in the air, disseminating the potent
illusion that an ideal commonwealth can be created without reference to the
inherited qualities of its citizens. China had a budding intelligentsia, which
might have flowered into a brain-trust, with results which we dare not imagine.
Confucianism saved it by a successful appeal to conscience and to common-
sense. It is really worth our while to enquire into the nature of that appeal, for
if the modem world can be preserved from min, it must be by the practical
application of a conception of life based upon the same principles which Con¬
fucius taught and embodied. It should be remembered that Confucius referred
to himself as a transmitter of immemorial truths. Students of Theosophy are
justified in regarding him as an emissary of the Lodge of Masters which is the
true source of the movement now represented in the world by The Theosoph-
ical Society.
Confucius has been greatly misunderstood, not only by Western scholars and
missionaries, but by his own followers who have too often yielded to the con¬
genital bias of Chinese scholars towards pedantry and literal-mindedness and
self-satisfaction. He was not, as is so often supposed, a blind worshipper of past
forms, an undiscriminating lover of ceremony, a restorer of ancestor-worship, for
his devotion to the wisdom of the ancients was based upon years of study and
meditation. He believed in the supreme value of experience. The Superior
Man teaches what he has proved by his own immediate experience and has
corroborated by the recorded experiences of others, both contemporary and
ancient. We read in The Doctrine of the Mean (Chung Yung):
However excellent a system of moral truths appealing to supernatural authority may
be, it is not verifiable by experience; what is not verifiable by experience cannot com¬
mand credence; and what cannot command credence the people will never obey. How¬
ever excellent a system of moral truths appealing merely to worldly authority may be,
it does not command respect; what does not command respect cannot command credence;
and what cannot command credence the people will never obey. Therefore every system
of moral laws must be based upon the man’s own consciousness. It must be verified by
the common experience of men. Examined into by comparing it with the teachings of
acknowledged great and wise men of the past, there must be no divergence. Applying
it to the operations and processes of Nature in the physical universe, there must be no
contradiction. Confronted with the spiritual powers of the universe, a man must be
120
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
able to maintain it without any doubt. He must be prepared to wait a hundred genera¬
tions after him for the coming of a man of perfect divine nature to confirm it without
any misgiving. The fact that he is able to confront the spiritual powers of the universe
without any doubt, shows that he understands the will of God. The fact that he is
prepared to wait a hundred generations after him for the man of perfect divine nature
without any misgiving, shows that he understands the nature of man.
This reverence for experience explains Confucius’ intense interest in history.
The life of a nation is subject to the same laws which govern the lives of indi¬
viduals, and in history the elements of our common human nature appear in
magnified and simplified form, clearly discernible. He was an indefatigable
scholar, collecting and editing ancient chronicles and ballads which were finally
shaped into the Book of History , the Book of Odes , and the Book of Rites; and
composing a compendium of more recent events in the Spring and Autumn
Annals of the State of Lu. Thus he made available the experience of antiquity
for future generations. It is the fault of those future generations, if parts of
“The Five Classics” have become meaningless and can no longer be fruitfully
applied. In the Book of Changes , for example, a forgotten science of divination
and numerology is preserved; but the key to its interpretation has been lost,
and modem scholars ridicule it because it is beyond their comprehension. 1
Confucius could justify his doctrines by an appeal to experience because the
respect for experience was integrated in the Chinese consciousness. It is this
respect which underlies and, in a measure, justifies what is called ancestor-
worship. Ancestor-worship was an extension of the general tradition that the
son owed devotion and obedience to his parents, that youth should humble itself
before age. It signified loyalty to the truths which had been discovered and
transmitted by past generations. One sacrificed to the ancestral spirits, because
they represented the racial ideal which one sought to embody.
Therefore, when Confucius emphasized filial piety as the foundation of civili¬
zation, he was in reality resuscitating beliefs and practices which were inseparable
from the essence of his racial consciousness. Indeed, they are inseparable from
the essence of every racial consciousness. The standards of the Christian family
differ only in form, not in substance, from the Confucian principles.
However, although Confucius was primarily a transmitter and a restorer of
ancient truths, he was also a creative genius of the first order, one of the greatest
of mankind. His message is individual and unique. He repeated what all the
sages have said, but he cast his thought in a form which only he himself could
have imagined. In particular, he enriched human consciousness by contributing
his personal definition and interpretation of ideal human nature. This is found
in his teaching concerning the Superior Man.
The Chi nese term which we translate as the Superior Man is chun tzu. As
1 "The Five Classics" and "The Four Books" constitute what might be called the sacred canon of Confucianism.
"The Four Books" are the Analects, a collection of the sayings and discourses of Confucius and his chief disciples;
the Great Learning, a brief ethical treatise, attributed to the disciple, Tsfing Ts’an; The Doctrine of the Mean, the
authorship of which is ascribed to Confucius’ grandson, although the internal evidence is that it contains the
Master’s teaching in its purest form; and the Mencius, which records the acts and teachings of the greatest of Con¬
fucian missionaries, who lived in the Fourth Century b. c., and was a contemporary of the Taoist mystic, Chuang-
Tze.
CONFUCIUS
I 2 I
Lionel Giles points out: “ ‘Princely man’ is as nearly as possible the literal
translation, and sometimes, ... it actually means ‘prince’.” In certain con¬
notations, it suggests the Greek ho kalos kagathos , “the noble and good
man”, which is, perhaps, best rendered by the English “gentleman”, in the
highest and purest meaning of that term. But the chun tzu is also a sage. Stu¬
dents of Theosophy will recognize in many of his attributes the qualities of a
ch£la, of a disciple of a Master of Wisdom.
Confucius has left no distinct metaphysical system, no detailed cosmogony.
Like the Buddha and like Socrates, he seems to have believed that the primary
need of men was to understand themselves; that the study of cosmic Nature
might become a dangerous distraction for the undisciplined mind. But there are
passages which suggest that his general conception of Nature was similar to that
of Lao-Tze and the Taoists. The following, from the Chung Yung , might be
taken from a Taoist scripture:
Absolute truth is indestructible. Being indestructible, it is eternal. Being eternal,
it is self-existent. Being self-existent, it is infinite. Being infinite, it is vast and deep.
Being vast and deep, it is transcendental and intelligent. It is because it is vast and deep
that it contains all existence. It is because it is transcendental and intelligent that it
embraces all existence. It is because it is infinite and eternal that it fills all existence.
In vastness and depth it is like the Earth. In transcendental intelligence it is like Heaven.
Infinite and eternal, it is Infinitude itself. Such being the nature of absolute truth, it
manifests itself without being evident; it produces effects without action; it accomplishes
its ends without being conscious [of limitations].
The principle in the course and operation of Nature may be summed up in one word:
it exists for its own sake without any double or ulterior motive. Hence the way in which
it produces things is unfathomable. Nature is vast, deep, high, intelligent, infinite, and
eternal. The heaven, appearing before us, is only this bright, shining spot; but when taken
in its immeasurable extent, the sun, moon, stars, and constellations are suspended in it,
and all things are embraced under it. The earth, appearing before us, is but a handful
cf soil; but taken in all its breadth and depth, it sustains mighty Himalayas without
feeling their weight.
The adoration of “Absolute Nature” is as typically Chinese as the cult of
filial duty. It is, indeed, the mainspring of Far Eastern art and poetry, and
a recurring theme of its mystical literature. Above and within the physical
and visible world, Chinese tradition recognized another world, the source from
which all existences come forth and to which they return. In the profoundest
sense, however, as the philosophers taught, there is only one world, only one
path of being, the Tao, nor do existences come forth and return from the Real.
They only seem to do so; in truth, they cannot depart from that which is their
essence, their raison d'etre. Thus, wherever there is being, the Tao can be
found, if we search deeply enough.
“The principle in the course and operation of Nature” is, in its supreme aspect,
known as “Heaven” or “God”. It is the Divine Law and not a personal divinity.
But it is, in another sense, the very substance of all real personality in the uni¬
verse. Human nature, in its highest phase, may thus be called a personification
of God. In the Analects } it is said that ‘‘the Master would never talk about prodi-
122
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
gies, feats of strength, crime, or supernatural beings.” He could discover no
place in the cosmos for the supernatural. The course and operation of Nature
must at the last bring all creatures to their proper rest. It is necessary to add,
however, that the term, Nature, as here used, has a significance far transcending
that which is given it by most Western thinkers, for whom it means little more
than the sum-total of physical processes. “Absolute Nature”, like the natura
naturans of Spinoza, is the one creative force which is at work in all worlds and
on all planes.
Although he seldom refers to it directly, we may presume, on the basis of
the passage quoted above, that such a metaphysical background was always
present in his thought. It makes intelligible two ideas which Confucius was
always stressing,—that the Superior Man is the Natural Man, and that moral or
spiritual progress is a natural process, obeying laws essentially identical with
those which preside over all cyclic changes and the growth of all living things.
The Superior Man is the Natural Man. Certainly this is a dangerous state¬
ment, open to the gravest misinterpretations. The “natural man”, as Occidental
thought habitually conceives him, is not “superior”, in any sense of the word.
He is an animal whose impulse to happiness is thwarted by a system of taboos
originally imposed by the conditions of primitive society, and morality or ethics
is the survival of this system into an age in which taboos are no longer needed;
or he is the “noble savage” of Rousseau and Chateaubriand, a normally sweet-
tempered creature, whose native goodness has been smothered by civilization and
particularly by the division of society into castes. In any event, the modernistic
moralist proposes to substitute a new morality for the old, pretending that this
substitution will make it possible for all “natural men” to enjoy themselves,
freed from all ancient inhibitions and all class distinctions.
Confucius had no such illusions. He regarded the Superior Man as “natural”
because the form of the Superior Man has been pre-determined for human
nature by “the ordinance of God”. It is normal for humanity to grow into that
higher form, as it is normal for the life-principle in the acorn to expand into the
form of an oak.
The ordinance of God is what we call the law of our being. To fulfil the law of our
being is what we call the moral law. The moral law when reduced to a system is what
we call religion. . . . The life of the moral man is an exemplification of the universal
order. The life of the vulgar person, on the other hand, is a contradiction of the uni¬
versal order. . . . When the passions, such as joy, anger, grief and pleasure, have not
awakened, that is our true self, or moral being. When these passions awaken and each
and all attain due measure and degree, that is the moral order. Our true self or moral
being is the great root of existence, and moral order is the universal law in the world.
When true moral being and moral order are realized, the universe then becomes a cosmos
and all things attain their full growth and development (Chung Yung).
Thus ethics is as truly a branch of natural science as botany or astronomy
When truly seen, the universe appears as a moral order. The laws of physics
and the laws of the spiritual life correspond to one another, as Drummond
perceived, since they are ordinances of the same Divinity, expressions of a
CONFUCIUS
123
Nature which is indivisible. But if the Superior Man be the Natural Man, why
are so few men natural? Why is the average human creature a “vulgar person”
whose life is “a contradiction of the universal order”?
Confucius was much too wise to attempt to explain the incidence of evil and
folly, ignorance and illusion, in the natural order. He suggests, however, that one
source of these things is found in the human mind, in the misuse of imagination,
desire and will. “There is nothing more evident than that which cannot be seen
by the eyes and nothing more palpable than that which cannot be perceived by
the senses: wherefore the moral man watches diligently over his secret thoughts”
(Chung Yung). Men are moved by the thoughts and delusions to which they
heedlessly give themselves. They do not really take the time and trouble to
meditate before they act, to determine for themselves what it is that they really
desire. What is needed, therefore, is self-knowledge, which is acquired by medi¬
tation upon experience. One must search, within the heart, in social life, in
history, in the physical universe; one must resolve to find, anywhere and every¬
where, evidences of the universal order, the moral law.
The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first
ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their own states, they first regulated
their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.
Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify
their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in
their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of
their knowledge lay in the investigation of things {The Great Learning ).
Confucius, like Plato, believed that knowledge and love are in essence one
and the same; that, for the mature human being, love without knowledge and
knowledge without love are equally unnatural. Man must, by the constraint of
his nature, love truth and nobility, when these are really perceived. Because so
few perceive things as they are, human life is troubled and futile, the affections
are turned towards irrational and base objects, and the mind dissipates its energies
in fantasy and ratiocination without purpose.
There are men, I daresay, who act rightly without knowing the reason why, but I am
not one of them. Having heard much, I sift out the good and practise it; having seen
much, I retain it in my memory. This is the second order of wisdom {Analects).
These words are of particular interest because they imply that Confucius
recognized the superiority of intuitive understanding to the knowledge which is
laboriously built up by the human reason. As Giles suggests, “the saying has a
distinctly Taoist flavour”. The major distinction between Confucius and Lao-
Tze is that the former founded his teaching upon common experience and reason,
whereas the latter insisted that truth can only be known finally by immediate
intuition, by direct spiritual vision. According to a Taoist tradition, Confucius
visited the older sage and paid homage to him, saying afterwards to his disciples:
“There is the dragon [a symbol of Adeptship]: I cannot tell how he mounts on
the wind through the clouds and rises to heaven. To-day I have seen Lao-Tze,
124 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
and can only compare him to the dragon.” Chuang-Tze, who respected Con¬
fucius in spite of his loathing for certain Confucianist sectarians, suggested that
he preferred the way of Lao-Tze, but was forced by destiny to teach a lower way
to mankind. However that may be, the way of common experience and reason
which Confucius taught is better adapted than the mystical lao for the vast
majority of men. When the unregenerate rely on spiritual intuition as their
guide, they soon lose themselves in the labyrinth of the psychic world. It is too
easy to mistake glamour for light. The sublime visions of a Lao-Tze are reserved
for those who have perfected themselves in the ‘‘lower way” of self-discipline
which Confucius pointed out.
TzH Kung asked: What would you say of the man who conferred benefits far and wide
on the people and was able to be the salvation of all? Would you pronounce him a man
of moral virtue?—Of moral virtue? said the Master. Nay, rather, of divine virtue. Even
the Emperors of the Golden Age were still striving to attain this height ( Analects ).
The Superior Man stands at the beginning of the path, not at its end,—if
we must think of it as having an end. But as the sage so clearly saw, before
one can become divine, one must become human. The summit of the mountain
is reached by those who begin its ascent, not by those who fancy that one can
dispense with the intermediate stages of the climb and can somehow leap im¬
mediately to the ultimate goal.
I know now why there is no real moral life. The wise mistake moral law for some¬
thing higher than it really is; and the foolish do not know enough what moral law really
is. I know now why the moral law is not understood. The noble natures want to live
too high, high above their moral ordinary self; and ignoble natures do not live high
enough (Chung Yung).
Therefore, the first stage of the path, as Confucius conceived it, is to become,
not divine, but truly human. He called upon his disciples to become aware of
the powers which they actually possessed, to rescue them from misuse, to re¬
divert them to the purposes for which Nature intended them.
Yen Yuan inquired as to the meaning of true goodness. The Master said: The sub¬
dual of self and the reversion to the natural laws governing conduct—this is true good¬
ness. If a man can for the space of one day subdue his selfishness and revert to natural
laws, the whole world will call him good. True goodness springs from a man’s own heart.
How can it depend on other men?—Yen Yuan said: Kindly tell me the practical rule
to be deduced from this.—The Master replied: Do not use your eyes, your ears, your
power of speaking or your faculty of movement without obeying the inner law of self-
control {Analects).
The word which Giles translates as ‘‘the inner law of self-control” is li. It is
the term rendered by Legge as “propriety”, which, as Giles says, “suggests
nothing so much as the headmistress of a young ladies’ seminary”. Li often
denoted religious rites or, indeed, any form of ceremonial or etiquette. However,
it also signified the inward conscious state, of which ritual, ceremony and
CONFUCIUS
125
politeness were the natural expressions; and this seems to be the sense in which
it was generally used by Confucius. It is associated with the term, jen , often
translated as “virtue”, but suggesting less the outer form than the inner intent,
the kindliness or charity which becomes manifest through right action.
When It and jen become active, the whole life of the human being becomes
dynamic and creative in ways which the ordinary man cannot conceive. The
least act is then charged with significance, inasmuch as it is the vehicle of a
defined, conscious purpose. When man no longer acts against Nature but with
her, he becomes the channel of forces infinitely greater than himself. He lives
creatively, even though he may be unaware of his powers. Confucius, like the
Taoists, did not believe that man discovers new forms and values by straining
to invent them. Few of his followers have understood that Confucius was a
great moralist because they have failed to understand that he was fundamentally
mystical in his attitude towards all problems. “There is nothing more evident
than that which cannot be seen by the eyes.” As the disciple turns his attention
to his “secret thoughts” and purifies these, “the principle in the course and opera¬
tion of Nature” transforms him and speaks through him to mankind.
The man of moral virtue, wishing to stand firm himself, will lend firmness to others;
wishing to be illumined, he will illumine others. . . . Some one addressing Confucius,
said: Why, Sir, do you take no part in the government?—The Master replied: What
does the Book of History say concerning filial piety? Do your duty as a son and as a
brother, and these qualities will make themselves felt in the government. This, then,
really amounts to taking part in the government. Holding office need not be considered
essential. ... A ruler questioned Confucius on a point of government, saying: Ought
I not to cut off the lawless in order to establish law and order?—Confucius replied: Sir,
what need is there for the death penalty in your system of government? If you showed
a sincere desire to be good, your people would likewise be good. The virtue of the prince
is like unto wind; that of the people like unto grass. For it is the nature of grass to bend
when the wind blows upon it {Analects).
God in giving life to all created things is surely bountiful to them according to their
qualities. Hence the tree that is full of life He fosters and sustains, while that which
is ready to fall He cuts off and destroys {Chung Yung).
Confucius illustrated this doctrine by his life. Fie was, indeed, like a tree full
of life. It is not strange that a commentator compared him to the Principle
which orders the phenomena of Nature, for Confucius had raised a new ordir
out of the confusion of his age. Tzu-ssu said:
Confucius possessed, as if by hereditary transmission, the virtues of the Emperors
Yao and Shun. . . . Above all, he kept in unison with the seasons of the sky; below,
he conformed to the water and the land. We may liken him unto the sky and earth,
. . . in respect of the universality with which they overspread and enfold things. We
may liken him unto the four seasons in respect of their varied march; unto the sun and
moon, in respect of their alternate shining. All things are kept in train without injuring
one another; their ways go on together without interference: the smaller forces in river
streams, the greater forces in ample transformations. It is this that makes the earth
anffsky so great.
Stanley V. LaDow.
{To be continued)
THE OAK AND THE NUTHATCH
I F you would learn how the great world wags to-day, come to my window,
high above a busy thoroughfare, and armed with an opera-glass you will
acquire a liberal education. The other day we were privileged to watch a
large and popular church disporting itself in modem fashion. A fuss was going
on round the great open doors. Adults of both sexes were rushing up and down
through hordes of milling children of every racial shade. There were two bands,
movingly juvenile, standing too close together to be playing different tunes
simultaneously, and too close to everyone else to be playing in the key. When
Robert Louis Stevenson travelled steerage, bets were taken as to which was tea
and which was coffee, a faint flavour of dish-towel in the tea, but lacking in the
coffee, deciding the question. Even so did “America” on the right and “Yankee
Doodle” on the left promote active betting, but with no result, there being a
flavour of dish-towel in both. Ambling through the crowd were several minor
clergy (at least I hope they were minor) cassocked and bareheaded. Each bore
across his manly chest a placard with the proud device, “I will not fight”, and
with instant intelligence we said to each other “Pacifists”! The infants carried
banners, obviously home-made and nailed to sticks of kindling wood (the
pageant regarded as pageant was decidedly scrubby). The banners remarked
on one side that “war was hell”, and on the reverse, “to hell with war”. It was
provocative of thought to watch six-year-olds staggering under them. The
curates milled about, and the distracted ladies rushed up and down, and a
large number of pink balloons were borne aloft. We squabbled over the
significance of these, but finally agreed that, obeying the law of correspondences,
they were worn above the shoulders to typify the head.
But even fashionable churches cannot arrest the cycles. Suddenly—just like
that!—war broke out! A very small girl, no bigger than Belgium, was pushed
into the gutter by a rude and determined boy, who, wishing to be somewhere
else, walked straight through her. This was resented by her several brothers
and the sidewalks were instantly mobilized. Belgium wept in the gutter minus a
hair-ribbon, while attackers and defenders, making fists the size of mandarin
oranges, opened hostilities. To the credit of the curates and the ladies, be it
said that a League of Nations was formed in the twinkling of an eye, and it was
true to type, for they talked and they talked and they talked, and then, without
question of right or wrong, made that most disgustful of all proposals to children
who need justice—that they “kiss and make up”. It is agreeable to add that
both curates and ladies were noticeably knocked about before peace without
honour descended, when they all scuffled away out of step and out of tune, a
Lilliputian army “terrible with banners”, conscripted for the Black Lodge.
The peace that ensued for the onlookers was disturbed and dark with question¬
ings. Have we in training a generation of little poltroons who, like the pusil-
126
THE OAK AND THE NUTHATCH
127
lanimous hero of a popular play of old, threaten in the face of dire wrong to
“slap the wrist”? Why enrol infants for this type of pernicious nonsense?
What dreams are carried in those pink balloons? What skandhas are being
planted and watered before our eyes?
Skandhas! It is disconcerting when a vast subject strolls nonchalantly across
the threshold of a little paper, and demands to be included. Theosophy leads
us to the edge of many mysteries, that of the skandhas not the least, and over
them we muse and wonder. But bewilderment is a poor foundation on which to
build, and only in the sure hope of correction by my betters could I venture to
meet this challenge.
May it be said that we are factories, working day in and day out, lifetime after
lifetime—factories that we cannot shut down if we would, the freedom of our
will being limited to the quality of our production, these products being attri¬
butes,—skandhas? Or are we laboratories working under pressure to perfect
chemical results, which results will be attributes,—skandhas? Or gardens
through which the seasons inexorably pass, where we sow and reap perforce,
and where not only will the sesame be sesame and the corn be corn, but thistles
will be thistles and tares be tares; but wheat or weeds, the harvest is sure and will
be attributes—skandhas?
If it be so, a consideration of the skandhas will throw light on many a house¬
hold saying and fairy tale, on many a myth and legend. We say of one, “he was
bom with a silver spoon in his mouth”; of another, “he has no luck”, or “the
gods must have a spite against him”, but there are no silver spoons, no luck, no
spite—only skandhas. The ancients had largely outgrown this simplicity.
Their Fates and Nemeses, at least for the instructed among them, had meanings
that the “man in the street” must always miss, and there is a man in the street
in the blood of all of us. Dreaming false, he persuades himself that the mission
of the Fates is to confer or to withhold, to bless or to curse, but it is not so.
Watching the fulfilment of the Law, doubtless they suffer or are glad when we
shoulder again those burdens we must drop between the worlds—burdens that
are at once our endowment and our doom; perhaps they weariedly sigh like poor
Mary Queen of Scots, “their end is their beginning”, but they too are under the
Law of Necessity. Clotho may spin the thread, Lachesis mark its limit, and
Atropos sever it, but they deal only with what we bring them, attributes—
skandhas. Destiny, far from being blind, has three eyes.
When the Daughters of Time turn from us and “under their solemn fillets we
see the scorn”, we have but ourselves to blame. “It all lies before you, take
what you will”, easy tinsel or hard-won gold—“bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky
that holds them all”. The choice was made for us with splendid precision long
ago, after forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, and that is where it
must always be made—in that place, with that companionship, by that help.
It is said that “everything can be reduced to states of consciousness”. Then
are the skandhas of the very stuff and essence of consciousness? The Glossary
t^te us that we are working with five skandhas now and that there are two
mTO to come. The first and simplest is “rupa”, form, vehicle. If that covers
128
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
all form in which human consciousness has embodied itself, it must mean houses
and clothes and furniture and many other things besides the physical body, and
one can only suppose that an immense amount of experimentation is going on
in every direction,—most of it for the discard, we hope and pray. Our patterns
in the noumenal world are of a divine perfection but, like small children with
paint boxes, we copy badly. We fashion rupas of cheap material and of evil
colour, rupas that never fit and that wear shabby too soon, and we wail that it is
not fair; but we did the fashioning. Passing on to the next, if “perception
were not blunt, weak, untrained; if “consciousness” (that astounding complex)
were not for ever busy on wrong planes, arrogant, lazy, and fed with husks; if
“action” were not misdirected, violent or half-hearted; if “knowledge”, in the
sense of nous , were not skilfully evaded, then we could take heart, for we should
be approaching the gift of the sixth. But while man still vaunts such changelings
as vanity for pride, and prejudice for faith, Divine mercy withholds the sixth.
We should only debase intuition if we had it, and, by its lunatic shadow, the
masquerading “hunch”, continue to make havoc.
We hear a great deal to-day about “stream of consciousness” literature. A
great master of literature is welcome to his methods, and there are streams of
consciousness into which it is a privilege to be pitched. Unfortunately the
popular way seems to be to take the nastiest or the stupidest type of mind and
w r rite page after page of its supposed drivel, without paragraph, humour or let-up.
It makes boresome reading, its appeal being only to the callow who have not
discovered how nasty and stupid the human mind can be. Casual acquaintances
will furnish it free of charge, and you wouldn’t read it out loud to your puppy.
But these people are not barking up the wrong tree, they are only barking on
the wrong note, for they have a “hunch” about consciousness, a suspicion as to
its importance. It is true that the “stream of consciousness” is our great open
secret, our key to all planes, and the Masters have said so in every form of words.
To change its direction is to be bom again, to clarify it is to work with the
Logos. “As a man thinketh in his heart.” Then how shall we think in the
heart? “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are pure, lovely and of
good report—think on these things.” Many saints have left their records for
our help. Most of these lacked the training of the Secret Wisdom and therefore
float better than they swim, but they float in an ocean of love, and great is our
debt to them.
Love and Wisdom need each other for this travel. When that union is
accomplished the cosmic ocean will be full of brave swimmers instead of lone
figures here and there. We see them passing—swift, unresting, rapt, “with
intensest love moving perpetually toward things divine”. They pause beside
us where we splash and flounder, and call us fellow-swimmers. Perhaps we are,
perhaps some day we shall master that superb over-stroke and keep pace with
them. Indeed, as we watch their lovely progress are we not “almost persuaded” ?
L.S.
HISTORICAL MYSTERIES
T HE story of Martin, the peasant seer, has often been told. French
Memoirs of the early nineteenth century Contain numerous references
to him, while the essential facts of his connection with Louis XVIII are
matters of official record. Perhaps the most dependable account of his expe¬
rience and “mission” is given by G. LeNotre in his Martin le Visionnaire — 1816 -
1834, in which all the official references and numerous depositions are set forth.
The story, as we now give it, is as well authenticated as any event in history.
*******
This happened on January 15th, 1816.
- Thomas Martin, a French peasant, was at work alone in his fields.
“Martin”, said a voice, close by, “you must go to the King, to warn him
that he is in danger. Wicked men seek to overthrow the Government. He
must bring about order in his domain, and decree public prayers for the con¬
version of the people . . . otherwise the direst misfortunes will befall France.
The farmer, startled by the unperceived approach, and loathe to have his
work interrupted, answered testily,
“Since you know so much about it, why not carry out your commission your¬
self! Why choose a poor man like me—I am no talker.”
“It is not I who am to go, but you”, replied the other, quietly but peremptor¬
ily, “do as I command you”. And Martin, stupefied, saw the man rise into the
air, waver an instant, then slowly vanish “as though he had dissolved”.
The peasant’s first impulse was to run, but as if compelled by a will higher
than his own, he took up his fork and continued his work. The fact that it was
completed in about half the usual time, added no little to the uneasy preoccu¬
pation with which he turned homeward.
Three days later, January 18th, 1816, he went to his cellar, candle in hand,
and was selecting some fine red apples, when beside him, without warning,
again stood the stranger. What might have been said on this occasion was
never recorded, for the farmer bounded up the stairs three steps at a time, the^^
candle falling unheeded to the floor. Two days later still, when measurinjjj^B
oats for the horses, he found himself face to face with the unknown, standing^
framed in the stable doorway. Again he fled in consternation, bolting himself
into his house. He could not refrain from telling his wife and his brother-in-
law of the disturbing experiences, but they merely scoffed—as though anyone
could be hidden in their small home, with three active grown-ups, rising early
and working late, and with several children about!
The next day, Sunday, all the family went to the village church. Martin,
extending his hand toward the holy water, suddenly realized that his “un-
ki»n” was beside him, performing the same rite. As he walked up the aisle,
thl^eemingly solid individual followed, but stopped at the entrance to the
129
i 3 o THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
pew; remaining there, he entered most devoutly into all that was done, joined
the family as they met on the steps of the church afterward, and proceeded
with them along the road to the farm. His appearance was the same on each
occasion—of medium height, slender in build, with a thin, fine face and gentle
though compelling voice; he was always clothed in a long, tight-fitting great¬
coat, buttoned from top to*toe, and wore a round, tall hat. As they reached
the farm, he suddenly faced Martin, said imperatively, “Carry out your com¬
mission—do as I tell you!”, and vanished. At last there were witnesses! His
family were with him; they must have seen and heard all. But no—they had
seen nothing, heard nothing.
In bewilderment, Martin turned to his Parish priest. The latter knew him
to be steady, industrious, thrifty, a good father, not given to drink, never en¬
gaging in political agitation, never subject to religious unbalance or extremes.
Concealing his astonishment, the Curd told him such things happen now and
then to the bravest and best; advised him to see his doctor and adopt a simple
rdgime, and promised to say a Mass, with the intention that light be vouchsafed
as to the reality of the apparitions. Martin attended the Mass. On his return
home, the stranger appeared for the fifth time, merely saying, “Martin, carry
out your commission. Time is passing.”
The Curd straightway appealed to his superior, the Bishop of Versailles, a
man of wide experience in public life, kindly, tolerant, but by no means cred¬
ulous. The Bishop talked with the farmer, pronounced his trouble ridiculous,—
dreams and nothing more; then bethought him that, as the instructions involved
the King, it was really outside his own jurisdiction anyway. Martin should go
to the Prefect at Chartres and tell him the story. “And”, he added, “if you see
your unknown, ask him his name and who told him to come to you—then tell
your Curd, who will report it to me.” While he had no faith in celestial visitants,
the Bishop was impressed by Martin’s absolute sincerity and good faith, and,
concluding that he was the dupe of some enemy of the Government, wrote to
the Minister of Police.
The day after Martin’s return to his little village of Gallardon, the visitor
appeared again. “I was with you, though invisible”, he said, “when you talked
with the Bishop. He told you to ask me my name and on whose behalf I come.
My name will remain unknown. He who sent me is above me.” Martin, al¬
though cold with fear, ventured to ask why such a commission was given to a
mere peasant, and was told that it was in order to humble pride,—though not
his pride. Three days later, again appearing, the stranger said:
“Martin, you will be led before the King, you will disclose to him secrets of
the time of his exile, the knowledge of which will be given you only at the mo¬
ment when you are introduced into his presence.”
This and subsequent conversations, some of them dealing with facts of which
Martin knew nothing, or employing words unfamiliar to him and remembered
imperfectly, were written down by the Cur6 and reported to the Bishop, who
finally recommended that the Minister of Police send someone to arrest the
intruder and put an end to the matter. Martin and the Cure were both sum-
HISTORICAL MYSTERIES
131
moned before the Prefect of the district, where the peasant maintained his
straightforward simplicity and composure throughout a rigorous examination.
At the end of it, he was sent off to Paris, in the custody of a police officer, to ap¬
pear before the Minister of Police, with the recommendation that severity be
exercised.
It was on a Friday morning, March 8th, that the countryman and his gen¬
darme were interviewed at the H6tel du Quai Malaquais. Stepping into an
impressive antechamber, the first person Martin perceived was his “unknown”,
who told him to be steady, to have no uneasiness or fear, and to tell his story
just as it had occurred. Then he vanished, the inner doors opened, and Martin
was led before the Minister.
The Minister of Police at that time was the Comte Elie Decazes. Having
won the confidence of the King to a marked degree, he had aroused jealousy
in every party at court. Decazes received Martin haughtily, and having heard
his story, told him he could return to his home, easy in mind, for the enigmatic
personage had been arrested and was now in prison.
Martin, whom no cross-examining disturbed, since each step brought him
that much nearer his goal and to final release from the apparitions, replied
simply, “I don’t believe that. I saw him here just now, and then he vanished”.
The Minister called one of his secretaries, and commanded,
“See if that man is really in prison.”
“He is”, replied the subordinate.
“Well”, said Martin, “since you have him, let him be brought here. I shall
recognize him at once.”
Decazes abruptly ended the interview, sending the prisoner back to his hotel
—the H6tel de Calais, 138, rue Montmartre—in charge of his gendarme, who
was ordered not to leave him day or night. That afternoon, another visitation.
“They told you”, said the stranger, “that I had been arrested. Inform him
who said so, that he has no power over me!”
At seven the following morning, he came again, this time to say that a physi¬
cian would come, whose questions must be answered quite frankly and
without uneasiness. On neither occasion could the police officer, Andr6, per¬
ceive anything. About three o’clock a visitor arrived, and Martin received him
with, “You must be the doctor whose visit was announced to me.”
“How do you know that?” countered the other, laughing.
“I know it because the unknown personage whom I see, warned me of it.”
It was Pinel, famous alienist and head physician at the Salp£tri£re, sent by
Decazes. Again Martin told his story, relating it with his usual quiet sincerity.
Pinel reported afterward that there was no trace of delirium, but that Martin’s
mental state, attributing real existence to purely fantastic images, was not
unusual. Inasmuch, however, as it could conceivably change to a condition
dangerous to others, he advised for him the medical treatment for the mentally
deranged. Later, reflecting on Martin’s good sense in all but the matter of his
vis^s, Pinel became disturbed, doubtful of his diagnosis, and offered to make
another examination in company with M. Royer-Collard, head physician at
13 2 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Charenton, the State institution for the insane—finally recommending that
Martin be sent there for several weeks’ observation.
Andrd and his prisoner were summoned in haste to the Ministry, where the
gendarme was admitted and ordered to take Martin, waiting outside, to Charen¬
ton forthwith. The two had become fast friends. Andr6 was accustomed to
the custody of criminals. But this peasant was so honest, so dependable, so
level-headed on all but the one subject, that it was impossible not to sympathize
with his desire to rid himself of his obsessions and get back to his family and
neglected fields. With the idea of breaking the distressing news gently, he
remarked:
“You think perhaps, my friend, that we are about to return home?”
“Not a bit of it”, replied Martin. “I know very well where you are going to
take me. You are taking me to Charenton—but no matter, no harm will come
of it.” His “vision”, he explained, had told him, and this time had lifted the
incognito, saying:
“The incredulity is so great that I must disclose my name—I am the Arch¬
angel Raphael, high in the sight of God.” (Various other instances will at
once occur to the reader where names of this kind have been used by messengers
of the Lodge, according to the comprehension and need of the individual they
are addressing.) Before disappearing this time, the visitant foretold that an
inquiry would be made at Gallardon, by the authorities, as to the people with
whom Martin had associated. Martin wrote at once, on March 12th, to his
brother, telling him that this would be done. It was not until the 16th that the
official order was given for the investigation to be made.
Left at Charenton with his few belongings, Martin went through more ex¬
aminations, more questioning. His answers, as always, were clear, precise,
satisfactory. His physical condition, it was found, could scarcely have
been better. Asked why he had been sent there, he related quietly the entire
account of his visions, all of which was written down in the record forming the
basis of the present recital. The case was pronounced a “partial and ecstatic
mania”, appearing intermittently, and in the intervals leaving the intellectual
faculties entirely sound. But Royer-Collard who made the diagnosis, was un¬
easy. Too many of the usual “symptoms” were lacking. Martin was given
the freedom of the grounds, though very closely watched, and was allowed to
help with the gardening. Except during his examinations, he refrained from
talking of his apparitions. His simple faith made it possible for him to
accept the entire situation without any particular wonderment. He was con¬
vinced that each step in his experience was the will of God, and his ac¬
ceptance and conviction were so complete that they affected to a greater or less
degree everyone with whom he associated. Added to that, he never showed
impatience, sadness, fear, nor excessive gaiety. He entered whole-heartedly
and equably into the life about him, all of which he found novel and pleasurable.
The day after his first examination, the “angel” appeared again, in uncon¬
cealed displeasure. “Since they are behaving like this, I will no longer come”,
he said. “It is not doctors of medicine but doctors of theology that should be
HISTORICAL MYSTERIES
i 33
consulted! If they continue in their incredulity, misfortune will certainly fol¬
low. As for you, hold fast to your trust in God. No harm will come to you.”
About eleven days later, however, he did appear again. Martin was just
starting a letter to his brother, and, as the vision ended, wrote: “As I was about
to write you, the same apparition came to me, saying:—‘I told you that I would
no longer come; I assure you that I should be deeply sorry if my efforts were to
fail; I assure you that the most terrible scourge is about to fall upon France.’
The archangel told me also that I could not wish better health than I have,
that the most learned doctors are sent to visit me, and that they are unable to
find a thing wrong with me, and that if I am kept here it is because they want
to put me to the test.” In concluding, the angel had said, “Martin, I give you
peace; be not troubled; have no disquietude”, and Martin, who told the doctor
everything, added that although he had always been very tranquil, he felt, from
that moment, a calm and peace which he had never experienced before.
Still another and another visitation. Every afternoon, Martin walked in the
park. Suddenly one day, the “angel” appeared, saying:
“There is division of opinion and discussion regarding me. Some say that I
am an imaginary being, or even an angel of darkness. To convince you that I
am real, come to me and take me by the hand.” Martin obeyed and “felt his
own hand gripped as by two ordinary hands”. Thereupon the angel threw open
the overcoat that had invariably enveloped him, and there shone a light of such
blinding radiance that Martin could discern nothing of the body. The “angel”
then wrapped the coat about him again, and the light disappeared. Next he re¬
moved his tall hat, saying,
“A fallen angel wears on his brow the mark of his reprobation: examine mine
and see if you find anything of the sort.” Martin raised his eyes to a forehead of
spotless purity. Without another word, the visitor was gone.
This account was given, be it remembered, over the signature of Pinel,
physician-in-chief of the Salp&tri&re, and Royer-Collard, physician-in-chief at
Charenton, who declared that Martin showed no sign of aberration, that he was
not an impostor, that the desire to be in the limelight had never entered his
“rather ordinary and limited” mind, and finally that it was physically impos¬
sible, in this disconcerting phenomenon, for any outside human agency to have
intervened.
There is nothing in the record to indicate the cause of the next step. Decazes,
contrary to what might have been expected, had followed the case rather closely,
demanding reports. The Cur6 of Gallardon, by now convinced that the
phenomena were miraculous, and that his parishioner was the chosen of heaven
for the salvation of France, was unceasing in his efforts, demanding first that
something be done for Martin’s family and neglected farm, and actually ob¬
taining from the King, through Decazes, a gift of money for this purpose. Not
safljbd with anything short of Martin’s release, however, the Cur6 finally
wroteto Monseigneur de Talleyrand de P^rigord, Archbishop of Rheims and
Grand Almoner to the King. The latter sent two eminent ecclesiastics to
Charenton, who put Martin through still another examination. The story
134
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
had by this time become widely known, and must almost certainly have come
to the ears of the King through one channel or another. The King is represented
as being impervious to such an idea as that of angelic messengers, but as being
possibly suspicious that enemies of his favourite, Decazes, were responsible for
the whole affair, and curious to see how far they could and would go.
Whatever the explanation, a messenger from the Minister of Police arrived
suddenly at Charenton on the second of April, with orders for Martin’s removal,
no reason and no subsequent destination being specified. He was taken at once
before Decazes, who questioned him, asking, for one thing, what he intended
to say to the King.
“I do not know at present”, replied Martin simply, “it will be told to me
when I am in his presence.”
‘‘Well, since you wish to go to him”, said the Minister, ‘‘I am going to take
you there.” And he withdrew to don his court attire. Immediately, the “arch¬
angel” appeared, though only for a moment.
“Martin”, said he, “you are going to speak to the King. You will be alone
with him. Have no fear. The words you are to speak will come to you.”
The coach bearing the Minister departed first, followed, after a brief interval,
by another in which rode Martin and a subordinate of the Ministry, instructed
to take his charge to the first valet-de-chambre of the King. In the unaccus¬
tomed grandeur of the Tuileries, Martin maintained his usual composure. Taken
before the King, and by the latter’s order left alone with him, he returned the
kindly greeting of the monarch courteously but unceremoniously, and, when
told to be seated, took a chair at the opposite side of a little table at which the
King sat. Here, after repeating once more the oft-told story of his apparitions,
he disclosed several secret incidents which had occurred during the King’s exile,
part of them forgotten by the King himself after twenty years. He then
revealed certain plots, and without mentioning the names of the leaders, desig¬
nated them unmistakably. Then the King, greatly moved, raised his eyes and
his hands toward heaven and said, “Martin, these matters must be known only
to you and to me”. And Martin promised the most absolute secrecy.
The peasant stated afterward that during the interview, which lasted about
a half hour, he spoke with extreme ease: it seemed almost as though another
spoke through him, the words came to his tongue so readily; and the secrets
which he revealed to the King were totally unknown to him, until he became
conscious of them as he entered the royal presence. Once they were told, his
ease of speech suddenly left him. “Sire”, he said, “my mission is accomplished.
I have nothing more to say.” He was then sent back to Charenton, where he
gave the authorities his account of the royal audience, though without revealing
its “secrets”. After this, Martin was set free, and returned home.
The “archangel” had promised that once the message was given to the King,
he would never appear again. The promise was kept,—as Martin himself de¬
clared. Martin’s later career, however, is puzzling. Practically none of those
who talked with him up to this point, doubted his absolute sincerity, veracity
and good faith, no matter what explanation they may have given of his visions.
HISTORICAL MYSTERIES
i35
The same cannot be said of him in after years when, famous throughout France,
and exposed to the foolish adulation of countless wonder-mongers and senti¬
mentalists, he began to see other visions, to hear another “voice”, and to utter
prophecies. So long as Louis XVIII lived, Martin observed the silence he had
pledged. This did not prevent others, however, from imagining just what
“must have been” said; and rumour was rife. Enemies of Decazes were sure
that the famous interview must have been for the purpose of warning the King
against his minister’s machinations. Supporters of various pretenders to the
throne, saw in it an order to the King to abdicate in favour of their particular
claimant. Any calamity that occurred was regarded as the punishment meted
out for failure to obey the command of heaven. By 1824, when Louis XVIII died,
Martin’s mode of life, his personality, his whole outlook, appear to have changed,
as a result of the notoriety he had experienced, and, upon the death of the
King, he was persuaded that his promise of silence was no longer binding. He
then declared that during his conversation with Louis, the King had been re¬
minded of a day, early in the reign of Louis XVI, and before the latter had any
children, when the two brothers were hunting together. Into the mind of
Louis XVIII (at that time the Comte de Provence) had come the guilty thought
that if the King were struck by a stray bullet, the crown of France would be
his own. As for the primary message of the “angel”, it was asserted to be that
Louis XVIII, finally on the throne after so many years of waiting, was never¬
theless not rightfully there, for his nephew, the little Dauphin, supposed to
have died in prison in 1795, had in reality escaped from the Temple, was still
alive, and that France would know happiness only when she had discovered
and enthroned him. On another occasion, Martin claimed to have told the
King that he must not be crowned; and the King never was crowned. Inci¬
dentally there is some indication that Charles X too, was influenced in his
abdication by statements of Martin regarding the legitimate claimant.
The complicating element in these assertions is, that belief in the escape and
continued existence of the little Dauphin was widely held, and that Martin had
become associated with a group of ardent enthusiasts on the subject. Numerous
pretenders had appeared (some twenty-five or thirty in all), desirous of claiming
the royal heritage. One of the best known of these, “Karl-Wilhelm Naundorff”, A
Martin met and claimed to recognize as the true Dauphin whom he had seen in
a vision. And such was Martin’s standing as a seer and prophet, that his declara¬
tion gave, in effect, a supernatural backing to Naundorff’s claims which had
surprising weight. Rumour and fact became so entangled that it is difficult to
judge whether Martin’s sincerity and good faith had remained with him—but
it is equally difficult to pronounce against him. It was a time when political
feeling ran high, and political enmities were intense, and Martin, after receiving
repeated warnings (anonymous, though entirely of earth this time) to desist
from his activities on behalf of his “Dauphin”, died by the hand of an assassin,
in 1834-
“NATIONS CAN LIVE AT HOME”
“ TN the July, 1933, issue of the Quarterly, in the ‘Screen of Time’, it was
suggested that England would be very much better off to-day if, after the
Armistice of November, 1918, her demobilized armies had been helped to
occupy the many acres of uncultivated land in England and Scotland. The idea
was that it is the first duty of every government to try to make a country self-
supporting in the event of war. England was nearly starved to death by German
submarines, and ought not to allow such a condition to remain possible. In other
words, England (and of course every other country similarly) ought to do its ut¬
most to raise within its own borders enough food to feed its entire population.
It would have been claimed until recently that, owing to the poverty of the soil,
etc., such large-scale production of food would have been impossible in a densely
populated country. I am now sending you a book 1 which meets that objection
head-on. Are the author’s conclusions correct or are they fallacious? Have they
been put to a practical test, or are they merely theoretical possibilities?”
Such is the opening paragraph of a recent letter which introduced us to this
book upon which we have been asked to give an opinion. Now the present
writer is not an agronomist, so he handed the book to a friend who follows that
particular profession. Thus the following is an amalgam of three points of view:
that of our Recorder of the “Screen”, who is alive to the social danger of the
present hand-to-mouth economic policy of certain European nations; that of an
agronomist and soil scientist who is competent to pass upon the practical
agricultural aspect of the matter, and, finally, that of a student of plant science
who approaches the subject with some knowledge of the factors which ensure
the maximum growth and productivity of plants.
Mr. Willcox’s thesis is stated by the title of the book: “Nations Can Live at
Home”. In a word, it is his contention that the new science of “Agrobiology”
(the scientific management of field crops) is competent at this very moment to
supply each nation through its domestic agriculture, with all the food requisite
to the healthy maintenance of its people. More than this, the author asserts
that the limits of increased food production have not even been sighted.
Ever since the eighteenth century the spectre of Malthus has stalked the world
to render uneasy the repose of statesmen and economists, for Malthus taught
“that population tends to multiply faster than its means of subsistence can be
made to do, and that when this occurs the lower or weaker classes must suffer
from lack of food; that unless an increase of population be checked by prudential
restraint, poverty is inevitable; and that the multiplying of the population will
be checked by poverty, vice, or some other cause of suffering.”
That this threat to the cupboards of nations is no idle one, is abundantly
1 Nations Can Live at Home, by 0. W. Willcox, Ph.D.; W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., New York, 1935.
136
“NATIONS CAN LIVE AT HOME”
i37
attested by the dire spectacle of China, swarming with humanity and wasted
by recurrent famines, or of Japan and Italy forced, as they seem to believe, into
careers of war and invasion to save their own nations from starvation. Indeed,
it was the perusal of Malthus’s writings that gave Darwin his first inkling of the
giant struggle for existence which became the cornerstone of his theory.
Until the turn of the century, population pressure upon food supply was,
in a measure, minimized by the opening of new agricultural lands to emigrating
peoples. To-day, however, the frontier is gone, and once more the dark shadow
of a hungry world looms before the nations. Mussolini, for example, has stated
Italy’s apparent case in cold, realistic sentences: “According as our population
increases there are three outlets: to condemn ourselves to voluntary sterility—
and Italians are too intelligent for that; to wage war; or to place our surplus
population elsewhere.’’ Recent events have made evident upon which of the
outlets II Duce's choice has fallen. War, say the realists, is the ultimate term of
the Malthusian law. They see the futility of the dream of an all-sufficing
international trade since this palliative to national want is at best inconstant
and temporary, subject to the vicissitudes of tariff barriers, glutted markets,
foreign competition, and, worst of all, to the menace of war.
With a brave array of statistics and graphs to support his statements, the
author of the book before us challenges the Malthusian prophets of disaster,
and asserts that agronomy (the art of field-crop production) has, within the last
ten years, been lifted from the realm of chance and blundering empiricism in
which it has been floundering for twenty thousand years, and has been placed
upon a basis so exact that “all agrobiologic phenomena may be dimensioned,
permuted, controlled and brought to a finish with quantitative exactitude”.
This is a statement so startling that it is small wonder one’s first reaction to it is
ironical. Another “Send-a-Dime Scheme”, another “Townsend Plan”, we say
wearily, and prepare to close the book. But as we read on, we begin to realize
that this man is no dreamer; he is a hard-headed scientist dealing with experi¬
mentally-attested facts. To be sure his prophecies are often based upon
experiments carried out in small acreages, but just as the compound formed in
the test-tube epitomizes the production of the same chemical in commercial
quantities, so the small acreage crop epitomizes a parallel large-scale production,
provided the conditions can be duplicated on a commensurate scale.
What, then, are some of the conditions of this new agrobiology which is to
lay the ghost of the Rev. Mr. Malthus?
Its first principle is the well-known constancy of genotypes. In other words,
strains of plants breed true just as strains of poultry or cattle or sheep breed
true. And just as some strains or breeds of cattle produce more milk than others,
so some strains of plants will enormously outdistance others in their production
of grain or fruit or other food-product. We must then, say the agrobiologists,
rigorously exclude from cultivation all the strains of vegetables which give low
yields, and grow only selected and thoroughly tested “perultra agrotypes”.
The (fcoretic limit of production of various food-plants can be mathematically
calculsrced, and many of our best agrotypes have been brought close to the
138 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
maximum yield. The theoretical maximum return from wheat, for example, is
171 bushels per acre, and already we have American wheat varieties yielding
122 yi bushels per acre. Indian com has a theoretical maximum yield of 225
bushels per acre, and this has actually been reached in a certain strain. These
strains or varieties will continue year after year to give the same yield under
the same combination of environmental factors.
So the second principle of the new agrobiology is concerned with the environ¬
ment under which the crop is to grow. This consists, in essence, of a perfertile
soil”, that is, a soil which contains the plant food-salts in exactly the right
amounts and correct relative proportions for the optimum needs of the plant.
Such knowledge is in our hands, and the soil requirements of any plant can be
“blue-printed” with exactitude. The soil, as a complex of inconstant and
variable factors over which the older empirical agriculture so taxed itself, is now
regarded as little more than a theatre of action—a kind of receptacle to hold the
plants. Given a loose, non-poisonous soil, supplied artificially with the correct
proportions of some half-dozen chemical elements in which it is likely to be
deficient, and any crop plant adapted to that particular climate will give its
maximum yield. The author sweeps aside, and we think a bit too brashly, the
inconstant and incalculable factors of the environment—those “acts of God”
which have harassed the farmer from the beginning. In his own breezy way he
writes: “Drought; too much rain; irregular rain; bugs in, on and above the soil;
rust, blight and other plant diseases; microbiological complexes, soil complexes,
plant physiological complexes, not omitting mental complexes; all these and
more beside take their toll of the ordinary farmer’s crops ... (but) the arms that
may be used are known. The conduct of agricultural operations is something
to be approached in the spirit of Grant who ordered one of his officers to ‘stop
thinking about what Lee is going to do, and think about what we are going to
do’. The upshot of it all is that plant life, in any given closed system, can be
dealt with as a constant, measurable quantity, and that growth factors can be
dealt with as forces having definite and measurable magnitudes”.
To this statement my agronomical friend and myself both give our assent.
The statistics of phenomenal wheat production in Italy, of rice in Japan, of com
in America, of sugar-cane in Java—all grown according to the strictest agrobio¬
logical conditions—are convincing.
Armed, therefore, with this weapon, the author advances upon the Malthu-
sians. Professor East has calculated that 3.2 acres of land are required to feed
one average individual for one year at our present American standard of living.
Allowing for the lower standard of more densely populated countries, we may set
the ratio as one person to 2.5 acres. Since only about 40% of the land area of the
globe is cultivable, the theoretical limit of population is set at 5,200 million
people, which, under present conditions of population increase, will be reached
in about 100 years.
Mr. Willcox brushes these figures aside and sets down a “primary number” of
51 persons per acre as a feasible ratio, which is equivalent to a population
density of 3 2,640 per square mile. This number, he avers, can be much increased
“NATIONS CAN LIVE AT HOME’
i39
by the introduction of various secondary factors into agriculture, such as multi¬
plied crops in a single season, indirect production of proteins, etc. At present
there is no European nation with a population density of more than 1500 per
square mile.
We need not follow him along the lines of his further speculations, in whose
higher flights he sets forth certain theoretical population figures of astronomical
magnitude which would seem to fill the earth so full that people would have to
sleep edgewise like the exiles in Professor Tchemavin’s Soviet lumber camps.
Let us hope that long before it happens the famous fourth dimension may open
up to colonization. Neither are we greatly impressed by our author’s attempt
to hitch his agrobiological wagon to the will-o’-the-wisp of pacifism.
The practical conclusion of the matter is more to our taste. We think that
“nations can live at home” if they are prepared to enter upon a regimen of
scientifically controlled agriculture, and can find or can develop a staff of
agrobiological experts competent to handle the matter. Their farmers must be
prepared to submit their lands to expert direction and to relinquish their time-
honoured concessions and empirical practices. No small problem this, under
- any sort of administration, but an enlightened gentleman-farmer class, such as
England possesses, might accomplish it. Under a democratic state-management,
we should expect the same muddle of incompetent direction, half-baked theory,
egregious waste, personal friction and bureaucratic interference, which char¬
acterizes the “New Deal” under whose dubious blessings it is our privilege to
live. A dictator-state would also make for success. In fact, one regrets that
Mussolini did not keep to his vittoria del grano , which met with such astonishing
success in 1934 that Professor Thomasi of the Institute of Agricultural Chemistry
at Rome, making a thoroughgoing application of agrobiological principles to
some new strains of wheat, produced 171 bushels to the acre, which is practically
the theoretical highest possible yield. Even the farmers of the provinces, under
the direction of agronomical experts, and using inferior wheat strains, rolled up
yields as high as 121 bushels per acre—71% of the theoretical maximum. When
one compares this figure with the 14 bushels per acre, which is the average yield
in the United States, one is less inclined to class Mr. Willcox with the Utopians.
We think therefore, that if the agrarian population of England is prepared to
submit itself to the necessary regimen, it can provide every man, woman and child
in the British Isles with an ample and attractive diet carrying the proportions of
proteids, carbohydrates and fats which are essential to health, and, furthermore,
we are inclined to believe with Mr. Willcox, that the present population could
“more than double without curtailing a standard of living much above the
average they are now enjoying.... Britain cannot be starved when Britons have
put their agriculture in order and have squared their treatment of the land with
the realities of science”.
R.E.T.
WITHOUT CENSOR
VI.
O UR journey across France from Bordeaux to Baccarat, near Lun6ville,
took us through Perigueux, Limoges, Ch&teauroux, and Bourges; from
there we doubled and twisted backward and forward, often waiting for
hours until some train, coming from the front with wounded, or on its way to the
lines with troops or supplies, had passed us. We saw nothing, of course, of the
cities and towns through which we passed, for, even when we stopped, we never
left the railway station. There was a reason for this: the French Chefs de Gare
had developed, we had been warned, an unfortunate habit of arbitrarily uncoup¬
ling several cars from the end of troop trains whenever they happened to think
that they were too long and too heavy, without saying anything about it to any¬
one. A troop train, so mutilated, would pull out minus cars, men and equipment,
and often the loss would not be discovered for several hours, especially if it had
taken place at night. Accordingly, we put out a guard all along the train at each
stop, day and night, and the Officer of the Day was on twenty-four hour duty,
his sleep being constantly interrupted by the necessity of making inspections
when we were halted in pitchy darkness. Our forward sections had all been
warned of this amusing idiosyncrasy on the part of the railway management;
none the less, a captain in charge of one of the sections succeeded in losing four
cars one night, with their contents, living and inanimate. The Colonel was
furious, and rightly, when he heard of this upon his arrival, and the unfortunate
captain was shipped off in a motor-cycle side-car, with an orderly, with instruc¬
tions not to come back at all if he could not find his cars. As neither of them
could speak any French, I often wondered what kind of time they had; but I
heard later on, after I had left the Ammunition Train, that they had finally
returned triumphant, bringing, so to speak, their sheaves with them.
We did not receive the same whole-hearted and friendly greetings from the
French on this trip as we had during our progress from Brest to Bordeaux; in
fact, our arrival at a town did not produce even a ripple of enthusiasm. Troop
movements were an old story in this part of France, and already many trains full
of American soldiers had passed through from the training-areas and ports in the
south, while, with the people on the coast, the sight of Americans had still been a
novelty and the passage of any troops fairly infrequent. We thoroughly enjoyed
every moment of that trip. The country through which we passed was beautiful,
and we proceeded so slowly that we had plenty of time to let the beauty sink in.
Our superior railway carriage, which we had requisitioned at Bordeaux, was very
comfortable, and we had nothing to do but rest, sleep, talk, read and admire
the scenery. We must have covered over five hundred miles on that trip, allowing
for all our twistings and doublings back and forth. We reached Chaumont
(Haute Marne), where General Headquarters, American Expeditionary Forces,
140
WITHOUT CENSOR
141
was located, on the afternoon of the second day, but only stopped in the station
there for a few minutes, proceeding through that night, with many stops, and
finally arriving at Baccarat early on the morning of July 16th.
As we disen trained, we heard the sound of firing, and, looking overhead, we
saw a Boche plane going back fast toward the German lines. The archies were
firing, and all around the plane were black patches in the sky where shrapnel was
bursting, none of it, however, taking effect. Our men crowded out into the road,
and stood gazing up with open mouths, always a poor thing to do in the circum¬
stances, as those pieces of shrapnel have to come down to earth again. However,
this particular party was over, and we had only arrived in time to see the end
of it. The Boche frequently sent observation planes over in the day time, for
purposes of reconnaissance. We were told that when they were in this part of
France in 1914, and before they were forced out, they had planted spies among
the civilians and had subsidized disloyal elements in the population, with a view
to obtaining information later as to what was going on behind the French lines.
One way of obtaining this information was from the air. Whenever there was
something to impart, some peasant would arrange cows in a fixed order in a
certain comer of a field, or washing would be laid out on bushes or on the grass
in a pattern agreed upon beforehand to convey a definite meaning, and the
German plane would read this panel from the air, and would report accordingly
upon its return. But there were other ways, as well, in which information passed,
and we received an illustration of this a few days later. A captain in one of the
infantry regiments of our Division, a man whom I had known quite well in my
company at Plattsburgh, was very anxious to try out a daylight trench raid on
the Boche. He devised a plan, which was submitted to, and approved by, his
regimental commander and his brigade commander. But the projected raid
became too well known beforehand. It was talked about throughout the Di¬
vision, and on the day and at the hour appointed, a number of officers from other
units, who had no business even to know about it, were in the vicinity, under
cover, waiting to observe the show. The raiding party found the front line
German trenches empty, and proceeded to the second line trenches, where they
were suddenly surrounded by vastly superior numbers of the enemy; of that
raiding party, if I remember correctly, only about half came back, the others all4
being captured or killed, and among those who were killed was the captain, my
friend. There was no doubt whatever that the Germans received information
about the raid beforehand, through one of their usual sources—which was not to
be wondered at in view of the lack of secrecy—and arranged the reception for our
raiding party in advance. The affair created a furor at the time, but it was in
process of being hushed up when I left the Division, and I never heard the final
outcome.
It was so well known, in the Vosges, that information identifying Allied units
andexplaining circulation and movements of Allied troops was constantly reach-
in^^e Germans, that it was decided to take advantage of this, and, just before
our St. Mihiel operation started early in September, to stage a fake attack in the
Vosges, with a view to holding German divisions in place and preventing their
142
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
opposing us at St. Mihiel. I quote from the Report of the First Army, American
Expeditionary Forces. “The heavy movement of American Divisions towards
Lorraine aroused speculation among the inhabitants as to the prospects for an
American offensive in that region. While such an attack was logical and to be
expected, it is probable also that the enemy gained some information regarding
our concentration, which may have led him to think we were planning an attack
on the St. Mihiel front. To counteract this probability the Commander-in-Chief,
American Expeditionary Forces, took advantage of the presence of several
American divisions in the Vosges to deceive the enemy as to our intentions. An
army corps commander with his staff was ordered to Belfort with instructions to
establish an Army Headquarters at that place and to draft the plans and carry
out the reconnaissances preparatory to an offensive operation toward Mulhouse.
Offices were opened, staff reconnoitering parties were sent out and groups from
American divisions were ordered to that front. Finally, a carbon copy of the
orders directing these preliminary steps, was intentionally left in a hotel at
Belfort by a staff officer from General Headquarters, and it quickly disappeared.
The success of this ruse was apparent, as the Germans concentrated several
divisions in reserve in that vicinity."
The Baccarat sector was what the French called bon secteur; troops just out of
the line and in need of a rest, or new units, like our own, engaged in their first
experience in holding trenches, were sent there by both sides, and there was a
kind of gentleman’s agreement with the enemy not to start anything serious.
Activity was confined to an occasional trench raid, and to a mild daily artillery
interchange, in the course of which a few shells were thrown over by each side.
At night, however, Boche planes used to come over and make things disagreeable.
The 77th Division took over the sector from the 42nd Division, American
National Guard, which departed for the Marne area for its first active service.
Our Division was thus reunited for the first time since April, when the movement
of our units overseas had started from Camp Upton. Our infantry had learned a
great deal from their experience on the British front, while we, who had been at
Camp Souge, had improved as a result of our training there; so the Division
Staff were well pleased with the appearance and feel of the command, and full of
high hopes as to its ability.
Owing to the inactivity on that part of the front, there was a fairly large
civilian population in Baccarat, and domestic life among the French went on
much as usual, although none of the town’s activities or factories were in opera¬
tion. But there was a vastly different appearance and atmosphere, both as
regards the town and the people, compared with those towns which we had seen
in the south. The War had set its mark on the place. Our men were in billets
for the first time, and we had close contact with the French people which living
with them brings. The houses, while undemolished by shell fire, were running
down and badly in need of repair. Food was scarce, and the population was
under-nourished, particularly the children, who were wild and farouche and
suspicious. A sure way to the hearts of the women was to make them presents
of sugar and of white Army bread, and this our men speedily discovered. For
WITHOUT CENSOR
M3
almost four long years, troops had been billeted with those people in constant
succession. Women and children had lived among rough men. They had had no
privacy at all. Small wonder that they were apathetic, that they did not receive
us with open arms. To them, we were just another lot, to be replaced after a
while by others, without end. I have often thought that the atmosphere of
Baccarat was sadder, more drab and hopeless, than even that of those towns on
the more active stretches of the front which I saw later, where the small remain¬
ing civilian population was in hourly danger of death. At Baccarat, they were
fairly safe. But the great steam-roller of war had passed over them, and had left
them flat; they were dull and dead. It was pathetic beyond words. Yet, many
of our men did succeed in arousing them; they won the children’s hearts, and the
liking of the women. Often I would come across two or three of our soldiers
sitting against a wall in the sun, with several old women who were doing their
mending and knitting. The soldiers could not converse, but it felt like home in a
way to them, and, unconsciously to theftiselves, they were creating a friendly
atmosphere which bore fruit later, for I heard much more of children’s laughter
in the vicinity of our billets at the end of my two weeks’ tour of duty there, than
I had heard at first.
The Colonel and I were billeted in a little stucco two-story house on the edge
of the town, the owner and sole occupant of which was an old lady in her seventies.
We had started a Headquarters mess in another house a little way down the
street, where we went for meals, and where we subsisted simply on the Army
ration. At night, the Boche planes would come over, and, flying low, would
machine-gun the town, primarily for the purpose of breaking down the morale of
the newly arrived American troops, but also in the hope that they would catch
unwary loiterers in the streets. When the first of these entertainments started,
the Colonel and I were at home, and we quickly took stock of our surroundings,
with a view to occupying the best strategic position available. We decided to
stand in the front hallway of the flimsy structure, as there appeared to be more
thicknesses of wall and ceiling between us and the outside world at that point
than at any other. In a moment or two the old lady joined us; apparently she
too, from long experience, had picked this same spot as being the most protected.
As the din and uproar increased, she began to tremble, and seizing my arm, she
kept saying, Ah! J'ai peur , j'ai peur! “What does she say?”, asked the Colonel,
who even at this late date had acquired no French at all. I repeated her words,
and explained their meaning. “Quite so”, said the Colonel, “tell her that I have
got peur myself”. Instead, I translated this into some words of encouragement
and cheer, and patted her on the shoulder, and she smiled, and quieted down
again until the disturbance was over. We spent some time together, the three of
us, in the evenings in this way during my stay, and the poor old thing was always
terrified. It must have been a great relief to her to have two officers billeted on
her, who could keep her company. Her morale was broken; she had stood this
sorfcflmhing for innumerable nights, sometimes alone, and it had just been too
much. I grew quite fond of our old lady, but I succeeded in getting into her bad
graces before I left. I had with me a portable rubber bath tub, which folded up
144
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
into a small compass, and went easily into a comer of my bedding-roll. It was
one of the greatest assets which I have ever possessed, and during my whole
stay in France I was able to enjoy baths when others could not have them. It was
unfolded and set out every morning by my faithful striker, and filled with water
from my canvas bucket. But it was a tricky contraption, for unless one watched
out, the thing would meanly curl over on one of its many folds, and let the water
out on the floor. The Colonel had the room directly under mine. I was splashing
away one morning, and thinking that my striker had not given me as much water
as usual, when suddenly I heard stentorian tones from the room below, and then
the Colonel’s voice, inquiring in a loud bellow what I thought I was doing up
there anyway. In alarm, I looked hastily over my shoulder, only to see that,
as soon as my back had been turned, my tricky old tub had lain down on me
completely in one comer, and that there were the remains of a lake on the floor.
The lake itself had rapidly oozed through the flimsy flooring, and the Colonel
had been awakened from a sound sleep by water dripping on his face. When the
old lady saw the unfortunate results as far as her property was concerned, she
was furious, and on the spot she demanded exorbitant and extortionate damages.
I felt like explaining to her that I did not want to buy the house, but calmness
and moderation prevailed; and I finally settled with her for an amount which
should have enabled her to have both rooms entirely done over, but which I did
not in the least object to giving her, hoping that she would make the repairs
herself, which she probably did, and that she would use the money for some
small comforts which would make her lot more bearable.
The Colonel, upon returning from Division Headquarters where he had
reported the day of our arrival, informed me that the letters which he had
written on my behalf from Camp Souge recommending me for staff work, had
indeed borne fruit, and that I was to leave them, and to go to the Headquarters
First American Army (Field Army) which had just been formed. He said that
my orders had not yet come through, buUthat there was no doubt whatever
about it, as it had been arranged over the telephone by 77th Division Head¬
quarters with General Headquarters at Chaumont, and that I had better begin
without delay to turn over my duties to my successor as Adjutant, whom he
proceeded immediately to appoint, and to make him familiar with all routine
matters.of administration. This I at once started to do, and then remembered
the fact that, over the preceding months, I had signed receipts for a considerable
amount of government property and equipment of various kinds. My name was
on the papers. What was I going to say if, after the War, I was summoned to
Washington and asked what I had done with it all? I hastily decided that the
new Adjutant was far better able to afford these luxuries than I. So I had dupli¬
cate receipts made up for everything, on which the new Adjutant received from
me these various articles, and I watched him sign on the dotted line with a feeling
of some relief. About this time all officers in the Division received orders to
discard locker trunks, which were to be sent to the rear until after the War,
and to reduce to field equipment. The Colonel advised me, as I was leaving
them, not to give up anything until I had to, and to hold on to mine. This I did;
WITHOUT CENSOR
145
and I succeeded in doing so permanently, as I was always able later on to com¬
mand transportation, and to get myself moved about when necessity arose. The
turning over of my duties to my successor only took a day or so, and then, as
my orders still failed to come through, I was without any duties, although still
officially assigned to my old unit. I proceeded, therefore, to enjoy myself, paying
visits to friends in the infantry in their front line P. Cs. (Posts of Command);
calling daily on the Chief of Staff to inquire about my orders, and stopping to
talk, and to hear the gossip, with friends at Division Headquarters; also motoring
about with the Colonel on his trips of inspection and supervision as a sort of
guest. One afternoon we were on a road that we did not know, and had pro¬
ceeded along it for some distance, when we were stopped by loud shouts, and
were told by some soldiers that if we went three hundred yards more in that
direction, we should be in No Man’s Land. We might have continued calmly
until we had arrived within the enemy lines and been quietly captured, which
would have been an ignominious ending for high hopes.
Finally, on July 29th, my orders came through from Division Headquarters,
directing me, in accordance with instructions, G. H. Q., American E. F., to pro¬
ceed to La Fert6-sous-Jouarre, between Ch&teau-Thierry and Paris, reporting
upon arrival to the Chief of Staff, 1st Army, for duty, and stating that the
travel directed was necessary in the military service. I finished my packing,
which did not take long; had my order ornamented with all the official stamps
which the Division Provost Marshal and the French authorities seemed to con¬
sider necessary before I could start on my travels, and found that I could get
a train to Paris late that afternoon. All roads led to Paris; no matter where the
place was to which one was going, it was always quicker to go there vi& Paris
than to try to go there direct. I spent most of that day going about saying
good-bye to my fellow officers, most of whom as a matter of fact I have not seen
again to this day, and to some of the enlisted men. I also bade an affectionate
farewell to my faithful striker, for I realized that it was not possible for anyone
as low in rank as a captain to travel about with a personal servant; one must be
at least a brigadier general to be able to do that! After luncheon I started to
take my leave of the Colonel, but he told me that his time was his own that da^^
and that he was going to see me off. He seemed genuinely sorry to have me
I made a little speech, which I most whole-heartedly meant, in which I thanked
him for his kindnesses, for his patience with my mistakes and ignorance, and for
all that I felt that I had learned from him personally and while under his com¬
mand. He seemed quite touched by this, and said in a gruff voice,—“Not at all,
Captain, I have a great many things to thank you for”. Official sounds of com¬
motion then warned me that the train was about to start, so I saluted him
officially for the last time. My salute was returned, and he shook me by the hand,
and wished me good luck, and I climbed into the already-moving carriage. That
jAasc of my Army experience was over.
it is outside the province of an article such as this to attempt to give in any
detail an account of general military operations, or to trace the progress and
sequence of events on the Western Front. All that is a matter of record and of
146
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
history. These articles are merely an endeavour to recount the experiences of
one individual in what he happened to see of the Great War. But at this point
it may be of interest to outline briefly something of the military situation as it
stood in the closing days of July, 1918, and more specifically in regard to the
American troops that were engaged, and as it affected them, and to relate some¬
thing of the formation and earlier accomplishments of those larger field units of
the American Army with which I was to be identified from then until the Armis¬
tice, and afterwards. When I received my orders at Baccarat to report to Head¬
quarters of the First American Army in the field, 1 knew nothing whatever of
what had been done in the American Expeditionary Forces in regard to the
organization of those larger units and higher staffs, nor did I have the slightest
idea as to what extent, or exactly where, American troops were actually in action.
Owing to our isolation up to that time in geographical terms, I had been as far
removed from any knowledge of what was going on as if I had been at the North
Pole. Nor did I know then that the day upon which I had arrived at Baccarat,
July 16th, had to all intents and purposes marked the turning point of the War
on the Western Front. On that day, all of France had been in suspense; on that
day, the Germans had wavered. On July seventeenth, the enemy had been
stopped, and the following day marked the actual beginning, in the light of
retrospect, of his long retreat. I did not know anything of all that then, nor of
what I am now about to set down. I learned it later, after I had arrived at my
destination, and had entered upon my new duties. All that I knew when I left
Baccarat was, that I had one, single, impelling idea,—to get to La F6rte-sous-
Jouarre just as fast as I could and find out what was going on.
Briefly, then, the great Ch&teau-Thierry salient was so extended and deep,
and so exposed to attack on the flanks that, from the German point of view, it
was impossible to push further ahead at its apex until the salient had been
widened; moreover, the Germans realized that, unless this could be done, the
salient itself was quite likely to prove untenable in the long run. Initial attempts
during the summer by the Germans to effect this widening, had failed. Then
Ludendorff decided upon the great offensive, which took place in July, and which
was widely heralded in Germany as the final operation which was to win the War.
I have always understood that, while the main objective was Paris, this operation
was divided into several phases, and that there were several preliminary objec¬
tives which had to be gained first and simultaneously, before the success of the
whole plan could be assured; failure at any one point would jeopardize the
entire offensive. Ludendorff decided to attack at each side of Rheims, the
heaviest attack being by the German First and Third Armies in the Champagne,
east of Rheims. There was to be another attack against the Montagne de
Rheims, which was planned to cross the Marne and then turn up to fipemay,
joining the two phases of the German offensive in that area. At the same time,
two other German armies were to attack on the Amiens-Montdidier front, break¬
ing through at that point and driving straight for Paris from the northwest.
Simultaneously, there was to be an attack against the British in Flanders. The
supposedly victorious German troops from the operations at Rheims, after
WITHOUT CENSOR
147
effecting a junction, were to sweep down the Marne on Paris from the northeast,
and victory would be won. On the Allied side, the order of battle, from left to
right, was General Mangin’s Tenth Army; General Degoutte’s Sixth Army;
General Berthelot’s Fifth Army; and General Gouraud’s Fourth Army. In the
Sixth French Army, under General Degoutte, was the First American Army
Corps, commanded by Major General Hunter Liggett, and the Second, Third,
Fourth, Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth American Divisions, while the Forty-
second American Division was with General Gouraud’s Fourth French Army.
The American Army in France at that time consisted of four divisions in line
and two in reserve on the Ch&teau-Thierry front; the Forty-second Division
with the Fourth French Army; four divisions in line with the French in quiet
sectors in Alsace-Lorraine, one of which was my own Division, the Seventy-
seventh; five divisions with the British; four in training areas, and four which
had just arrived.
The First American Army Corps, to which I was so soon to be sent from Head¬
quarters First Army and temporarily attached, had been formed, and its staff
organized, during the winter of 1917-1918, in readiness for later events, with
station at Neufchateau, where it had taken over administrative command of
various American divisions then in training in the Vosges. The French system of
corps command had been at once adopted, under which an army corps consisted
of its staff, various technical troops, the corps artillery, and such divisions as
happened at the time to be in line on the corps front, or in reserve in the corps
area. The corps organization, therefore, was a permanent one, while the divisions
under its command changed from time to time, as reliefs were effected. An
army-corps staff was divided into three sections: G-i, in control of adminis¬
tration and personnel; G-2, in control of military intelligence; and G-3, having
to do with operations and training. An American field-army staff had exactly
the same organization, with the addition of another section, G-4, which func¬
tioned with the Service of Supplies. With both the army corps and the field
army, there was in addition an administrative staff consisting of an Adjutant
General, Chief Signal officer, Chief Air officer, Chief Medical officer and Chiefs
Engineer officer, each with the personnel necessary to assist him. Owing to tl^
size of our divisions, which were much larger than those of either the French or
English, consisting as they did of about 28,000 officers and men each, an Ameri¬
can army corps in the Great War numbered approximately from 125,000 to
150,000 men; this was about the size of a French field army, if I remember
correctly, and was several times the size of an army corps during our Civil War.
The Staff of the First American Army Corps had thus been working together for
some while, and had perfected its organization and increased its efficiency so that
it was ready to function when the time came for it to take over a field command.
On June 21st, the First American Army Corps had been ordered to La F6rte-
sUfe-Jouarre with instructions to prepare to take over a command in that area.
Constant conferences were held with General Degoutte, and on July 4th the
First Corps took over a sector for the first time. Among the troops then assigned
to come under the command of our First Corps was a French Division; it was
148 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the first time that French troops had served under American command since the
War of the Revolution, and the first tactical operation of an American Army
Corps since our Civil War.
The First American Army Corps had thus participated in the fighting on the
Ch&teau-Thierry front in the early days of July, and up to the time that the great
German offensive broke in the middle of that month. The complete failure of
that offensive, and all that happened, is too well known to be enlarged upon here.
General Gouraud, with the Fourth French Army, had stopped the First and
Third German Armies in the Champagne by the end of the second day, thus at
the same time rendering abortive the proposed German drive on Paris from the
northwest. The German Seventh Army, however, had crossed the Marne, and
had penetrated in depth against General Berthelot and General Degoutte, and,
with the Champagne attack a failure, the enemy had then proceeded to throw
additional forces into the Marne battle. Allied reserves, however, were rushed
to meet them, and General Foch had counter-attacked the following day on a
wide front. The Forty-second American Division had been withdrawn from the
Fourth French Army, and had been added to the First American Army Corps at
Ch&teau-Thierry, the evacuation of which town by the enemy, our First Corps
had been instrumental in effecting. On the night of July 2 5th-26th, the Forty-
second Division had taken over the entire front of the First American Army
Corps, and, supported by divisional and corps artillery, the Division had attacked
on July 28th on a wide front and had crossed the Ourcq.
This, then, is a very sketchy presentation of the military situation on the
Marne front as it existed July 29th, the day on which I took the train from
Baccarat to Paris. I have dwelt at some length upon the early history and
performances of the First American Army Corps because I was to be associated
with that Staff under such interesting circumstances during the next month;
because it was the first of our army corps to get into action; and because it was
commanded by Major General Hunter Liggett, who, of the general officers in
the American Expeditionary Forces, ranked in command in the field second to
General Pershing himself. It is a striking commentary upon the efficiency of
the Staff of the First American Army Corps, both then, and later on at St. Mihiel
and in the Meuse-Argonne operation, that, after the Armistice, and when our
Third Army which marched to the Rhine was formed, it was the Staff of the
First Corps which was transferred, practically intact, to form the Staff of that
Army of Occupation.
My journey to Paris was uneventful. My train meandered slowly along,
reaching Nancy in the late evening, and was practically empty to that point.
We waited for a long time in the station at Nancy, and, as it was a clear, moon¬
lit evening, I fully expected that we should find ourselves in time for the usual
nightly bombing, during which the railroad yards were always a favourite target;
it was too early, however, for the German hate to start. During the night, the
train filled up. It pursued a circuitous route somewhere just back of the lines,
and at each stop my carriage was invaded by French officers and men, off on
leave from their units; before long every seat in my compartment was occupied
WITHOUT CENSOR
149
by French officers, with several others sleeping on the floor, while the corridor of
the train was so thickly covered with sleeping poilus that it was not possible to
walk along it. I had taken the precaution of settling myself early in the evening
in the seat by the window facing forward; the windows would not open, but the
window in the door did, and I had left it open in order to have plenty of fresh air.
The first French officer who entered, saw this open window, gave an exclamation
of horror, and made a bee-line for it and closed it. By the time the compartment
and corridor had filled up, the smell of unwashed humanity was something over¬
powering and terrific. I waited until unmistakable sounds in different keys told
me that, beyond peradventure, all the French officers were asleep. I leaned
quietly forward, and opened the window in the door again, and, wrapping myself
anew in my overcoat, I waited to see what would happen. Before long I heard
the sound of grumbling, and an officer arose shivering, and, cursing fluently, made
his way over prostrate forms to the window and closed it. I observed the spot
to which he returned, and when that comer of the carriage was once more con¬
tributing its share to the general harmony, I again opened the window. That
time, I got to sleep before it was closed, but the breathless and pungent atmos¬
phere was too much to stand and I awoke again, and again I opened the window.
I spent that entire night opening that window at intervals, after repeated closings
on the part of the French Army. If I had not done so, I should have been as¬
phyxiated: I never understood why they did not discover that it was I who was
giving them so much trouble and take drastic action upon my person; but I
finally decided that it must have been a different French officer each time.
Upon arriving in Paris the following morning, I made straight for the Hotel
Continental, settled myself in a room, ordered two breakfasts and ate them both,
and, unpacking my belongings, sent for the valet and had all my uniforms
pressed. After this, and a piping hot bath, I felt sufficiently improved to tele¬
phone one of my relatives, a major on the Staff of the American Chief of Air
Service who was stationed at that time in Paris, and arranged to have luncheon
with him at another hotel, where we exchanged family news and I found out what
he knew about the War. After luncheon I moved myself and my belongings to
the railway station, and took a train for La F6rte-sous-Jouarre, passing through
Meaux en route, and arriving at my destination late in the afternoon. Upon
alighting from the train, I found the railway station in ruins; it had been entirely
demolished by German air-plane bombs the night before. Leaving my lugg(HP
under the eye of an American sentry, I made my way through the town, which
everywhere showed signs of aerial bombardment, and was directed to the Head¬
quarters First American Army, which was located in a large private dwelling.
I found that the Chief of Staff was absent, and that he would not be back until
the following morning, so I looked up the Billeting Officer and secured a room,
assembled my luggage from the station with some difficulty, and, after a supper
of biscuit and sardines from my bedding-roll, settled down for the night.
Centurion.
(To be continued)
INDRAWAL
OUR GREAT OPPORTUNITY
I T was stated at the last Convention that the time might come when we
should have to dig ourselves in, when the very existence of the Society will
be hidden from the surface of the earth, cut down to the root; that the day
will probably come when there will be no more public meetings, no more
Quarterly as we now know it, no more Conventions.
This statement startled and, perhaps, dismayed some of our members, in spite
of the care that was exercised to prevent misunderstandings and unwarranted
fears over the implications of what was said. For example, we were told that we
should not make the mistake of supposing that cutting down to the root will
mean that the Movement is being snuffed out, or has ended in failure; but,
on the contrary, that indrawal means transference of energy from the outer to
the inner,—the perpetuation of what would otherwise die; that the process is not
a negative, but a positive one; that what it means, in short, is discipleship.
Thus it was made abundantly clear that if we wish to form part of the root—
the “nucleus”—we cannot toy with the idea of discipleship; we must embrace it
whole-heartedly, with singleness of purpose and with fixity of attention and
will.
At the meetings of the New York Branch during the season of 1934-35, much
was said explicitly as well as implicitly on the subject of indrawal. In an address
in which was discussed the rise and fall and cyclic progress of civilization, and its
corollary—reincarnation, the cyclic progress of the soul of man,—it was shown
that this cyclic movement, this alternation of opposites, is a law of nature and is
found everywhere; that “the succession of alternates through which our lives
must be lived, compels us to recognize that we must take the thing which comes
to us and store it up within ourselves where it will be useful to us, just as we take
air into our lungs”. By this cyclic alternation of receiving a gift and then being
deprived of it, we are given an opportunity to utilize the gift, to embody it and
make it ours, to learn self-reliance, and thereby acquire the ability to carry on,
when the original inspiration has been withdrawn. Cavd, in Fragments (Vol. 1),
advises those who would seek the Masters to learn the first step, which is
“Isolation”—to “Stand Alone”,—and the second step, the other side of the first,
which is “Obedience”. “Isolation” is only a step in the process of learning
to think and act for oneself, so as to “know only that which you yourself have
tried and tested”. After we have in this way acquired a little knowledge, we
should not allow a feeling of self-satisfaction to develop, as though we ourselves
had accomplished anything, because the simple truth is that everything we have
and are that is in any sense real, is a gift from our Master. And one of the gifts
of the Masters is this period of indrawal, when in order to find our own Master
INDRAWAL, OUR GREAT OPPORTUNITY
151
we must seek him with all our heart, and, as Fragments warns, must rise to his
plane, for in actual fact the Masters cannot descend to ours.
So, then, the crux of the matter is: Are we prepared, do we really desire, to
enter into that inner life of the spirit, or are we content to drift and to remain
unwilling to make the effort,—that fierce, indomitable effort of will referred to
in Light on the Path —to grasp this opportunity, this invitation, which the cycle
of indrawal presents? Do we believe in, are we convinced of the truth of the
statement that the inner life is that which all must eventually lead, and the
path of discipleship that along which all must eventually travel? Enough was
said at Convention to convince us mentally that this is true, but have we
arrived at an inner conviction strong enough to impel us to action, using all the
force and energy of which we are capable? Or, shall we continue to dissipate
that force and energy upon outer things, which are but feeble and transitory
shadows of the real world?
Another aspect of the meaning of indrawal, given at Convention, was supple¬
mented in an address before the New York Branch, when it was pointed out
that science, having compassed the whole physical universe, discovers that it is
limited, and is, in fact, empty. It was said that when our thought has com¬
passed the whole physical universe and reached its boundaries, it is like the out¬
going of the breath when it has been exhaled. Then we have to draw it in
again. In the same way, when we have reached the turning point of a cycle,
we should reverse our polarity; when we have gone out to the furthest limits,
we should prepare to go within. We can do this only by looking at life in terms
of spiritual law, by realizing that the external universe is but a manifestation
of spiritual law, and that the causal factors are in consciousness. It was suggested
that in the same way in which science has discovered this emptiness of the
universe, we should have been able to discover the emptiness of all external
things, and that the personality—the ordinary everyday level of consciousness
of the ordinary person—is a mere dream, a mirage of our past consciousness. It
was further pointed out that, once we have discovered this fact for ourselves, we
should not stop there, but should fill the void with real thoughts, real perception
and real understanding.
How, then, can we turn this opportunity of indrawal into a positive process^
We should regard it as a gift from the Masters,—an opportunity to learn and to
grow in understanding. After a cycle of inspiration and help through the
Quarterly, Branch meetings and the Annual Conventions of the Society, we
should have been able to store up within ourselves material which would serve to
transform our lives completely if we made use of but a small portion of what
we have received. Year after year at our Conventions, delegate after delegate
has expressed appreciation and gratitude for the help and inspiration received
from the Quarterly. If all outer activities of the Society should cease, the
thfty-two volumes of the Quarterly already published contain all and more
than any of us need to work with indefinitely, if we will but use the gifts that have
been poured out upon us with unselfish love and unsparing devotion, and show
our appreciation by a more determined effort to embody the ideals which they
152
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
hold before us. If, for example, we should take the following lines from Frag¬
ments” (Quarterly, July, 1935) as a subject for meditation and resolution, to
be carried out in our everyday life, thefe would be no occasion for uneasiness
or dismay at the prospect of the Movement being cut down to the root:
“Who knows where earth begins and heaven ends; who can fix the boundary
of that inner world and this, determine what is seen and what unseen?
‘‘Why grant a boundary between ourselves and heaven? What boundary can
there be, save sin?
‘‘Living in heavenly-mindedness, we shall make earth one with heaven,
remove the veil, nor know which pavement, whether clay or gold, we tread.”
H.P.B., in Isis , writes of a beautiful Chinese legend which illustrates “living
in heavenly-mindedness”. A pious matron and her two servants lived entirely
“with thoughts turned to the Land of Enlightenment”. One of the maid¬
servants died and passed over to the “Realm of Amita”. The surviving maid
told her mistress the following day that her deceased companion had appeared
to her in a dream and said: “Thanks to the persevering supplications of our
dear mistress, I am become an inhabitant of Paradise, and my blessedness is past
all expression”. The matron replied that she would believe what the deceased
maid had said if she should appear to her. The next night the deceased appeared
to her mistress. The lady asked if she might visit the “Land of Enlightenment”,
and the reply was that she had only to follow her hand-maiden. This she did
in her dream, and perceived a lake of immeasurable expanse, overspread with
innumerable red and white lotus flowers, of various sizes, some blooming, some
fading. She asked what those flowers might signify. The maiden replied:
“These are all human beings on the earth whose thoughts are turned to the
Land of Enlightenment. The very first longing after the paradise of Amita
produces a flower in the Celestial Lake, and this becomes daily larger and more
glorious as the self-improvement of the person whom it represents advances; in
the contrary case, it loses in glory and fades away.” The matron desired to
know the name of an enlightened one who reposed on one of the flowers, clad in
waving and wondrously glistening raiment. Her whilom maid answered: “That
is Yang-kie”. Then asked she the name of another, and was answered: “That
is Mahu”. When the matron awoke, she sent to inquire for Yang-kie and Mahu.
The first had already departed; the other was still alive and well. “And thus the
lady learned that the soul of one who advances in holiness and never turns back,
may be already a dweller in the Land of Enlightenment, even though the body
still sojourn in this transitory world.”
“Living in heavenly-mindedness!” Living toward, as it were, the “Land of
Enlightenment”! Is not that what is meant by indrawal, and being cut down to
the root? Is it not a transference of energy from the outer to the inner?
By filling the emptiness of our personalities with real thoughts, real perception
and real understanding, we shall be living in the real world, and come at last to
find that there is no boundary between us and heaven. If we act upon that
realization, our lives will be made vibrant with purpose, our personalities will
become transformed. H.G,
FLOWERS
Vedi I'eccelso omai , e la larghezza
dell'eterno valor , poscia che tanti
speculi fatti s'ha, in che si spezza ,
uno manendo in sk, come davanti.
See now the height and breadth of the eternal worth , since it hath made itself so
many mirrors wherein it breaketh , remaining in itself one as before .— II Paradiso.
HE morning sun has come out after the rain. Its light, broken into in¬
numerable facets, glitters in the raindrops which hang upon the leaves
and blades of grass. Myriads of little rainbows are flashing from these
jewels, so soon to be drawn back into the sky. Scarcely less transitory than
they, are the morning-glories open upon the twining vines over the trellis.
They too are like a rainbow, their trumpets full of that vibrating colour only a
translucent medium can show. Some are white, some a delicate pink, some a
deep rose. There are others of a violent magenta, and others a dark ultramarine
or purple. There are many large ones, of a marvellous blue to be found again
only in early stained glass. They evoke the splendid windows of Chartres,
Notre Dame de la Belle Verrikre, where the Virgin and Child are surrounded by
such a blue effulgence. They remind us that the One Light in manifesting itself,
split into seven resplendent rays of colour. “Oh Splendour of God whereby
I saw the lofty triumph of the truthful realm!”
It is in all the “Works of God”, in manifested nature, that we see mirrored
the facets of the one unbroken Light. Why do we see it? That we may love it
and desire it. How do we see it? By that Sun’s light which shines within our
own hearts. Sometimes, indeed most times, we find it very difficult to see in
the unevolved matter, where the idea is working, the divine paradigm; but, in
flowers, men of all races and climes have perceived something of the beauty^f
perfection, and a deep corresponding significance. Jacob Boehme wrote ofiffe
Signature of All Things, the stamp upon them of the creative rays. I suppose
that occult botany is based upon such correspondences, hidden to the undevel¬
oped eye of the ordinary scientist. What marvellous secrets, what poems must
be read by the Adept in these divine hieroglyphics!
In every religion some flower has had a peculiar sanctity and meaning. One
thinks at once of the great rosy lotus of India and China, of the blue lotus of
Egypt, of the roses and lilies of Christendom. In The Secret Doctrine there is
a chapter devoted to the symbol of the lotus. In Hindu and Buddhist art it is
everywhere represented. I remember a Sung figure of the Sleeping Avalokitesh-
wara: the great Creative Being slumbers, sunk in pralaya. His head is resting
on one hand and his arm is supported by a kind of lion. The other hand still
holds a rosary; its beads are world chains. From behind him spring lotus plants;
153
i 5 4 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
to the left, one leaf and a seed pod, the fruit and seed of the past; to the right,
leaves and a bud, the world to come.
When we think of Egypt do we not remember at once the great columns of
Kamak, whose shafts are stems bound together, and the capitals, lotus flowers?
In Mexico there is the god Xochipilli. Upon his body are carved blossoms. He
sits upon the ground, his hands upon his knees, and gazes with huge staring
eyes upon the heaven whence come the sun and rain. In his intense concentra¬
tion he is calling down these blessings upon earth. Then there is the goddess
of flowers, Xochiquetzal. The lily of the West was brought down from heaven
by the hand of the Archangel Gabriel. As for the rose, it is the form of para¬
dise itself.
All over the world, men have brought offerings of flowers to the gods, be¬
cause of their beauty, and because they saw in them, perhaps, a supreme ex¬
ample of the florescence of a divine idea, something as pure and complete as
the heart of the perfected Saint. At all festivals there are flowers, at banquets,
at weddings, at funerals. The Hindu priests are hung with wreaths of mari¬
golds and crowned with jasmine. The Polynesians wear leis of scented flowers.
Alcibiades, when he leaned against the doorpost, looking in at Socrates, in the
Symposium, was crowned with violets. The English lover hung garlands upon
the threshold of his beloved on May Day morn. There is even a romantic spider
who woos his lady with a bouquet of green leaves clasped in his front legs.
There is the Language of Flowers. Alas that now-a-days so few should study
this delightful subject! “Syrian Mallow—consumed by love. Purple Hya¬
cinth—sorrow. Jonquil—I desire a return of affection. Monarda—your whims
are unbearable. Wild Tansy—I declare war against you.” Someday, when
the reaction sets in, this ought to be a part of the curriculum of all “Female
Academies”, just as flower arrangement is essential to the education of the
Japanese girl. We live in an age when the arts of life are neglected!
In a description of the visit of Sudhana to the Abode of the Bodhisattvas—
the “Tower which holds within itself an array of brilliantly shining objects”—
it is said: “Asamkhyeyas (which means innumerable), Asamkhyeyas of bells
tinkle in the breeze, asamkhyeyas of flowers are showered, asamkhyeyas of
wreaths are swinging. ...” These asamkhyeyas of flowers have fallen upon
the earth, over the fields and woods and mountains. Everywhere they grow,
poppies of Iceland, giant Himalayan lilies, sheets of delicate evening primroses
upon the desert, narcissus upon the Alpine pastures, fuchsias on the slopes of
Andean volcanoes, myriads of humble flowers by the roadside. And who can
say which is the most beautiful? “The supremely pure splendour of the im¬
partible essence illumines all things at once.”
Did you ever see the Passion Flower? You know at once that it is a special
and mystical creation.
Oh ye who view the marvellous without surprise
And know that a chaste virgin can tame unicorns
Or a white hart appear, the Cross between his horns,
Or gushing crystal waters from a rock arise,
FLOWERS
i5S
Nor doubt that faith should bring to pass a miracle
Beside the marble shrine where some great saint lies dead,
Nor that a moon of light surrounds a holy head,
Now gaze with awe upon this lovely pentacle.
The Passion Flower here its mystic signs displays
Within the wide spread chalice of its open heart.
The Crown of Thorns shows in its purple-powdered rays,
Its stamens five are the five Wounds His flesh did part,
The three sharp Nails are the three styles borne uppermost,
The column is the Cross, the calix holds the sacred Host.
Did you ever watch the night-blooming cereus open in the southern moon¬
light? When the darkness falls, its tight buds begin to stir as though they
felt the influence of the approaching moon. Slowly, slowly the rosette of white
petals unfolds. One can see the petals move. When they have opened out,
a cascade of pale stamens loosens itself, and the air is filled with perfume. All
night long it hangs in amazing beauty, but with the day it closes up and dies.
It is so strangely lovely that it seems to come from another planet, to be a
heavenly visitant. What does it signify? When was it created and by Whom?
To celebrate what love, sacrifice and triumph? To prefigure what paradise?
Then, there are the flowers of art. They are as numberless and as living as
the flowers of the field and garden. There is the dandelion visited by a butter¬
fly, painted by the Emperor Hui Tsung. He lost the half of his empire, but in
his palace south of the Yellow River he painted such masterpieces as must
cause the gods to forget his defeat. There are the oases of Persian miniatures.
There are the pink-tipped daisies and harebells of illuminated Books of Hours.
There are the “flowery meads” of wild strawberries, iris, pansies, daffodils and
pinks in millefleur tapestries. Who can forget Diirer’s little bunch of violets,
or the pale roses which fall through the air in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus?
One of the beautiful pictures of the West is the Wilton Diptich. It is thought
by the authorities to be English. It was painted about 1396 for King Richard
the Second. In one panel, the Virgin, surrounded by angels, holds up the Infant
Jesus to receive the homage of the king. In the other, Richard himself is l^el-
ing, accompanied by three saints. The Virgin is wrapped in a blue rob^md
all the little angels are dressed in blue. They have long wings shaded to dark
blue which make a fringe against the gold sky. They are frail creatures, and
their pale yellow curls are crowned with roses. One of them bears the pennant
of St. George, a red cross on a white field. The infant Jesus, clad in a gold cloth,
leans forward from His mother’s arms to bless the king. The ground is strewn
with flowers, large blue columbines and roses. The whole effect is of a celestial
world of blue and gold. Richard, who kneels in the foreground of the second
panel, has a heavy cloak of ruddy gold. On his head he wears the crown. His
Jiands are raised in prayer. Behind him, against the gold sky, are the three
patrons; first, St. John the Baptist, who clasps a lamb to his bosom with one
arm, and touches Richard’s shoulder with the other, as if encouraging him.
1 5 6 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
With him are two magnificent kings, St. Edward and St. Edmund. One, a ma¬
jestic old man with a white beard, is clothed in cream-coloured velvet with
ermine. He holds a ring. His sleeve, which shows as his mantle falls back, is
a pure, light blue. This note, which recalls the blues of the other panel, is like
a phrase of music. The second king is a younger man. He wears a cape of green
lined with ermine and a rich robe of blue and gold brocade. He bears, as a
sceptre, an arrow.
This picture, with its splendid harmonies of colour and rhythm, its style
and poetry, is itself like a flower, the work of a long evolution, the incarnation
of an idea. The reason why I think of it now is that one of its themes is the
humility and obedience of the king. He is presented by his great patrons to
the King of Heaven because he is simple, humble and desirous to obey. The
angels of Heaven are crowned with flowers because they are obedient. . . .
What has obedience to do with flowers? A very great deal. The plant grows
because it obeys the law of its being. The sense of hearing of the plant is turned
to listen to the voice of that law. In The Secret Doctrine we are told that plant
consciousness corresponds to that of the Second Round, and, we may infer, to
Buddhi, the Spiritual Will. Spiritual Will runs through plants like the flowing
sap, and they offer it no resistance. They heed it and it alone. They struggle
indomitably with the obstacles of weather, of rock or soil. They grow around
the rock, they bend from the wind, they spring up in tiny crannies. And some
of them, when they have succeeded, burst forth in a cry of triumph, a perfected
work, a divine signature, a flower. There are climates where this impulse of
manifestation is so strong that the plants threaten to overgrow everything,
where giant lianas spring up over night, where one can see the vines fling out
their tendrils, where one can hear the sound of this onrush of foliage. Writing
of Ceylon, Carr6 describes a forest after rain, when violet and brown orchids
and scarlet lilies burst out on the bushes. “Continuous creation, universal urge,
dan vital , divinity everywhere dispersed and everywhere present, eternal
Becoming.”
The heat, the growth, the luxuriance of summer are the symbols of the ardent
desire for material manifestation, when all the Powers, rushing forth, hasten
to incarnate, and to express as perfectly as may be the limitless ideas of the
One Being. As these Powers are mirrored and divided at the circumference of
the circle—for us, the physical world—they turn to retrace their journey, to
renew themselves once more in the source of all fire, Fount and Origin, Fons
et Origo. Thus, when the impulse begins to recede, as the sun in our latitudes
rolls away, and when the plant has carried out its plan as far as it can in one
life-span, the leaves fall, the flowers fade, the winter comes. Splendidly glitter¬
ing, the Winter Constellations rise in the night sky, like the turned page in the
great illuminated book wherein the sages read. The year has been made in a
revolving sphere that he who contemplates it may see that each season moves
towards the other, all resolved in one motion.
With what pomp and magnificence the triumph of accomplishment is cele¬
brated in our woods and fields. The leaves are red and gold, the fields are full
FLOWERS
i57
of golden rod, of asters, of purple ironweed and rosy violet eupatory. They
are like the great Gothic cathedrals when their roofs were painted with lapis
lazuli spangled with gold stars, and their columns were banded with colours;
when tapestries hung on their walls and the windows flashed in coruscations of
sapphire, emerald and ruby, like the wings of Archangels. The smoke of au¬
tumn bonfires is like incense. In the fields, upon the altar, and in the heart,
men are called to celebrate the ritual of that Mass in which is figured Birth,
Passion, Death and Resurrection.
Manifestation is not" all creative joy. It is pain. It is crucifixion upon the
mundane cross. For the flower, which obeys the creative command, the Divine
Will, there is patience and peace. The sun may wither it or the rain beat it
down, or the armies of the insect world assail it. It accepts all as part of its
evolution, without talking about its “rights”. But man, who has free will,
refuses to think of himself as the vehicle of the Divine Life, as a creature des¬
tined to execute the purpose of the Creator. He refuses to think of himself
as destined at all, even by his own sins. He is satisfied with himself, imperfect
as he is, and wonders why any obstacles should lie in his path. He fancies he
is outside the Laws of Nature. Therefore, he lives in a hell. The circles of the
Inferno are built by man.
Where is the way of escape? How very simple. Even by considering the
lilies of the field he may see the way. Nor has he been left without supreme
Examples. There are those Great Ones who have carried out the desire of
the Spiritual Will in themselves, who have incarnated the divine purpose, who
have resolved the duality of the poles and attained the immortality of conscious
union with that plan. Every Avatar has declared himself to be the Way.
“Therefore to the Essence which hath such privilege that whatsoever good
be found outside of it is naught else save a light of its own ray, more than to
any other must the mind needs move in love. . .
One of the greatest works of Western art is the PietA of Avignon. Upon a
dark and desolate plain, the Virgin, Mary Magdalen, and John, grieve over
the body of Christ taken from the Cross. The Virgin, in the centre, prays over
that body which lies upon her knees. St. John with one hand supports tha
head which even in death is surrounded by rays of light. The Magdalen, bef
ing the perfumed oil, kneels weeping by the feet. At the extreme left, the donor
kneels, but he does not look at them, for they are in another world. He con¬
templates that vision in his heart. Contemplate here the sacrifice of the whole
of the personal self. That which to man is the bitter end and sorrow, is to the
spirit the return home and the Way of Resurrection.
Soon the trees will be bare, and the dried seedpods, empty of their fruit, will
rattle in the cold winds. The flower fades, the body dies. The true form of the
i ower endures, the divine paradigm of man persists. Other plants and flowers
111 spring up to express that form. The soul of man will reincarnate to carry
forward into ever-increasing completeness the nature of that paradigm. When
the consciousness of man has raised itself to the understanding of the true
significance of form, and has united itself with it, man will be an immortal.
158 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Eckhart says: “God’s purpose in the union of Contemplation is fruitfulness in
works.” So, in works, the divine purpose is the union of Contemplation.
It is our destiny and path which the whole of summer’s effulgence and the
splendour of the flowers are pointing out to us. Already the morning-glories
are closing their trumpets under the heat of the sun, and the diamond garlands
of the raindrops have evaporated. Soon, we too shall have vanished from the
face of the earth, “gone five-wards”, as the Hindus say of the dispersion of the
physical body into the elements. There is “a fourth kind of Pralaya; the Nitya,
or Constant Dissolution . . . the change which takes place imperceptibly in
every thing in this universe from the globe down to the atom, without cessation.
It is growth and decay—life and death.” If this were all and nothing more, if
our life were merely a brief flowering, so incomplete and imperfect, what would
be the significance of this changing universe? No. Life is the constant striving
of the Divine Being to incarnate itself fully in every atom. The raindrop
which flashes back to the sun its refulgent colours, partakes of the nature of the
sun and must return those rays. How shall we receive and partake of the
mysteries of the occult Transubstantiation?
We have to follow, in our small cycle, the course of the greater. From the
atom of the Spiritual Sun in our hearts the power of love must rise into our
minds, there to image itself in self-conscious thought, and this, in turn, must be
incarnated in the physical world in action. Then the fruit of action will return
to us in contemplation, and we shall complete the cycle, not in the darkness of
death, but awake. As we gradually incarnate the purposes of the Spiritual Will,
they become our own, and we share the immortal Life and Intellect.
In form, then, of a white rose displayed itself to me that sacred soldiery which in his
blood Christ made his spouse;
but the other, which, as it flieth, seeth and doth sing his glory who enamoureth it,
and the excellence which hath made it what it is,
like to a swarm of bees which doth one while plunge into the flowers and another
while wend back to where its toil is turned to sweetness,
ever descended into the great flower adorned with so many leaves, and reascended
thence to where its love doth ceaseless make sojourn.
Sauvage.
There are vast worlds all placed away within the hollows of each atom , multifarious
as the motes in a sunbeam .— Yoga Vasishtha.
REMARKS BY THE WAY
K ING George is dead. The whole world regrets it, and millions genuinely
grieve. When he came to the throne he was regarded with indifference.
His devoted and unselfish service, his integrity and sincerity, won him
the extraordinary affection and respect which his Jubilee, and now his death,
made so evident. A great loss. He had come to be regarded as a centre of
stability in the chaos of recent years, and thus had fulfilled one of the primary
functions of a King. Truly “humble of heart”, his reliance on Divine Providence,
combined with much common-sense, had given him the strength to carry a
burden which the limitations of his authority must at times have made almost
intolerable. He was not the man to wash his hands of moral responsibility, and
yet he had been deprived of all power except that which his Ministers chose to
concede to him. It is my belief, none the less, that during the Great War his
quiet determination to “see the thing through” had contributed greatly to the
Allied cause. Brought up in the Royal Navy, it was part of his creed to fight his
ship until either it won or went to the bottom. For the example which he and
Queen Mary set in their own home, as man and wife, as father and mother, it
would be impossible to be too grateful. They hated immorality and vulgarity.
One can only hope that the Queen will continue to exert the same influence,
unimpeded.
Everyone must wish that the new King will leave as fine a record behind him.
To use an old-time expression: may he grow in grace as in wisdom and dignity,
and live to be blest by his people as his father was before him.
King George did not seek popularity; it came to him as a result of the respect
he earned. It is greatly to be hoped that his son will refrain from trying “to sell
himself” to the mob. Apart from other considerations, the mob, in the long
run, always turns and rends those who pander to it.
Rudyard Kipling’s death is a sad loss also. He stood for certain principles
which the world of to-day is ceasing to understand. He was a great creaJ^fc
artist, and although it may be said that his genius sometimes became mudaied
as it percolated through his brain, the fact remains that much of what he wrote
will be quoted as long as English literature exists.
He was a Freemason with an uncommon understanding of the tenets of the
Craft,—of tenets which echo the esotericism of by-gone ages. He worked for
Brotherhood between East and West, by portraying the manhood, valour and
chivalry, which he loved, and which he honoured whether met in the races of
India or among his own people.
Every great artist is a seer, and Kipling was something of a prophet too. Years
^pfore the Great War he saw it coming, and saw Germany as the cause of it.
159
«
i6o
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
In every way possible he tried to prepare England and the Empire for the
struggle, though, like most prophets, he warned deaf ears.
He understood and loved France and its people as few Englishmen do. It
became the longing of his life that England and France should stand together
in forceful defence of the ideals which, in their souls, both nations cherish. For
he was a reader of souls, and was not deceived by appearances. He knew that
the talk and squirmings of politicians are of the surface, not of the depths.
Really loving, of necessity he hated also,—totally unlike in this, as in so many
other ways, those similitudes of men who pride themselves upon merging good
and evil into a meaningless conceit.
Let us be thankful for his life, and for the record he left behind him.
Speaking of Kipling reminds me, for reasons that will be obvious, of a state¬
ment I read recently in a book entitled An Infant in Anns: War Letters of a
Company Officer , 1914-1918 , by Graham H. Greenwell, M.C. The author writes
objectively throughout, to speak in modem parlance; that is, without moralizing,
without comment,—with this single exception. He is in the Italian Alps, facing
the Austrians, some time after the disaster of Caporetto, when the French and
English had hurried to the aid of Italy; and, as usual, he records his experience:
“We are in colder regions now and the weather is absolutely poisonous. We got
soaked on the march yesterday, but it only made the men more cheerful. It is
always the same with them; it needs really rotten circumstances to get the best
out of them.”
There is the test both of men and nations, for, granting that the superior man,
in the Confucian sense, can maintain himself at his best in prosperity and
adversity alike, the good in the ordinary man would remain dormant for ever
if it were not for hardships and suffering. It is only the worthless whom adversity
crushes. From first to last in Kipling’s writings he made this law of life clear,
magnificently clear.
The death of Paul Bourget is another outstanding event, for his influence in
French literature was immense and will certainly endure. He was not only a
great novelist; he was profound in his insight into human nature, human motives.
Women have said that no one understood women as he did. Not always religious,
he became so, intensely and fervently, as the result of his study of life. Perhaps
one of his most helpful contributions to the data of ethics was the realization-
exemplified so forcibly in his Dbnon du Midi —that whenever a man persists in
violating his own conscience, he always ends by finding full justification for his
conduct in some soothing misinterpretation of his religion. In other words,
while the lives of the few are controlled by their religion, the many fit their
religion to the pattern of their lives. This, of course, is just as true of Theos-
ophists as of orthodox Christians, Buddhists or Hindus.
An ornithologist connected with one of our American universities tells me that
the feeding of wild birds on a large scale, in times of severe frost or drought, has
REMARKS BY THE WAY
161
now been proved to be thoroughly destructive because the birds rapidly lose the
ability to find food for themselves, and that the ability, once lost, is not recovered,
so that they die of starvation by the thousand. Instead of migrating when they
ought to do so, they wait to be fed. In one or more European countries, where
ornithology and the care of wild birds are supervised by the government, laws
have consequently been passed to prohibit what until recently was regarded not
only as a kindness, but as the only way to preserve wild life.
At the same time I hear from friends in the middle West that small-town,
self-respecting families, the members of which refused help a few years ago unless
they were allowed to work for it, have now become so demoralized by govern¬
ment aid that they refuse work when it is offered to them, shamelessly asking
why they should work when it is the “duty” of the government to support
them.
The attempt of our politicians to supplant the laws of Nature, both biolog¬
ical and spiritual, will prove ruinous in more ways than one. Such folly, and
vanity, remind one of their opposites,—the statement of Master K.H. as quoted
in The Occult World: “we but follow and servilely copy Nature in her works”,
—and thus perform “miracles”, he might have added.
I have been reading, not the book itself, but a review of the latest book by
Sir Norman Angell, Raw Materials , Population Pressure and War. Some of his
writings have done great harm, but it appears that his present effort should
dispose of the theory advocated by the late Frank Simonds and many others,
that world-peace would result if Germany, Italy and Japan, the so-called
“have-not” nations, were provided with colonies at the expense of nations
possessing them. Angell refutes this theory on the strength of known facts.
He points out, for instance, that in the Italian colony of Eritrea, there are only 84
Italians engaged in agriculture, and that only 90 Italian families could be
persuaded to settle in Libya in 1934. Why assume, then, that thousands would
flock to Ethiopia? Japan has owned Korea for twenty-five years and Formosa
for nearly forty; yet very few Japanese have settled in either place. With some
millions “on the dole” in Great Britain, most of whom, theoretically, might have
overflowed with advantage to one or another of England’s colonies or Crown
possessions, “in the year 1934, twenty thousand more Britons returned from the
overseas territories than went thereto.” The problem of raw materials is dealt
with in the same way, proving conclusively that Simonds’s theory springs from
the plane of Napoleon’s bete noire , ideology, not from the world of fact.
It should be clear in any case, as I see it, that you can never satisfy a man who
is a brigand both by nature and education: he will always want everything in
sight. There is a caste or tribe in India which regards it as a social and religious
duty to steal, and the peoples of Germany, Italy and Japan alike, have been
brought up to believe that it is their god-given destiny to dominate and to possess
whatlMff land they think they need. In that case, it is not stealing or brigandage:
on therontrary, should anyone interfere, as England interfered with Germany in
the Great War, or as England is considered to be interfering with Italy’s rape of
162
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Ethiopia, the would-be robber feels as if Righteousness itself were being infa¬
mously, wantonly outraged, in his person.
Part of the tragedy is that the world might have been at peace to-day if it
had not been for England’s mistakes since the war, for it was England who
made the resurgence and re-armament of Germany possible, and who proved,
to the delight of the wicked, but to the dismay of all who loved her and were not
blind, that brigandage in its most brutal form can be forgiven and forgotten if
this be thought expedient, and if that low motive be garnished with sentimental
and senseless sympathy for the man, or nation, you have helped to subdue.
Inevitably, the cost of this to England in the long run will be terrible—grievous
to contemplate—and she will get no help from America, or so it seems; for our
national self-centredness has been increased and is still increasing as a result
of domestic policies which encourage it in the individual. “Do nothing for
anybody and grab all you can”, is almost certain to control our international
relations, now that this has become the moral standard of so many (the voting
many) of our citizens.
Yet another self-proclaimed Initiate! I had hoped that Annie Besant and
Leadbeater, having reduced this sort of thing to the lowest stages of absurdity,
would have served as a reminder that the genuine Initiate is incapable of such
claims, whether made directly or by insinuation. Paul Brunton, in A Search in
Secret India , showed that he did not know the difference between psychic and
spiritual attainment. The most superficial student could see that, when visiting
yogis of various kinds, he failed to discriminate between the real and the unreal.
Psychic by nature, it was easy for his “Maharishee” in the south of India to
impose upon him a state of consciousness which was accepted as a great spiritual
illumination; and this, judging by his later book, A Search in Secret Egypt ,
appears to have had unfortunate, if inevitable, results. For him, it is no longer,
“Thus have I heard”, but, “Behold, I know!” And he treats all his psychic
impressions as if they were revelations from on high. “I have been able to
reconstruct”, he writes, “both from my own experience [psychic visions] within
the Pyramid, and from the evidences of wall carvings in the temples, the
mysterious drama of the innermost secret rite of Osiris”! When a man writes like
that, a student of Theosophy, unless quite new and green, is tempted to ejaculate,
“Poor ass!” Then there are times when he becomes mysterious: “I shall throw
out a hint”, he says (p. 207), “in the form of a question, as to the principle
involved in the secret meaning of hieroglyphs”,—which he follows with a
question which a boy might ask after listening to his first lecture on Egyptology.
Finally, he of course meets an Adept, who declares himself to be an Adept, and
who, following Mr. Brunton’s own account of the interview, had him thoroughly
hypnotized in about two minutes. The “Adept’s” eyes were “large and lustrous”.
“As I talked to him, there crept over me an irresistible sensation of their duplex
power, penetrative and hypnotic at the same time. They read my soul and they
then ruled it. They drew from my mind some of its secrets and they compelled me
to remain passive before him".
REMARKS BY THE WAY
163-
Hypnotists can do that with chickens. Adepts of the White Lodge do not do
such things, either with chickens or men. They regard any interference with a
man’s free will, or with his freedom of thought, as a crime.
To become a member of the Roman Catholic Church for me would be impossi¬
ble. This involves no criticism of any student of Theosophy who is able to
reconcile his theosophical beliefs with membership in that Church. Many of its
dogmas are open to a mystical interpretation which Theosophy supplies; but
there are other dogmas, such as that of Papal Infallibility (to mention only one),
which defy both reason and experience. I must add that, speaking for myself
as an individual, I find their misinterpretation of the doctrine of transubstanti-
ation, revolting.
None the less, it is the duty and opportunity of a student of Theosophy to
recognize and to be thankful for truth wherever he finds it, and, in my judgment,
there is more genuine spirituality flowing to-day from Roman Catholic sources
than from any other Church or religion. Much of their literature is marred, of
course, by their “Mother of God” obsession (another tragic misunderstanding);
but this can be ignored, and many of their books contain no reference to the
subject. The best of them contain pure Bhakti Yoga—the Yoga, or Union, of
Love—but with an understanding of the discipline involved which modern
India has lost. The discipline, as all of us know, was given to us in such books
as Light on the Path and The Voice of the Silence , while Fragments , by interpreting
and re-interpreting these, in the light of first-hand experience, should leave us
with no excuse for ignorance. Even so, a somewhat different or more detailed
and elaborate exposition of the same truths, cannot fail to be helpful, and
French Catholicism in particular supplies this with astonishing fecundity.
I am thinking for the moment of a book called Recueillement (sometimes trans¬
lated as recollection, or as reflection; but perhaps better as indrawal), the author
of which, A. D. Sertillanges, is a member of the Dominican Order. Our spirit, or
understanding, he says, is intended to think and judge in the Spirit of God,
much as a faithful dog reads the look in his master’s face; and it soon becomes
evident, as one.reads Sertillanges, that this is the source of his own Theos-sophia^
No one understands better than he, the duality of human nature, or the com¬
plexity of the lower personal self. More than that, he knows that “things are
but the frontiers of man” (surely a brilliant phrase), and knows, too, that
Hugo was wrong when saying that the soul is great but that man is small; for
it is the whole of man that is great, or will be, at the hour of man’s apotheosis.
The spiritual star-gazer, he declares, frees himself from the gross things of life
and from ephemeral desires,—which is something to the good; but the star¬
gazer forgets that what we regard as trifles have their relation with the All, and
acquire, by that within them which is eternal, a tragic importance.
Hftiat meaning has our life, he asks, unless it be an effort to change our inner-
mo^desires into realities; and whence these innermost desires unless stamped
upon us by the impulsion of the primal Cause?
Destiny is the excuse of the feeble and the work of the strong, he quotes; then
164 THE 0 S 0 PH 1 CAL QUARTERLY
adds: do not look for excuses, for with God we can always be strong and create
our own destiny.
There is scarcely a page in the book that does not shine with some truth o
Theosophy; but I am not extolling a book as exceptional; I am maintaining that
the Catholic approach to things to-day is more truly theosophical, in important
respects, than most students of Theosophy realize. No other church in America
has done as much to combat filthiness on the stage and in the movies ; while
its fight against divorce, birth control, and similar degeneracies has been fearless
and unremitting.
Take as a further illustration, the question of education. Not long ago I
bought a book by Father Vincent McNabb, the poet, for his essay on Francis
Thompson: delightful reading. Then, looking at other essays in the same
volume, I found one which quoted a statement given out by the Roman Catholic
Archbishops and Bishops of England and Wales in 1929, covering the “principles
which underlie the Catholic attitude on Education”,—as follows:
“(1) It is no part of the normal function of the State to teach.
”(2) The State is entitled to see that citizens receive due education sufficient
to enable them to discharge the duties of citizenship in its various degrees.
“(3) The State ought, therefore, to encourage every form of sound educational
endeavour, and may take means to safeguard the efficiency of education.
‘‘(4) To parents whose economic means are insufficient to pay for the education
of their children, it is the duty of the State to furnish the necessary means,
providing them from the common funds arising out of the taxation of the whole
community. But in so doing the State must not interfere with parental responsi¬
bility, nor hamper the reasonable liberty of parents in their choice of a school for
their children. Above all, where the people are not all of one creed, there must
be no differentiation on the ground of religion.
“(5) Where there is need of greater school accommodation the State may, in
default of other agencies, intervene to supply it; but it may do so only ‘in
default of, and in substitution for, and to the extent of, the responsibility of the
parents’ of the children who need this accommodation.
“(6) The teacher is always acting in loco parentis , never in loco civitatis , though
the State, to safeguard its citizenship, may take reasonable care to see that
teachers are efficient.
‘‘(7) Thus a teacher never is and never can be a civil servant, and should never
regard himself or allow himself to be so regarded. Whatever authority he may
possess to teach and control children, and to claim their respect and obedience,
comes to him from God, through the parents, and not through the State, except
in so far as the State is acting on behalf of the parents.”
There could hardly be a clearer statement of theosophical principles on this
subject; nor a more direct contradiction of the theories upon which Socialism,
Bolshevism, Fascism, Hitlerism, alike are based. Further, as Father McNabb
proceeds to point out:—
‘‘In saying that ‘it is no part of the normal function of the State to teach’,
the [Roman Catholic] Bishops have enunciated a principle of wider scope than
REMARKS BY THE WAY
165
mere education. There is a group of political thinkers whose doctrine is that
the best State is the one which exercises the greatest number of functions. In
other words, the State has the moral power to do all that it has the physical
power to do. Of course, this is the old false principle: ‘Might is Right’.”
This should make it clear that the protagonists of the New Deal in America
are among those whose theories are thus flatly challenged.
Part of the explanation is that the Church of Rome, with few exceptions,
stands by the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas; the Protestant Churches have
no philosophy; the Buddhists and Hindus have so many philosophies that they
‘do not know what to do with them, while the philosophies of Fascism, Hitlerism,
Bolshevism, Socialism and the New Deal are thoroughly materialistic, and must
prove themselves, in time, to be self-destructive.
Postscript.
The Quarterly was almost ready to go to press when Germany, by sending
troops into the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland, once again treated her
written promise as ‘‘a scrap of paper”. At the same time she offered another
written promise—a peace pact to last for twenty-five years. And there are
leading statesmen in England and elsewhere, who urge France and Belgium,
thus threatened, to regard Germany’s promises as guaranteeing security! It
would be incredible if it were not for the record of the past fifteen years. Some
people learn nothing and never will.
Prime Minister Baldwin, in the House of Commons, speaks of Germany as
having touched ‘‘all the most delicate, raw susceptibilities of the French”. If a
man were to point a loaded revolver within two inches of Mr. Baldwin’s nose,
and a so-called friend, instead of striking the revolver out of the man’s hand,
were gently to protest against this affront to Mr. Baldwin’s ‘‘susceptibilities”,
raw or otherwise, I doubt if Mr. Baldwin would feel, either that his case had
been adequately stated, or that his security had been guaranteed.
Mr. Eden is in terror lest the League of Nations should collapse. It is a
thousand pities that it was ever brought into being. It was the psychic, prema¬
ture anticipation of something for which the world may be ready in a millioiL
years. • Congress is a miniature League of Nations (States), and it is notoriou^
that the representatives of the forty-eight States, instead of thinking of the
welfare of the whole, think, first, of their personal interests, secondly, of the
interests of their States, and only then, if at all, of the general welfare. And
Americans, morally, are not inferior, so far as I can see, to Europeans. In
Congress, votes are ‘‘traded” quite openly: ‘‘If you will support me here, I will
support you there.” Principles are almost unknown. Inevitably, at this stage
of human evolution, the same is true of the League of Nations, although the
procedure is not always quite so crude.
‘‘The law of the jungle is the alternative”, it is said. But it is the law of the
jui^e, and no other, which controls to-day, and the League of Nations merely
ag^rvates that condition.
i66
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
All that Theosophy pleads for is a recognition of the facts, of the Truth.
Theosophy hates pretence and wanton self-deception. It refuses to call a
brigand who prides himself on being a brigand, a normal man, and it refuses to
pretend that the normal man is a saint. It knows that the normal man, the
vast majority of men, are self-seeking, and that this is true of nations, practi¬
cally without exception. But a nation like France seeks security and peace; a
nation like Soviet Russia seeks domination for her detestable ideas, and, in that
way, rather than by conquest, the enlargement of her sphere of influence.
Germany and Italy are seeking the enlargement of their territories, the material
domination of peoples, the magnification of their own sense of importance.
America does not care how many brigands are threatening the world, so long'
as they do not interfere with her; for she is seeking money, or, perhaps (for her
aims are nebulous) the “high standards of living” which money is supposed to
provide—and does not provide.
It would be better if the League of Nations, whose existence only beclouds
the issue, were to be disbanded. This would help statesmen to deal with facts,
which they loathe, and might release them from the world of dreams. Mean¬
while France, which has also been wedded to the League nostrum, has appealed
to it for help against Germany’s latest violation of her engagements; otherwise
France, which feels bound by her word, as Germany does not, could and should
have sent her armies straight into the Rhineland, to drive out the troops which
Germany has sent there, and to retain possession of it, with the Rhine or beyond
it as frontier, in spite of the shocked disapproval of those who pretend still to
pin their faith to “scraps of paper”.
No student of Theosophy can be of service to humanity until he has learned
to distinguish between psychic fancy and spiritual perception, between “ideol¬
ogy” and illumined common-sense, between the real and the unreal, between
“psychic and noetic action”. The dreamer argues in this way:—it is terrible
that tigers should kill to eat; tigers ought to live on bread-and-milk; they would
do so if they were treated properly, with kindliness; therefore dot the jungle
with bread-and-milk in pails, and tigers will become gentle and friendly, gam¬
bolling with the deer in the sunshine. When common-sense (and nous used to
be the schoolboy colloquialism for common-sense), when the man who, though
his heart may be in heaven, still has his feet on earth, points out that this sort
of thing was used as a symbol of the millennium, but was never suggested as an
ideal for to-morrow,—the ideologist, with an eye like an ichthyophthalmite (see
the dictionary!), is*either irritated or grieved by such lack of appreciation, and
works all the harder to convince the world that his utopianism is sound sense.
There is a type of wiseacre, however, who is perhaps more dangerous than
the addle-pated dreamer: I am thinking of the man who has “been there”, who
“knows”. Many of them write books. They cite their own experience and
observation, and thus base their conclusions upon “facts”, unable or unwilling
to see that their facts are far too few to make sound conclusions possible.
Figuratively, they declare a man to be good because he has blue eyes and a
square jaw, and was polite to them when they asked their way. They know
REMARKS BY THE WAY
167
nothing of his past, nothing of his behaviour except through their superficial
contact with him. Thus, some young man, perhaps a medical student, will
make a tour through Germany on his bicycle. He admires the hardworking
peasants, and is grateful for the friendly treatment he receives from everyone
he encounters. He writes a book about his experience, reporting his facts faith¬
fully; but his personal reactions are misleading,. and his conclusions are all
wrong, because he knows nothing of Germany’s past, no.thing of the German
nature when acting collectively. He knows nothing of the racial mediumship,
of the hysteria, the madness, which literally takes possession of a German
crowd under the influence of a “spell-binder” who flatters them, and who de¬
liberately plays upon their emotions with the aid of military bands and the wild
shouting of patriotic songs. Their leaders use hypnotism in all its forms to pro¬
duce the desired effect,—an insanity of personal and national egotism. A timid,
kindly “baker or candlestick-maker”, will leave such a meeting, swollen to the
bursting-point, drunk with the conviction that because he is a German he is a
Held , a hero, a lion among men, and that the rest of the world exists but to be
subjected to his race of super-men. There are exceptions—always there are
some exceptions—but the vast majority of Germans look back upon their per¬
formance during the Great War, from the violation of Belgium’s neutrality to
the sinking of the Irish cross-channel passenger 5 . 5 . Leinster , in October, 1918,
not only as justifiable, but as noble beyond compare. Addressing a large party
of American editors, visiting England, on the day this last-named German
exploit became known, the quiet Arthur Balfour declared: “Brutes they were
and . . . brutes they remain”—a pronouncement greeted with a storm of
applause—applause conveniently forgotten by most of those who were present
—and filling those whom he condemned with a further sense of their own in¬
dubitable superiority.
England, we are told, is not ready, is not sufficiently armed; but whose fault
is that! And does a brave man, when a friend’s life is threatened, try to excuse
inaction on any such grounds? Or is the brave man, in this case, still shell¬
shocked and shattered? England, in the Great War, suffered terribly. But
she did not suffer as France and Belgium suffered, and they have not lost their
nerve.
The worship of comfort, the craving for “prosperity”, the fear of pain, the
dread of death, and the softening of the moral fibre which these low aims and
fears entail,—these are the evils which are sapping the manhood of the English-
speaking world, more so in America than in England, but in England, at this
moment, with tragic and appalling effect, obvious to civilized humanity. For,
once again, Germany would not have dared if she had had reason to expect
uncalculating fearlessness.
Is it too late to hope that England, even at this eleventh hour, will meet the
armed bully with naked fists if necessary, but with that faith in the power of
righteousness, with that white heat of indignation, which are invincible even in
hell, and which never fail to cow a bully into submission?
The Spirit of Man in Asian Art , by Laurence Binyon; Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1935; price, $4.00.
This is one of those rare and beautiful books which one reads slowly because
one does not want to finish it but to savour it and to hoard one’s enjoyment.
Dr. Binyon, “Sometime Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum”,
is well known to students of Oriental art. He speaks not only with the authority
of scholarship, but with that of a profound understanding, sympathy and sensi¬
bility. One feels that one is listening to a master of the subject. Sometimes,
indeed, we seem not to be reading this book at all, but to be looking with new
eyes upon the works of art themselves, and to be living in that atmosphere of
spiritual perception, contemplation and intense feeling which produced them.
No other work which we have read on the subject conveys so completely and
exquisitely this impression. Those who only know Western art will discover
that it throws light upon its peculiar qualities, and those who are not particularly
interested in any art will, nevertheless, find it full of illuminating ideas. It is
profusely illustrated with reproductions of some of the most beautiful examples
of Asian art.
Dr. Binyon speaks first of the wonderful early bronzes of China and of the
paintings of Ku K’ai-chih. He then takes up the fresco art of India at Ajanta
and Bagh, the sculpture of the Gupta period, the Greek influences of Gandhara,
and their effects, through Buddhism, upon China and Japan. In the Sung
period, when Buddhism and the native Chinese mysticism of the Tao came
together in Zen, Chinese painting attained its most sublime heights.
Hollowness, emptiness—these are words, these are ideas, from which our instincts
recoil; they are repugnant. But Lao-tzu makes friends with the idea of Space, he makes
it companionable; he dwells on the uses of emptiness. “Clay is moulded into a vessel;
the utility of a vessel depends on its hollow interior. Doors and windows are cut out in
order to make a house; the utility of the house depends on the empty spaces. Thus,
while the existence of things may be good, it is the non-existent in them which makes
them serviceable.” At once we find ourselves seeing things from a fresh angle. There
is a picture called “Listening to Music”, attributed, perhaps rightly, to a figure-painter
who flourished at the end of the eighth century. It is hard to think of any Western
painting in which the empty spaces are made as significant as they are here: one would
almost say even more significant than the figures. The intervals seem brimmed with a
listening silence. You feel that the artist dwelt on them, so as to draw out their eloquence.
It is, so to speak, space spiritualized.
168
REVIEWS
169
We must quote, also, from the chapter on Persian art, where the differences
between Chinese and Persian mysticism are described with keen delicacy.
On a summer night, driving in an automobile, have you not sometimes been startled
and thrilled by the apparition of wayside flowers and grasses suddenly isolated and
luminous in the beams of the headlamps? A moment ago there was darkness, now with
each stem and petal delicately distinct, they seem to have something unearthly in their
beauty. Can they really have been there in the dark with all that intricate profusion of
form and colour? You feel as if they had suddenly been created for you yourself. . . .
In our own day this peculiar vein of feeling is present, 1 think, in the paintings of \ incent
Van Gogh; for him not only sunflower and iris but a straw-bottomed chair, a pair of old
boots, could be illuminated with a light that never was, enriching not only the senses but
the inward eye.
I showed you in my last lecture a Chinese picture of a Buddhist mystic, a woman,
straying on a forlorn shore in the dead of winter, seeking for the Absolute in essential
solitude. Very different externally, yet essentially akin, is the Persian poet among the
spring flowers in their incredible beauty. 1 he one is for immersing herself in the world
wherein no creature dwelleth” (to use the phrase of Boehme), the world within oneself,
the other “sees the world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower . An intoxica¬
tion of the senses merges into an intoxication of the spirit.
The chapters on Japanese art show the same acute penetration of the pecu¬
liarly intense nature of the race.
At the outset I should like to dwell for a moment on this propensity to carry things to
extremity, to sacrifice everything else to the chosen aim, which I think is characteristic
of the race and which sometimes will appear to us almost fantastic, almost terrifying. . . .
Now there is a story of a Japanese woman weeping on a battlefield over the bodies of her
dead sons; to someone who sought to comfort her she replied: 1 do not weep because I
have lost them, I weep because 1 have no more sons to give.” ... There is a sort of absolute
quality in the Japanese loyalty to a cause or idea. Probably in the history of the world
there has never been a race so heroic, I mean so possessed by the spirit which is ready
to dare all and endure all, regardless of consequence, in the cause which it has chosen.
Though this spirit is manifested most strikingly in the world of action, it is present also
in the world of ideas, and in art.
However, we cannot quote all of the book. We can only urge that it be read
and enjoyed for itself.
St.C. LaD.^H
Joan oj Arc , by Milton Waldman; Little, Brown & Company, 1935; price,
$3.00.
The author is rather a good story-teller, is most sympathetic toward Joan of
Arc, and has unbounded admiration for her as a woman of extraordinary ability
and cleverness. He feels that she has never been shown in her true light.
“Posterity has awarded her everything and more, that her judges tried to take
ften her, except of course her life. . . . But even posterity has failed to restore
her common ordinary humanity. She rides down the ages as a bronze
image on a horse, with a sword held high in one hand and a pennon in the other,
like nothing that ever lived; so each generation receives her and reverently
170
THE 0 S 0 PH 1 CAL QUARTERLY
passes her on.” Deploring the fact that she had to “rely on the conscientious
pens of her enemies’ scribes to acquit her of the pious slanders of her friends and
let her be seen as she was”, he takes the record of the trial as his source (supple¬
mented by a long bibliography) and, sifting out the true from the false, attempts
to make her live again—in ‘‘her common ordinary humanity”. Some aspects
of her character are well portrayed, and there are welcome touches such as:
“A quite satisfactory number of men and women have stood trial for their lives
with courage; a good few have done so displaying a high order of intelligence;
it is hard to think of anyone but Socrates and Joan of Arc who did so with gay
humour.” The military portion of the story and also the trial are presented in a
swift narrative that holds the attention well, but to the mystical aspect of his
subject he brings little or no understanding. His strictures on mediaeval ecstatics
and visionaries (‘‘that ridiculous, pathetic, repulsive crew” with whom Joan had
nothing in common), show not only his perhaps justifiable distaste for the abuses
of the mediaeval religious system, but equally his ignorance of the reality behind
it. With all his desire to present Joan in her true greatness, then, his understand¬
ing inevitably falls short. At times he seems convinced that she was divinely
inspired, though how he accounts for certain phenomena is not always clear.
Two of his many comments on the Voices are indicative: ‘‘Until inquiry and
proof have brought such things as Joan’s visions within the laws of physical
cause and effect, we shall find it impossible to believe that she really spoke with,
saw, touched, and smelt saints out of Paradise as she claimed. We must assume
that her visions were subjective to her before they can become comprehensible
to us, for so our minds are now made.” . . . ‘‘As to their appearance, she
never gave a straight answer, and for the simple reason that she was unable to.
She had identified her visitors by an inward prompting based upon deep
psychological processes that can be traced to the legends she had been taught
and the sculptured likenesses she had so long and intently gazed upon. Those
effigies had given body so to speak, to the figments of her imagination.”
The result is almost inevitable. From even a partially materialistic standpoint
what explanation can there be of that tragic death, following the promise of
deliverance, except the one he apparently intends: ‘‘the truth dawned upon her
that they [the Voices] had betrayed her”? To many readers this can only mean
a failure on the author’s part to grasp the real and supreme achievement of that
valorous life and heroic death. The book is marred by colloquialisms ill suited
to a biography of mediaeval times, and by references to matters of sex of a kind
that are unpardonable. The reader is left chiefly with the feeling that the
author’s entire sincerity and very laudable intention outdistance his under¬
standing and capacity to handle such a subject.
J.C.
The Philosophy of Spinoza , by Harry Austryn Wolfson, Nathan Littauer
Professor of Jewish Literature and Philosophy in Harvard University; Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1934; price, $7.50.
REVIEWS
171
Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God t by S. M. Melamed; University
of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1933; price, $3.
The student of Spinoza’s Ethics often suspects that what he is reading is an
index to the philosopher’s thought rather than an exposition of it. The austere
geometrical form which Spinoza adopted, gives logical coherence and unity, but
it is not conducive to fluency or expansiveness. Inevitably one speculates con¬
cerning the sentiments and ideas which he did not reveal, but which may be
surmised as the justification and substratum of his public work. Why was he
so restrained, so reticent? The usual explanation is that he was silent about
many things, because it was imprudent in the Seventeenth Century to ex¬
pound too openly any religious views which public opinion might regard as too
heterodox.
Professor Wolfson suggests another reason which is more convincing. Spi¬
noza was not an isolated phenomenon. He was a representative of a long phil¬
osophical tradition. He meditated upon problems which had stimulated men’s
minds for centuries, problems which were still cast in the form which Aristotle
had given them. Like Giordano Bruno and Descartes, Spinoza was attracted by
the “new learning”, and by the revolution that was progressing in physical
science, but above all he was inspired by a passion for pure metaphysics, as
defined by mediaeval thought. He could not desist from the quest of those
truths which lie beyond the range of ordinary experiment and which show forth
the essence of God, the relation between God and the world, the nature of man
and the path of divine wisdom. In his search he examined the conclusions of
those who had preceded him in this way. Gradually he built a system of his
own, selecting and rejecting, criticizing and adapting. Sometimes he virtually
incorporated fragments of old texts, as Shakespeare embodied in his dramas
long passages that had been composed by others. As has been said, Spinoza
was the last and greatest of the scholastic philosophers. He clarified the work
of generations of theologians and metaphysicians. Certainly much that is
obscure becomes clear, if we recognize that Spinoza thought of himself as a com¬
mentator on the wisdom of his predecessors. He was addressing a public familiar
with the technical language which he used, and did not believe it to be necessary
to explain in detail what he was talking about.
Professor Wolfson has proved what has hitherto been only surmised,-^fae
indebtedness of Spinoza to the Moorish and Jewish philosophers of the SpBreh
peninsula, and through them to the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic schools which
flourished in the Near East under Moslem protection during the European Dark
Age that preceded the dawn of mediaeval civilization. Scholars have generally
admitted that Arabic philosophy was the immediate progenitor of the scholastic
metaphysics which became so characteristic a feature of mediaeval Christianity.
However, though Avicenna and Averroes have been studied and translated,
their Jewish successors have been neglected. Professor Wolfson’s work in this
forgotten field is, therefore, of the greatest value. He has made available in
translation, with admirable commentaries, much of this Spanish-Jewish phil¬
osophical literature, which in large measure exists only in scattered manuscripts,
i 7 2 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
but which constitutes an integral part of the metaphysical and mystical tradi
tion of the West. The quotations from these Hebrew sources are sufficient in
themselves to give distinction to his work on Spinoza, quite irrespective of his
thesis. For all but a few, Maimonides, Crescas, Gersonides, Ibn Ezra, Ibn
Gabirol, have been only names. In these pages, they begin to live again. ^
We do not fully agree with Dr. Wolfson’s final evaluation of Spinoza’s doc¬
trines. He argues that Spinoza, by “four acts of daring”, fundamentally altered
the traditional teaching.
By declaring that God has the attribute of extension as well as of thought, Spinoza
has thus removed the break in the principle of the homogeneity of nature. ... By
denying design and purpose in God, [he] removed the break in the principle of the uni¬
formity of the laws of nature. . . . [His] insistence upon the complete inseparability of
soul from body has . . . removed another break in the uniformity of nature. . . . [His]
insistence upon the elimination of freedom of the will from human actions has . . .
removed another break in the uniformity of the laws of nature.
Other philosophers have insisted with equal force upon the homogeneity of
Nature; others have identified Nature with a substance whose “essence involves
existence”, that is, with God; others have denied freedom of the will, in the
ordinary sense, to God as well as to man. The real problem is to ascertain what
Spinoza meant when he affirmed these things. We may approach an under¬
standing of his intent, if we assume that he was not merely a philosopher who
speculated, but was primarily a mystic who experienced what he taught. The
key to his doctrine is found, we believe, in his conclusion that the inmost self,
the higher mind of man, is “a part of the infinite intellect of God”, and that the
human mind participates, therefore, in the only possible kind of freedom, the
full freedom of expression which distinguishes immortal from mortal being.
Nothing external to itself can curb the higher mind’s power to make manifest
its essence, to become that which it is its nature to become. The tragedy of man
is that he does not exercise this liberty, but allows himself to fall under the do¬
minion of necessity, where he is the slave of whatever emotion happens to be
dominant at any given instant. According to such an interpretation, when
men turn to evil instead of to good, it is not because they choose evil but be¬
cause, deluded by emotion and self-will, and stupefied by ignorance and inertia,
they fail to identify themselves with that which is their good. “The more per¬
fection anything has, the more active and the less passive it is; and contrariwise,
the more active it is, the more perfect it becomes. . . . Blessedness is not the
reward of virtue, but virtue itself: nor should we rejoice in it for that we restrain
our desires, but, on the contrary, because we rejoice therein we can restrain our
desires.”
In many ways, Spinoza’s pantheism resembles the great systems of thought
which were bom in ancient India and China,—the Vedanta, the Sankhya, Bud¬
dhism, Taoism. This resemblance is, in fact, the theme of Spinoza and Buddha ,
by Dr. Melamed. The author, however, has very peculiar views, the most
peculiar of all being that Spinoza, like Buddha, his Oriental prototype, was an
enemy of the human race. The Brahma of the Indian mystics, and the Dens of
REVIEWS
i73
Spinoza are “dead gods”, according to Dr. Melamed, and he contrasts them,
to their supposed disadvantage, with the “living god”, the Jehovah of the Old
Testament. He does not understand how a God who is immanent in the world
can also be transcendent, in the sense that He is not the world, though His
attributes are made manifest in and through the world. A God who is identified
with Nature or Eternal Substance is “dead”, according to Dr. Melamed’s
definition, because he cannot imagine what sort of consciousness He can have.
No more can any other human personality form an image of that divine con¬
sciousness; but what possible difference can this make? Such consciousness as
we have, must have come from somewhere, and what other source can there
be save the Nature or Essence of all things, the One Self, God. Unless one
frankly adopts a materialistic theory of consciousness, there is only one alter¬
native to this proposition, and that is to assume that God is a being distinct
from and even hostile to the general order of Nature, and that the men whom
He made in His image are essentially unnatural entities, as “extra-cosmic”
as their creator. This appears to be Dr. Melamed’s assumption. A quotation
may make his point of view more intelligible.
Buddhism negates life, Judaism affirms it. The negation of life is a symptom of de¬
cadence, for healthy races cling tenaciously to it. . . . The tropical sun and the jungle
destroyed [man’s] appetite for it, for they annihilated in him the courage to fight and
the will to live. . . . Out of this deterioration arose the lifeless and anonymous univer-
salism of the East. The man who emerged from the jungle denied life, while he who
came out of the desert affirmed it. . . . The ancient Jews became individualistic to the
same extent that the Eastern Aryans grew universalistic. ... In the Upanishads man
is not visible, and we hear only his cosmic wails and lamentations. . . . The personal,
living God of the Bible is only a correlation to its living, passionate and powerful man.
The universal and dead God of the Upanishads is equal in reality to its dead univer-
salism. Out of the jungle crawled a dead God, and out of the desert roared a living God.
There are so many illusions packed in these sentences that any analysis must
be hopelessly inadequate. However, we venture to suggest that the principal
illusion is one shared by the whole of unredeemed mankind. It is the illusion
that the human personality is an end in itself, a powerful and living being, a
thing to be worshipped with self-satisfaction and pride. The “life” whi
Buddhism negates is not the life of the physical body as such, nor is it t
life of divinity; it is “psychic” life, the vital force that we attribute to tne
human personality which has been defined as the image of the body in the mind.
If this be pessimism, so be it; but what sort of optimism can that be which de¬
pends for the verification of its dreams upon the triumph of the “old Adam” in
man, over all the obstacles which a beneficent Nature places in the way of the
soul’s descent into hell. S.V.L.
Question No. 397 .—Would not Theosophists regard the Gospel according to St. John as the
nearest to the Divine Wisdom of them all? Edmond Holmes , in his "Creed of Christ' 1 , does not
seem to agree. Is this an instance of a wise man nodding?
Answer. —Theosophy is the key to a true understanding of the great Scriptures of the
world. Where that knowledge is lacking, one may find great insight on many points, but
almost always accompanied by definite limitations in other directions. Mr. Holmes’s books
are very valuable, particularly his Creed of Buddha , but his limitations are marked. When
he finds that the statements of Christ recorded in the Gospel of St. John are not in accordance
with his own ideas, instead of trying to enlarge and deepen his view, he questions the authen¬
ticity of the Gospel. In his case, as in all others, one should gain all one can from his insight
and let the rest go. In fairness to him, however, we must remember that Biblical scholarship
periodically discredits the alleged authorship, and even the genuineness, of the fourth Gospel.
Perhaps we should add that few students of Theosophy would undertake to say which of
two statements made by a great Master was “the nearest to Divine Wisdom”, to rank, for ex¬
ample, Christ’s statement in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of St. John,
above or below the Sermon on the Mount as recorded by St. Matthew. To do so would, among
other things, be to imply that one understood either Gospel fully, something that no one short
of an Adept could do. J.F.B.M.
Answer. —One of the fundamentals of the theosophical philosophy is that Truth is limited
and incomplete if defined or if expressed in one set of terms. The Gospels all contain revela¬
tions of the Divine Wisdom, which must be the case in view of their record of the words and
acts of a great Avatar. The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles reveal many aspects of the
Divine Wisdom, as, for example, in the writings of St. Paul, who was an Initiate. St. John had
knowledge of the Logos Doctrine, not, perhaps, possessed by the other disciples; in addition,
he was known as the beloved disciple, which relationship involved close contact with his
Master in the real sense, and his account of the Last Supper reveals a deep understanding of
his Master’s heart.
While the Gospel of St. John discloses facets of the Truth that the other Gospels do not,
it is important to remember that Truth must be approached from all sides, and that one view
of it is necessarily incomplete. G.H.M.
Answer. — I should think that, not only students of Theosophy, but all intuitive students
of the Bible as well, would regard the Gospel of St. John as the nearest to the Divine Wisdom.
The first three Gospels are known as the Synoptic Gospels, because of their similitude in con¬
tents, words and, even, phrasing; and because, combined, they present a general and harmonized
story of Christ’s life. This grouping of the first three, may tend to influence people, some
scholars included, to attach less importance than it deserves to the fourth Gospel. The Synop¬
tic Gospels, in the main, record Christ’s sayings, and the events of his life. The Gospel of St.
174
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
i 7 S
John deals more with the purpose and plan of his incarnation, with the spirit of it. I should
say that students of Theosophy would regard the Synoptic Gospels, valuable as they are, as
more or less representative of the “eye” doctrine; and that of St. John as representative of
the “heart” doctrine. The last book in the Bible, known as The Revelation of St. John the
Divine, should reinforce that opinion; so, too, should a study of his life at Patmos, for St.
John’s disciples make it evident that they knew he continued to receive the personal teaching of
Christ, long after Christ’s withdrawal from the world. One of these disciples, Polycarp, taught
Irenaeus, who was Bishop of southern France from 175 to 202. Hamack, the theologian,
commenting on a letter in which Irenaeus refers to the time he was in Lower Asia with Polycarp,
writes: “These are priceless words, for they establish a chain of tradition (Jesus, John, Polycarp,
Irenaeus) which is without paraHel in history.” It is to be regretted that Christian peoples
have not informed themselves more fully about St. John’s influence; about the way in which
the tradition of Patmos was carried from southern France to Iona of Scotland, and, thence,
into Northumbria, in England; for it is St. John, and not St. Peter, “who is the father of the
French and the British Churches”. G.M.W.K.
Answer. —Nearest of all the Gospels to the Divine Wisdom? Possibly. Although the degree
of Truth which can be derived from any one of the Gospels does not necessarily depend wholly
upon the illumination of its author, but in large measure upon the understanding and intuition
of the reader. Or does the question perhaps mean that St. John, as he revealed himself in
that Gospel, was the nearest of all those lesser figures in the New Testament to a complete
grasp of the Divine Wisdom? Surely, on Patmos, whether in the body or out of the body, he
rose to great heights of insight and vision, when he listened to that voice which was as the sound
of many waters, to those sayings which were faithful and true. But of all those lesser figures
it is St. Paul, that great Initiate, who tells us the most of the wisdom and love and power of
the Father; of how to carry that essence of the Divine into the spiritual combat of daily life
and living; of how the Spirit of the Warrior, which he exemplified, can be made ours. It is the
Divine Wisdom which St. Paul gives us, in full measure, pressed down and running over.
C.R.A.
IN MEMORIAM.
THEODORA DODGE
A valued and devoted member of The Theosophical Society, and
a brilliant and most helpful contributor to
the “Theosophical Quarterly”.
Died, 1st February, 1936
NOTICE OF CONVENTION
The Theosophical Society
To the Branches of The Theosophical Society:
1. The Annual Convention of The Theosophical Society will be held at 64, Washington
Mews, New York, on Saturday, April 25th, 1936, beginning at 10:30 a. m.
2. Branches unable to send delegates to the Convention are requested to send proxies.
These may be made out to the Secretary T. S., or to any officer or member of the Society
who is resident in New York or is to attend the Convention. These proxies should state the
number of members in good standing in the Branch.
3. Branch Secretaries are asked to send their annual reports to the Secretary T. S. These
reports should cover the significant features of the year’s work and should be accompanied
by a complete list of officers and members, with the full name and address of each; also a
statement of the number of members gained or lost during the year; also a record of the place
and time of Branch meetings. These reports should reach the Secretary T. S. by April 1st.
4. Members-at-large are invited to attend the Convention sessions; and all Branch mem¬
bers, whether delegates or not, will be welcome.
5. Following the custom of former years, the sessions of the Convention will begin at 10:30
a. m. and 2:30 p. m.
6. On Sunday, April 26th, at 4 p. m., tea will be served at 64, Washington Mews, to dele¬
gates, members, and their friends.
Isabel E. Perkins,
Secretary , The Theosophical Society ,
P. O. Box 64, Station 0 , New York, N. Y.
February 15th, 1936.
NOTICE OF MEETINGS
The regular meetings of the New York Branch of The Theosophical Society are held on
alternate Saturday evenings, at 64, Washington Mews, which runs from the east side of Fifth
Avenue, midway between Eighth Street and Washington Square, North. No. 64 is the first
studio east of Fifth Avenue, on the north side of the Mews. The meetings begin at half-past
eight, and close at ten o’clock. There will be meetings on,—
April 4th and 18th, May 2nd.
Out-of-town members of the Society are invited to attend these meetings whenever they
are in New York. Visitors who may be interested in Theosophy are always welcome.
176
I n
%
Blavatsky, H. P.
STANDARD BOOKS
Isis Unveiled, Vols. I and II .doth, $12.50
Complete in on# book...cloth, 7.50
Key to Theosophy .doth, 3 50
Secret Doctrine, The, Vols. I and II and Index. .... .doth, ij.so
Complete in one book, without subject-index volume, 7 .50
Theosophical Glossary .doth, 2,26
Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge .doth, 2.50
Voice of the Silence . fabric, 1.00
Cave. Fragments, Volume I.boards, iso
Volume II ...boards, i.bo
Volume III .boards, 1.50
Gerard, John. Letters to Friends.. .-. ...boards, i.»6
Hillard, Katherine. Abridgment of the Secret Doctrine, .doth, 3.00
Johnston, Charles. Bhagavad Gita .Translated, annotot^ii^do^, 1.25
Crest Jewel of Wisdom, The .doth, 1.25
Great Upanishads, The, Volume I.doth, 1,B ®
Parables of the Kingdom, The.p*p«. • bo
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras .Translated, annotated; doth, 1.26
Song of Life, The..
Judge, William Q. Bhagavad Gita .Edited; doth, 1 . 25 ; leather, 1.50
Culture of Concentration . pftper ’ ' 2 f
Echoes from the Orient . -paper.
Letters That Have Helped Me, Volume I andII,each..doth, 1.00
Ocean of Theosophy .doth,
Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms ...y. doth > '*°®
Keightley, Archibald. Theosophy as an Influence in Life paper, .20
Mkcheli, S Hen e ry B^dinger^MEmTATioN; Spedai edition, . 20 , Sper,’ .50
Theosophical Society and Theosophy, The. .paper, .20
Mitchell, J. F. B. Collegiate Education and Standards of
Sinned A.' P. ' Esoteric Buddhism: .
Occult World, The ...• *. doth ’
l°:s E y D K
Ko r n| White Lotus.V.V"V.V""V.Vl-S
Light on the Path... doth, 1>2J
Through the Gates of Gold.
THE QUARTERLY BOOK DEPARTMENT,
P. a Box 64, Station O, New York.
Dbvoiional: ^Letters ttS’path^ThePar-
iwwoHhe'SS&fTta of Life; Through the Gatesof Gold; Voice of the Silence.
a .... _ . , he secret Doctrine; Isis Unveiled; Key to Theosophy;
& Doctrine; Talkson Rdigion; Theosophical Glossary;
Transactions; Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
ifH
Tm Theosophical Society and Theosophy. _
jjfcj r
m *1*
m)t <Ef)eo$opf)tcal Sowf?
Founded by f>. P. Blavateky at Ilw Vork hi WB
HE Society does not pretend to be able to estabUA
at once a universal brotherhood among men, but
only strives to create the nucleus of such a body.
Many of its members believe that an acquaintance
with the world's religions and philosophies will
" reveal, as the common and fundamental principle
underlying these, that “spiritual identity of all Souls with the
Oversoul ” which is the basis of true brotherhood; and many
of them also believe that an appreciation of the finer forces
of nature and man will still further emphasize the same idea.
The organization is wholly unsectarian, with no creed#
dogma# nor personal authority to enforce or impose; neither
is it to be held responsible for the opinions of its member*#
who are expected to accord to the beliefs of others that
tolerance wnich they desire for their own.
The following proclamation was adopted at the Conven¬
tion of the Society# held at Boston# April# 1895:
4 The Theosophical Society in America by its delegates and
members in Convention assembled# does hereby proclaim
fraternal good will and kindly feeling toward all students of
Theosophy and members of Theosophical Societies wherever
and however situated. It further proclaims and avers its
hearty sympathy and association with such persons and
organizations in all theosophical matters except those of
government and administration# and invites their cor*
tespondence and co-operation.
“To all men and women of whatever caste,creed#race#or
religious belief# who aim at the fostering of peace# gentleness#
and unselfish regard one for another# and the acquisition of
such knowledge of men and nature as shall tend to the eleva¬
tion and advancement of the human race# it sends most friendly
greeting and freely proffers its services.
“It Joins hands with all religions and religious bodies vHimc
efforts are directed to the purification of men's thoughts and
the bettering of their ways# and it avows its harmony there¬
with. To all scientific societies and individual searchers after
wisdom upon whatever plane# and by whatever righteottf
means pursued# it is and will be grateful for such discovery
and unfoldment of Truth as shall serve to announce and con¬
firm a scientific basis for ethics.
“And lastly, it invites to its membership those who# seek¬
ing a higher life hereafter# would learn to know the path to
tread in this.”
Applications for membership should be addressed to the
Secretary T. S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York.
No. 3 JULY, 1936
No. 131
S g
IHEOSOPHICAJ
Quartered
library ft
ANDOVER NEWTON Hi
theological school ||
The Theosophical Quarterly
Subscription price, $2.00 per annum; single copies, 50 cents
Published by The Theosophical Society
at 64 Washington Mews, New York, N.Y.
July; October; January; April
Address .11 oommunica.ions 10 F. O. Box 64, Station O, New York
In Europe, single copies may be obtained from and subscriptions may be salt to John
M SktaTcS Court, Charing Cross Road, London, W. C. 2, England; or to
Mrll H. Lincoln, 9 Beaconsfield Road, Low Fell, Gateshead-on-Tyne, England, from
',11 hank numbers may be obtained. Annual subscription price, $2.00, postpaid.
CONTENTS OF VOL. XXXIII, NO. 3
July, 1936
PAGE
NOTES AND COMMENTS. *79
FRAGMENTS. * 9 °
CONFUCIUS (concluded). * 9 *
T. S. ACTIVITIES: Convention Report; Letters of Greeting . 201
REVIEWS. 255
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. 263
Entered as second-class matter September 5. 1923. at the Post Office at New York, N. Y. t under the
Act of March 3. 1879.
Copyright, 1936, by The Theosophical Society
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The principal aim and object of this Society is to form the nucleus of a
Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex,
caste or colour. The subsidiary objects are: The study of ancient and modern
religions, philosophies and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance
of such study; and the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and
the psychical powers latent in man.
The Theosophical Quarterly is the official organ of the original
Theosophical Society founded in New York by H. P. Blavatsky,
W Q. Judge and others, in 1875. . .
We have no connection whatsoever with any other organization
calling itself Theosophical, formerly headed by Mrs Besant, nor
with similar bodies, the purposes and methods of which are whollj/W
foreign to our own.
Editors, The Theosophical Quarterly.
ffS
%
JULY, 1936
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.
f*s
%
Selflessness and Power
W E read in Light on the Path: “It is easy to say: ‘I will not be ambitious’;
it is not so easy to say: ‘When the Master reads my heart, he will find
it clean utterly’. The pure artist who works for the love of his work
is sometimes more firmly planted on the right road than the occultist who fancies
he has removed his interest from self, but who has in reality only enlarged the
limits of experience and desire, and transferred his interest to the things which
concern his larger span of life.”
It is the nature of the pure artist to “create”. His work is original and unique,
for it records an individual vision of reality, making manifest an aspect of
beauty or truth which no other person could possibly have revealed. The
Iliad and the Divine Comedy are as distinct as two species of flowers, and they
are equally irreplaceable in the order of Nature. The very important fact to
which Light on the Path points, is that the measure of the artist’s power to
create is the measure of his selflessness. The more selfless he is, the more indi¬
vidual he becomes; and the more individual he is, the more efficacious^ his
response to the signs and symbols of divinity which are everywhere pre^nt in
Nature. Thus, on his own plane of action, he grows “as the flower grows, un¬
consciously”, embodying and transmitting a ray of universal creative force.
This is equivalent to saying that he does not know in advance what he will
create, for it is the spirit which creates through him. However, this does not
mean that he must be passive, negative, mediumistic. Genius can only over¬
shadow or incarnate in the man who toils and meditates incessantly, and who
is ever expectant, prepared to act the instant that genuine inspiration comes.
The pure artist does not dwell in Bohemia. He works daily to perfect his tech¬
nique, mastering the rules of his craft, and training his senses to serve his pur¬
pose. He broadens and deepens his ideas of the beautiful and the true and the
noble, seeking the essence of natural forms, eager to learn from the experience
179
180 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
of other men and other ages, accepting praise with detachment and criticism
with gratitude. When he produces a work of his own, he visualizes his aim as
clearly as possible and carefully devises a scheme of execution, like a general
planning a campaign. But if this work be touched by genius, it will surpass
his original design. As Bergson has said, the ways of genius, of creative evolu¬
tion, are subtile, incalculable, imponderable. After all, what constitutes the
difference between the Cathedral of Chartres and the First Methodist Church?
“Ascending Mutations”
Doubtless, the pure scientist, like the pure artist, might be taken as a model
of selfless devotion. There have been men of science who dedicated their lives
to the service of truth and who have “created” knowledge, as the painters and
sculptors have “created” beauty. The scientific discipline demands an uncom¬
promising obedience to established principles. The engineer takes no liberties
with natural law; whether he approve of them or not, he accepts things as they
are and acts accordingly.
Unfortunately, the specialization of the sciences has tended to narrow the
minds of their devotees. Each scientist is tempted to substitute some fragment
of truth which he sees for the whole, to assume that he comprehends the uni¬
verse because he has calculated the velocity of a neutron or produced a syn¬
thetic hormone. Few men of science can write on any subject outside their
specialty without betraying a spirit of arrogance and bigotry. In general,
scientists have lost the reverence for Nature which characterized their great
predecessors and which atoned for so many deficiencies. To-day there is a
widespread notion that Nature is a badly constructed machine which should
be taken apart and re-fashioned after an improved model. Especially among
the biologists and psychologists and their popularizers, there is a sort of compe¬
tition to determine who can make over Nature the most completely.
A notable example is offered by a French book, De quoi vivre , which might
be roughly translated “The wherewithal to live”. The author, M. Jean Cou-
trot, suggests that science will ultimately modify the cyclic character of man’s
psychic life. When that happy day arrives, human existence will become an
“ascending mutation” uninterrupted by any of the back-slidings which make
up so much of the subject-matter of history. The thesis invites some ironical
comments, when one realizes that modem civilization is at this moment sliding
towards the brink of a chasm, and that one of the active causes of its agony is
the very scientific progress which M. Coutrot extols.
He affirms that two distinct processes have been operative throughout hu¬
man history. There is a rhythmic or oscillatory movement, an expression of
the universal phenomenon of periodicity or undulation; and there is a con¬
tinuous progressive movement which has no obvious counterpart in the physical
world but which is illustrated in man, M. Coutrot thinks, by the way in which
the scientific knowledge of one generation is extended by the next. He calls
these two movements the additive and the non-additive , the former proceeding
steadily onwards and the latter perpetually vibrating like an electric current
NOTES AND COMMENTS
i8i
between two poles. He contrasts the orderly growth of natural science, bring¬
ing man a constant increase of power over matter, with the disorder and chaos
of man’s emotional life. Man may be the lord of the physical creation, but
he is only too obviously not the lord of himself. He alternates almost auto¬
matically between pleasure and pain, between elation and depression, between
self-confidence and diffidence. All the great religions have faced, and solved,
this supreme human problem. But M. Coutrot is not interested in the great
religions. He pretends that the final solution can be found by men of science
who will bring under control the domain of human sensibility, applying to that
end the methods which have been so successful in the physical realm.
The Measurable and the Immeasurable
It is apparent that M. Coutrot suffers from the common materialistic delu¬
sion that all things in the universe can be weighed and measured. The fact is
that consciousness in all its states is immeasurable by any means known to
the man of science. The only entities that can be weighed and measured are
physical things which we know as objects of consciousness. The subjects of
consciousness, our thoughts and emotions and aspirations, even our physical
sensations, are in themselves without form or substance or dimension, as these
are conceived by the scientific mind which is exclusively trained in the study
of objective existence.
Therefore, the only cure which the scientific mind can imagine for the cycles
to which human consciousness is subject, is to abolish them. But this is equiva¬
lent to abolishing the universe, for the manifestation of the universe is itself
the supreme expression of cyclic law, and nothing which it contains can be
withdrawn from the necessity that rules the whole. M. Coutrot virtually sug¬
gests that the energies of consciousness may be gradually concentrated in that
part of the intellect which reasons scientifically; that there may come into
existence some day a truly collectivist commonwealth, where all men will labour
in unison to increase the sum-total of the knowledge of the human species.
One should try to be grateful for almost anything, and it is at least pleasant
to observe that M. Coutrot does not evoke a Utopia of playgrounds where
everyone will amuse himself without effort or expense or tedium, where pain
in any form will be as unthinkable as common-sense. There is nothing oLjfcs
sort in M. Coutrot’s picture, but one wonders what kind of consciotf^Kss
would be left in his super-scientific hive. The “human species” might accumu¬
late a deal of knowledge, but the “worker-bees” which gathered it would be
fortunate if they retained enough consciousness to know their own names. It
is always a futile exercise to postulate the existence of the “human species”
apart from the individuals, real or potential, which constitute the only reality
which it has.
La Revue Universelle , February 15, 1936, contains an essay, De nouvelles
raisons de vivre , by M. Thierry Maulnier, which makes very clear many of the
fundamental errors of De quoi vivre. Failing to discern between the measur-
*ble and the immeasurable, M. Coutrot has inevitably been blind to the
182 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
distinction between the higher and lower natures of the human being. We
paraphrase the conclusion of M. Maulnier’s article.
This is the danger of placing scientific knowledge at the summit of human activities.
. . . The supreme form of human activity is not reason in so far as it is an instrument
for acquiring knowledge, but reason in so far as it is a builder of values, of values which
do not progress from one generation to another and which, differing in this respect from
scientific knowledge, can only find in the individual their perfect and unsurpassable
expression. Without falling into the error of [selfish] individualism, we must admit that
human society, the human species, has a purpose, an end, in each of the beings which
compose it. . . . We heard M. Coutrot declare a few days ago that there is no insolvable
problem. Nevertheless, there is a problem which cannot be solved by means of rational
knowledge, and this is the problem of rational knowledge itself; for we cannot resolve
the relations of the subject and its object, that which is called in religious language the
Incarnation of the Word. Whether we explain this Incarnation by divine aid, or whether
we leave it as a mystery, it remains certain that we cannot establish a continuous scien¬
tific series [of ideas] joining the things of the Self and the universe. 1 he man is a subject,
since he thinks; the species is an object. It is not in an object that we can discover for
the thinking man a complete fulfilment.
Cycles Within Cycles
In the Proem of The Secret Doctrine there is a reference to the superlative
mystery to which M. Maulnier refers. It is significant that in the theosophical
philosophy the Incarnation of the Logos, the prototype of all minor Incarna¬
tions, proceeds according to cyclic law.
The “Manifested Universe”, therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it were,
the very essence of its EX-istence as “manifestation”. But just as the opposite poles of
subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are
synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there is “that” which links spirit to matter,
subject to object. This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is
called by the occultists Fohat. It is the “bridge” by which the “Ideas” existing in the
“Divine Thought” are impressed on Cosmic Substance as the “laws of Nature”. . . .
Thus from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance
the several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualized and attains to self—or
reflective—consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious
link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into
life. . . . Further, the Secret Doctrine affirms the Eternity of the Universe in toto as a
boundless plane; periodically “the play-ground of numberless Universes incessantly
manifesting and disappearing”. . . . “The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is
like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux”. This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine
is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow,
which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature.
As Emerson said, quoting an ancient Indian scripture, the Universe exists
for purposes of Soul. But the Universe and the Law of Cycles are funda¬
mentally one. If the human consciousness in its present mode be the play¬
ground of numberless moods appearing and disappearing, this is in accordance
with the nature of things, and we shall be wise to co-operate with the law rather
than to dream of changing it. However, this does not mean that we must
remain eternally in the same little cycles where we now move back and forth,
NOTES AND COMMENTS
183
returning to the same follies time after time. There are cycles within cycles,
spiritual tides within the psychic and physical, and we have the power to de¬
termine to what “round” of being we shall belong.
In the occult philosophy which Madame Blavatsky interpreted, the “princi¬
ple” of Buddhi which is destined to become the perfected human individual,
is an undivided ray of the Logos, the Over-Soul. Like the radiance of the
Sun, it “falls” into matter, imprisoning itself in a form which is subject to
birth and growth, decay and death. Released by death, it is drawn back to¬
wards its source, only to return again and to initiate a new incarnation and
transformation. Thus it accumulates experience, “passing through every ele¬
mental form of the phenomenal world”, and then “acquiring individuality,
first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts
(checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence,
from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest
archangel”.
M. Coutrot’s ideal of a constant progression is thus realized, but this realiza¬
tion does not involve, as he seems to fancy, a cancellation of cyclic law, any
more than the ripening of a man’s wisdom depends upon his release from all the
vicissitudes of bodily existence. Night is as real and as necessary as day, winter
is no less beautiful than summer; and by the same token, the Soul needs to
experience pain and sleep and death as well as pleasure and waking and life.
It is our own fault if we think of death and sleep as periods of unconsciousness,
as interruptions of the continuity of our true being.
The popular scientific desire to change the order of Nature is, in a sense, a
perversion of the right desire to pass from the superficial cycles, within which
our personal life is confined, to the inner and higher cycles which determine
real growth in real consciousness. There is only one road to this goal. It has
been described so many times in essentially identical terms that the world,
deceived by the simplicity of what is demanded, finds the words of wisdom
banal, and seeks to invent a more pretentious way of its own. What are these
words of wisdom? In essence, nothing more than this,—to become that which
in our souls we aspire to be and to cease to embody qualities which we kno^^b
be mean and low, to devote ourselves to the highest purpose which we can con¬
ceive and to crush out of existence all those elements of our daily life which
strengthen the “personal idea”, the illusion that we are separate “selves”. No
man can evolve from a lower to a higher condition unless he starves out the
mental images and desires which chain him to the lower state. Such is the
teaching of Krishna, of the Buddha, of the Christ, of all the Masters who have
tried to induce men to become human. To return to M. Coutrot’s phraseology,
what other means can there be of harmonizing the additive and the non-additive
powers of the human being?
The Art of Improving Upon Nature
It may be assumed, therefore, that man is born into the world for the pur¬
pose of improving himself. When he attains a certain degree of self-improve-
184
THE0S0PH1CAL QUARTERLY
ment, as is said, he acquires the power of improving others as well as himself,
and even of improving upon Nature, if by Nature we mean the actual mani¬
fested world. It is perhaps more appropriate to think of an Adept, a perfected
human being, as creating new forms in manifested Nature because he has real¬
ized union with the Essence of Nature, because he is, indeed, a self-conscious
expression of that Essence. Thus, in the old symbolism, the Creative Logos
was called the Heavenly Man.
Do we realize that our thoughts have repercussions, for better or for worse,
upon the planes of life both above and below us? We read in The Secret Doc¬
trine of the dependence of the lower kingdoms upon man for their forms and
vital powers. It is asserted that man is not descended from the lower animals;
that the lower animals are, on the contrary, offshoots of man, developments on
an inferior plane of the “astral moulds” which he has left behind during his
long evolution.
When it is borne in mind that all forms which now people the Earth are so many
variations on basic types originally thrown off by the Man of the Third and Fourth
Round, such an evolutionist argument as that insisting on the “unity of structural plan”
characterizing all vertebrates, loses its edge. The basic types referred to were very few
in number in comparison with the multitude of organisms to which they ultimately gave
rise; but a general unity of type has, nevertheless, been preserved throughout the ages.
The economy of Nature does not sanction the co-existence of several utterly opposed
“ground plans” of organic evolution on one planet. Once, however, that the general
drift of the Occult explanation is formulated, inference as to detail may well be left to
the intuitive reader ( 5 . D., ed. 1893, II, 721-722).
According to this classification, there is a fundamental distinction between
a “basic type” and its variations. Wherever or whenever a basic type appears
in Nature, one may assume that it is an effect of a real creative act, whereas
a variation is merely a modification, too often a deformation, of the type.
When one considers the quality of the “thought-forms” which millions of al¬
leged human beings emit daily, the extraordinary stability of the basic types
becomes apparent. There are monstrosities in the lower kingdoms reflecting
the monstrosities of human nature; but the original impetus towards order and
beauty still prevails.
Dangerous Innovations in the Natural Order
However, quite apart from man’s psychic influence upon the natural order,
his physical activities have been the cause of many dangerous innovations ever
since the dawn of civilization. Agriculture, the domestication of animals, the
building of cities, the draining of marshes, the clearing of land, the advent of
the machine age, have changed the aspect of the earth and have added to the
fauna and flora a host of abnormal entities. Domesticated creatures are seldom
capable of taking care of themselves. They survive under artificial conditions;
when the conditions are removed, they perish or revert to the wild state. In
particular, they are susceptible to diseases easily spread by modem methods of
communication. Certainly it is necessary and normal that man should tame
NOTES AND COMMENTS
185
the savage energies of the earth. However, history shows that man has not
realized the responsibility which he has assumed. It is a terrible fact that
practically every centre of civilization, of which there is any record, has ended
by becoming a desert or a plague-spot. There is no other way whereby Nature
can restore the balance which has been recurrently upset by man’s reckless
and insensate greed.
Modem science has discovered a few elementary facts concerning the “bal¬
ance of nature”. There is a real recognition, for example, of the danger of
deforestation as a primary cause of droughts and floods. But there are modes
of scientific experimentation which may ultimately induce perils greater than
any which have been faced during this historical cycle. There is a tendency
to-day to produce monstrosities, not as accidental by-products, but deliber¬
ately, as objects of study and to gratify curiosity.
One recalls the horrors of vivisection, to which has been added the sinister
practice of inoculating animals with bacteria and viruses. But there are other
biological “triumphs” which are hailed by the newspapers and which suggest
frightful possibilities, although they are still of a very elementary type. For
instance, the New York Times , March 28, 1936, published a despatch from
Moscow proclaiming the artificial production of “new forms of life” in a Soviet
laboratory.
Progress in the study of mutation of the species has progressed to the point where
man can now, within limits, assume the role of creator and himself produce new varieties
of life, it was stated to-day by Dr. Hermann J. Muller of the University of Texas who,
for the past three years, has been experimenting here as head of the “Department of
Mutation and the Gene” of the Academy of Sciences of the U. S. S. R. . . . In his
laboratories here Dr. Muller has been producing View varieties of the fruit fly by shoot¬
ing at chromosomes [the alleged physical basis of heredity within the cell-nucleus] with
X-rays, causing changes in cell structures which produce striking alterations in form,
colouration and physiological functioning. In this manner Dr. Muller is producing
swiftly and on a large scale mutations which nature produces haltingly and at rare inter¬
vals. By selection of desired types among mutations thus artificially produced, Dr.
Muller and his co-workers are able to create new and more and more complicated forms
of life which reproduce their own kind. Thus varieties of the fruit fly have been pro¬
duced with curiously shaped eyes and wings and blond and brunette colouration whereas
the normal fruit fly is somewhere in between. “However,” said Dr. Muller, “we cannot
at this stage, and perhaps not for a very long time, produce new types to order without
resorting to a process of selection similar to nature’s. What we have accomplished su
far is to develop a technique for increasing the number of genes, which are the bearer?
of hereditary characteristics and form the basis of life. This increases the range of changes
available for selection. Most variations are detrimental, and we cannot control the type
of variations produced.. However, we can search extensively for rare and desirable types.
. . . Man should be able to improve vastly upon nature's results now that he knows
more about the ways of the gene.”
This sounds harmless, though unpleasant. Nevertheless, the potentialities
which it suggests are not reassuring. It is credible that as the knowledge of
the properties of radiation proceeds, it may be possible to produce all sorts of
variations not only in fruit flies but also in the higher animals and even in
186 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
human entities. Some of these variations might be useful to man, as cows and
apples are useful, but all would tend towards abnormality, and the boundary
between the abnormal and the monstrous is hard to trace. Who is to decide
what is a “vast improvement” upon Nature, and what is to be the canon of
judgment? Are brunette or blond fruit flies higher in the spiritual hierarchy
than those which are “somewhere in between”? If the power to induce radical
variations were greatly increased and controlled by perverted and thoroughly
vicious minds, the final result might be literally a planetary catastrophe.
The Wars of the Gods and Titans
These reflections may seem fanciful and grotesque; but the student of The¬
osophy is under obligation to seek the direction in which events are moving
and to follow as far as he can see towards their destined end. All races have
preserved some account of the wars of the Gods and Titans. There is good
reason for believing that these combats between the Bright and Dark Powers
are not at all mythical. They were no more actual in the remote past than
they are to-day. They become manifest, even to the dim vision of mortals,
whenever the creative power in Nature and Man conflicts with the forces which
work towards distortion and degeneration.
It has been said that the devils cannot create anything; they can only vam-
pirize and deform that which is already created. Thus, in the Indian legend,
the Asuras or demons “pierced with evil” the forms which had been projected
by the Devas. It would seem that this is precisely what is done whenever we
heedlessly or arrogantly disrupt the natural order within ourselves or in the
world around us. According to the traditions of Atlantis, the Magicians of the
Lost Continent became adepts in the production of monsters, both visible and
invisible. Before they were completely successful, their whole empire col¬
lapsed; but at the same time the great continent on which they had lived was
submerged, and nearly a million years elapsed before mankind could recover
sufficiently to undertake a new experiment in world-wide civilization.
Social Planning
In the New York Herald Tribune , April 15, 1936, there is a special article by
William R. Mathews, editor of the Arizona Daily Star. Mr. Mathews was a
friend of the late Dr. James Henry Breasted, the famous Egyptologist, and he
describes various conversations on the general subject of social planning. Dr.
Breasted expressed some opinions which ought to shock the susceptibilities of
certain people in Washington and elsewhere. We quote a few of his remarks.
IPs all perfectly childish. All of these plans are due to fail. There is nothing new
about them. They have been tried countless times in history, and every time they have
failed. Diocletian, the Roman Emperor, tried them, and instead of bringing prosperity
they brought calamity. Diocletian fixed prices, fixed wages, laid down strict rules of
conduct for business to regulate labour and competition. . . . The same excuses were
present then. Yet Diocletian, with all of his undisputed power and authority, could
not make the schemes work. . . . Unless it is stopped, the same thing will happen to
NOTES AND COMMENTS
x »7
us that happened to the Romans. As the state expands its powers, and imposes its
arbitrary authority, the best minds will become discouraged, for they will be forbidden
to express their thoughts. There will be no reason for thinking. 1 he state will do the
thinking for you. The rise of the Church during the time of the Roman Empire was due
largely to the fact that it offered the only outlet for people of high intelligence and crea¬
tive ability. It was the only way for such persons to appease their discouragement other
than by debauchery or by suicide. From the time of Diocletian life became so discour¬
aging for persons of high intellectuality that many of them would open their veins and
purposely allow themselves to bleed to death. The Church rose to its subsequent posi¬
tion of authority because the best brains went into it. A similar development will come
in this country, if this same idea of repression (always present with the assertion of com¬
plete authority by the state) continues to arise.
It would seem that the alternatives which Dr. Breasted mentioned are more
actual in the modem world than many might imagine. When a civilization
shows signs of decadence—and the substitution of the state for the family as
the irreducible social unit is such a sign—the individual who is superior to the
mass is forced to choose between religion and debauch and suicide. The de¬
bauch may be relatively mild and largely mental, and the suicide may be moral
rather than physical; but the principle is the same. A decadent society is a
more terrible monstrosity than any distorted physical shape. It is doomed to
destruction unless it can be saved by a determined group of individuals who
dedicate themselves to the service of some real ideal, some spiritual purpose.
Those who do not re-form themselves will perish with the mob.
Withdrawal to the Causal World
However, if you have the will and the imagination, you may regard a deca¬
dent period as a time of special opportunity. If you face the facts, realization
comes that you must indraw , withdraw to the “causal world”, for there is
literally no other place to go except hell itself.
What is the causal world, to which reference has been made in various theo-
sophical writings? It transcends our knowledge so greatly that any definition
would be futile and presumptuous. Yet we may think of it as the field of crea¬
tive powers, beyond and above psychic perturbations, the real home of the
Masters. One turns towards it and even, in a sense, enters into it, whenever
one contemplates with love that which one recognizes as superior to <>n^|lf,
whenever one tries to embody what the Masters have embodied. It is it^iis
way and in no other that new “basic types” can be externalized in the world of
mortals. There is no other mode of creation; all else is imitation or travesty
of the real.
Will anyone say that the energies which mould living forms are nothing but
abstractions so far as he is concerned, that he can discover no point in experi¬
ence where he has come into contact with them? Whenever we imagine any¬
thing, whenever we give ourselves to anything, good or bad or indifferent, we
set in motion a current of force which is productive of certain concrete results
| on one or more planes of being. Such is the Law of Karma in an aspect which
should be intelligible to the modem mind. The modem doctrine of energy
i88
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
is based upon Newton’s third law, that “to every action there is always op¬
posed an equal reaction”.
Creation Versus Deformation
It should be remembered, at this point, that there is a fundamental distinc¬
tion between the right and wrong use of the moulding power which we all
possess. It can be an instrument of creation or of deformation. It has been
suggested that one major defect of the modem mind is its tendency towards
undue specialization, towards the construction of fragmentary conceptions of
truth and life. The chief function of science and government to-day is to
minister to the vanity of the gross personality, to the appetites and passions of
man’s perverted animal nature. One need only consider some of the qualities
which Light on the Path defines as incompatible with true human progress,—the
desire of life, the desire of comfort, the sense of separateness, the desire for
sensation. Modem man is invited, incited, even commanded by the leaders of
opinion, to increase and multiply these agencies of the lower self.
Is it any wonder that our civilization should be rapidly assuming a mon¬
strous aspect? As Dr. Carrel so clearly recognizes, modem man is lop-sided.
He is in danger of losing all awareness of his real destiny, which is to become
in act that which in essence he is,—a complete being, exercising every power,
both spiritual and physical, which exists in Nature. Modem man prefers to
use the powers of consciousness to deform his being. For what is deformation ?
It is the inordinate development of some part of an organism at the expense of
the rest. No one can think of himself as an animal personality in an animal
body, without deflecting the course of his normal growth. The lower nature
which he constructs can only grow by feeding upon the higher, as the Dragon
of the Apocalypse lives by preying upon those “which keep the command¬
ments of God”.
To withdraw to the causal world, to become a creative agent, implies a com¬
plete reversal of the habits of self-indulgence which are so generally condoned
to-day, even in many of the Churches. The Church which rose from the ashes
of ancient Rome was an imperfect institution; but it had two virtues which
made possible the resurrection of civilization. It preserved human faith in
the causal world and in the denizens of that world; and it held forth to suffer¬
ing humanity the truth that the mortal could be re-bom there as an Immortal,
if he fixed his mind and heart upon the model of his Divine Master, and if he
restrained the animal impulses of the personality which alone make man mortal.
Thus it became possible for mediaeval man to open himself to the creative
inspiration which flows from the causal world; to act as a channel through
which that inspiration could pass, to embody itself in new “basic types” of
life and art and knowledge.
Creation becomes a fact in experience when man surrenders himself to an
ideal of truth and beauty higher than any which he has as yet incarnated. In
spite of ignorance and brutality and confusion, that is what happened with
extraordinary frequency during the Middle Ages, as is evident, for example, to
NOTES AND COMMENTS
189
anyone who has studied without bias the history of mediaeval art. It was pre¬
eminently the age of “the pure artist who works for the love of his work”; in
this respect, neither the Greek cycle nor the Renaissance can be compared to
it. It is significant that the typical mediaeval artist was anonymous. Who
knows to-day who was the Master of the Work at Chartres, who designed the
stained glass of Bourges, who composed the folk-music of England and Brittany?
The Creation of the Perfect Man
It was scarcely by accident that an age of “pure art” should also have held
in honour the kindred ideals of sanctity and chivalry. Like the artist, the
saint and the knight must cultivate selflessness, the spirit of consecration, the
habit of obedience to every demand of the True and the Beautiful and the
Good. Whereas the artist moulds some medium external to himself, the saint
and the warrior must primarily mould themselves. In each instance, the
shaktis , the energies of imagination and desire and will, must be used to create
and not to deform. Instead of remaining the prisoners of their bodies and
emotions a^id fancies, which constitute mere fragments of the real man, the
elect of mankind have claimed their heritage as citizens of the causal world,
as co-workers with Nature, as builders of the true Self. They have meditated,
in the sense given that word in the “Elixir of Life”, inexpressibly yearning to
“go out towards the infinite”. Left to his own personal resources, man can
only deform what already exists; but in the measure that he unreservedly re¬
sponds to the inspiration which ceaselessly emanates from causal Nature, the
humblest of mankind can transform both himself and others.
The modern student of Theosophy cannot complain that he has no ideal to
inspire him. Theosophy affirms that knowledge exists and is attainable. It
presents the model of the Perfect Man, not as a dream-shadow but as it has
been individually embodied by the Masters. Evidence of their attainment may
be found in the scriptures of all the world-religions; but Theosophy testifies
that he who seeks can find the Masters here and now; that they are not mere
figures of history but living men. ^
Everyone is free to copy that model of perfection, to make himself over into#
its likeness. Doubtless, we cannot know what perfection, in the complere
sense, really is, until we become perfect; but we can perceive enough to know
that we should love it; and if we strive, with the artist’s enthusiasm and me¬
ticulous care for detail, to embody what we do perceive, our vision will grow
steadily more luminous. Above all, if we give ourselves to this supreme ideal,
to this veritable “imitation of Christ”, the genius from on high will enter us,
accomplishing what we could never do for ourselves, touching our work with
living creative fire.
“In whatever way men approach me”, says the Avatar Krishna in the
Jjjmgavad Gita , “in that way I love them.”
FRAGMENTS
1 0 VE called to me across the garden of life: Come walk with me, he said.
j It was May-time and the birds were singing. Joyfully I answered; but
when I reached him, Love took my hand and said: For myself alone?
Then I replied: There is much to love and many to love in this beautiful,
teeming world. I shall love them all, but for your dear sake.
Love loosed my hand: For myself alone, he said, and turned away.
Again Love called to me, this time across the frozen fields at evening. For it
was December, and everything was lost in the white stillness of the snow. Sum¬
mer had gone with its scentless flowers, autumn with its tasteless fruit.
Love held out his hands as I went toward him: For myself alone? he said.
Yes, O Love Divine, I cried. Yes, for yourself alone. But 0 the frittered
years, the wasted powers!
Love looked at me and smiled: See the pureness of the snow, he said; see
the glory of the near-by stars.
Then he said: Remember.
Cav£.
190
CONFUCIUS
%
II.
Yu , shall I tell you what true knowledge is? When you know , to know that you
know , and when you do not know , to know that you do not know—that is true
knowledge .— Confucius.
“ T7 NOWLEDGE is not innate in me”, said Confucius. “I am but one
1 %^ who loves antiquity and earnestly studies it.” Like all true re-
formers, he came to fulfil the law and the prophets. He sought and
found in the past the prototypes of all present activities. He had a heightened
sense of the unity of time, and would have found unintelligible the modernistic
theory that men can build their future without reference to their past. How
can one reject the past without rejecting experience itself, the root of wisdom?
We read in the Chung Yung:
Every system of moral laws must be based upon a man’s own consciousness. It must
be verified by the common experience. Examined by comparing it with the teachings
of acknowledged great and wise men of the past, there must be no divergence.
No man can understand the moral law by introspection alone, for the field of
personal experience is too limited. But by the power of sympathetic imagi¬
nation he can indefinitely extend his knowledge. “If I am walking with two
men”, Confucius remarks in the Analects , “each of them will serve as my
teacher.” The value of history becomes apparent. The screen of time reflects
every conceivable mode of human existence. Whatever may be one’s present
plan of action, one can discover in the past something analogous which has
been executed in detail, and which has produced definite results, good or evil.
Thus the study of antiquity re-enforces our conscience, our innate intuition
of the moral law. However, Confucius did not think of the present as merely
a repetition of the past. He saw the present emerging from the past, as the
plant emerges from the seed. He sought in antiquity the hidden design which
is to be realized in the future. This explains his veneration for the ‘‘wise men
of the past”. Like the Manus and Rishis of prehistoric India, like the Patri¬
archs of the Old Testament, the primeval sages of China seem to have sounded
the keynote of a racial cycle. It is natural for each member of their race to
aspire towards the unfoldment of the qualities of consciousness which
sages, the spiritual ancestors, first announced and embodied. The Chung Yung
describes the creative potency which distinguishes the sage from the rank and
file of mortals.
All-embracing and vast is the nature of such a man. Profound it is and inexhaustible,
like a living spring of water, ever running out with life and vitality. All-embracing and
vast, it is like Heaven. Profound and inexhaustible, it is like the abyss.
%
191
192
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Confucius lived in the declining years of the Chou dynasty when there was
almost universal confusion, when the people were in danger of losing all sense
of the racial tradition. His first task was to make evident the value of past
experience, of ethical continuity. Therefore, he laboured to strengthen the
cult of the family which had somehow persisted in the midst of political anarchy
and economic distress, and in spite of the superstitions which had grown up
around it. The cultivation of filial piety, the respect of youth for age, the
offering of gifts to the ancestral spirits, signified, as Confucius believed, a state
of health in the body politic. Before a man could be expected to revere his
feudal lord or the Emperor, he must have learned the art of reverence in the
family circle. As long as reverence persisted, China could not be destroyed.
It was typical of Confucius that he placed the burden of responsibility not
upon the young and ignorant, but upon those who were mature in years and
who held positions of power and trust. “If the ruler is personally upright, his
subjects will do their duty unbidden; if he is not personally upright, they will
not obey, whatever his bidding.” On one occasion, when Confucius was Min¬
ister of Justice, a father brought certain charges against his own son. After
imprisoning both father and son for a brief period, he let them go. The Min¬
ister Chi Huan reminded the sage of his emphasis upon filial duty as the first
of virtues and asked why he had not put the unfilial son to death “as an ex¬
ample to all the people”. Confucius replied: “The father has never taught the
son to be filial, and therefore the guilt really rests with him.”
Confucius recognized the social nature of man. It is a fundamental precept
in Confucianism, that no man can live for himself alone and make manifest the
attributes of mind and heart with which Nature has endowed him. Each man
should incarnate in himself the universal principles of justice and charity.
The Confucian expression of the Golden Rule, like the Buddhist, is negative in
form, but in spirit it is as positive as the corresponding maxim of the Master
Christ.
Tzii Kung asked, saying: “Is there any one maxim which ought to be acted upon
throughout one’s whole life?” The Master replied: “Surely the maxim of charity is
such—Do not unto others what you would not that they should do unto you” {Analects).
However, no more than the Buddha or the Christ did Confucius interpret
the Golden Rule sentimentally. The true actor in the dram? of life is not the
personal entity, but the real individual within, the soul. Only in so far as one
represents the soul, should one do unto others as he would that they should do
unto himself. Charity and justice have no reality apart from “inner self-
realization”.
Make conscientiousness and sincerity your grand object. Have no friends not equal
to yourself. If you have done wrong, be not ashamed to make amends. ... I do not
see how a man without sincerity can be good for anything. How can a cart or carriage
be made to go without yoke or cross-bar? . . . Wang-sun Chia asked, saying: What
means the adage, “Better be civil to the kitchen-god than to the god of the inner sanc¬
tum”? The Master replied: The adage is false. He who sins against Heaven can rely
on the intercession of none {Analects).
9 OX
CONFUCIUS 193
Confucius was as far removed as it is possible to be from what is to-day
called “social-mindedness”. He did not immolate the individual to the family,
much less to the state. The family is, indeed, a natural entity, but it becomes
a meaningless abstraction when it is conceived apart from its individual mem¬
bers. Confucius recognized in it one of the instruments devised by Nature to
assist the development of real individuality. In a real family, each member
would be altogether unique and irreplaceable, at the same time that he would
represent the ideal of the family as a whole. The group and the individual
are, in truth, indivisible, for neither can exist without the other. We cannot
imagine Confucius approving any mode of collectivism which reduces the indi¬
vidual to the status of a cog in a machine, and subordinates every individual
need to the exigencies of an abstract “society”.
The ideal of the Superior Man is the nucleus of the Confucian system. The
Superior Man is the real individual in process of becoming “perfect and di¬
vine”. He is the disciple of a Sage, sharing in the creative power of the Sage,
nor can he dwell in a society without transforming it in some degree. Never
relaxing his effort, he “subdues his selfishness and reverts to natural [ i . e.
spiritual] laws”.
Confucius did not pretend that the way of the Superior Man could be trod¬
den to the end by more than a few determined souls. The human race, as at
present constituted, is incapable en masse of so complete and enduring a meta¬
morphosis. Therefore, although the sage’s teaching had a meaning for every¬
one, even for the lowliest, its true import was reserved for his disciples, for
those who undertook to practise his injunctions in the details of daily living.
His method, in this respect, did not differ from that of all great teachers. He
tried to establish a united group of disciples, an order of Superior Men. If
such a group could be established, its example would influence the whole na¬
tion to which it belonged. It would be a radiant centre, a sort of spiritual sun
shining upon the frozen wastes of the world.
Confucius never tired of this theme. He longed for the day when the princes
of China and their ministers would be Superior Men.
If the ruler cherish the principle of self-control, the people will be docile to his com¬
mands.
The Emperor Shun was one who did nothing, yet governed well. For what in effect,
did he do? Religiously self-observant, he sat gravely upon the throne, and that is all.
A virtuous ruler is like the Pole-star which keeps its place while all the other stars
do homage to it.
The Master said: If a country had none but good rulers for a hundred years, crime
might be stamped out and the death-penalty abolished. How true this saying is! If a
kingly sovereign were to appear, by the end of one generation natural goodness would
prevail. If a man can reform his own heart, what should hinder him from taking part in
government? But if he cannot reform his own heart, what has he to do with reforming
others!^
He ^o realizes the difficulty of being a good king—has he not almost succeeded in
makingnis country prosper? {Analects.)
The Way of the Superior Man has been called the Middle Way. Students
194
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
of Confucius make frequent reference to the Doctrine of the Mean. At ap¬
proximately the same time, the identical doctrine was being taught in Greece
by Pythagoras and Aristotle, and in India the Buddha was expounding it as
the truth of the Middle Path. It is one of the most misunderstood ideas in the
world, for it is generally interpreted as inculcating that virtue is a state of com¬
promise between two extremes of conduct. The Confucianists themselves have
often travestied their Master’s teaching, although no words could be clearer
than his.
There was the Emperor Shun. His was perhaps what may be considered a truly great
intellect. Shun had a natural curiosity of mind, and he loved to inquire into things. He
looked upon evil merely as something negative; and he recognized only what is good as
having a positive existence. Taking the two extremes of negative and positive, he ap¬
plied the mean between the two extremes in his judgment, employment and dealings
with people.
Men all say: “We are wise”; but when driven forward and taken in a trap, there is*
not one who knows how to find an escape. Men all say: “We are wise”; but even if they
find the true central clue and balance in their moral being (their true self) they are not
able for one month to follow the line of conduct which is in accordance with it.
Hui was a man who all his life sought the central clue in his moral being, and when he
got hold of one thing which was good, he embraced it with all his might and never lost it
again. A man may be able to renounce the possession of kingdoms and empires, be able
to spurn the honours and emoluments of office, be able to trample upon naked weapons;
with all that he will not be able to find the central clue in his moral being.
The man who has the true force of moral character is one who is easy and accommo¬
dating and yet without weakness or indiscrimination. How unflinchingly firm he is in
his strength! He is independent without any bias. When there is moral social order in
the country, if he enters public life he does not change from what he was in retirement.
When there is no moral social order, he holds on his way without changing even unto
death. How unflinchingly firm he is in his strength! (Chung Yung.)
The Golden Mean is, therefore, the “central clue in our moral being”, the
true self, and when we act from that centre, we follow the Middle Way. Let
anyone try for five minutes to base his conduct upon the central clue in his
moral being, and then say whether this be in any sense whatsoever a com¬
promise between good and evil.
As the reader of the Chung Yung can discover for himself, Confucius was
fundamentally a mystic, and we shall only understand the Doctrine of the
Mean if we interpret it in mystical terms. In other words, only the mystic
can truly understand and follow the Middle Way.
Those of us who can lay claim to no mystical experience of their own, can
perhaps begin to understand the beauty and splendour of the Middle Way,
by reflecting upon the “pairs of opposites” so frequently mentioned in theo-
sophical literature. “The Manifested Universe is pervaded by duality, which
is, as it were, the very essence of its Existence as Manifestation.” When
that which is one and undivided in the spiritual world is reflected in the mirror
of psychic and physical nature, it appears to be twofold, divided into a pair of
opposites. One ancient symbol of this process is the triangle, the angles of the
base denoting the two poles of the opposites, and the apex signifying the unity,
90*
CONFUCIUS i 95
the “central clue”, from which they have proceeded and into which they may
be withdrawn. Another symbol would seem to be the cross, the vertical line
representing the gradations of being between the absolute Oneness of the Un¬
manifested, and the extremes of duality in manifested Nature; the horizontal
line representing a given “pair of opposites”, the two poles or limits of any
particular state of consciousness.
Some examples drawn from common experience may make this clearer.
Pleasure and pain constitute a “pair of opposites”, and the ordinary personal
consciousness moves back and forth between them. It is condemned to this
perpetual oscillation, because it is separated by a film of illusion from the higher
nature in which pleasure and pain are blended into a single state. Light on the
Path describes this “fact of pain and pleasure being but one sensation ; and the
man who attains self-mastery is said to be “equal in pleasure and pain . Not
only is he unmoved by joy and sorrow, but these are equally and permanently
mingled in a superior sensation which includes them both. Such is the testi¬
mony of the mystics, but each of us can find some confirmation of it in his own
experience. When we are most intensely alive, when we move from the unreal
towards the Real in response to some compelling attraction of truth or beauty,
when we truly love, we cannot say which is dominant in our sensation, bliss
or anguish. These two no longer appear as polar opposites, but as aspects of
a sentiment which is one and indivisible.
Again, it has been said that courage is the mean between fear and reckless¬
ness. The average person is a mixture of timidity and rashness, a coward in
some ways, a heedless fool in others. But a man does not become brave by
compromising somehow between the desire to run and the desire to attack at
any cost, for such an adjustment would prevent him from moving in any direc¬
tion. Real courage is an attribute of the soul, and it becomes manifest when
both fear and recklessness are “ground up” and merged in a higher synthesis .
The trained captain knows when to retreat and when to advance; in this sense,
he makes right use of the qualities which we know, in their debased forms, as
fear and recklessness. Practising self-control, he does not flee to escape pain,
nor does he make a useless frontal attack, merely for the fun of it. How can
he be moved by them, if these contrary qualities be blended, transmuted,
drawn up to the apex which holds them fast in indivisible unity? It is not^^
necessary to be a hero to prove the reality of this indrawal of fear and
excessive boldness into courage. One need only recall what sensations he
experienced on some rare occasion when he acted with some semblance of
bravery.
This rather lengthy digression may suggest what Confucius meant when he
spoke of finding the central clue in one’s moral being. To find that clue is to
find the soul, the real self of the human being, the higher nature which unifies
ai^kharmonizes what is twofold in our personal life. As the sage said again
an^gain, the path to that higher nature is discovered by means of self-dis¬
cipline and self-control. Self-control is, indeed, in the Confucian philosophy,
a synonym for the Middle Way.
196 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
The higher type of man, having gathered knowledge from many sources, will regulate
the whole by the inner rule of self-control, and will thus avoid overstepping the limit.
That virtue is perfect which adheres to a constant mean. It has long been rare among
men ( Analects ).
How does one attain this fundamental quality of It, which is here translated
as “self-control”? A passage from the Analects suggests the direction in which
we may look for an answer.
Tzu Kung asked for advice on the practice of moral virtue. The Master replied: If
an artisan wants to do his work well, he must begin by sharpening his tools. Even so,
among the great men of your country, you should serve the wise and good, and make
friends of men who have this moral virtue. . . . The Superior Man seeks all that he
wants in himself; the inferior man seeks all that he wants from others. The Superior
Man is firm but not quarrelsome; sociable but not clannish. He does not esteem a person
more highly because of what he says, neither does he undervalue what is said because of
the person who says it.
Moral virtue simply consists in being able, anywhere and everywhere, to exercise five
particular qualities,—namely, self-respect, magnanimity, sincerity, earnestness and
benevolence. Show self-respect, and others will respect you; be magnanimous, and you
will win all hearts; be sincere, and men will trust you; be earnest, and you will achieve
great things; be benevolent, and you will be fit to impose your will upon others.
The Superior Man makes a sense of duty the groundwork of his character, blends with
it in action a sense of harmonious proportion, manifests it in a spirit of unselfishness,
and perfects it by the addition of sincerity and truth. Then indeed is he a noble character.
Charity, fidelity to duty, sincerity, harmonious proportion may be called the
four pillars of the temple where the Superior Man dwells. It is a testimony to
the unity of truth and to the existence of the one brotherhood which joins to¬
gether all seekers of the truth, that the four Confucian attributes may be as¬
sembled under the Platonic or Pythagorean Trinity of the Good, the True and
the Beautiful.
The man of divine virtue, the God-like Man, who is higher than the Superior
Man, “confers benefits far and wide on the people and can be the salvation of
all”. He illustrates charity in its perfect form, living or dying for the sake of
others, never for himself. He towers like a Master of Wisdom above the world
of mortals.
But as Confucius believed, it was natural for all men to love those who are
near to them, to be careful of the welfare of others, to be sympathetic towards
all who suffer. His whole moral philosophy was founded on this conception of
man’s nature, although it is devoid of any suggestion of sentimentality. He
did not deny that most human nature, in its actual warped condition, no longer
behaves naturally; nor did he pretend that the honourable man should be
incapable of hatred. “He hates those who publish the faults of others, those
who vilify their superiors, those who are audacious but narrow-minded.”
However, he insisted that men should be charitable towards one another
because all souls t are included in one “universal order”. Once again, we must
realize the basic mysticism of Confucius in order to understand what he meant
by an altruistic life. He did not mean what the modern world calls philan-
'T Q 4PTTVTTTRS
20*
CONFUCIUS 197
thropy, the sharing of material wealth, the gift of one’s own or somebody
else’s money to some impersonal distributing agency. Even the most helpful
outward act was void of merit, in his opinion, unless it were inspired by jen,
“goodness of heart,” and shu , “loving-kindness”. No one can begin to be
charitable, in the true sense, until these qualities have become habitual states
of consciousness. That is why a man who really improves himself cannot help
doing good to others.
The man of moral virtue, wishing to stand firm himself, will lend firmness to others;
wishing himself to be illuminated, he will illuminate others. . . . Make conscientious¬
ness and truth your guiding principles, and thus pass to the cultivation of duty to your
neighbour. This is exalted virtue {Analects).
The moral life of man may be likened to travelling to a distant place: one must start
from the nearest stage. It may also be likened to ascending a height: one must begin
from the lowest step. . . . When a man carries out the principles of conscientiousness
and reciprocity he is not far from the moral law. . . . Wherefore the moral law in deal¬
ing with men appeals to the common human nature and changes the manner of their
lives and nothing more {Chung Yung).
One grows in the moral life by fidelity to one’s duty. In the Confucian
ethics, however, duty is not the hazy, indefinite term which too often it is
with us. Duty consists in the right performance of certain acts with the right
motives and with intelligence. It is most important to note that discrimina¬
tion as to motive is absolutely essential. Abstract goodness of intention is not
enough. One must recognize that our duties towards other men are deter¬
mined, first by the fact that no individual is exactly like another, and secondly
by the hierarchical order in which all living beings are grouped. In our rela¬
tions with others, we should always consider who and what they are as regards
inner attainment, rank, social station, and so on. Also, at every moment, we
should know as clearly as possible where we stand, accepting our status as it is,
never pretending to be higher or lower in the hierarchy than we actually are.
The Confucian spirit is paralleled by the injunction of the Christian Cate¬
chism “to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to
call me”. However, in the Far East the practice of duty has, at least in theory,
been exalted to the status of an art. It includes the observance of the laws of
etiquette, of politeness, of good taste. It is characteristic of the Chinese coi^
ception of virtue that the form is not separated from the substance; the gooa^
ness of an act is questioned when the performance is boorish or brutal.
The moral man conforms to his life-circumstances; he does not desire anything outside
his position. Finding himself in a position of wealth and honour, he lives as becomes
one living in a position of wealth and honour. Finding himself in a position of poverty
and humble circumstances, he lives as becomes one living in a position of poverty and
humble circumstances. Finding himself in uncivilized countries, he lives as becomes
one living in uncivilized countries. In one word, the moral man can find himself in no
situation in life in which he is not master of himself. ... In a high position he does not
domineer over subordinates. In a subordinate position he does not court the favour of
sdPk’iors. He puts in order his own personal conduct and seeks nothing from others;
hence he has no complaint to make. He complains not against God nor rails against
ig8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
men. Thus it is that the moral man lives out the even tenor of his life, calmly waiting
for the appointment of God, whereas the vulgar person takes to dangerous courses, ex¬
pecting the uncertain chances of luck.
The duties of universal obligation are five, and the moral qualities by which they are
carried out are three. The duties are those between ruler and subject; between father
and son; between husband and wife; between elder brother and younger; and those in
the intercourse between friends. These are the five duties of universal regulation. In¬
telligence, moral character and courage: these are the three universally recognized moral
qualities of man. ...
The Emperor Wu and his brother were indeed eminently pious men. Now, true filial
piety consists in successfully carrying out the unfinished work of our forefathers and
transmitting their achievements to posterity. . . . The principle in the order of prece¬
dence in the ceremonies of worship in the ancestral temple is, in the first place, to arrange
the members of the family according to descent. Ranks are next considered, in order to
give recognition to the principle of social distinction. Services are next considered as a
recognition of distinction in moral worth. In the general banquet, those below take pre¬
cedence of those above in pledging the company, in order to show that consideration is
shown to the meanest. In conclusion, a separate feast is given to the elders, in order to
recognize the principle of seniority according to age. ... If one only understood the
meaning of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, and the significance of the services in
ancestral worship, it would be the easiest thing to govern a nation (Chung Yung).
Whenever the Master saw a person in mourning, or in official robes, or one who was
blind, he would at once rise from his seat, even though the other were his junior. . . .
In his native village Confucius was simple and unassuming. He gave the impression of
being no great speaker. In the ancestral temple and at Court he spoke fluently but with
a certain reserve. At Court he spoke to the ministers of lower rank with frankness and
affability. To those of higher rank he spoke quietly but with decision. In the pres¬
ence of his Sovereign, he seemed full of awe, but at the same time grave and collected
{Analects).
The Taoists often accused the Confucianists of hypocrisy. It is only too
obvious that a scrupulous observance of the outer forms of right conduct may
co-exist with cynicism and hardness of heart. Confucius himself would have
admitted the Taoist charge that few people, even of the better sort, mean all
that they say; that the son, for instance, may not feel as much reverence for the
father as his external acts would seem to indicate. But it is a basic Confucian
tenet that no one can continually perform certain acts as if they corresponded
to his desires, without awakening those desires in his heart. However, there
must be sincerity of motive, a persistent determination to discover and to live
the truth. No action of any kind can have any enduring validity unless it be
vitalized by the honest effort to realize some aspect of eternal truth.
It is only he, in the world, who possesses absolute truth who can get to the bottom of
the law of his being. He who is able to get to the bottom of the law of his being will be
able to get to the bottom of the law of being of other men. He will pass on to the knowl¬
edge of the laws of physical nature, and so will be able to influence the forces of creation
of the Universe. He who can influence the forces of creation of the Universe is one with
the Powers of the Universe. . . .
Truth means the realization of our being; and moral law means the law of our being.
Truth is the beginning and end of existence. Without truth there is no existence. It is
for this reason that the moral man values truth. Truth is not only the realization of
our being: it is that by which things outside us have an existence. The realization of
T S ACTTVTTTES
20.3
CONFUCIUS i 99
our being is moral sense. The realization of things outside us is intellect. 1 hese, moral
sense and intellect, are the powers or faculties of our being. They combine the inner or
subjective and the outer or objective use of the power of the mind. Therefore with truth
everything done is right. . . . All the institutions of human society and civilization-
laws, customs and usages—have their origin in the divine moral law in man. 1 hey wait
for the right man before they can be put into practice. Hence it is said: Unless there be
highest moral power, the highest moral law cannot be realized. Wherefore the moral
man, while honouring the greatness and power of moral nature, yet does not neglect
inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge. While widening the extent of his knowledge, he
yet seeks to attain the utmost accuracy in the minutest details. While seeking to under¬
stand the highest things, he yet lives a plain, ordinary life in accordance with the moral
order (Chung Yung).
A man without charity in his heart—what has he to do with ceremonies? In all rites,
simplicity is better than extravagance; in mourning for the dead, heartfelt sorrow is
better than punctiliousness. ... It has not been my lot to see a thoroughly virtuous
man; could I see a man possessing honesty of soul, that would satisfy me. Is it possible
there should be honesty of soul in one who pretends to have what he has not; who, when
empty, pretends to be overflowing; who, when in want, pretends to be in affluence?
{Analects.)
As has been suggested, the Chinese have stressed the importance of good
form and grace in action, not only because politeness is, as Giles says, “an in¬
dispensable lubricant in the lesser dealings of life”, but because it is a mani¬
festation of the “harmonious proportion” which is a fundamental attribute of
Universal Nature. An act, to be complete, must be beautiful as well as good
and true. The greatest of the Greeks understood this law, and the Master
Christ illustrated it at every moment of his life. It was, indeed, the principle
upon which the institutions of chivalry were established; but the modem so-
called Christian world has almost forgotten it. How many Christians to-day
believe that courtesy is a divine attribute and not merely a “lubricant”?
Confucius, like Socrates, recommended the contemplation of beauty in
nature and art, as a means towards the cultivation of the love of Beauty as a
thing-in-itself. He was himself a profound student of poetry and music. His
point of view in this matter may be illumined by meditation upon the table of
shaktis or spiritual forces which is given in The Secret Doctrine (ed. 1888, I,
292-293). The “highest” of the six forces is called mantrika-shakti , “the force
of letters, speech or music. . . . The influence of melody is one of its ordinary^
manifestations.” Unless this shakti be actively present in consciousness, tta*
creative force of universal Nature, “the light of the Logos”, Daiviprakr^T
cannot become fully manifest in the individual life.
Tzii Hsia asked, saying: What is the meaning of the passage in the Odes:
“What dimples in her witching smile!
What lovely eyes, clear white and black!
Simplicity sets off her ornaments”?
The Master replied: You must have a plain background before you can lay on the
colours.
^tules of ceremony then require a background?
%Ui' exclaimed the Master, would that my meaning were always thus well under¬
stood ! {Analects.)
200
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
To make the thoughts sincere is to allow no self-deception, as when we hate a bad
odour, or love that which is beautiful. 1 his is called the enjoyment of the powers of the
Self. Therefore, the Superior Man must be watchful over himself when he is alone {The
Great Learning).
The life of the moral man is plain, and yet not unattractive; it is simple, and yet full
of grace; it is easy, and yet methodical. He knows that accomplishment of great things
consists in doing little things well. He knows that great effects are produced by little
causes. He knows the evidence and reality of what cannot be perceived by the senses.
Thus he is enabled to enter into the world of ideas and morals. ... It is only the man
with the most perfect divine moral nature who is able to combine in himself quickness of
apprehension, intelligence, insight, and understanding: qualities necessary for the exer¬
cise of command; magnanimity, generosity, benignity and gentleness: qualities necessary
for the exercise of patience; originality, energy, strength of character and determination:
qualities necessary for the exercise of endurance; dignity, noble seriousness, order and
regularity: qualities necessary for the exercise of self-respect; grace, method, delicacy
and lucidity: qualities necessary for the exercise of critical judgment. . . . Such a man
becomes an example and a statute for generations, and his words become laws. ... It
is only he who possesses absolute truth in the world who can create {Chung Yung).
Thus the disciple will permit no word or act “which is contrary to good
taste and decency”. Misunderstanding this constant emphasis upon etiquette
and ceremony, occidental scholars have too often represented Confucius as a
cold and pedantic fundamentalist, the supreme historical exemplar of formal¬
ism in life and morals. It is only fair to add that, with few exceptions, his
Chinese followers, with their reiterated emphasis upon the dead-letter of the
Confucian texts, have been largely responsible for many Western misinterpre¬
tations.
As has been suggested, Confucius was above all a mystic. He did not look at
external things as real in themselves; he looked through them and within them,
always seeking their essence. In the Confucian philosophy, the Unmanifested
is ever present as the basis and cause of the manifested, and the sole raison
d'etre of the manifested is to embody and show forth the Unmanifested in the
perfect beauty of its eternal “harmonious proportion”.
The power of spiritual forces in the Universe—how active it is everywhere! Invisible
to the eyes, and impalpable to the senses, it is inherent in all things, and nothing escapes
its operation. It is a fact that there are these forces which make men in all countries
fast and purify themselves, and with solemnity of dress institute services of sacrifice and
religious worship. Like the rush of mighty waters, the presence of unseen Powers is felt:
sometimes above us, sometimes around us. Such is the evidence of things invisible that
it is impossible to doubt the spiritual nature of man. . . . The workings of Almighty
God are soundless. There is nothing higher than that {Chung Yung).
Stanley V. LaDow.
T S ACTIVITIES
203
REPORT OF THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
Morning Session
The Annual Convention of The Theosophical Society was called to order
at 64, Washington Mews, New York, at 10.30 o’clock, on Saturday morning,
April 25th, 1936, by Mr. Hargrove, Chairman of the Executive Committee,
who served as Temporary Chairman of the Convention. A Committee on
Credentials was appointed, consisting of Mr. H. B. Mitchell, Miss Perkins,
and Miss Chickering, to confer and report at once.
Address of the Temporary Chairman
Mr. Hargrove: It is with peculiar gratitude and pleasure that I welcome
you to another Convention of The Theosophical Society. It is always a priv¬
ilege to do so, but, as we are human, there are times when the gratitude for
being able to perform this function, is felt more than usual.
Invariably it is a matter of joy to see once more your many friendly, generous
faces, but of course that is not the only reason for thanksgiving on these occa¬
sions. It was said by one great Master, “Where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” and there is no
question, in the minds of some of us in any case, that, whether visibly or invis¬
ibly, we are overshadowed at our Conventions by those members of the Lodge,
who from the earliest days of the Society, have steered its course through
the rough seas of life; and this, to many of us, means a great deal.
The Theosophical Society has evolved to a point where, because of thdW-
votion of its members—I will not say always the understanding of its members,
but their undoubted devotion—they provide, when meeting in this way, an
atmosphere which neutralizes sufficiently even the atmosphere of New York,
thus making it possible for those great beings to bless this assembly, not from
some remote distance in space, but in the closest and most intimate way. There¬
fore every additional Convention we are able to attend is for each and all of
us an additional benediction.
k The Report of the Committee on Credentials was next called for and pre-
201
202
THE 0 S 0 PHICAL QUARTERLY
sented. When this had been accepted and the Committee discharged, the
permanent organization of the Convention was effected by the election of
Mr. H. B. Mitchell, President of the New York Branch, as Permanent Chair¬
man of the Convention, and Miss Perkins and Miss Chickering as Secretary
and Assistant Secretary.
Address of the Chairman
The Chairman: I can but echo Mr. Hargrove’s expression of thanks. It
is with deep gratitude that I serve again as your Chairman.
What has been said of the sense one may have here of the close presence of
the inner world, may serve to explain another feeling in which I think most of
us must share. In the opening of these Conventions, time and its cycles seem
for a moment to stand still: its divisions disappear—the divisions that some¬
times seem to sever our own being, or else to imprison us, as though with bars
through which we could look, but against which we press ourselves in vain.
Past, present and future are in this moment as one, whole and complete;
no more the mere fragments they too often seem; the wounds healed where
they were tom apart. All that has been, here for a moment still is. All that
we have felt as lost, here is again ours. Our great companions of the past are
still with us. Each heart calls its own roll, and to each name there comes an
answer, “Here”. H.P.B. and Judge, and those who stood with them, faithful
in life and death; Mr. Griscom, Mr. Johnston, Dr. Keightley; others whom
death took in this last year. Again, in our hearts, we feel them with us. hear
their voice and see their smile. Here too, in some sense that words do not
adequately reflect, the goal that has gleamed for us all our life, far away, has
drawn near. All we could never be, somehow is; and endless failure finds in it
an end. For here, in this moment, when we meet in our Father’s house about
our Father’s business, the inner and the outer worlds are one; and time and
its cycles, which, like the beating of a heart, mark the ingoing and the outgoing
of the spirit, have here, in that unity, their beginning, their middle and their
end. Without moving is the travelling in this road; the end is wrapped in the
beginning, and the Kingdom of the Heavens seems literally at hand.
Because of this, I think we see more clearly and truly at these Conventions
than we usually succeed in seeing through the year. For in truth the inner
world is one with the outer, as it here seems; our goal is within our reach; the
Kingdom of the Heavens is at hand. But, in general, the moment of realiza¬
tion is but a moment in our consciousness. Then the cycles spread out from
their nodes. The past is again past; its lessons to be reviewed and learned;
its successes and its failures alike to be transformed into power. The future
stretches on before us; our goal is again distant, to be reached only as step
by step we travel the Way between. And the duty of the present is once more
to fix the features of that Way upon mind and will,—to gain as clear an under¬
standing as we can of what is required in order to pursue it.
It is a higher duty, and one upon which far more depends, than can easily
be recognized by those who, ignorant of the origin of the Theosophical Move-
T. S. ACTIVITIES
203
ment and of the function it was founded to fulfil, attempt to judge it by ap¬
pearances or numbers. To such it must seem absurd to assume, as we con¬
stantly do, that the destinies of a race and civilization can turn upon the vision
and fidelity of a few score simple people, gathered together in an old mews
which improvement has passed by. Yet it is more absurd to assume that the
importance of function is measurable by the mass or magnificence of the in¬
strument. The safety of great ships may rest upon the fidelity of a lighthouse
keeper on a lonely rock; and there is a power that comes from position, as well
as that which is due to mass and force. A royal signature is not less potent
because not written in the letters of an advertising poster; and the fraction
of a turn of a micrometer screw between the fingers, can bring into the field
of a telescope new worlds, millions of light years from those that had been
seen before. The Karma, the destiny, of a race, as of an individual, depends
upon such things as these illustrations suggest,—upon the direction of its life-
forces, upon the lights which guide it, the laws that it makes sovereign and
obeys, the worlds which it envisions, the ideals and desires it pictures and
strives to attain. It is with these things that the Theosophical Movement
is concerned, and our duty to-day is to deepen our understanding of them.
It is of the utmost moment that we, who have been led to the Path, and shown
its course as it climbs upward to the Gates of Gold, should keep clear in our
minds the picture of its successive stages. We know, as the world does not,
how desperate is the need for clear pictures of the Truth, and how vital and
dynamic such pictures can be,—how magical are understanding and love.
The potency of pictures is too little considered. We cannot move a finger,
the will cannot act, except upon some picture previously given us or conceived
by our imagination. All growth and development are the progressive filling
of astral moulds, the actualization of such pictures as the imagination forms;
for our imagination is a facet of Kriyasakti, the great creative principle, and
the forms it impresses upon the Astral Light have the power to draw to them¬
selves substance and force, so that they materialize outwardly. Growth is
always from within out, the thought preceding the act, the concept preceding
its realization; and this whether the concept be true or false. If it be false, it
creates monstrosities. But monstrosities cltc created, as witness the French
and Russian revolutions, and the self-contradictory aberrations of politics
nearer home. It has been rightly said that the French Revolution was due
to the Encyclopedists far more than to the Jacobins; and that there is nothing
that can prevent an idea, held firmly and desired with self-giving ardour, from
working out the realization of its content for good or ill. That is the way life
works, and that is why true understanding and devotion are the magical powjs
for good that they are,—why a nun’s silent meditation in her cell may be n^re
potent than any eloquence, broadcast over the whole world. If we, here to¬
day, can attain to true understanding of the Masters’ will, can gain and hold
a clear picture of our goal, or of the next steps upon our way toward it, above
all if, having gained such understanding, we can give to it our whole-hearted
love and obedience, we shall, by that inner work, be serving the Theosophical
204
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Movement, the great Lodge of Masters, and the world in which we live, more
effectively than by any outer means we could devise.
An analogy may help us. If we press our finger tips on the glass of the win¬
dow pane, the mark we leave may not at first be noticeable. But as little by
little dust accumulates upon it, or as the sun shines directly through it, the
print is brought out clearly, showing every detail, every swirl and curve, in a
pattern of light. It is the same with the imprint of our heart and mind upon
the astral plane, which is the window glass of the world. The impression is
scarcely noticeable until, for dust, we give the substance of ourselves, the
ground-up stuff of our personality, thus remoulded on the image that has been
formed within our souls. But then it stands forth clearly; and the effect is
intensified a thousand times if, by virtue of our participation in the Theo-
sophical Movement, we are in the direct path of the light radiating from the
Lodge upon the world. Then the image that we treasure may be projected
large upon the world, as a lantern throws a picture on the screen,—save that
it is no longer merely a picture, merely a simulacrum of an ideal, but is itself
real and living, vital and potent with the life and power of the spirit that con¬
ceived and nourished it. There is a profound truth behind the apocryphal
story of the child Jesus moulding clay sparrows that rose and flew.
Such is the inner work of understanding, of love and of self-giving, which
is the special work of the indrawing cycles, and which, in all cycles, is the spe¬
cial work of our Conventions, inasmuch as their primary object is to gain
and to disseminate right understanding of the duties entrusted to us and of
the Path we must follow.
Despite all that has been said in the last few years, upon the necessity of
indrawal and upon what it must be expected to involve, it is doubtful if this
phase of the cycle has been understood throughout the Society. It is appar¬
ently viewed very negatively, as though it were an interruption of the “real”,
effective, understandable work of the Movement. It is envisaged in terms of
deprivation rather than of gain, in terms of loss of what we have had in the
past,—loss of leaders, loss of teaching and guidance, loss of meetings and com¬
panionship, loss of the Quarterly, withdrawal of inspiration, help and sup¬
port. In short, I think the prospect is regarded very much as one might look
forward to a cold, empty, deserted house, through whose bare rooms we shall
wander, lonely and desolate, where we used to be welcomed with love and
cheer.
Indrawal may, indeed, involve any or all of the deprivations thus antici¬
pated; but to see it in those terms is to see it falsely. It is to see it from below,
not from above, and from the point of view of self-assumed failure (quite gratu¬
itously assumed) instead of success; from the point of view of what is surren¬
dered rather than of what is gained. When the Kingdom of Heaven was likened
to a pearl of great price, which the merchant sold all that he had to obtain,
among those who heard the parable there may have been some who saw in it
nothing but the hell of parting with all that they had. The same occasion
may bring either heaven or hell, according as we meet it from the one side or
T. S. ACTIVITIES
205
the other. If the house is to be deserted by your family or friends, moving
from the heat and hideous turmoil of the city to the cool quiet of the country,
why do you assume that you are to be left behind? Please remember that you
have been invited to go with them, and you remain to wander through de¬
serted halls only if you so choose—only if you yourself prefer the crowds and
confusion, the glare and noise, to the quiet of the hills and the wide horizons,
across which drift the shadows of the clouds.
Why is it that the indrawing cycle is so misconceived? I think there are
three contributory causes. There is, first, sheer laziness: the laziness that
has grown used to things as they are and does not wish to change, and the
laziness of mind that assumes as its own view, without bothering to examine
or challenge it, the instinctive reactions of the lower nature, which never will¬
ingly surrenders itself and which shrinks from all sacrifice, no matter what
may be gained of opportunity and achievement. Wherever we have permitted
this to mislead us, we know what must be done to correct and clear our sight.
The second cause of confusion is, I think, a misinterpretation of the his¬
torical record, caused by our failure to remember that never before, in our
civilization, has the Theosophical Movement been carried over into the in-
drawing cycle. Always in the past, the centre established in the last quarter
of the century has had to be withdrawn, or has disintegrated, before the open¬
ing of the new, so that the Lodge has not heretofore had a centre in the world
during the inbreathing cycle such as it has had in the outbreathing. The re¬
sult of this has been that the currents of the inbreathing of spirit have largely
passed over the world rather than through it, and the world itself has been
much less affected by the inbreathing than by the outbreathing. This fact,
perceived without being analyzed, can easily prompt the erroneous inference
that the one cycle is less dynamic than the other. It is only in our own day,
in the success that has carried our Movement over the end of the century and
these thirty-six years into the new, that we can really observe the effect of the
inbreathing when its currents draw through the world by virtue of a Lodge
centre having been maintained in it.
The third factor might be considered as the reverse aspect of the second; for
as the failure of the Movement in the past prevented the indrawing currents
from manifesting their full effects in the world, so now the success of the Move¬
ment in entering new ground since the beginning of the century, has overlaid^^^
the normal, major cycle of indrawal, with a secondary, minor cycle of outgi\-®
ing, whose effects, experienced close at hand, have not been distinguished,
by many of our members, from those of the main cycle upon which they have
been superposed. An advancing wave has obscured a receding tide.
To understand either cycle it is necessary to remember that the object of
giving out is to draw in. It has been said that so far as ultimate and infinite
purposes can be set forth in the terms of our finite speech, the object of mani-
» ,tion, the reason for the emergence of the visible universe from Pralaya,
e evolution of self-consciousness and the lifting of it from lower to higher
levels. The universe comes forth that it may go back enriched; and because
206 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Being is one, this great cycle is mirrored in endless lesser cycles of outgoing
and return. Thus the outgoing from the Lodge, the sending of its messenger
into the world with new teaching of the Way, has for its object the lifting of
the consciousness of the world, the guidance of human evolution, and, in partic¬
ular, the drawing up to union with the Lodge (in spiritual consciousness and
ch£laship) of such individuals in the world as respond to the teaching and appeal.
The outgoing is not an end in itself, but has an aim beyond itself to which it
is but a means,—an aim that can be realized only through the indrawing.
It is like the spring-time plowing of the soil and sowing of seed, whose object
is the harvesting of a crop. Or it has been likened to fishermen casting a net
into the sea, in order to draw it in with its catch. Heretofore the net has broken
as it was drawn in, and so has come up empty, the aim and purpose of the
outgoing having been defeated by the failure of the indrawing. But with us,
so far, the net has held.
Another simile that has been used is the way water may be drawn up in a
tube by the indrawing of the breath—provided always that the lower end of
the tube be kept beneath the surface of the water. The coming of the Lodge
Messenger in the outgoing cycle brings the tube down into the world, and if
it can be maintained there in the inbreathing cycle, the water will follow the
indrawing breath. But in the past, the centre in the world could not be main¬
tained ; the tube was not kept beneath the surface, and the currents of the in¬
breathing swept over and not through the world. That is one reason why,
as we saw, the indrawing cycle has had so negative an aspect in common
thought. In the past it has been negative, in that outer effects have been small.
But with us, because the centre was maintained, the effects have been experi¬
enced directly in the manifest world about us, and whether we have heretofore
done so or not, we can to-day see those effects for what they are, and read in
them the evidence of the tremendous, dynamic potency of the inner forces
with which our Movement deals.
But first it will be well to broaden our thought of cyclic law by approaching
it from a standpoint that is both less material and less abstract than that which
is commonly taken. Theosophy teaches us that everything that is, is living.
Behind all phenomena, of every kind, there are vital phenomena; and this must
be as true of cyclic phenomena as of all else. Behind and explaining them
must be individual life and consciousness. This has been recognized by medi¬
cal science in its study of diseases that have a recurring period, such as the
chills and fever of malaria, the periodicity having been traced to the life cycle
of the germ. It is instructive to think similarly of the outbreathing and in¬
breathing of spiritual force in terms of the cycle of human lives.
There is first the coming of the Lodge Messenger, which, as H.P.B. told us,
takes place in the last quarter of each century. He comes, either alone or with
a small group, to bring the Lodge teaching anew to the world, and to give
what he can of Lodge force and inspiration to such as will receive it. He does
not do this, any more than the husbandman sows seed, as an end in itself. He
does it for the purpose of growing a crop; and therefore, so far as conditions
T. S. ACTIVITIES
207
permit the Lodge Messenger to do openly the work for which he comes, we
find him in general drawing around him a group of students or disciples, whom
he seeks to kindle to the ideals of the Lodge and to awaken to the realities of
the inner life. In so far as he thus succeeds in inspiring his pupils, his giving
out of the Lodge teaching has the result of inducing, as its response, a second¬
ary, indrawing current, rising from the world toward the Lodge, which is con¬
stituted by the aspiration and effort of those whose aim is ch£laship.
Throughout his life or mission, the Lodge Messenger does what he can to direct
and strengthen this induced, indrawing current, and when the time comes that
he must die, or be withdrawn, the question as to whether the Movement can
continue turns upon whether this secondary current has reached its goal in
the attainment of ch£laship by one or more of the Messenger’s students. If
ch£laship has not been attained, if the inner life and perceptions of the dis¬
ciples remain dependent upon the constant stimulus and correction of the Mes¬
senger’s presence, then his withdrawal of necessity leaves the outer centre
without foundation or link with the Lodge, so that it must disintegrate, or,
worse, be perverted to lower aims that may be the very opposite of the pur¬
poses of the Lodge. We have seen this happen again and again. It is illus¬
trated, in greater or less degree, in the history of every exoteric religious
movement. Once the founder (or the primary group who worked with him)
had been withdrawn, the direct link with the Lodge was broken, and the inner
vision of those who remained was unable to distinguish between spiritual truth
and the psychic, upside-down reflection of reality. Or else their lack of puri¬
fication, their unconquered desires, their failure in understanding or in selfless¬
ness, the smallness of their real love for the ideals they professed, all combined
to erase the founder’s teaching and to cause the substitution of something
wholly foreign to it. Again and again this has been the fate of the Theosophical
Movement.
But if the Messenger succeed in inspiring his students to the point where
they so work upon themselves as to gain a footing in the inner world and an
inner life of their own, weaned from dependence upon the Messenger’s presence,
if, in other words, real ch£laship be developed from among his students, so thaW
one or more of them has established independent, individual connection wit^
the Lodge, then by that fact a new link is formed between the world and the
Lodge, which remains despite the Messenger’s withdrawal. That was the
meaning of H.P.B.’s dying message: ‘‘Keep the link unbroken”. Through
the line of W. Q. Judge, it was kept unbroken, by the rebirth, in the world, of
love and ch£laship.
Love, we have been told, is the power that moves the world. It cannot exist
and give no sign. When it is reborn in the world, and rises to consciousness of
itself and of the Lodge, it must straightway begin to work the works of love.
What then immediately happens is described in Light on the Path:
In some confused and blurred manner the news that there is knowledge and a benef¬
icent power which teaches, is carried to as many men as will listen to it. No disciple
can cross the threshold without communicating this news, and placing it on record in
208
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
some fashion or other. He stands horror-struck at the imperfect and unprepared man¬
ner in which he has done this; and then comes the desire to do it well, and with the
desire thus to help others comes the power.
Thus the sequence of the cyclic phases, in terms of individual lives, becomes
clear. If the Lodge Messenger, and those who may have come with him from
the Lodge, be successful in their outgiving, it kindles in their pupils an induced,
indrawing current of aspiration, flowing from the world back toward the Lodge;
and if, in its turn, this current be successful in reaching its goal, it results im¬
mediately in a new outgoing,—a new outbreathing cycle, established by the new
chelaship, being thus superposed upon the indrawing phase of the primary cycle.
This is what we can trace in our own Movement following the turn of the
primary cycle in 1898 to 1900; and again, something more than a decade later,
in 1911, when, once more, buried love came to rebirth and consciousness, and
renewed again, just twenty-five years ago, an outgiving cycle of Lodge force
and teaching. It is well that we should understand clearly this relation be¬
tween cyclic law and individual lives, that it may bring home to us the truth
that the continuance of the Theosophical Movement depends not upon some
abstraction, but upon our own individual lives and effort,—upon your success
with yourself, upon whether you care enough that a Lodge centre should be
maintained in the outer, Western world, and the teaching of H.P.B. and Judge,
and the others to whom we owe so much, be preserved as living teaching of a
living truth. It must be in individual hearts that chelaship is kept: not in
masses nor abstractions, but in individuals.
To attain to chelaship is to attain to union with the Lodge. Therefore, so
long as Lodge ch£las are in the world, the Lodge has a centre in the world, a
fulcrum for its lever, or, in the simile used before, the end of the tube is kept
in the water, and the inbreathing, instead of passing over the surface, passes
through the water, agitating it and lifting it up in the tube. What would this
mean in the world about us? What theoretical differences should we expect
to observe between this condition, as existing in our own time, and the con¬
ditions in past centuries?
In the first place, where before there had been but one current, there would
now be two. The dead weight of materialism, which in the past would not
have been outwardly opposed in that phase of the cycle, would, through the
success of the Movement, now be met by a rising current setting in the op¬
posite direction. Like the meeting of two opposing tides, this would cause
conflict and tumultuous waves and tide-rips, and confusion of cross currents,—
such as we can observe in the East River at Hell Gate where the tides meet.
Unopposed, the dead weight of things pressed man down deeper and deeper
into matter, into the dominance of material comforts and material aims and
the consequent slow poisoning of his spiritual nature, without its action being
particularly noticed, or men being roused to recognition of their danger. But
when met by an opposite current, setting away from the world to the Lodge,
away from softness and ease, and sloth and selfishness, toward service and
T. S. ACTIVITIES
209
sacrifice and self-giving, then the true nature of each is revealed by contrast
with the other, and choice is forced. We should then expect to see sharp con¬
flict in the world, the head-on collision of opposing forces, and men being
roughly awakened to the necessity of choosing their part and throwing them¬
selves into the one current or the other.
Second, we should expect to see, corresponding to the rising of the water
in the tube, a recrudescence and resurrection of the buried spiritual element
in man and the world, an uprising in individuals of the essential spirit that
leads to chglaship, the spirit that sacrifices self to loyalty.
Now let us ask ourselves what it is, in actual fact, that the world reveals
in these last twenty-five years from 1911 to 1936, and how the facts compare
with the theory. Almost immediately the World War breaks forth, spreading
more widely over the world than any previous conflict that history records.
There is direct, head-on collision; and from it all sorts of tide-rips and cross
currents. The overthrow of Russia; the tyranny of Bolshevism; the failure
in final perseverance that permitted the Armistice—the failure to win the war;
the reaction to sentimental pacifism, to empty abstractions and the psychic
delusions of self-determinism and democracy, and the rule of the lowest in¬
stead of the best; the insane assumption that talk could take the place of force.
There is inflation and depression; the collapse of the American system; the
revulsion from democracy and the establishment of dictatorships, the edicts
of men or of mobs taking the place of law. And now, the cold-blooded murder
of a whole people in order to loot its land. This is what the world actually
shows us of these twenty-five years.
But, rising up above the world, in the misery and carnage of the World War,
we see supreme heroism and self-giving. We see men lifted far above the levels
on which they ordinarily lived. We see their deaths placing them on the path
to ch&aship, to which, in their next life, they may be reborn.
Is there difference between what theory indicates and what the facts reveal?
And does indrawal still seem something negative and dull, the absence of driv¬
ing force and action?
When, thinking it interesting, I spoke of this parallel to one of my fellow^
members, he said with a smile: “You will not help the Movement or the Society
if you make it appear that they are responsible for all the woes of the world
in these last twenty-five years!” I am not making the Society responsible
for the woes of the world, nor for its evil. I am presenting the success of the
Movement as responsible for enabling the great Lodge of Masters to do more,
than at similar times in the past, to combat that evil by awakening men to
some vision of it and some revulsion against it. It is not a “woe” that man
should be aroused to fight evils that grew strong while he yielded to them,
and which have been steadily poisoning him. The evil is in the evil, not in
Aei resisting of it.
On this point let us call upon the witness of medical science, as last year
we listened to physical science. We shall not be interested in the sayings of
the little men, the doctors who want a fashionable practice and coddle you
210
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
and send you to bed or to Florida, or who wish to remove everything they
hope may be removable among your interior organs, so that they may gratify
their curiosity and charge you for it. We shall ask the testimony of real scien¬
tists, of those who have given themselves to the study of man’s whole nature,
and who have been one-pointed and self-sacrificing in their search for truth, even
though they have used utterly illegitimate methods, involving the monstrous
cruelties of vivisection and animal experimentation Such testimony we can
find in Dr. Carrel’s book, Man , the Unknown.
Man, to Dr. Carrel, is a unit; behind all his aspects, man himself is one,
and thinks and acts and lives with the whole of himself. Only as he energizes
and calls into play all his forces, all his organs, only as he actualizes his full
potentialities, can any one of his activities reach its maximum efficiency, and he
himself escape degeneration. He rots in ease. His whole organism was made
for the overcoming of difficulties, the lifting of weights, the conquering of his
environment and of himself. Man is not outside the universe but a part of it,
a part of the Divine Purpose, for existence is not a purposeless thing. The
great sweep of evolution is designed to lift all being to a higher consciousness,
to transform what is, into what is to be; and man is part of this. He has real
work to do, real weights to lift, and he is not healthy, as no being is healthy,
when he is not performing the function for which he is designed. Mind, body
and character all need hardship, struggle, uneven conditions, sleeplessness and
hunger and thirst and cold, effort to the limit of his strength, the denial of his
appetites and passions. And all of this he seeks to escape, and very largely
succeeds in escaping, through the control that modem physical science has
given him over the conditions of his life,—his heated and cooled houses, his
delicatessen shops, his ready-made clothes, his regular hours of sleep, the low
grade of intelligence demanded in his daily routine, the constant putting of
mere 'quantity before quality.
The triumph of physical science, Dr. Carrel shows, has thus wrought the
degeneracy of man. Every advance in man’s power to control his environment
has been prostituted to the indulgence of his appetites and to material ease.
Looking back over past civilizations it is noteworthy that whenever natural
conditions did not impose hunger and hardship upon man, he imposed them
upon himself. Fasting has been prescribed in all the great religions, and rigorous
self-discipline and the subordination of the body to the will, were in the very
foundation of the chivalric code. In tournament as in battle, the knight was
called to jeopardize his life and to spend himself to the utmost limit of his
strength. As compression gives spring, so self-discipline yields creative power,
and the marvellous flowering of Gothic art is the offspring of man’s firmer hold
upon himself. It is in to-day’s utter rejection of the ideals of self-discipline and
self-spending, in the modem revolt against all restraints upon appetite and
self-indulgence, that such students of man as Dr. Carrel find the gravest danger
to the race. The conclusion Dr. Carrel points out i$ inescapable: all the
sciences of man unite in giving the same testimony to his needs as does religion.
Whether we view man from the physiological or the psychological side—above
T. S. ACTIVITIES
21 I
all if we strive to see him as a whole—we are forced to recognize that the ease
and safety, which he is for ever seeking, work to his undoing; and a civiliza¬
tion, such as that of to-day, based upon such unworthy desires, must in the
end destroy him. It has grown up without thought or plan or recognition of
what must be its effect upon man’s nature and development and ultimate
happiness. In actual fact it is destructive of all three.
The crying need of our times, as Dr. Carrel sees it, is therefore twofold:
First, that man should rouse himself to the facts of his own being, and again
lay discipline upon himself, resolutely imposing upon himself harder conditions
that will demand and develop all his powers. Here Dr. Carrel, all uncon¬
sciously, echoes back to us Light on the Path , “Kill out desire of comfort .
The second great need is for those who can guide the world and civilization
in the light of a knowledge of man’s whole nature, the sum total of his poten¬
tialities. And here, though again he does not know it, Dr. Carrel joins in the
prayer that is never absent from our hearts, that some how, some way, we may
evoke “God-instructed men” to guide us,—that Adept Kings may come again
to earth, the representatives of the great Lodge of Masters.
So much for the past. We look forward now to the future, trying to apply
what we have learned. What lies ahead?
Indrawal, surely; but indrawal should now mean to us something more
and other than it appears to such as have approached it negatively. Whether
there can be continuance of outgiving must depend upon whether love and
chelaship can be brought anew to self-consciousness and rebirth. But whether
there be outgoing or not—continuance of the Quarterly, meetings, conven¬
tions, or not—there must surely be ingoing, deeper and deeper into our own
being. Whether or not we continue to talk and to write, we shall certainly
have to be; and we can benefit the Movement through talking only as we first
become what we wish to talk about. We must be honest above all, and dis¬
tinguish between what we know and what we have heard. Theosophy was
not given us in the outbreathing cycle merely to preach to some one else. It
was given us to be applied, to be lived and proved in our own lives. That is
the work of the indrawing cycle—to draw the teaching in. We have received
the teaching. We need no more. We need to live what we have. Gravely
let us recognize and accept the destiny to which we are called.
Perhaps we are of different ages in the inner life, and perhaps different sim^
should be used for these differing conditions. If our elders withdraw, leaving
us here, perhaps it is like a mother who, having placed her child upon his feet,
withdraws her hands that he may stand alone, and come to her, walking by
himself. Or perhaps it may be as the Black Prince was left by his father to win
his battle and his spurs alone. But whatever simile we use, if it be a true simile,
it will show us that, with the indrawing, we are not come to some pause or
suppression of our great adventure, but rather to the moment of proof for which
*11 our past has been preparation, all our teaching designed,—the point at
Stanch Theosophy and our own manhood alike come to their test. For from
whatever standpoint we approach it, indrawal means that we go in to greater
212
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
intensity of force, of responsibility, of opportunity; that the infant must be¬
come the child, the child the man, and the man be faced with the sharp cleavage
between the world and the Lodge, between what he has been and the fulness
of the stature of what it is open to him to become.
For sixty-one years we in the Society have been taught and guided. What
is the result? Where are those whose lives have been transformed, as Theos¬
ophy tells us its disciplines do transform those who follow them? Where
are those who can speak of these things “with authority”, as one who has
proved them? It is the answer to those questions, not more teaching, that
the world needs.
The great Lodge does not call us to ease, to comfort, to soft lives, in which
even science now sees men must degenerate and rot. It calls us, it was said
here last year, as Garibaldi called for men, offering them toil and privation,
hunger and thirst, hardship, suffering and death, that a Cause may prevail.
But where, for Garibaldi’s men, all this was to be where men could see it, we
must remember that in our work none of it should show at all. We are not
to be tossed about by the turmoil and the conflict; we are to still them by tak¬
ing the shock, unmoved, upon ourselves. What else is the meaning of the
“Guardian Wall”, of which the ch£la aspires to be a part?
More and more our work must be inner work,—such work as I spoke of at
the beginning: the work of meditation, of forming and holding clear-cut pic¬
tures of our ideal, and above all the work of giving ourselves wholly and com¬
pletely to what we profess to love and serve. We have to give all. It is only
at the limit of our being, only when, and where, we have done our own utmost,
only at the frontiers of ourselves, that we can come into contact with what is
beyond ourselves, and so can be aided by power higher than our own to grow
into something greater than we have been. Half measures must of their very
nature fail. Not taking us to our own limits, they cannot possibly take us
beyond them; and it is beyond them that our goal is set.
No man is ever left without the light he needs, save as he blinds himself.
But until the need comes, though the light is there it means little to us. From
our childhood we have read the words of counsel that we have now to follow.
Nowhere is there more compelling, moving counsel for the indrawing than
the prayer of the great Christian Master at the end of his mission, recorded
in the 17th chapter of St. John: “And now I am no more in the world, but
these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine
own name those whom thou hast given me.” Let us read it again, taking it
now to ourselves, and praying for the grace of such final perseverance as may
turn all lukewarmness or half measures into whole-hearted and complete self¬
giving. Then, and then only, can come the fulfilment of the promise and the
teaching, and life and death be alike transformed for us. It is there, at the
extreme frontiers of their being, that the Master awaits his chSlas.
After due authorization, the Chairman next appointed the following com¬
mittees :
T. S. ACTIVITIES
213
Committee on Resolutions: Mr. Hargrove, Dr. Torrey, Mr. Auchincloss.
Committee on Letters of Greeting: Mr. J. F. B. Mitchell, Mr. Kobb6, Mr. A.
Gonz&lez Jim6nez.
Committee on Nominations: Mr. Miller, Mr. LaDow, Dr. Hohnstedt.
The report of the Secretary T. S. was then called for.
Report of the Secretary T. S.
Miss Perkins: I have the honour to submit the following Report; and, in
so doing, would remind you that our Branches are holding special meetings
for the purpose of taking active part in the proceedings here to-day, drawing
near in their hearts, to give and to receive.
Branch Activities
Reporting for the Cincinnati Branch, Miss Hohnstedt writes: “ The Great
Upanishads , by Charles Johnston, has proved a very inspiring study. Our
members are taking an entirely different attitude toward the problems they
daily face; all feel the seriousness of our obligation to preserve at least a nucleus,
for the use of the coming Messenger.” The members of Hope Branch, in Provi¬
dence, Mrs. Rose says,—‘‘Express their gratitude for the strength that even
a little knowledge of Theosophy brings, and all are trying to ‘do something
about it’.” Of the Middletown Branch, the Secretary, Mrs. Pierce tells us:
“This year the homes of the majority of us were visited by death; the first to
go was our beloved member, Mrs. Roberts, who is sorely missed. But these
losses have drawn our little band into closer union, and the winter’s meetings
have been of great help to us all.” In his report for the Pacific Branch of Los
Angeles, Mr. Box outlines a method of study which it may be helpful to quote:
“Our aims and effort have been, to grasp clearly, as applying to our present
and future lives, the teaching that is still being so generously given us. At the
opening meeting, our first thought was of that ‘anything but soft’ letter quoted
in the April, 1935, ‘Screen’, with its wellnigh scathing but timely and well-
deserved admonitions. The 1935 Convention Report was considered for sev¬
eral meetings, until not only the Chairman’s address but every speech and
paper, resounded for us with the call to ‘empty’ ourselves of ‘softness’, as being
opposed to virility and to the virtuous heroism that is its higher opposite. S<v
we became more conscious , inwardly as well as outwardly, of events and things
as they occur; and instead of merely looking on and mentally measuring them,
we have tried to discover what great Nature herself would have us be at this
time. The pruning that there is to do, ‘down to the root’, is evidently not so
much of the Movement as of ourselves,—so that we may spring up again,
to blossom and bear the fruit of the soul itself, in the full sunlight of the Lodge.
Next we turned to Mr. Charles Johnston’s ‘Christianity and War’; and from
this to ‘War Seen from Within’, printed in the Quarterly for January, 1915,
wh^J;he outnumbered French and English and Belgians were holding back
the m\o\e German army. This gave us a glimpse of the fighting we must do
within ourselves, in our pruning.” Speaking of the meetings of the Virya
214 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Branch, Denver, its Secretary, Miss Mary Kent Wallace, says: A broad
range of material is brought in for analysis according to theosophic principles.
The Branch has also used Mr. Griscom’s ‘Letters to Students and Elementary
Articles’, selected articles from the Quarterly, which has been much missed
in the last months, and recent Reports of the New York Branch: all of which
have formed the background of discussion, and have reinforced the desire to
make the teachings effective in conduct and character.”
Of Branches in England, the one at Gateshead is, Mr. Ward says, most
appreciative of the help given by neighbouring Branches”. Reporting for the
Newcastle Branch, its Secretary, Mrs. Cassidy, writes, “Our studies have
included reports of the New York Branch meetings (much appreciated); articles
in the Quarterly on Jeanne d’Arc and on the French Revolution, for a better
understanding of France; also the 1935 Convention Report, which was illu¬
mined by the impressions of three members, who, having been present, were
able to make their fellows feel as if they, too, had been there.” The Norfolk
Branch, consisting of members widely separated, has developed, for the con¬
duct of its “correspondence-meetings”, a comprehensive plan which enlists
the participation of each one. The Secretary, Mrs. Graves, reports: “I think
the most noteworthy thing about our year’s work has been an increasing reali¬
zation of the intimate connection that Theosophy has with the world to-day,
the importance of the theosophic life and its increasing influence in world
affairs,—as is shown by the intense desire of our members to discover how the
teaching we receive can be used for good, in the troubled and dark days through
which we are passing. We are immensely grateful for the help we receive
from the Reports of the New York meetings—the first one for this year is so
encouraging, showing how much is within our power, how great the possi¬
bilities for us if we live the life with devotion, humility, and faith.” “The
meetings of the South Shields Branch,” Mr. Mackey writes, “reveal a unity
of purpose in the search for Truth; and as a body, we seem to be slowly moving
forward to a better understanding of the inner aspects of Theosophy.” After
reporting on the work of the Whitley Bay Branch, the Secretary, Mrs. Ross,
adds: “We were all delighted to receive the season’s first Report of the New
York Branch meetings. We look forward to these Reports eagerly; everyone
appreciates them and bids me thank those who make it possible for us to have
them.”
The Arvika Branch, strengthened by the return of Mr. Emanuel Jonsson,
has been very active. Mrs. Fjaestad writes: “We greatly enjoy ourT. S. work,
and are very grateful that we ever came to know of Theosophy. We have
been studying the New York Reports and translations of Quarterly articles;
discussion always follows, and our President, who is a serious student, con¬
ducts this ably.” The Branch in Czecho-Slovakia has, naturally, given special
study to the last Convention Report, as two of its officers participated in that
gathering. “The temporary suspension of the Quarterly confronted us”,
the Secretary writes, “with urgent need to become worthier to get inspiration.
We have surveyed the tests that came, in 1914 and 1923, of our ability to recog-
T. S. ACTIVITIES
215
nize the application of theosophical principles; and now, facing another real
test, we are endeavouring to remain aware of the tremendous fact that the
little decisions, made from moment to moment in our individual hearts, will
have far-reaching effect,—for it was said in the ‘Screen’ of January, 1916,
that the thinking of the humblest member has unlimited power back of it
when it is in harmony with the thought of Masters. We have learned to ap¬
preciate the Theosophical Quarterly from the depths of our hearts, and
have become more fully aware of our indebtedness to its editors and their
collaborators.” In the Oslo Branch the subject of indrawal was considered
as a necessary response to cyclic law, and the annual address of the Chairman,
Mr. Henning Dahl, placed special emphasis on the responsibility of each indi¬
vidual member to prepare himself to be a faithful representative of the heart
of the Movement when its activities are withdrawn from outer avenues, and
concentrated inwardly. Reporting for the Toronto Branch, Mr. Albert J.
Harris says that interest in their studies has been exceedingly well maintained,
and that the sincerity of members is very manifest. The new Secretary of the
Venezuela Branch, Miss Reyes, reports: ‘‘The Branch selected for its study
articles about war and discipleship, the addresses of the 1935 Convention,
and the Reports of the New York Branch meetings. We tried through this
study to help the world to see the true meaning of war, and, above all, to
strengthen our aspiration toward the Masters.”
The European Branches still follow the request made by the Executive
Committee in 1929, and contribute to some Allied Relief Fund the amount
formerly paid to the Society in dues. The gift is accompanied by the explana¬
tion that it is prompted by official action of the Society, and the acknowl¬
edgments received show that the Society’s position and standards have thus
been widely disseminated. Ever since 1929, the Society has received, from
one of its members, a special donation that amply covers the sum so diverted,
and thus the Treasury has not suffered.
Book Department
This Department, which is wholly self-supporting, is quietly carrying out
the purpose for which it was established by Mr. Clement A. Griscom, not long
after he had issued the first number of the Quarterly,— that purpose beiijr
the publication and sale of a few books which should represent the ideals odH
standards of the Movement, in order that, through them, seekers for Truth
might be led to discover the Society. Additional books will be issued when¬
ever required to serve this end. Meantime there is continued demand for
those we have. This is both surprising and gratifying, since our books are
never advertised nor offered for sale through the book-shops,—knowledge of
them being disseminated by those who have found them of value.
Theosophical Quarterly
^As we know, circumstances made it impossible for the Editors to publish
more than two numbers of our magazine this year,—and subscribers were
promptly notified that all subscription dates had been set ahead six months.
2 l6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Hearty approval was expressed by our subscribers; many took occasion to
testify to their high estimate of the Quarterly and its profound influence
upon their lives. Subsequent letters told of having turned, “in the six months
of silence”, to the back numbers of the magazine, and how the writers had
discovered there material of great practical value, sufficient for years of study
and experimentation. It has been possible to arrange for continuance of the
world-wide distribution of the magazine to leading libraries; also the member
who originated the limited edition on so-called “imperishable rag paper”, has
continued ever since to defray its cost, that it may be perpetuated in selected
libraries.
Secretary's Office
In deference to repeated requests from members who constantly share the
work of this Office, I shall not mention their names, but would gratefully ac¬
knowledge assistance from a number who count it a privilege to put their time
and skill at the disposition of the Society, in any capacity whatsoever. This
was preeminently the attitude of a member whose death, a few weeks ago,
is deeply felt by those who had the good fortune to know her and to work with
her. I refer to Miss Theodora Dodge. Her contributions to our magazine
under several pen-names, were highly distinctive, and her literary gifts were
always at the service of the Society in a variety of other ways,—one being
the preparation, from Miss Chickering’s shorthand notes, of the condensed
Reports of the New York Branch meetings. Her handling of this material
faithfully presented both the thought of the speakers and the pervading spirit
of the meetings.
As to the small “travelling library”: no fee is assessed for the loan of books,
and if payment of carriage charges would be burdensome, that can be arranged.
Why wait, year after year, for the chance to read early numbers of the
Quarterly, or some oft-quoted book? Why not make early use of this library?
It includes books that will help the inquirer to discover what Theosophy is;
it also offers the Quarterly issues containing Mr. Griscom’s “Elementary
Articles”, and his “Letters to Students”, in which problems that confront the
aspirant for discipleship are discussed with the forceful clarity and sympa¬
thetic understanding that characterized his approach to the right conduct of
life. For any public library frequented by readers interested in such literature,
we can supply the Quarterly and a few books on Theosophy, from a special
fund. European and American members are invited to inform the Secretary
whenever they discover a library in which our magazine and books might
be useful.
There are no problems or dissensions within the Society to be reported.
This is surely due, in part, to the closer bonds between members, formed by
their recognition of the battle in which the Movement is engaged and their
desire to participate. Another factor is the incessant watchfulness of our
older members who were so closely associated with Mr. Judge. Guided by
experience and theosophic principles, they discern any maladjustment or un-
T. S. ACTIVITIES
217
due emphasis that may be creeping into T. S. activities, and promptly indicate
how the balance may be restored, and how the workers may again make their
full contribution to the Cause. With them “the Work”, its honour, its needs,
its claims, is an ever-present and controlling criterion. Thus, as I suggested
last year, we who have the great good fortune to be apprenticed to these trained
workmen, are privileged to serve the Movement as lesser links in the hierarchical
chain. So, to the heartfelt gratitude expressed in the messages from our
Branches and our isolated members, I beg to add my own, which also goes
very deep; and on behalf of us all, I ask those older members to believe that
we intend to turn our words into deeds.
Respectfully submitted,
Isabel E. Perkins,
Secretary , The Theosophical Society.
This report having been accepted with the unanimous thanks of the Con¬
vention to the Secretary and to the Secretary’s helpers, the report of the Exec¬
utive Committee was next called for.
Report of the Executive Committee
Mr. Hargrove: Miss Perkins, in what she has just read to us, covered
admirably the outer activities of the Society during the past year. It is only
fitting, in any case, considering the indrawal now taking place, that the report
of the Executive Committee should become more and more concerned with
inner things.
It may be interesting to note, however, in connection with what Professor
Mitchell was saying, that at the end of the eighteenth century, after the failure
of the Movement—which of course is a very different situation from that
which exists to-day—the Comte de Saint-Germain did everything possible to
shut down all the Lodges and semi-occult fraternities which had been brought
into existence as the result of the work of Saint-Martin, Mesmer, Cagliostro,
Pasqually and others,—not only to shut them down, but to destroy their rec¬
ords. This is the occult tradition, the truth of which is confirmed, unwittingly,
by the exhaustive historical labours of Auguste Viatte and others in France,
and by the failure of innumerable pseudo-occultists to find records the dis¬
covery of which would have enabled them to pose as the direct heirs of the
eighteenth-century Movement. Saint-Germain, foreseeing this danger, and de¬
termined to prevent the evil which would have resulted, used all his authority
and power to remove the last trace of activities for which he, originally, had been
responsible, but which had been turned into channels leading to the Black instead
of to the White Lodge. That, however, is incidental,—a parenthesis. Now for
my main subject.
Professor Mitchell made it very clear that indrawal is not a negative process.
If it is real indrawal, it is intensely positive. He made it clear also that the
real work, the creative work at any period, whether of indrawal or of expansion,
is done on the plane of thought, imagination, aspiration, devotion. Thoughts
arelhinns, and what is and will be of primary importance is that every member
2 l8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
try to follow what the Buddha called the Noble Eightfold Path, including
right thought, right aspiration, right understanding. Devotion alone is not
enough. If devotion does not result in understanding, it is not real devotion,
and we ought to face that fact, because he who loses his opportunity now to
gain understanding, perhaps imagining that in some future life he will be better
qualified for that sort of labour, is deceiving himself. It is now or never. He
must work for it now, for otherwise he will earn no chance in the future to
gain it. And understanding is of supreme importance. A man could be struck
dumb to-morrow, and yet could be a great creative centre in the world if he
knew how to think, how to meditate,—not necessarily in some exalted sense,
with Kundalini and other mystic powers functioning, but straight, clear-cut
thinking about the rights and wrongs and meaning of life, and the principles
of Theosophy. Far greater, of course, would be his influence for good if love
were to inspire and clothe his understanding,—love of his Master, uniting him
to his Master’s purpose and power.
However, no matter how complete the indrawal, members will still have an
outer mission. Each one must find his own vocation for himself, though, gen¬
erally speaking, every member should be able to do something toward meeting
what is obviously the world’s greatest need,—religion; for it is the tragedy
of the world to-day that it has no religion, no belief in a spiritual world
more real than earth, no belief in evolution as divinely supervised and guided,
no vision of anything worth while, worth striving for, beyond material pros¬
perity and freedom from pain. We must saturate ourselves with the horror
of this condition if we are to work with ardour for its removal. Desperate,
in very truth, is the world’s need,—and therefore the need of the Masters,
seeing that they must work through such as ourselves, through faulty human
agencies (and so few even of these!), for the enlightenment of those many
millions whose souls cry piteously for help, while their personalities, lost, with¬
out knowing it, in the fog of “progress”, look to economic panaceas and the
false lights of science, to lead them to a Promised Land. Read books by the
generation which has come to manhood since the Great War, and you will
find religion of any kind treated as unworthy of discussion—lumped with
antimacassars and wax flowers as food for cynicism, or as evidence of a more
enlightened present.
Experience should have proved by this time that Theosophy is for the very
few. At one time the Adyar Society claimed a membership of from twenty
to thirty thousand, and we can see from them what happens when a mob is
brought into touch with divine Truth: they pervert it, drag it down to their
own level, see “spirituality” in psychic experience, worship a mob-leader like
Mrs. Besant and a charlatan like “Bishop” Leadbeater. No: Theosophy is
for the very few. But there is the whole world to be helped, and we, who were
bom in the West, are responsible first for everything we can do on behalf of
those among whom we live and who speak our own language.
Nominally, Christianity is the religion of our world. Our ancestors, for many
hundreds of years, were brought up in that faith. Its terminology has been
T. S. ACTIVITIES
219
incorporated in all European languages. The most ignorant have at least
heard of Christ. Yet actually, as we know, Christianity to-day is either re¬
jected or seriously misunderstood; and because students of Theosophy have
been given the clue to an understanding of all the great exoteric religions, and
because Christianity clearly ought to be, and must in time become, in truth and
in fact, the religion of the Western peoples,—part, in any case, of the outer
mission of our members will be to bring the light and fire of Theosophy into
Christian worship. As Master K. H. wrote many years ago: “You can do
immense good by helping to give the Western nations a secure basis upon
which to reconstruct their crumbling faith.”
There are those, as all of us know, who will not accept religious truth of any
kind, simply because, to do so, would threaten their own self-indulgence: their
minds are closed. For a very different reason the minds of many of the clergy
are closed, that is, by caste arrogance: they, as it were, are professionals, and
they consider it their function to teach laymen,—not to allow the layman
to imagine that he can teach them anything about religion. To be fair, the
clergy are not exceptional in this, for in all professional ranks you find the
same attitude. It was noticeable among some Old Army men during the Great
War.
On the other hand there are multitudes whose minds are open, and who are
not satisfied with what they now have. A warning at this point: never attack,
never criticize, for that is the worst of all methods to bring men to the truth.
Work with the grain of the wood, not against it. Apart from that, do not risk
upsetting what little faith people may now have; to do that would be a crime.
Even a mistaken or crude faith is better than none. We must take people
where we find them. We must become “fishers of men”.
From the beginning men have interpreted the teaching of great founders
of religions to suit themselves,—to suit their prejudices, preferences, and the
evil or selfish or lazy or timid pattern of their lives. They have not sought
the truth; they have sought what they wanted—the easy way, and justifica¬
tion for their weaknesses. Compare the Taoists of to-day with the teachings
of Lao-tsze: what a gulf! And the gulf is almost as great between the teach¬
ings of Christ and those of the various churches,—all of them claiming to reptt^
sent his doctrine, and all of them, in one way or another, misrepresenting^
lamentably.
In what ways misrepresenting it? We need not, for the present, concern
ourselves with Roman Catholicism, if only because no direct action with them
would be possible: they are too deeply intrenched to be affected by Theos¬
ophy except “atmospherically”, unconsciously. Among Protestants, one way
in which Christ’s teachings are most seriously misrepresented lies in the ten¬
dency to think of him as “ascended into heaven” with the inference that his
fc>rk is done, that he suffers no more. The hymns commonly sung at Easter
H& Ascensiontide—many of which are supremely beautiful—unfortunately
emphasize this misunderstanding: “All his woes are over now, And the passion
that he bore; sin and pain can vex no more”. “Christ our King to heaven
220 THE 0 S 0 PHICAL QUARTERLY
ascendeth, Past the blue sky’s utmost bound”. “Thou art gone up on high
To mansions in the skies”. And so forth. In their anxiety to emphasize his
divinity, the orthodox have not only exiled him from earth but from his own
humanity, while he, for ever toiling in our midst, not only suffers, but, as he has
said, suffers more to-day from the ingratitude of men than from all the agonies
of his Passion,—suffers, too, from the realization that, owing to the failure
of men to respond, their agony, and his, instead of being “over ’, are being
prolonged needlessly, cruelly, indefinitely.
I place this misunderstanding first, because it is perhaps the most dangerous
of any. How can people be adequately grateful for a sacrifice, no matter how
great, if made and finished nearly two thousand years ago! Human nature
is not capable of that; but it perhaps would be capable of gratitude, and of a
deep desire to repay and serve, if the love and suffering and sacrifice were
seen as of to-day and as continuous.
Once more, however, we cannot remove the misunderstanding by attack¬
ing it; we should quietly take it for granted, in our contact with the open-
minded, that he still lives and labours among us, and that it is our own fault,
our own blindness, if we do not see and know him.
Another superstition that is subversive of Christ’s influence, that tends to
defeat his purposes, is Humanitarianism: improve living conditions in this
world, it is suggested, and the next will take care of itself. If you think of
man and work for his material well-being, God will be so pleased with you
that he will not care if you never think about him. And this again is a form of
laziness, because people find it easier to rush at somebody whom they think
they can improve, than to rush from themselves toward God.
The logical outcome of Humanitarianism is Sovietism, Bolshevism. The
Bolshevist claims to be working for the greatest good of the greatest number,
and interprets “good” as signifying worldly happiness. Waiving the fact that
the greatest sorrows, sufferings and joys of life are entirely personal, and are
in no way affected by the economic system under which men live, let us
consider for a moment the theory of Sovietism in practice. Private owner¬
ship, they argue, is the cause of all evil; ownership must be collective. In
1932, Stalin and the rest of them decided that, having collectivized industry
and commerce, the time had come to collectivize also the farming of Russia.
There were twenty-five million small holdings, the large estates having been
seized by the peasants during the revolution. These, Stalin said, must be
merged in big State farms of twenty-five thousand acres each, the peasants
to work on these farms, collectively, for the benefit of the entire population.
But the peasants did not like the idea of working as slaves under government
overseers; so their first response was to kill nearly seventy per cent of their
live-stock,—horses, cattle, sheep included. It will take thirty years, some
calculate, to bring back to normal the number of animals Russia should possess.
This destruction of live-stock was not instigated by conspirators; it spread
like an epidemic throughout the country. Humanitarian discipline, however,
had to be maintained; so, to chasten the peasant; to gouge him out of his little
T. S. ACTIVITIES
221
farm, and to force him into the collective system, the Soviet, which was the
only legitimate buyer of produce, paid him next to nothing for it, thus making
it impossible for him to obtain clothing, matches, oil and the other necessities
of life. But the peasant could not see the justice of this procedure, and asked
himself why he should labour if he were not to be paid for it,—why grow wheat,
for instance, if, in exchange, he were not able to obtain something else that
he needed. So he decided to grow no more than would feed his family and
himself. Stalin and his associates discovered what had happened. They
sent out an army of inquisitors who seized everything the peasant had grown
for his own use—leaving him and his family to starve, that the true Bolshevists
might live. It has been admitted by Bolshevist authorities that from three to
five million peasants, including women and children, starved to death in 1932.
Humanitarianism, carried to its logical end! Now, we are told, private hold¬
ings, small farms, no longer exist. The surviving peasants have become State
property.
The majority of Humanitarians—that is to say, of those who, calling them¬
selves Christians, think, when at all, in terms of a materialistic, this-world,
never-mind-the-other-world philosophy—would be indignant if classed as
Bolshevists. All the more need, therefore, to remind them, as opportunity
offers, of where the logic of their behaviour leads. The truth of course is that
they are trying, like most people, to “straddle”.
Another perversion of Christianity, promulgated to-day from many pulpits,
is Pacifism. So much has been said about it, however, at previous Conven¬
tions, that to attempt to add anything would be superfluous. None the less,
just as Humanitarianism rarely sees to what it leads, so is there grave danger
whenever the idea of so-called Christian fellowship becomes dominant. Preach¬
ers do not always recognize the logical outcome of their injunctions. For
example, there is a clergyman in London whose addresses are broadcast, and
whose ideas on many subjects seem to be refreshingly theosophical in tendency;
but does he realize that, teaching half-truths, people will be justified in drawing
detestable inferences from what he says? Thus, in a recent article, published
in a popular Sunday paper, he states: “Jesus declared also that the main pur¬
pose of our existence—the greatest and best offering that we could make to
the glory of God—was honest and unselfish human fellowship, the fellowship
that knows no barriers of nation or class or sect, the fellowship in which each
works eagerly for the common good”. Apart from the fact that this senti¬
ment appears, at least, to waive what the Catechism, and religion in all its
forms, declare to be fundamental and primary: “thy duty towards God”,
namely, “to love him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul,
and with all my strength; to worship him, to give him thanks”, and so forth—a
requirement which, as I have already suggested, the Humanitarian ignores
when he does not deride it—apart from this reversal of the religious sequence,
the^^ragraph I have quoted means, in practice—especially in the mouth
of a clergyman—that it is “unchristian” to proclaim the truth about Soviet
Russia, about Italy and Ethiopia, about Hitler’s Germany,—seeing that all
222
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
is white, and there is no such thing as black. Hitler, for instance, says he wants
peace, as everyone wants peace; so of course Hitler means what he says: there¬
fore we should welcome Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, as friends and brothers, in
one universal “human fellowship”. It is mawkish,—a monstrous perversion
of Christ’s teaching.
The truth is that this “fellowship that knows no barriers of nation or class
or sect”, though it sounds theosophical, and would be theosophical if it were
properly understood ,—is based, in most cases, upon the common error of regard¬
ing the manifested world, in which duality prevails, as if the unity of the un¬
manifest ought to govern our approach to things and people and our daily
conduct. The result of such an error is, inevitably, hopeless confusion, though
it is frequently mistaken for idealism and spirituality. Duality is the law
of existence, and this means that good and evil, like light and darkness, are
facts, and that any effort to gloss over the gulf between them is vicious.
Misunderstanding of the Vedanta produces the same illusion—that because
of fundamental Unity, duality does not exist—and therefore the same wrong
attitude: there is no difference, they say, between an honest woman and her
opposite.
If any man can look within his own nature, and then can study history,
without finding proof and to spare of duality, we can only say we are sorry
for him; and we, as students of Theosophy, must do what we can to remove
the misunderstanding, to clear away the confusion, and to nullify one of the
great hindrances to Christ’s work in the world. It is a shame and a disgrace
that churches working in his name, supposed to exist for his purposes, should
betray him in these ways. Christ hated evil and unsparingly denounced it;
loved righteousness, as he loved truth and beauty, and proclaimed his love in
word and act. Was he “unchristian” when, speaking of Herod, he said, “Go
ye, and tell that fox”, or, when condemning the Scribes and Pharisees, he
poured forth a torrent of invective such as has never been equalled in liter¬
ature? He was not, is not, “a desiccated pansy”, to use the phrase of The Occidt
World , or the “pale Galilean” of Swinburne, but a man of intense and pas¬
sionate feeling, of consuming indignation surging from the white-hot furnace
of his love. Was there ever bitterness that surpassed the bitterness of his,
“Nevertheless I must walk [go on my way] to-day, and to-morrow, and the day
following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem”,—followed
instantly by the heart-broken love from which the bitterness sprang: “0
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are
sent unto thee: how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a
hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!”
Perhaps, before you die, some of you will be permitted to confront the “social-
minded”, or anaemic, or ritualistic, or anti-ritualistic, or apologetic, or peace-
at-any-price Christian of to-day, with this other, truer picture of that Master
as he is.
So far we have been considering Christianity from within. Now let us con¬
sider it from without, thinking of those who do not belong, even nominally,
T. S. ACTIVITIES
223
to any Church, and who perhaps regard themselves as permanently estranged
from such associations.
There can be no need to discuss dogmatic materialism. Theosophy cannot
help those who are satisfied with their incredulity; still less can it bring light
to those who have turned incredulity into a collection of negative dogmas,
fanatically, narrow-mindedly maintained,—whether in the name of science,
or as an exhibition of universal scepticism, makes no difference. People of that
kind, however, are few in comparison with the many who are not satisfied
with what they have, and who long sincerely at times in any case for more
light. There are splendid people among them, and granting, as we have agreed,
I think, that Theosophy is for the very few; granting that the Lodge would help
the many if it could, and at the same time help the Churches, it follows that
it should be the particular mission of members of our Society to show these
people that the Churches need them at least as much as they need the Churches.
So many of them say in effect that they respect and admire Christ, but that
they “cannot stand” the Church (no matter which). Suggest to them, in
that case, that Christ, whose banner that Church displays, may find “standing
it” even harder than they do! Why not help him to make it what it ought
to be? Clearly the need is to bring the Churches, one by one, more closely
into line with the spirit and purpose and doctrine of Christ which, as we
know, is Theosophy, although it would be a mistake to attach that or any
other label to the basic fact, without which nothing can be accomplished —
the fact that Christ is a living Master, an eternal, ever-present reality, as much
in the world, though not of it, as he was when incarnated in Palestine, or when
he talked and ate with his disciples after his Resurrection.
Sometimes, on the other hand, you will meet with those who claim to have
studied the subject seriously, but who, when you question them, are obliged
to admit that they have read a few books such as Frazer’s Golden Bough, and
no more,—enough to convince them, however, that all religions and religious
symbolism spring from primitive nature-worship (the return of Spring and so
forth), or from ancestor-worship, or from things concerning sex; or, perhaps,
that the mythologies of Greece and Rome, the dramas of the Mysteries, and
the “legendary” lives of Avatars, Christ included, portray the motions of
planets through the signs of the Zodiac,—from which they infer that neither
Christ nor Buddha was an historical character, and that the ritual, ceremonies
and festivals of Christianity, admittedly Pagan in origin, instead of hajn g
profound spiritual significance, are echoes, merely, of primitive blood-saq»s.
or of one or another of the alleged early superstitions I have named. Then
you will have your opportunity to explain that blood-sacrifices and similar
evils were the misinterpretations, by degenerate (not primitive) races, of the
Ancient Wisdom, which said originally, as it says to-day, that the lower nature
must be slain before the soul can rise from “its dead self” to immortal con¬
sciousness and power. You will be able to explain, too, the doctrine of corre¬
spondences; that the universe is one; that the laws governing the spiritual
1 an d real world are reflected in the laws of external nature, that the return of
224
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Spring, the motions of the planets, and so forth, typify, and are the natural
correspondence of, the life and evolution of the soul,—outer and visible signs,
as it were, of an inward and spiritual process.
All Avatars—and Christ was an Avatar—were “the Word made flesh”, were
at one with the Logos or Oversoul, and therefore lived in spontaneous, instinc¬
tive obedience to universal law. Their lives and actions corresponded to, and
symbolized, everything real in the universe, from the soul of man to a grain
of wheat. To infer that because a life has universal implications, it can have
no reality in itself, is so illogical as to be absurd.
Incidentally—though you are unlikely to encounter this—it has been left
to certain self-styled theosophists (not of the Society) to maintain that the
chief significance of the life of Christ, which they regard as primarily mythical,
is to be found, by way of the Zodiac, in its correspondence with the use (mis¬
use) of the Chakras,—the great nerve centres in the physical and astral bodies.
By concentrating on these centres in a certain sequence, you will attain, they
say, spirituality. But what really happens? As a result of such concentration,
these people see wheels going round in their heads, literally, and are inordi¬
nately proud of those wheels; they attain a very low grade of psychic experi¬
ence, which in some cases amounts to psychic intoxication,—having as little
to do with spirituality as have states of consciousness induced by alcohol.
It is a depraved and degenerate form of Hinduism, leading directly to black
magic.
But you will not have to deal with perversities of that kind, except in rare
cases, as you carry your understanding into the world. The man who is not
actuated by curiosity, or by a desire for “powers”, but, instead, by a sincere
desire for the truth, does not fall into that kind of error. Nor is he concerned
about theology, or with intellectual hair-splitting. Trying, as I have already
suggested, to meet him where he stands, we must use illustrations and argu¬
ments based upon what he already knows and has experienced , or, in any case,
that do not conflict with what he recognizes as common-sense. We shall be
dealing with those whom the clergy have been utterly unable to reach, which
means that our methods must be very different from theirs,—must, in other
words, be theosophical, not stereotyped. “Always talk to a man’s soul”, Judge
used to say,—by which he meant, among other things: believe that the man,
just behind or above his personality, already knows these things, and that all
you need do is to remind him of them. You may be asked to reconcile seem¬
ing contradictions. For instance, the Apostles’ Creed says that Christ “as¬
cended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty”;
how, then, can Christ still be in the world, and, if you believe that he is, how
accept the Creed? But suppose you question in your turn: just where is “the
right hand of God”? Surely no one would suggest that God occupies a partic¬
ular spot in space to the exclusion of all other spots; surely, wherever Christ is,
is “the right hand of God”.
Help people to think; but above all let us keep vividly in our own minds and
hearts the conviction, the realization, that the Lodge is the greatest reality
T. S. ACTIVITIES
227
_ Cr r\r\ ir»ctppr1 of the usual
T. S. ACTIVITIES 225
in life, and that Christ represents the Lodge in this western hemisphere,
is the Lodge, in effect, for those whose natural approach to it he is. For it
is our own realization that counts; it is this that carries light and hope, the
realization that the inner world, the “kingdom of heaven with all its denizens,
is not remote from this world, but as much here in our midst as anywhere.
Interpenetration is not the right word because of its materialistic implications.
I am speaking of states of consciousness, and the further away we get from
matter, the nearer we get to the truth that consciousness can blend with con¬
sciousness regardless of space. It can be said that Christ, infinitely more real
as an individual than any of us, is also the light and life within all of us who are
his children. Nomenclature is of no importance. Some may choose to call
that inner light the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. When they find it, they will
not worry about its name. But we should avoid the use of foreign terms at this
stage of the cycle; they have served their purpose; and to describe something
as Atma or Buddhi, when addressing an inquirer, would display our igno¬
rance, not our wisdom. As missionaries, we must often use Christian terms,
but must immensely broaden and deepen their significance.
Above all we must insist that the work of Christ is only beginning; that
the Churches, instead of representing him, necessarily can only represent the
world, even though it be some of the best that is in the world, and that not
only the clergy, but every so-called Christian, should strive with all his might
to discover the next step away from the world toward the eternal and the real.
If they will do that, they will find Christ ready and more than ready to help
them; will find him grateful—miracle though it seem—for their least desire
to help him; will find him to be human, divinely human, and therefore lament¬
ing over the world as over Jerusalem of old (pray heaven not over us too): “If
thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong
unto thy peace!”
If we, by our devotion and understanding, can carry that much light into
the darkness around us, that much of radiant stillness into the confusion and
turmoil of to-day’s existence, we shall be preparing the way of the next Lodge
Messenger, shall be making his paths straight, and thus shall be fulfilling the
mission of our membership in this Society, established, over sixty years ago,
as the link between the Lodge and the noblest aspirations of mankind.
This report having been accepted, after certain announcements had been
made the Convention adjourned until 2.30 p. m.
Afternoon Session
The Chairman: Before we proceed to the report of the Nominating Com¬
mittee, the Chairman would ask permission to revert to the theme with which
he dealt this morning, but where it has become clear that one point was not
made as sharply and definitely as it should have been. The point is of such
flkal moment not because it is new—it has been spoken of again and again
mour Conventions—but because upon it the continuance of the Theosophical
Movement directly depends.
226
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
It is this: If the Movement is to continue it must produce chelas.
This morning I left this too general and abstract, and spoke rather more
of ch 61 aship than of ch£las. I talked of an ascending current of love and aspira¬
tion, of devotion and self-giving,—all of which concerns us in a way. But it
is not definite enough. What is needed is the production of individual ch£las.
Love and aspiration, if they end in themselves as love and aspiration, are not
enough in this crisis. What we want of them is that they should produce ch 61 as.
They are like the rising sap in a plant. If that plant is to continue, the rising
sap must produce individual flowers and fruit and seeds. And then the indi¬
vidual seed must germinate and grow. This is the only way that type of plant
can continue to exist.
So with the Theosophical Movement. Its continued existence in the world
depends upon the continued production of individual chelas. Love and aspira¬
tion, like the ascending sap in the tree, are necessary for their production,
but they are only a means to an end, not the end itself. Each generation of
students must produce new seed.
Quite simply, that means that some of you here in this room must cease to
be content with loving and aspiring and having good feelings, some or all of
the time. It means that you must make those good feelings transform you
into ch 61 as, or else that you must forget about your feelings, whether good or
bad, and lay hold of something that will transform you into ch 61 as. It is
and must be an individual matter. In reality all accomplishment comes back
to individual accomplishment. But nothing is more an individual matter
than ch 61 aship.
I want to make this point as sharply as I can. The continuance of the Move¬
ment depends upon at least one individual becoming a ch 61 a, and one of the
things that can really help him is the effort to the same end by other individ¬
uals. Who are they? It behooves each to ask himself as to his own effort.
The report of the Committee on Nominations was then called for.
Report of the Committee on Nominations
Mr. Miller nominated the following officers for re-election: Mr. Hargrove
and Mr. Saxe as members of the Executive Committee; Miss Perkins as Secre¬
tary; Miss Chickering as Assistant Secretary; Mr. H. B. Mitchell as Treasurer,
and Mr. Kobbd as Assistant Treasurer. It was voted that the Secretary of the
Convention be instructed to cast one ballot for the election of officers as nomi¬
nated, and that the Committee be discharged with thanks.
Mr. H. B. Mitchell, reporting as Treasurer T.S., presented the year’s
financial statement for which he expressed his thanks to Mr. Kobb6. He
called attention to the fact that, while the present balance in the bank ex¬
ceeded that of last year, it did not cover the prospective printer’s bill for the
next two issues of the Quarterly. Those bills had to be charged against it,
because all subscribers were notified that, two issues having been omitted this
T. S. ACTIVITIES
227
year, they need pay, for the coming year, only $1.00 instead of the usual
$2.00. When this was taken into account, the apparent surplus was turned
into a very real deficit, which would have to be met as in the past, by voluntary
contributions. This report having been accepted with thanks to the Treasurer
and the Assistant Treasurer, the Committee on Resolutions was asked to
report.
Report of the Committee on Resolutions
Mr. Hargrove: I am relying upon Dr. Torrey to make the real report
of this Committee. No matter what either of us may say, however, you will
have to infer your own specific resolutions, each one for himself, because we
shall not suggest them, and because what we shall say will be futile unless
personal resolutions result. I shall now try to speak on two texts. One is,
“Man, know thyself”, which goes back to Hermes and long before him; the
other is, “Man is the mirror of the universe”, which goes back to Pythagoras
and long before him. They are antediluvian. There is nothing modem about
them whatever.
All of us are familiar with the teaching of the seven principles of man. Some
of you will remember Mr. Judge’s oft-repeated statement that everything in
life and in nature should be interpreted in the light of the seven principles.
There is the upper triad: spirit, spiritual soul, and the higher mind, or Atma,
Buddhi, Manas—although that, of course, is exoteric. Then in the lower
quaternary there are the lower mind, and Kama or desire; there are Prana or
the life force, and the Linga Sarira or astral body,—once more, exoteric. It
will be simpler, for our purpose this afternoon, to think of the upper triad
as the immortal part of man, and of the lower quaternary as the personality.
Man being the mirror of the universe, we find that the hierarchy which he is
by nature (before he has perverted his nature), reflects the hierarchical princi¬
ple which is manifest everywhere in the universe around him, except where,
as in himself, he has turned things upside down; for the vast majority of
men, instead of being governed by the immortal part of themselves, are gov¬
erned by the personality,—which means that they are governed by their own
mob, by their own demos—their elemental inclinations and desires. This is
why man is the demos-controlled animal which he is to-day, and why the whole
world is in a state of such deplorable confusion. The hierarchical principle,
inherent in Nature both seen and unseen, was intended to inspire and guide
the evolution of man as of all else; what we find, however, is that though “God
hath made man upright”, with heart and mind above the rest of him, he has
“sought out many inventions”, with the result that he is either an anarchist,
or is governed by men whose only claim to authority is that they are repre¬
sentative, not of the best, not even of some average or middle point between
the higher and lower natures, but of the selfishness or ambition or greed or
rapacity of those elemental inclinations and desires which, collectively, are
the mob. You may recall the Psalmist: “Thus they provoked Him to anger
with their inventions; and the plague brake in upon them.” In any case, we
228
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
have plagues and to spare; while as yet we have no Phinehas (as the story
continues) to “stand up” and “execute judgment”: so our plagues are not
stayed, and never will be until humanity becomes willing to accept the ruler-
ship of God-instructed men.
This doctrine of the higher and lower nature of man, and of a similar duality
throughout the manifested universe, needs to be emphasized, as I suggested
this morning, by all students of Theosophy. Failure to understand and to
act upon it, is responsible for many evils,—a false and sentimental idealism
among them. Philosophers and even pedagogues have argued that all men
are bom good, and that it is only because of cruel or domineering parents,
who cross our infantile wills, and of other forms of inharmonious environment,
that we grow into something bad,—that we develop a lower nature. The same
misunderstanding existed in China, thousands of years ago, and still exists
there, and, as usual, is the perversion of a theosophical truth, taught in the
ancient Mysteries,—the truth that man’s origin was spiritual. But in the
Mysteries they taught also that, since his origin, man has not only “fallen
into matter”, but by self-will has perverted all his faculties to selfish ends:
and this is what the exoteric idealist often overlooks. It is not a new topic.
In Queen Victoria’s day, one of her Ministers, Lord Palmerston, during a
holiday, made a speech on Education in which he declared, possibly from hav¬
ing no experience of them, that “all children are bom good”. Disraeli, allud¬
ing to this shortly afterwards, remarked that “the noble Viscount, among
other pleasant means of passing his vacation, had abolished Original Sin”!
Some of us know, to our cost, that our Original Sin is not so easily abolished.
But the most important aspect of my subject is that, because of this duality
in manifested Nature, so marked in man,—necessarily his life, and the life of
the universe itself, is a ceaseless conflict, with the corollary that conflict is
not an evil, but is essential to health and growth. The most terrible of all
conflicts, because incessant, age-long, is that between the Powers of Light and
those of Darkness,—between the White Lodge and the Black, fighting for the
souls of men. That most people no longer believe in the Devil, who was, after
all, the symbol of a dreadful reality, a synthetic representation of the Powers
of Darkness, is a victory for them for which they had long been working, see¬
ing that—to use a homely illustration—if you do not believe in the existence
of burglars, you do not lock your doors. It is less easy, therefore, to revive
a belief in the inevitableness of spiritual warfare than otherwise it would be.
This morning I attempted to denounce the practice of turning historical
facts, such as the incarnation of Christ, into solar myths and similar things.
I meant every word I said and a great deal more; but I want to consider now
the symbology involved in the lives of Avatars and in the great legends of
antiquity. For instance, the life and death of Christ, and his resurrection,
typify the struggle of the soul to dominate the personality, and illustrate
the truth that compromise in that struggle is impossible, for as soon as the
personality strives to co-operate with, or to submit to, the immortal part of
itself, it discovers, among other things, that it must die if it is to rise again;
T. S. ACTIVITIES
229
that the sense of separateness must be extirpated if immortality is to be
attained.
Orthodox Christians are unwilling to think much of the reality of Christ’s
struggle with himself. They read of the struggle in Gethsemane; but Christ’s
life must have been a struggle from infancy to the moment of his death. He
was a descendant of David: what does that mean in terms of heredity? Does
it suggest a long line of saintliness? Nothing of the kind. Part of the sacrifice
he made in incarnating was the realization that he would have to deal with
and conquer and use (instead of being used by) that terrible heredity. Our
lot is different, because he volunteered for his, while our heredity was the prod¬
uct, or physical expression, of psychic causes set going by ourselves in the
past. The struggle, therefore, is justly ours.
The Zodiac too, though less suggestive of struggle, symbolizes the ascending
stages through which man must pass until he rises above personal limitations.
“Man is the mirror of the universe.” Wherever we look, outside ourselves,
we should seek the correspondence within ourselves. The Zodiac and the
planetary influences exist within us as well as outside us; and that they exist
within us, does not mean that the external is unreal, any more than the sym¬
bology of the life of an Avatar implies that his life was not historically real.
It would not only deprive life of much of its beauty, but would really
be morally stultifying if we were to think of old legends merely as legends.
Consider the story of King Arthur and his knights, and the Round Table.
King Arthur existed. He may not have spelled his name just as we do, but
he existed and so did his knights and the Round Table; and because, in their
day, Arthur and his knights represented the Theosophical Movement, they
typified or symbolized universal truths, much as do the life and activities of
an Avatar. The Grail reveals the very heart of Christianity—was and is that
heart—as it was the heart of the Egyptian Lodge. The sword Excalibur, as
real as the sword of Joan of Arc, typified also, by the law of correspondences,
the sword of knowledge, the sword of spiritual understanding; so that when
it was indrawn to the world of its origin (and you know what indrawal signifies)
—indrawn only through the persistence of the dying Arthur, by being thrown^
into the “mere”—there arose to meet it, “an arm, clothed in white samite,
mystic, wonderful, and caught him by the hilt, and brandished him three
times, and drew him under in the mere”. The marvel of that scene, as you
read of it, is more than a prayer, for it is of to-day and of eternity, living for
ever in our souls, even as Arthur and his sword from heaven are part of the
Movement as we are part of it.
Always there is reality as well as symbolism. Why doubt that the Hiram
Abiff, “the widow’s son”, of the Bible and Masonry, actually lived?—though
th^tories connected with his name are symbolic of the struggle of man to
became man, of man’s possible attainment of immortality, as may be found
by reading between the lines of that part of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Corin¬
thians which is quoted in the burial service.
“Man is the mirror of the universe.” “As above, so below.” Therefore—
230
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
following what was said by Professor Mitchell this morning about the next
Lodge Messenger and the Forerunner—since neither Forerunner nor Lodge
Messenger will be able to do anything for us, nor we for them, unless we have
attained a good measure of discipleship, let us try to realize that discipleship
of any degree is impossible except on the basis of my texts. For how could it
be possible unless man contained potentially within himself (latent, it is true,
but none the less potential) all the wisdom and power that the greatest of the
Masters possess? Spiritual growth could not be imagined otherwise. “Know
thyself.”
Among us there are many who want discipleship; some who strive for it.
(I am not speaking for the moment of chelaship. It is arbitrary, perhaps, but
I make a distinction between discipleship, which is the preliminary step, and
chelaship, which is the completion of discipleship.) But, among those who
want discipleship, self-knowledge is not often to be found. Otherwise there
would be fewer who seek it on their own terms,—who will learn from this per¬
son and not from that; at one time and not at another time. What they really
want is their own will, and they deceive themselves when they think they
want discipleship, seeing that discipleship means self-surrender. There is no
use playing at these things. It is a matter of life and death or it means noth¬
ing. All through the history of the Movement you find people who played
at it. Some of them said they wanted “freedom of soul”,—and that is the
soul’s desire for itself: to be set free from this infernal prison-house in which
it is bound. But the personality interprets that desire to suit itself, making
its own freedom the objective. As if the personality could be free! On that
plane, there is no such thing as freedom, for you are subject either to your
lower nature or you are subject to your higher nature. Nazi youth tries to
solve the problem by proclaiming: “We spit at freedom”,—not elegant, but
literal. What does that actually mean, however? It means subjection to some¬
one other than themselves but on the same plane as themselves: merely another
form of self-assertion, seeing that all opposites are forms of the same thing.
We, as students of Theosophy, know that there is but one solution. Dante
pointed it out: “In His will is our peace.” No progress is possible, or even
conceivable, until we are saturated with that conviction. Only then, only
as we try steadfastly to live in obedience to that principle, can we discover
that our freedom is His freedom, because the two wills have become one; and
that the only true freedom to be attained anywhere in life, is in that union.
Some may think with a groan that this means a life of everlasting struggle.
I wish it did. The trouble is that in most cases it does not. Would-be disciples,
as a rule, finally attain a certain level which they think is good enough, and
then are unaware of any struggle going on within them. They may have
made real progress up to that point, but, clearly, if we are not aware of struggle,
it means that we are no longer struggling; and because, in the spiritual life, we
cannot stand still, absence of struggle means that we are sliding back instead
of moving forward. For all of life is struggle; the very existence of our muscles
depends upon the hourly conquest of resistance. Without that, they would
T. S. ACTIVITIES
231
atrophy. In this world, struggle is essential to life; death is synonymous with
complete relaxation.
I was impressed not long ago when I read that the late Empress Eugdnie
(and few people have been more battered by life than she was) constantly
quoted the saying of Saint Chrysostom: “It takes shipwrecks to make a
seaman”. She had been shipwrecked in more ways than one, time after time,
and, always a woman of courage, the more she was battered, the more she
learned, and the more superb her courage and poise became.
Ch&laship, as I have said, is the completion of discipleship; but at all stages
we need to think of the spirit we are trying to express in action. Yet, if we
cannot as yet conceive of the spirit, let us begin at the other end,—begin where
we are. Find out as much as you can about ch£laship, from books and other
sources, and then, so far as you can, act “as if” you were a ch&la. Only in this
way, we have been told, will the spirit of it become clear to us, though, from
the very beginning, we should seek every indication of what that spirit may
be. Begin, because it is easier, with negatives. The spirit we seek will be
far-removed from the spirit of complaint and self-pity, of pretence and vanity,
and so forth. Then, let us seize, as we can, intimations of the true spirit,—
fragments of it, at best, since only such books as Light on the Path and 7 he
Voice of the Silence can give us more than fragments. I was reading, not long
ago, the account by a medical officer in the R.A.M.C. of an incident in the
Great War. He was serving with the Ninth Lancers, and in the retreat from
Mons the Ninth Lancers were trying to hinder the German advance so that the
infantry could retire. A half-squadron of Lancers under Colonel David Camp¬
bell charged right through a squadron and a half of German cavalry. When
it was over, the medical officer rushed to the field where this had occurred.
He saw a man lying on the ground whom he recognized as his Colonel, found
he had a revolver wound in the leg, a lance wound in the shoulder, and a sword
wound in the arm. As he knelt to dress the wounds he said, “I am sorry to
find you like this, sir.” Campbell looked up and replied: “Not at all, my boy,
not at all—Eve just had the best quarter of an hour I ever had in my life.”
That man had ridden the winner of the Grand National, and had had various
remarkable experiences; so he probably knew what he meant when he spoke
of a good quarter of an hour! Within a few weeks, the Colonel was back at th<
front, leading his regiment. One of his subalterns commented: “ ‘David’
some day go down and chase Satan out of hell!’ As General Sir David Cai
bell, that same man died not many weeks ago, after showing extraordinary
tact, consideration, as well as firmness, while serving during difficult times
as Governor of Malta.
I am far from suggesting that that incident reveals the whole spirit of ch61a-
ship; but is it not true that most of us need more of the spirit such incidents
reveal? It would go a long way to lift us above the slough in which we are
living. Just a fraction of the spirit of chelaship, that is all; but I do not see
w w anything resembling chelaship can be attained without that, and a great
Sal more.
w*
mp-
232
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Therefore, I would suggest that, in addition to our daily, our hourly efforts,
we should do what we can to feed ourselves on splendid pictures of self-effac¬
ing heroism, of nobility, of devotion, of rising above the wounds and distresses
of life, that we may rejoice in the spirit of the Masters, feeling that whenever
we enter that world of our best desire, we are close to them,—because that
spirit is part of their spirit. Let us draw what we can from the literature of
the world, and pick and choose, each man for himself, and find for himself
his own inspiration, his own ideal, his own longing, and then realize that recog¬
nition would be impossible if he did not contain all this within' his own heart
and will. We are not, in fact, the worms we sometimes seem to be. Potentially ,
we are Masters; and, thank heaven, the Lords of heaven see what we may and
ought to become and shall become, rather than the weakness and the failure.
So we may build our hope on their hope, our faith on their faith, and draw
from them the determination, in spite of our weakness, for their sakes to
conquer.
Dr. Torrey: In the little corner of the world where some of us meet weekly
to discuss things in general, we have become increasingly aware of the terrible
situation which prevails in American education, in government, and in social
life. It is a thoroughly disturbing and disheartening revelation, because,
after all, many of us are Americans of long standing, and it is not pleasant to
feel that one is fast becoming an alien in one’s own land and that its ideals
are utterly foreign to one’s own. Most of us can admit that the things which
we hate most in America—its arrogance, its preference for glamorous dreams
over reality, its tawdry coarseness, its dishonesty, its laziness—are likewise
within ourselves, spun into the very texture of our personalities. Perhaps
that is why we hate them so.
We have sought for some distinctive and true American ideal; we have
wished to discover something to which we might be loyal—something as truly
American as we feel England to be truly England: the England of Kipling,
of Conrad’s Lord Jim , and Galsworthy’s Old Jolyon Forsyte. And we are trou¬
bled that we cannot find it. If America has a soul it is in the realm of things
to be, or else it cannot make its voice heard in the present din of screaming
elementals.
It is usually in a nation’s history, or perhaps in its original declarations of
purpose, that its ideals appear. So, searching back through our history to our
beginnings, we have come to those men, those documents, and those acts which
made us a nation. Yes, to Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, to the Declara¬
tion of Independence and the Constitution, to the Revolutionary War. But
we quickly discovered that the ideals of government and society formulated
at that time were not original. The trail led us across the ocean to France, and
we found ourselves entangled in Masonry and the Deist Movement of the
17th Century; then back through Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, to the
Renaissance, and back of that to the Middle Ages, to Thomas Aquinas, Aris¬
totle, Plato.
T. S. ACTIVITIES
233
So I should like to start at the far end of the series and briefly deal with
some of these historical factors, pointing out as well as I can, who am no his¬
torian, the ancient forces which went to make America what she is to-day.
Then perchance we may get some light on a possible way of egress from a dark
and dangerous situation. We have been told that Great Ones fall back, even
from the threshold of Nirvana, and it does not seem that a group of warring
elementals can perpetuate itself indefinitely: a nation’s soul may be lost just
as the soul of an individual may be lost.
We are all familiar with the story of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
It is told in more or less varying terms depending upon the Roman Catholic
or the Protestant affiliation of the narrator. But as it is set forth in our school
books, it is generally biassed in a scientific-Protestant direction. It is written
by historians who pride themselves upon their coldly objective viewpoint,
little realizing that such a viewpoint is in itself but partial, since it leaves out of
account the very values which have often made history.
There was poverty, there was squalor, ignorance and superstition, but there
was also mysticism and theosophy in that world of the Middle Ages. The
modern so-scholarly world is rational and logical: therefore an outlook which
admits mysticism, which studies Plato, Plotinus, Hermetic Wisdom, astrology
and alchemy, which reasons deductively from revealed principles, stands con¬
demned by a generation which studies the world as mechanism and prides it¬
self on the inductive method. Yet Medievalism produced the great cathe¬
drals, the great saints, and the greatest poem of the Western world. One
feels that a modern student of Theosophy would have found the atmosphere
of that time more congenial than that of the present (though one hastens to
add that he might have shared the fate of Bruno).
But like so many living things, Medievalism went static, went habitual,
and what had once been a creative spirit became a cramping theology for men
to exercise their wits over in subtle disputation.
The Renaissance broke up the old moulds and inaugurated what has been
called the Faustian civilization—an apt term for a cycle which seeks power
at the expense of spirituality, exiles God, and attempts to grasp the levers
which control the universe. The Renaissance opened gloriously; at first men
only attempted to fit the new knowledge into the old, to expand and renew
the older organism. We know the result—the persecutions and burnings of
heretics, the degeneracy which followed an attempt to reintroduce the culture
of an earlier pagan cycle, the birth of intolerant Protestantism, and finally the,
rise of modern science.
It is in the field of cosmology and physics that the changes most pertinent
to the further history of the West seem to occur. The work of Copernicus,
Galileo, Kepler, brought mathematics to the fore. It is of interest to note
that Kepler, in particular, regarded his discoveries as contributions to Theos¬
ophy. He was concerned with the ancient Pythagorean-Platonic doctrine of
numbers, and in his discoveries he saw further proof of the Pythagorean axiom
that “God geometrizes”. He rejoiced exceedingly to discover that if a cube
234
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
be inscribed in the sphere containing the orbit of Saturn, the sphere of Jupiter
will just fit within the cube. If a tetrahedron be inscribed in Jupiter’s sphere,
the sphere of Mars will fit within the tetrahedron, and so on for all the five
regular solids. Modern astronomers tell us that this is only approximately
true, yet any one of us who has worked with geometrical symbolism, using
the hints which H.P.B. supplies, has become convinced that the ancient theos-
ophists knew a thing or two. They sought, not knowledge like their modem
successors in science, but divine wisdom.
But following Kepler and his contemporaries there came a slow change
in intellectual climate. Newton reduced the motions of the heavenly bodies
to one principle of universal gravitation which could be expressed in mathe¬
matical terms. Yet Newton himself was a devout man who valued his theo¬
logical writings more than his works in science. His attitude toward his dis¬
coveries is doubtless well expressed by Addison’s hymn:
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim. . . .
What though, in solemn silence, all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball?
What though nor real voice nor sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In Reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
For ever singing as they shine,
“The Hand that made us is divine.”
This poem, incidentally, is an excellent example of the deist point of view.
For a long time the scientists had been puzzling over the mystery of primary
and secondary qualities. It seemed to them that colour, sound, odour, and other
sensuous properties, were plainly the subjective reactions of a psyche to stimuli
from without. This left the world in itself possessed only of certain primary
qualities such as extension, motion and form. It remained for Bishop Berkeley
to refer the primary qualities as well as the secondary to the subjective world
and give us idealistic philosophy. But not so the deists. The outer world
was a mechanism, dark and dead: the planets move soundlessly round the dark,
terrestrial ball. Yet in reason’s ear they whisper that their mechanism de¬
mands a Mechanic.
Well, it is one of the ironies of history that the Copemican-Kepler-Newton
mathematical cosmology, which to them was a theosophic revelation, gave
men the impetus toward a mechanistic materialism such as the world had
never seen before. E. A. Burtt writes:
Newton’s authority was squarely behind the view of the cosmos which saw in man
a puny irrelevant spectator (so far as a being imprisoned in a dark room can be called
such) of the vast mathematical system whose regular motions according to mechanical
c apttVITIES
239
T. S. ACTIVITIES 235
principles constituted the world of nature. The glorious romantic universe of Dante
and Milton, that set no bounds to the imagination of man as it played over space and
time, had now been swept away. Space was identified with the realm of geometry,
time with the continuity of number. The world that people had thought themselves
living in—a world rich with colour and sound, redolent with fragrance, filled with glad¬
ness, love and beauty, speaking everywhere of purposive harmony and creative ideals
—was crowded now into minute corners in the brains of scattered organic beings. The
really important world outside was a world hard, cold, colourless, silent and dead; a world
of quantity, a world of mathematically computable motions in mechanical regularity.
The world of qualities, as immediately perceived by man, became just a curious and
quite minor effect of that infinite machine beyond. In Newton, the Cartesian meta¬
physics, ambiguously interpreted and stripped of its distinctive claim for serious phil¬
osophical consideration, finally overthrew Aristotelianism and became the predominant
world-view of modern times.
So, for a time, thought wavered between theosophy and materialism. And
it is at this point that an influence comes into the picture which was destined
to play an enormous part in the future. That was the influence of Masonry.
I am not a Mason; I know nothing of the innemess of the movement, and
from what I have seen of modem Masonry in action, and of the type of its
devotees, I have no desire for any closer association. Yet I know that sublime
things may fall into weak or unworthy hands (does not our own history show
the same thing?), and the older and true masonic ideal cannot be judged by
its modern representation. In saying this I only repeat what H.P.B. told us
in Isis —an opinion which my own limited observation has substantiated.
The origin of Masonry is obviously in the ancient Theosophy: its symbols
are entirely familiar to us; its very name is indicative of the central goal of all
true occultism. That its 18th Century derivation was from the literal guilds
of masons of the Mediaeval days is probable. But those stone-cutters were
more than stone-cutters. The symbols they strewed over the cathedrals they
built, shows that.
During the first quarter of the 18th Century, England was all the rage in
France. The famous Royal Society, founded in 1660, set the pace for educated
thinking, and Newton’s ideas became the fashion in France. It was toward
this new magnet that the French masonic literati were drawn. We must realize
that Masonry has always been a many-headed and paradoxical creaturaJin
this respect just like Theosophy again), and I suspect that there are two t^on-
ries just as there are two theosophies,—a true and noble Masonry of light,
and a dark twin which is a jungle of all that is tricky and sophist and glamor¬
ous and subversive. So in the 18th Century men rallied at first about a kind
of Newtonian-Pythagoreanism, waiting to see what would happen in the conflict
of cross currents where anticlericalism, pietism, anti-Christianity, astrology
and rationalism all stewed together. Then came a slow differentiation: French
Masonry tended to go the road of Illuminism and revolutionary self-assertion;
English Masonry reacted toward faith and loyalty to the State. Generally
speaking, the idea was rampant in France that Christianity was outmoded
i and bankrupt, and that a purified and emancipated religion of reason was soon
236
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
to take its place. Sometimes the language of the time is unmistakably theo-
sophic in the best sense of the term: there is recognition of the ancient and
universal Fountain of Truth, and an attempt even to support the Church a$
one of the incarnations and revelations of Theosophy. Then appear bitter
attacks upon Christianity, attempts to set up science and reason as guides
to life, a back-to-nature movement with all the foolishness of the “noble savage”
and the glorification of natural impulses.
Many of us have read Mrs. Webster’s books and know the weight she gives
to the perverse movement of Illuminism, which started with the Bavarian
Weishaupt, and finally allied itself with French Masonry. Mrs. Webster
definitely exempts English Masonry from her strictures. Bernard Fay, on the
contrary, in his Revolution and Freemasonry , does not even mention Mrs. Web¬
ster’s thesis. Yet there lie the facts of an inextricable muddle of good and evil.
Some of us feel that the Lodge made a valiant attempt to purge away the evil,
sending Mesmer, Cagliostro, St. Germain. We know that Cagliostro failed
his superior.
We need not follow France to the awful Terror. The men who directed
that outburst were hardly responsible human beings. Creatures who shriek
and rave and foam at the mouth, who throw enemies and erstwhile friends
alike to the guillotine, who deliberately set out to reduce the population of
France by murder, so that their schemes of universal benevolence may lead
to “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”,—such creatures bear the
hall-mark of the Black Lodge.
Rather I wish to point out the connection which links America to the France
of the Encyclopaedists and the Revolution. One school of historians shuts
its eyes to the fact that the American Revolution was deliberately provoked
and engineered by the Masonic lodges of America. They tell us that it was
a natural outcome of social and economic conditions which confronted the
colonists; that no proud people could accept the rule of a corrupt government
3000 miles away; that unjustified taxation without representation drove the
colonists to revolt. That is the view I was taught in school, where I anathema¬
tized kings and praised the birth of “Freedom” in poetry. Other historians
point out that Americans were loyal to their British blood, strongly attached
to the Protestant principles of the Reformation, loyal to the Hanoverian dy¬
nasty, and that their economic life was centred in London. It is exactly the
same dual interpretation of history which makes it so difficult to understand
the French Revolution.
It is, however, almost certain that the famous Boston Tea Party was a Ma¬
sonic affair. Masonry worked steadily through the colonies to sow the seeds
of discontent with England, and to cement them into a new unity. Franklin,
Washington, Revere, Hamilton, Madison and the Generals of the Revolution
were all Masons; the Declaration of Independence might have been written
by the French revolutionaries; the Great Seal of the United States bears the
Masonic symbols on its reverse.
Benjamin Franklin went to France as our first ambassador, and became
T. S. ACTIVITIES
239
T. S. ACTIVITIES
237
the petted darling of the Lodges there, who hailed him as the representative
of a “New Era”. Franklin was probably sincere, but he was enmeshed in
glamour and psychic dreams. Franklin as Grand Master of the Loge des heuj
Soeurs, Franklin embracing Voltaire while the emotional public drips tears
of joy (the exhibition even had to be repeated a second time so that those
absent on the first occasion might see Enlightenment in action!), Franklin carry¬
ing on a secret campaign against the principle of royalty in France—well, all
that, to put it mildly, is “a bit thick”.
Fay writes: He was Most Worshipful Master of the Loge des Neuf Soeurs , a
regular Blue Lodge belonging to the English Masonry of France. He was
Honorary Most Worshipful Master of the Cotnmandeurs du Temple of Car¬
cassonne,—the Saint Jean de Jerusalem Lodge conferred on him the highest
possible degrees. The Loge des Bons Amis of Rouen also made him one of their
brethren. All around him people sang:
To human nature he restores its rights;
He gives it freedom by giving it enlightenment,
And virtue itself, to visit mankind,
From Benjamin takes its appearance.
One reads the writings of Franklin and finds there the evidence of a clever,
hard-headed, practical, scientific fellow, but one looks in vain for a ray of true
spiritual insight. Here is worldly wisdom triumphant—that canny worldli¬
ness which, unchecked by authority either from without or within, has led to
the present debauch of materialistic humanitarianism. Most assuredly this
is neither true Masonry nor true Theosophy.
Or, turning to the genesis of the United States, it remains to ask whether
the ideals of French Revolutionary Masonry were sound ones upon which to
found a new nation. Opinions will differ. But speaking for myself only, and
fully admitting that men’s motives and ideals are mixtures of good and bad,
I cannot believe that an initial act of violence by disguised men, or the dissemi¬
nation of seditious revolutionary doctrines against the legitimate govern¬
ment, are other than the parallels of similar acts which rise distinctly from
my own lower nature and are accompanied by similar sophistries about freedom
and the rights of man. I do not “hold it to be self-evident that all men aja
created free and equal”. My experience shows me that the average man
creature of emotional caprice, and that the end of democracy is the shouting
mob. I believe that the maintenance of the culture of a race, and the preserva¬
tion of the soul of a nation, rests with the few—the true aristos , and that de¬
mocracy leads to a debasing of cultural and spiritual values.
The basic perversion which affects church and state alike and turns America
into a madhouse, is the identical confusion of lower and higher self to which
subversive French Masonry lent itself, a confusion between the world of Caesar
and the world of God. Or perhaps we may be nearer the truth if we say that
%en have forgotten that there is a higher self and a world of God, and are
turning the laws laid down by the Great Ones for the direction of the healthy
23 »
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
soul, to the uses of the body and its desires. So love becomes its ugly opposite;
brotherhood becomes sentimental humanitarianism; the spiritual ascent of
the soul to its home, turns into pacifist dreams of a material and scientific
Utopia; the study of life turns into mechanism whereby a mass of flickering
shadows thrown on the screen of time and space is regarded as causal, and
the shadows are interpreted in terms of one another. Take the famous Revolu¬
tionary Triad,—Liberty, Fraternity, Equality: the concepts which those words
carry are very old, and I believe that at their origin they are ideals of the Lodge
intended to guide men’s souls to heaven, and not to the communist paradise.
Liberty—yes, the liberty of the sons of God who, in perfect obedience to spiritual
law, find perfect freedom. Fraternity—certainly, the theoretic unity of all
souls in the Oversoul, and the practical attempt to establish the nucleus of
such a Brotherhood. Equality—truly, just as children of a father are equally
worthy of his affection, though the needs of the littlest are quite different from
the needs of the oldest. But these immemorial ideals of the White Lodge
have been “pierced with evil”, and their glamorous opposites have been subtly
substituted: for Freedom, self-assertion; for Fraternity, hysterical slumming
and the worship of man; for Equality, a levelling down to the lowest.
What then is the American ideal for which we have been yearning? As
I have dwelt upon these matters, I have thought of the last quarter of the
19th Century and of H.P.B.’s work. She was faced with a double perversion
of science and theology, and she set herself to correct matters. To those who
would listen she said: Back to the ancient Aryan sources. We have been
told by one of those early members that for years he never gave a thought to
Christianity. Then, about the year 1900, those people were told: Go back
to your own Scriptures and see what you find. So they returned to the study
of the New Testament “to find Theosophy on every page”.
If it be true then, as I believe it is true, that Masonry at its source is identical
with Theosophy at its source, then is it outside the bounds of reason to sug¬
gest that we should do just what H.P.B. asked her students to do? Let us
abandon the perversions of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality and work back
to their spiritual prototypes. Having come to understand something of the
true meaning of the terms, we may then set about the task of converting our
lives into harmony with them. We shall learn to live as free men and not as
self-willed, disobedient demons. We shall come to have some true sympathy
for others, and shall try to help them to lift the heavy burden from their own
lives; perhaps we shall try to put into effect those marvellous words from The
Song of Life: “When we surrender our wilfulness and bow to the light in an¬
other, we draw forth wonder and willing help. The lord of his inmost fortress
sees in us a friend, all doors are opened to us, and we are made free of every
secret within.”
And finally, having learned something about how to live in this world, and
how to practise a measure of brotherhood, we shall face the fact of the evolu¬
tion of our own souls, and shall study and apply the laws which pertain to that
evolution and which have been so abundantly explained and illustrated for
T. S. ACTIVITIES
239
us. We shall set out to incarnate progressively those parts of our greater Life
which now lie latent in our souls.
So to would-be American patriots we can say: Back to the sources—back
to an understanding of Theosophy under whatever name or form it most ap¬
peals to you. Saturate yourselves with its luminous ideal and use its bright
sword to cut through the jungle of unhealthy growths which have grown up
around it. Then let us live Theosophy and teach Theosophy. It is the Ameri¬
can Soul placed there by the Lodge. Shall we not try to make incarnate that
vision which many a poor immigrant of Europe has seen as his ship swung in
sight of the Statue of Liberty in the harbour here? Are we so certain that
Bartholdy has not builded better than he knew? What if Masters call that
Figure by another name; what if they call it Theosopliia?
The Chairman then asked for the report of the Committee on Letters of
Greeting.
Report of the Committee on Letters of Greeting
Mr. J. F. B. Mitchell: Mr. Chairman and Fellow Members , we are fortu¬
nate in having communications from all our Branches, and from a number
of members-at-large. They come to us with word that those who serve on
the outposts are thinking of us to-day; and they give us an opportunity, as
we read them here, to send back to these, our fellow-workers, something of the
strength and spirit of the Convention.
The letters were listened to with great interest and were frequently ap¬
plauded. Extracts from them are printed at the end of this Report of Con¬
vention Proceedings.
The Chairman expressed very sincere thanks to the writers of these letters,
on behalf of their assembled comrades,—and called attention to the evidence
they gave of the closeness and unity of effort throughout the Society. Dele¬
gates who were present were then asked to address the Convention.
Greetings from Delegates
Miss Hohnstedt: The members of the Cincinnati Branch who cannot be
here to-day are all sending their greetings. As to the work of the Branch,
we have been studying Mr. Johnston’s translation of the Upanishads and
find it very inspiring. It made a great impression on all of our members.
We have also taken, for comparison with the Upanishads, St. Paul’s Letters
to the Corinthians, and have found how much they coincided. The whole
aim of the Branch has been always to have the idea of Good Friday and^
Easter in mind. There cannot be an Easter unless it is preceded by Goq^
Friday. In other words, we have to go through Gethsemane and kill our lower
nature, if the higher nature is to evolve.
' J •
Mrs. Regan: It was said at the opening meeting of the New York Branch
that perhaps one of the outstanding characteristics of man is the capacity to
240
THE0S0PHICAL QUARTERLY
be inspired. Surely we have been inspired this morning. Now we must seri¬
ously ask ourselves what are we going to do about it? We must do smnething.
With some of us, perhaps with many of us, the afterglow of this Convention
is going to fade, and perhaps with it our inspiration. What are we going to
do to rekindle that inspiration? Do you remember the closing sentence in
one of the addresses of the Convention last year, speaking of indrawal? It
says in that closing sentence: It is we who must keep the link unbroken
—it is we who, by loving, by transferring our heart’s energy to the root, will
preserve its life so that it can bear fruit and put out branches when the Master
Gardener appears. Perhaps if we learn that sentence, when we find our in¬
spiration weakening we can think of it, and think of our great privilege and
renew our inspiration.
Another thing: do you remember the last “Fragment” in the third volume?
It is an appeal for chelas. Now there are those of our comrades who really
have carried this Society over into the present cycle; they have carried this
burden. Now let us see if we cannot help lift it a little. You remember the
closing words, “In God’s name come over and help us. The need is so great!”
Let us resolve to go over and help them.
Mr. A. Gonz/lez Jimenez: During this year the Venezuela Branch has
tried, to the extent of its ability, to work in silence. Every day its indrawal
becomes greater, so as to enter more completely into the Heart of the Lodge
willing for service.
It has been our new experience, we may say, to have again discovered that
Theosophy is found everywhere, and that the more we live the inner life, the
more evident is the Father’s Will in this world, as the Voice of the Lodge ex¬
presses itself in visible facts to those who are willing to see and who devote
their hearts to It.
Our chief subjects of study have been the War, and Discipleship, and the
addresses of last Convention. Several members are continuing the study of
Christianity, and are trying to practise daily some acts of “The Christian Life”.
We believe that this discipline will become a new state of consciousness.
Outwardly we have been witnesses of a change in the governmental regime,
and we pray that this may be of profit to the Soul’s purposes. One feels some¬
thing new in the collective mind. Papers, associations, etc., as far as they
can perceive, claim and invoke many of the same principles for which The
Theosophical Society is working. Many of them are asking, “From which
secret fibre of the National Soul have they received the message?” They know
not; but by intuition they are feeling the beneficent influence of the Theo¬
sophical Movement in this region.
The Branch is anxious to co-operate with the cyclic work of The Theosophical
Society at this time; to strive so that the world can feel the living inspiration
of Masters, and by means of sacrifice and devotion prepare the way for the
Lodge Messenger. His evocation has been our daily prayer.
Our gratitude and love to those great beings, on whose compassion our
T. S. ACTIVITIES
241
strength lies, and to those visible and invisible companions in Convention
assembled to-day. We pray that this may be an opportunity for the world to
learn that “man liveth not by bread alone”.
This, in conclusion, is from a letter from one of our members in Caracas:
“We shall not go [to the Convention], but—especially those among us who
have been there more than once—we shall think of all of you, one by one, with
much love, following you from minute to minute, during the morning, at lunch,
throughout the afternoon, and then at the tea on Sunday; and we shall be
en fete , sharing your joy and your hopes. It will be our souls that will be there
with you all, and if the Masters embrace us in the magic circle of their love,
we shall be there in person also!
“The separation, the distance, will not sadden us, because we know that you
and we are united by eternal ties which no dark power can ever sever.”
Mr. Rivero: It was Emerson, I think, who said in one of his essays, that
if he knew where Plato was now, he would sell all he had, seek him out, and
learn from him. Animated by a like purpose, should we not do likewise in
order to attend the Convention? This august assembly represents the realiza¬
tion of our highest inspiration of the year. Great then is our joy, great our
gratitude, great our responsibility.
Imbued with the edifying lessons of the Convention, we shall go again to
the visible unreality, as missionaries of the invisible reality. You recall the
juridical fictions of extra-territoriality and immunity? Diplomatic envoys,
unaccountable to local authorities, proceed in a foreign land as if they were in
their own. This privilege is not only the Ambassador’s: it extends even to
the most humble of his servants. In such a spirit, and if we are worthy, the
Convention may bestow upon us the grace of a similar, although greater, priv¬
ilege: the grace of “being in the world, yet not of the world”, in order that
we may love, serve and honour the Masters of Wisdom, the Masters of Com¬
passion, with “faith, courage and constancy”, illumined as we are to-day by
their divine light, which ever bums in the holiest and most secret comer of
our hearts.
Mr. Miller: We had a call at the Convention last year. The call has
been renewed to-day. It seems that what was said this morning (that this
is not a time for talk, but a time for action) is particularly true, but perhaps
we can learn from our failures, if in no other way. In fact, some of us haw
very little but failures and faults to offer the Masters. But the point I should
like to make is: that is just what they want—they want us as we are. Are
we going to give ourselves to them?
The meetings of the New York Branch this year were pointing towards
this Convention,—passing from the very inspiring opening meeting on inspira¬
tion and man’s capacity to receive it and the necessity for embodying it, to
the warning (which has been renewed here) that the time has come for the
fruit to appear, especially from those of us who have been members for any
242 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
length of time and have had poured out upon us, year after year, the richest
blessings of which we can possibly conceive. What have we returned for them.
In the little chapter on Karma, at the end of Light on the Path , it is stated
that, once the student has reached the threshold of occultism, certain Karmic
results ensue, and no longer can he plead ignorance. Therefore, it seems to me
that even those who are attending their first Convention, and how much more
those of us who have attended many Conventions,—are faced with responsibil¬
ity and can no more evade it than a man can become a child again.
The Letters of Greeting refer to the crisis in the world; but a crisis has been
reached in the lives of the members of this Society, and it is high time that
those of us who have been inspired and aroused partially, should become thor¬
oughly awake and alive, not only to our responsibilities, but to the enormous
and precious privilege offered to us, to co-operate with the Masters in their
efforts for humanity.
Mr. La Dow: I have something on my mind to say, which may seem to
be a digression, but I do not think it is. In yesterday’s Herald Tribune there
was an account of a meeting of the American Philosophical Society, with spe¬
cial reference to a paper read by a doctor who describes some experiments
on dogs. He inoculated them with some sort of germ which causes a slow
but fatal paralysis. He bred the dogs which apparently transmitted the dis¬
ease to their offspring. In any event, the puppies had the same clinical history
and died at approximately the same age as their parents. All this is supposed
to prove something or other.
The paper was read before the American Philosophical Society. No “phil¬
osopher”, however, protested against the barbarity of the thing. There is
evidence that this whole subject of vivisection and experimentation upon
animals has given great concern to members of the Lodge. You may recall
some passages in the Mahatma Letters (passages which I believe we can accept
as genuine). We may draw the deduction, that the end does not justify the
means. If an end can only be attained by vicious means, the end must also
be vicious. The knowledge which we should seek can never be obtained by
the torture of other creatures, animal or human. I think that many of us
limit the meaning of brotherhood. Real brotherhood must include the sense
of our kinship with the lower creatures, the realization of their dependence
upon us. It may be a sign of barbarism in me, but I can feel more brotherly
towards some dogs than towards some people.
If we start out in quest of knowledge with a perverted motive, the knowledge
acquired, the structure built in the mind, will be a monstrosity. “Man, know
thyself.” “Man is the mirror of the universe.” If we really base our lives
upon those two fundamental propositions, we shall never have to experiment
on anyone or anything except ourselves.
Mr. J. F. B. Mitchell: The one thing I should like to express is the prayer
that we may all take fire. One’s hope for the ordinary man is that he may de-
T. S. ACTIVITIES
243
tach himself from the great mass who seek nothing in life but their own amuse¬
ments and sensations, and realize that the purpose of his life is to fight for
righteousness, in himself and in the world. We, too, must do that, but with
a much more definite purpose added, the purpose that ch£laship shall be kept
alive in the world as a living fact, and not only as a tradition and a memory.
We can help toward that end in every moment of the day. It was on the
steps of a million men that the Buddha attained. Every moment brings its
opportunity to add to the spiritual capital of the Movement by our prayers,
our desires, and our efforts to carry out in action what we have been told,—
with the “intention” that someone may attain.
As was said this morning, we must gain understanding. In a time of in-
drawal, the light of the spiritual world will still be there, available for us if we
turn our attention to it, desire it and seek it. But there will be this great dif¬
ference. Now the light comes to us from outside ourselves, is interpreted for
us and reaches us clear and undistorted, as we have been receiving it to-day.
In a time of indrawal, we shall have to look in our own hearts for it, and then
understanding becomes trebly necessary, for, while the light will be there and
can always be reached, it must pass through and be coloured by our own minds.
If there is not understanding and purification of the mind and nature, the
spiritual light is distorted by the mind, and the result may be such terrible
perversions of spiritual truth as we see in the world to-day, a world being
wrecked by muddle-headed people with good intentions.
The Bhagavad Gita says that he who is perfected in devotion will find spirit¬
ual understanding springing up within him, but the devotion must be the
kind that is carried into action, the devotion of the will. It must be a whole¬
hearted devotion. We have all struggled for years for concentration as an aid
to meditation. We have thought of it as concentration of the mind, as control
of the thoughts, and perhaps have wondered if such a thing were possible.
I should like to suggest the substitution of another word: whole-heartedness.
There is no trouble about concentration if a man be whole-hearted. If he has
thrown himself into a cause with his whole heart, he leaves everything per¬
sonal, and all his distracting thoughts, behind. Suppose that one is doing a
piece of work for a cause that one loves, and something is said that hurts one’s
feelings. There is his chance. He can think about his feelings or turn and
throw himself whole-heartedly into the cause, leaving feelings behind,—pull¬
ing himself out of them as a man with one foot on solid ground and one in
quicksand, can pull himself out by throwing his weight on the foot that is on
solid ground.
Thinking of whole-heartedness this morning, a poem came back to me,
written at the time of the War, on Jeanne d’Arc—she was in heaven, and wanted
to go back to France to help with the War:
I would return to that my land flung in the teeth of war,
I would cast down my robe and crown that pleasure me no more,
And don the armour that I knew, the valiant sword 1 bore. . . .
For with me goes that soldier saint, St. Michael of the sword,
244
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
And I shall ride on his right side, a page beside his lord. . . .
Grant that I answer this my call, yea, though the end may be
The naked shame, the biting flame, the last, long agony;
I would go singing down that road where faggots wait for me.
Mine be the fire about my feet, the smoke above my head;
So might I glow, a torch to show the path my heroes tread;
My Captain! Oh y my Captain , let me go back! she said.
That is whole-heartedness—whether ahead of us we see the joy of the open
country, of which Professor Mitchell spoke, and all the riches of the spiritual
world, or whether we see faggots and the stake. “I would go singing down
that road where faggots wait for me.”
Mr. Auchincloss: Since our Convention a year ago, the Movement has
suffered a very great loss in the death of Miss Theodora Dodge, a loss far greater,
perhaps, than many realize. She influenced profoundly the lives of many
people, and she worked ceaselessly and tirelessly for the Movement and for
the Society in many ways, and yet comparatively few, I think, realize the
extent of her influence and of her labour. That was the way she wanted it.
What counted with her was, that the influence should be spread, that the work
should be done. She, herself, did not want to appear.
But she has left, in what she wrote for the Quarterly, and especially in her
“War Memories”, a means by which those who really knew her may remind
themselves of all that she was and of all that she stood for, and a means by
which those who did not know her so well may come, even now, to know her
better.
The narrative in her “War Memories” is so absorbing, and her comments
on the events in which she had a part are so interesting, that it is only too
easy to lose oneself in the narrative alone. That would be a mistake. For
those recollections of her experiences in the War reveal Miss Dodge as nothing
else could. That whole series is a revelation. And so I suggest that the ‘‘War
Memories” be read again, and re-read: by those who knew her well, that they
may recapture; by those who would know her better, that they may under¬
stand.
For, within the words and between the lines is revealed all that she was:
her loyalty, her tireless devotion to that Cause to which she had given herself,
and for which she stood to the end, and of which all her War work was only an
expression; her gaiety of heart and her sense of humour; her sympathy and
gentleness and tolerance; her sound judgment, and her splendid common-
sense; her unconquerable fighting spirit, which nothing could daunt, and which
fought, I am told, right up to the hour of her death.
We must recapture; we must understand,—in order that we may inherit
the richness of that which she has left to us; in order that we may carry on
where she left off; in order that we may continue to keep alive the memory
of one who has left us,—but whom we have not lost.
T Q 4rTTVTTT]?Q
T. S. ACTIVITIES 245
Mr. Saxe, alluding to the appeal that had been made, and to the state¬
ment that many T. S. members, after making a certain degree of progress,
seemed to stand still, suggested that one important factor might be a lack
of positive dissatisfaction with one’s accomplishment, day by day. After
enlarging on this point he continued: You know there is a limit to what the
older members can say regarding how poorly we do! They can generalize
to some extent and give hints from which we may draw our own inferences:
that is about all. But there is no law against our looking at ourselves in the
glass once in a while, and saying: “You poor, miserable, would-be disciple,—
for heaven’s sake wake up!”
Dr. Clark: Through The Theosophical Society, unexpected wealth was
brought to us,—a wealth of meaning in the religions of the world, and, for the
first time, perhaps, in our own religion. Sciences and philosophies yielded new
meanings, and became organized, bewildering us no longer. Ancient history
appeared in new significance, as it disclosed events parallel to those of our
own day. Gold was found in most unexpected quarters—in a song from Cali¬
fornia, a poem from Canada, in the preaching of Phillips Brooks, and of H. P.
Liddon. Certainly we had not dared to expect in sermons an unfolding of theo¬
sophical principles, or to find ecclesiastics feeling after the Lodge. Brooks
and Liddon, in that period of 1875, were reaching out toward universal truth,
and some spiritual magnetism from the Lodge seemed to affect them. They
understood the events of Christ’s life as definite historical facts and also as
expressions of universal law.
Thus finding wealth, in place after place, we have come to think of inex¬
haustible deposits of gold made by the Lodge, century after century. But is
any vein of precious metal inexhaustible? We did nothing to accumulate this
treasure, though we have used it as our own. Privilege entails responsibility.
Even the world—no lofty standard—brands those who waste an inheritance
instead of passing it on. How despicable we shall be if we do not zealously
guard this wealth of the Lodge that was put into our hands.
Mr. Kobb£: Mr. Chairman , and Fellow Warriors: First, as regards com
ditions in the world; all evil is not concentrated in the present, despite appealer
ances. There was evil in the past also. History is a record of it. It makes no
difference that, at one period, it was called Diocletianism, at another Girondism,
and now Bolshevism. The same subversion was, and is, the basis of it: a
pulling down and a levelling off; the exact opposite of the hierarchical principle
of the spiritual world. The Frankensteins who inaugurate such “isms”, some¬
times manoeuvre to put themselves in public office, and then they, and their
subversiveness, are comparatively easy to recognize. At other times, however,
S rking less openly, their object is to raise to public power a representative, a
bthpiece, who invariably is a renegade aristocrat, through whom they seek
totool the masses. Witness the r 61 e played by Philippe Egalit6 at the time
of the French Revolution. On the surface, there was the polished manner, the
246
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
genteel voice, while, underneath, there was rottenness to the core. Let us
not be deluded by any similar performance to-day.
Next, I want to underscore Mrs. Regan’s closing remarks about the need
for chdlas being so great, and to say something further on that subject. If
we are to meet here in future councils of war, we have to do something very
definite and immediate about it. Professor Mitchell referred to the World
War. Let us draw a little scene from those times; one, perhaps, partly from
imagination, but, nevertheless, correct in practically all detail. There were
men on the front line, and they had been there a long, long time; so long, that
“Blighty” was overdue. If they were not relieved soon, they could not be
brought back to the front for the next “big push” against “Fritz”. Not that
their hearts were less valiant, not that their spirits lagged; but the physical
machinery had run down. So, we see a column of other men, marching for¬
ward to relieve them; men, not as experienced as they, but honest-to-goodness
fighting units nevertheless; to whom must be entrusted the lesser “stunts”,
as they were called, necessary to advance the line. What about these fresh
troops who went up to the front? In the silence which precedes the dawn,
some of them talked “of sealing-wax and cabbages and kings”, or of whatever
was uppermost in their minds and hearts. Somewhere, mothers, wives, and
daughters, were praying that the Allied cause in which all were united, might
ultimately be triumphant. It was zero hour on the Flanders front. It was
time to go over the top.
The subversive forces at work in the outer world, are but a pale reflection
of the conflict on the inner plane. The Masters who, on the inner plane, guide
and advance the Lodge Movement, need chelas, here and now, that the outer
expression of the Movement may continue to be carried forward in the world.
They need us. Those who refer to themselves as our Elder Brothers, need
their little brothers who are in the world. Let us, then, march to the front.
Let us man the front line,—all united that the Masters’ cause may be carried
forward in the world. Let us, then, draw together in a closer touch of elbow,
a more snugly-knit esprit de corps. It is zero hour along the theosophical front.
Someone must go over the top.
Mr. Brush: Part of our discussion at the New York Branch this season,
has centred in “inspiration”. We have considered it as a divine gift, granted
us from above, as well as something that may be evoked from within; but
the basic fact brought out by these discussions—the one it seems to me that
can mean so much to ourselves as well as to the world—is this: that inspira¬
tion, instead of being the exclusive property of the few, the creative artists,
the thinkers, the leaders of the race, may become, under certain conditions,
the heritage of us all. We know what these conditions are. They are inner,
not outer. They are a basic part of Theosophy as well as of life.
It is as if we, and not only we, but all men, were surrounded at every point
by doors, each door leading away from self to something that is greater than
self. There is, for instance, the door of duty, the door of sacrifice, of service,
T Q A PTTVTTTT7Q
T. S. ACTIVITIES 247
of failure as well as success. Either we open these doors, willingly, ourselves,
or we wait until life opens them for us. Then, if we will turn away from our
preoccupation with self, sufficiently to look , we see through each opened door,
stretching away in the distance, a well worn path, full of difficulties that chal¬
lenge everything in us, but leading up to the heights where the Masters are.
Many are inspired by what they see, but stop at the threshold afraid to act
—afraid of the difficulties ahead; and so each door closes before them.
But at Convention time, it seems to me, all doors are opened for us at once,
so that we catch many a glimpse of the heights beyond. Our task, then, during
the coming months, is not only to treasure what we have seen and felt in our
hearts to-day, but continually to evoke the desire and the will to follow it.
Colonel Wise: Mr. Chairman , ladies and gentlemen: The last time I was
accorded the privilege of addressing this Society I did not have the honour of
being a member of it. Now I can claim that honour. But I am not even an
acolyte—only a neophyte. This being so, all I can do is “testify at the
meeting”.
The text—“know thyself”—upon which the Chairman of the Executive
Committee spoke to-day, suggests many things to my mind. It applies to
the American people collectively as well as individually. As a nation we are
in great need of knowing ourselves. Much of the evil among individuals to-day
is, I believe, due to our collective misunderstanding. False history has con¬
cealed from our view the true character of the Nation. To-day historians are
merely throwing together glittering platitudes that lead our people to believe
that we have attained perfection, when our record is far from commendable
in many respects. In truth, as a nation, we have manifested little knowledge
of liberty, equality, and fraternity in their real theosophic sense. As I see it,
our sufferings to-day are not accidental. They are part of the retribution which
enters into the nature of an all-wise, creative genius whose grand scheme of
things has regard for the weak as well as the strong. Slavery, our merciless
exploitation of the Red Race, our commercial greed, the constant accentua¬
tion of the material at the expense of the spiritual, involved us in a certain
penalty that we cannot escape. Yet, to-day there is not a single public ma^
urging the abandonment for ever of the materialism from which we are si^F
fering. On the contrary, they are all fixing the mind of the country upon the
recovery of what we recently possessed. I, for one, do not wish to see this kind
of recovery.
The radio is a second powerful evil influence in its present operation. A
butcher may hire a professed sociologist, a shoemaker a quack economist, a
department store a political scientist, to lecture to the masses with impunity.
The people are not as stupid as commonly supposed. After listening to these
ill-informed speakers, they see that none of them knows what he is talking about.
^ effect of this is evil. It tends to destroy faith in everything. The trouble
tSday is not wrong faith, but utter lack of faith. In short, the radio is being
employed not as an agency of moral uplift but of intellectual degradation.
248
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Last Saturday I picked up what is relatively a conservative newspaper.
Twelve subjects were covered on the front page. Four of these were foreign
wars, etc. The other eight were major crimes which had occurred in our very
midst. They included the holding up of a United States mail-passenger train,
a battle with bombs in a National bank, the strangling of a lady in her home,
the cutting of the throat of a business man in his office on Wall Street, the
arrest of licensed detectives for fraud, fraudulent practices by a large corpora¬
tion, and the dismissal of a United States judge for dishonesty in office. The
fate of the judge was decided by Congress, not on the merits of his case, but on
partisan political grounds. Here is a very different moral picture of American
society from that painted by our historians and publicists. Can any society
long endure, much less enjoy material prosperity, that has become morally
so degraded? What of the effect on the collective mind of the nation, of a press
that carries pictures of our true condition like that described? Where is there
anyone feeding noble, uplifting thoughts to the masses through popular his¬
tories, the radio, or the press?
Do we not know that a minister of the Gospel who openly essayed to assail
the tone of any of these perverted agencies would be removed from the pul¬
pit? Why blame the Church for this? The truth is we have made it impos¬
sible by our indifference for the Church to wield the “flaming sword” of truth.
Finally, I wish to advert to the Masonic connections of Washington that
have been mentioned here. To be sure Washington was a Mason. I believe,
however, he was far more than a Mason, and that he merely sought to employ
Masonry to the extent it could be made to serve a high purpose. In my opin¬
ion he was not only the greatest man ever produced by the Anglo-American
civilization, but a theosophist from the ground up. When he placed the triangle
on the seal of the United States, he placed it there to represent the principles
of the Ancient Wisdom. I believe that the way to correct the ills of American
society to-day is to lead the nation back to the principles taught by Washington
and symbolized by the sign he placed on the seal of the United States. The
national motto adopted by Washington—“E pluribus unum”—implied far
more than the political aggregation presently constituting the American Re¬
public. It implied the unity of which the Great Lodge has ever taught. It
implied the trinity of which Jesus himself was the inspired symbol.
What American society needs to-day is another Washington, so great, so
good, so high above ordinary men that he might lash the nation into a con¬
sciousness of itself, compel it to see itself in its true aspect, compel it to know
itself.
The Convention next heard with great pleasure and interest from Mr. Fisher,
and from Mr. Miller, Jr., Mr. Mitchell, Jr., Mr. H. Mitchell, Mr. Russ, Jr.
The Chairman then spoke of the debt of the Society to the contributors,
editors, proof-readers and others, whose labours, on a purely voluntary basis,
result in the publication of the Theosophical Quarterly. A motion express¬
ing this indebtedness, with deep appreciation, was carried unanimously.
T. S. ACTIVITIES
249
Mr. Hargrove: The Committee on Resolutions has nothing more to re¬
port, but, before it is dismissed, I want to point out, because I have been asked
to do so, an interesting deduction from Dr. Torrey’s talk. He spoke of French
Masonry and its effect in America. The Lodge, clearly, had hoped to use
Masonry in the eighteenth century, for the revival of true brotherhood and
of the Ancient Wisdom; unfortunately, as Dr. Torrey said, it was misused
and its influence became evil,—and is evil to this day, so far as concerns the
“Grand Orient” in France and in some other parts of Europe. But that failure
was the result of Cagliostro’s failure. This reminds us that the fate of the
Movement is nearly always in the hands of an individual,—not necessarily
an individual “at the top”. A person who seems of minor consequence can
do infinite harm to the Movement. In comparison with Saint-Germain, Cagli-
ostro was entirely secondary, but it was his failure that made it impossible
for the Lodge to do what might have been accomplished, and which, instead,
resulted in injury lasting to this day.
The Committee on Resolutions was then dismissed with thanks.
On motion, the Convention adjourned.
Isabel E. Perkins,
Secretary of Convention.
Julia Chickering,
Assistant Secretary of Convention
LETTERS OF GREETING
Aylsham, England.
To the Secretary, Theosophical Society: Please convey my warmest greetings, and good
wishes, to all our fellow members assembled in Convention.
These are difficult days; I doubt if there have been many more difficult; and here in Europe
what one is most aware of is a sense of great restlessness, of insecurity,—at times of fear, always
of nervousness.
This is a very bad thing, for fear is an evil counsellor, and has often driven men to terrible
upheavals and catastrophes.
Men’s minds are deeply troubled; but that is not bad, for in their trouble they are cease¬
lessly searching for something outside of themselves, something capable of satisfying them,
and so they are more open to the great teachings of the Lodge, to the wonderful truths that
Theosophy can bring them.
Herein lies our individual responsibility. If we can carry something into Convention which
is really worthy of it, something truly spiritual that has nothing of self in it, we shallan
increase of spiritual life, of light and understanding, which will enable us to become Rpriers
of the Masters’ light into the darkness of the world.
This will not be done by outer work, by any sort of propaganda, but by becoming a con¬
tagion of good to all those with whom we come in contact.
With renewed greetings and prayers that the Master’s blessing.may rest upon our Conven¬
tion, I am,
Espoir Bagnell.
Miss Bagnell wrote: Already, as you know well, we are looking forward to Convention
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
250
time, seeking to prepare for it beforehand, and then at the time to participate, to the utmost
extent of our consciousness, in that assembling of the Powers. . . .
I have thought that part of the work of the T. S. is in road-making, in maintaining that
essential line of communication between the Lodge and the world. Sometimes it is a case of
building or repairing bridges, under fire; sometimes it may be necessary to tunnel beneath a
mountain, where the digging into dark and subterranean regions requires the utmost courage
on the part of road-builders. In this connection, I found a quotation which seems to give an
immediate incentive to our effort: “We have not to tunnel the whole mountain ourselves.
Under the same Engineer there are gangs working from the Other Side.”
I send my good wishes to all “in Convention assembled”, greetings to those who are present
at Headquarters, and to those who, kept at home in the “place of their duty”, are present in
heart and consciousness. May we respond to the guidance that is given us, with greater
determination and a deeper understanding, at the time of the Convention, and in all the year
that follows.
Los Angeles, California.
With this, and in other ways, we send a glad greeting and every best wish to the members
assembled in Convention, and to all of those who, like ourselves, for various reasons are unable
to attend. In addition, we feel that now is the time for both introspection and retrospection.
As we look back over the years that have gone since the century began, we can see more or
less clearly in the distance, as it were, the outstanding changes that have taken place in the
life of the Society, especially in its inner life, during those years. Some of those changes we
have only heard of, or read about; others we have shared to an extent, having lived through
them; but its most outstanding and momentous change, at the century’s very beginning, we,
as a Branch, obviously have yet to undergo. This came, you will remember, when the Society
as such turned from the intellectual and other triumphs it had achieved, inward to its own
Soul, so as to become inwardly and outwardly at one with it; to give from there of its light
and life, and love and force, directly and in ever-increasing measure, to whatever its members
undertook to do, from that time on; or, rather, it was just a few of its members who then and
thus turned inward, to blaze a way for the rest of us. And, we hardly need to add, since we
all know it so well, the soul of it is the Masters. Furthermore, we realized that the members
of the Society, are the Society.
Thus, ever so slowly, step by step, year after year, Convention after Convention, as we now
see them, we have been brought to the very Tree of Life and Knowledge, so as to have seen
something of its blossoming; but of its ripened fruit, it seems, we have yet to “pluck and eat”,
as the Master in Light on the Path has it,—have yet to turn inward, to “indraw”, as we now
express it, as those few did at the century’s beginning.
Still, we have turned inward in some ways, our inner eyes at least have been opened, or nearly
so, or we could not inwardly see as we now do; but if we rightly interpret and take to heart what
has been told us in the last two or three Conventions, we did not go far enough. If we take
that simile or actuality to ourselves, that Tree as being our innermost Self, as we may truly do,
it seems we have borne leaves, and even blossomed to some extent, but there have been
too many leaves, personal leaves, that have almost taken the life from our tree, the Life that
has been given to us in those years; so that our finest and most inwardly productive blossoms
did not come to fruit, as they might have done, had we not grown so many of those leaves.
So that the Tree itself, its root within us, is in danger, and the season for its growth, which
those years have been, is almost at its end. So now there is pruning to do, “down to the root”,
to the Soul itself, stripped bare of everything that holds us back from it; if our endeavours,
our will and endurance, can take us that far. So we may grow again, be inwardly “born
again”, to blossom and to bear the fruit of the Lodge itself, in the Lodge itself, and be per¬
sonally conscious of being there, like the few at the century’s beginning.
Moreover, it would seem that it is to be either that or nothing, now or perhaps never. As
we thus looked back and within ourselves, it was as though that Master in Light on the Path
T. S. ACTIVITIES
251
himself was speaking: “I say first—take knowledge. To him who hath shall be given. The
womb of Time will close before you, and in later days you will remain unborn, without power.”
The italicizing is ours, the sentence having impressed us as never before. And may it be his
Convention, this time.
The Pacific Branch,
W. H. Box, President.
Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.
To the Members of The Thcosophical Society in Convention Assembled , the members of the
Newcastle-on-Tyne Branch send most hearty greetings and good wishes.
We shall be observing Convention Day once again, and this time with added interest. The
personal contact which some of us were privileged to have had last year has made a great
difference in many ways, and our Branch has certainly been enriched by it. We feel that we
know you all better and are much more intimate with your proceedings. We realize that we
have the same Ideals and are entirely at one with you in heart and purpose.
Although another year has passed it seems but yesterday, and may that be a joyful sign;
a striking indication that we have been busy in the Masters’ Cause, striving to become, in heart
and mind, more like unto Those it is our privilege to serve. The past year would seem to have
been an opportunity for assimilation and embodiment in a marked degree. By not having
the Quarterly for nine months, we have had the chance to digest and understand the old
numbers more thoroughly, and to the extent that we have diligently searched for the light,
we have benefited accordingly.
As the past year would seem to have been an opportunity for assimilation, so it has been
one for action or embodiment. “He that loveth me keepeth my Commandments.” It is
not sufficient to be hearers of the word only. We must be “doers”. So, standing on our own
inner resources, letting the Warrior fight in us, overcoming the world by being in it but not of
it, we have had the opportunity to build into our lives more fully those things which we believe
to be true. For embodied philosophy is strengthening, whereas its opposite is weakening.
We therefore trust that the Society has gained in spiritual force by the earnest application
of the principles we stand for. We have been told that “to know the doctrine, we must live
the life”, and this is no mere platitude. As we know at first hand, by actual experience, we
have vision and understanding both about ourselves and the world in general. And what is
more needed to-day? We were reminded a year ago that “we had a mission”, and we were
exhorted to be “true to our trust” at all costs. So we would pray that the Society may con¬
tinue to be a true channel, a shining reflector and disseminator of the light, and a fearless
spokesman for righteousness, justice and truth. We would pray that this may be, but we
would also exercise the will to that end.
E. Howard Lincoln,
Prcsid
South Shields, England.
To the Members of The Theosophical Society Assembled in Convention: —The members of the
South Shields Branch send to you to-day their very sincere fraternal greetings. At this time
of re-union and festival of the Spirit, we must offer in our hearts a paean of praise and deep
gratitude to the Elder Brothers who opened the door to the Spiritual Life by means of The
Theosophical Society, and who form the Guardian Wall to protect us from worse evils than
those that beset us; also to those members of the Society who have gone before and who
beckon us to follow in their footsteps. We have received from them a noble heritage, and we
must see to it that we do not betray the trust that they have reposed in us. The Light and
Life which radiate from Theosophy present to view an ideal at once noble and divine, in sharp
k contrast to the rampant sin and wickedness that hide under the cloak of Toleration to-day,
so that sin goes unchallenged. Democracy has become the Herd instinct; character and indi¬
viduality have gone, and western civilization, stripped of its veneer, appears to be tottering
252
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
on the brink of the abyss of chaos. Humanity and civilization can only be saved by a return
to the fundamental teachings of the Wisdom Religion. Let us pray that the spiritual force
emanating from the Convention may find ready response in a few hearts to live the life of the
soul, and thus bring others to the Light.
Thomas Mackey,
Secretary.
Toronto, Canada.
To the Secretary T.S.: The Members of the Branch ask me to send the following words of
Greeting.
Our thoughts at this time reach out to the members and friends assembled in Convention.
We feel a great force for good is centred there, its influence being felt throughout the whole
world. Although we cannot be present in person our thoughts and prayers will be with you.
With the increasing tension of life in the world to-day, Theosophy indeed provides an oasis
for our souls. At no time in our history was it more necessary to study the steadying influence
and philosophy of its teachings.
The inspiring messages that come to us through the medium of the Quarterly are a boon
to all who study its contents. To all who make this possible we send our grateful thanks.
May we all have the strength and courage to live its teachings that we may be further
fortified for the higher conquests in the great Cause of the Masters.
Albert J. Harris.
Whitley Bay, England.
To the Members of The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled , the Members of the
Whitley Bay Branch send sincere fraternal greetings.
Our thoughts and aspirations are conjoined with yours at this time, in your efforts to estab¬
lish and consolidate a centre through which the moral and spiritual powers latent in man may
function. It is only through our continued and concentrated efforts that this power can
operate; we are the instruments through which it flows, and the importance of the develop¬
ment and fitting of the instrument for this purpose cannot be over-stressed. As fire enters
ste'el, making it more pliable and ductile, that it may become tempered to a new strength, we
pray that the spirit of the Convention may enter our minds and thoughts to-day, that we
may become fired to further efforts, and that the consciousness of each member may be raised
to a new strength and dignity of purpose.
Fredk. A. Ross,
President , Whitley Bay Branch.
[Names are omitted from the following letter because it comes from a part of Europe where,
in certain circumstances, the opinions expressed by the sender might react dangerously upon
him.)
To the Secretary , Theosophical Society:
The members of the Branch wish to send most cordial greetings and the best of good wishes
to the Officers and Members of The Theosophical Society, in Convention Assembled—May
the blessings of the Great Lodge rest upon your Assembly so that it prove a very successful
one and a unanimous thanksgiving-service. We shall join our aspirations and prayers to yours.
This feeling-together, this feeling of Unity will reinforce our efforts and animate our own
resolutions that we become able to stand all hardships and trials in the time to come.
Recalling in our minds the most impressive experience which three members of ours had
by attending the Convention of last year and two years ago, we feel anew deep gratitude for
all we received during those very happy days “when we came home".
We live through a horrible time in this confused and fogged-in world where only Theosophy
gives us a better understanding of the underlying causes, and the connections of the disgust-
T. S. ACTIVITIES
253
ing occurrences in international affairs. In spite of the feverish activity of prominent states¬
men, the souls of the leading European Nations are in a deplorable agony. The humiliating
issues of the late London Conference prove a startling lack of concord in vital things among
the Great Powers of Europe, and show in a frightening way a terrible confusion, a blindness
and confounded stupidity of muddled and misled people who do not and will not recognize
principles of honour and righteousness; therefore, they cannot see the real facts and the un¬
avoidable consequences of their failure.
One of the political aims of Germany is to separate England from France. Will she succeed?
This conception would be almost intolerable, but we must face it and we must be watchful.
Undoubtedly, the artful tricks of the Black Powers were not without success. While the
members of the League of Nations argue, Germany is acting.
In truth, the Alliances of France and Czecho-Slovakia with the Soviets are an inexcusable
blunder, or perhaps the fruit of fear of Hitler-Germany; in any case a compromise with evil.
And what is to be thought of the thickheadedness—the wilful and sturdy resistance to com¬
prehend principles—of those English Parliamentarians who, in the House of Lords, recently
declared that the former German Colonies should be restored to Germany in order to comply
with her demand for “equality of rights”;—a spontaneous offer before it officially was de¬
manded by Germany! At the same time, they were discussing in London the grant of a new
loan to Germany. And all this for the “pacification of Europe”. Peace at any price, even
at the expense of the National Honour. Is this not downright insanity? Is not such an atti¬
tude almost an invitation to the Black Powers, or to their instruments, to further provoca¬
tions and aggressions?
What can we do against that attitude within such a poisoned and infected atmosphere?
What have to be our tasks, our contributions? Above all, I think, we ought to pray con¬
tinuously that the Masters’ will shall be done. Another effective contribution would be, I
believe, to put into practice in our own spheres of activity what Theosophy teaches and offers
us. To do so, there are plenty of opportunities: in fulfilling our daily duties in the light of
Theosophy; in our family circles; in our business life; yes, and even in our Branch life. Thus
we begin to realize our opportunities, and, feeling the mutual danger, we also see the respon¬
sibilities that rest on the members of The Theosophical Society.
To us, Theosophy is the light-house within that psychic fog, and the guide in the chaos of
international politics. Theosophy gives us not only more light and a better understanding,
but also more faith and courage and greater power of resistance; it braces our nerves and
refreshes our souls. And we, in this part of Europe, we especially, need these strengthening
forces; more than ever, I think, we are exposed to the danger of Hitlerism. Considering the
present political conditions of Europe, I am afraid that another Great War is fast approaching,
and we know the annexations that belong to Hitler’s scheme of conquest; possibly, our own
country will be one of his victims. Therefore, we have to face that danger and must be watch¬
ful. May be that that time of trial of which Mr. Hargrove spoke, “the time when we shall be
cut down to the root”, is not so far for our little Branch. But if we have confidence in God
as Job had, we shall remember that, “There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that.i^fcill
sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.”
Therefore, we have to acquire a steadfast faith and a bold courage; we must learn to be
inspired from above if we wish to respond, if we hope to be of some service to the Holy Cause,
and to come up to the expectations of the Masters of Karma and Wisdom. “Lord, grant
that we may rise to those opportunities and responsibilities with which we are faced”, and also
grant that we may become worthy of the “Grace of Final Perseverance”.
I beg to convey our brotherly greetings and heartfelt thanks to the Executive Committee,
as well as to the Officers and Members of the New York Branch, to whom we owe so much
for help, guidance and encouragement which we greatly appreciate.
Oneal, Arkansas.
To the Secretary T.S.: Would you kindly remember me to the Officers and Members of our
254
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Society in Convention assembled? Thank you. I shall certainly be with you in heart, and
spirit, and in thought. And how glad I shall be to be there, even if only in thought! What a
privilege, and honour to be in such Company! Again I beg the privilege of standing with my
Comrades as we salute the Corps.—Those who have for fifty years born so nobly, and un¬
complainingly the brunt of the battle. Toil, sacrifice and endless effort. Asking no quarter;
seeking no reward,—save the privilege of serving Righteousness.
A Voice was heard, ringing clear and true:
“Be steadfast, be strong",—
Steadfast in seeking Inspiration from Above;
Strong in making this Divine guidance manifest in our daily lives;
Steadfast in withdrawing our centre of interest from the world and its illusions;
Strong in following the Gleam of the Divine Light, back to the planes of the Immortal,—
our Home.
May the Peace and Love and Power of Those who understand , be with you.
Wm. E. Mullinax.
Deep interest was shown by delegates and members in the reading of Letters of Greeting,
and, as usual, they elicited frequent applause. In addition to the foregoing, they included
letters from Mr. Henning Dahl, Chairman of the Oslo Branch (Norway); Miss Eleanor Evans
(England); Mrs. Graves, Secretary of the Norfolk Branch (England); Miss Bertha Gorich
(California); Mr. J. E. Jonsson, President of the Arvika Branch (Sweden); Mr. and Mrs.
Plinio (Italy); Mr. W. G. Roberts, President of the Middletown Branch (Ohio); Mr. and Mrs.
Schoch (Brazil); Miss J. B. Tuttle (California); Mr. Acisclo Valed6n (Venezuela); Mr. Percy
W. Ward, Secretary of the Gateshead Branch (England); telegram from Captain and Mrs.
Hamlen (Maine); telegram from Mrs. Vaile (Florida); cablegram from Mrs. Bagnell, Presi¬
dent of the Norfolk Branch (England); cablegram from Mrs. Raymond (Japan); cablegram
from the Venezuela Branch of Caracas. Other letters from abroad were read, and most appre¬
ciatively received, but are not acknowledged or quoted in the open pages of the Quarterly
for the reason that unusual political conditions in some parts of Europe would make this
inconsiderate and inexpedient (see the Quarterly, July, 1934; page 33).
Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh , that is to say over fear;
fear of poverty , of suffering , of calumny , of illness , of loneliness , and of death.
There is no real piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious
concentration of courage .— Amiel.
The Chinese Renaissance , by Hu Shih; The University of Chicago Press, 1934;
price, Si.50.
Dr. Hu has been called “the father of the Chinese Renaissance”. Certainly
he has been an active participant in the events which have marked the disin¬
tegration of “old China” during the twenty-three years since the overthrow of
the Manchu Dynasty in 1912. To-day he is Dean of the College of Letters in
the National Peking University. His learning and literary skill have brought
him an international reputation. In a certain sense, he is the chief apologist for
the Chinese Republic. It is his function to justify the ways of “young China”
in the eyes of Westerners. It is not astonishing that he has been quite successful,
especially in the United States, for his conception of life is extraordinarily like
that of very many American college professors.
Undoubtedly China has been forced to try to adapt itself to a most difficult
set of conditions. The inroads of European nations and their industrialism
could not be checked by the diplomacy of the Manchus, and the pacifist habits
of the Chinese populace made any sort of effective military resistance impos¬
sible. Moreover, particularly during the past fifty years, the traditional culture
of China has been profoundly disturbed by the steady infiltration of Western
political, religious and social theories. The missionaries may have made few
converts to their various brands of Christianity, but they have given the Chinese
an exalted idea of modern science and the machine age, and they have been
only too successful in their efforts to undermine the institutions of Confucian¬
ism, including the sanctity of the family bond. From the missionaries the Chi¬
nese have learned that American democracy is the most perfect of all political
concoctions, and thousands of them have come to our universities to leai^nore
about Thomas Jefferson and Karl Marx, and to be dazzled still further by the
glamour of our modern world.
In brief, the virus of modernism has entered the old body of China, and only
the wisest of mankind would dare even to guess whether she will somehow be
cured or will die of the disease. Japan facing similar problems has attempted
to solve them by imitating the West in externals without discarding what is
essential in its traditional standards of inward behaviour. It is a desperate
experiment and may terminate in a ghastly failure, but at least it was under¬
taken consciously, after deliberation, by a group of statesmen whose principal
255
256
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
motives were love of country and loyalty to their Emperor. However, in
China it is impossible to describe what is happening as an experiment. The
old standards have been weakened, but only a vast confusion has taken their
place.
Dr. Hu is among those who have lost almost all faith in the virtues of ancient
Chinese civilization. On the other hand, he has a childish belief in the virtues
of Western science. No brain-truster in Washington or elsewhere ever revealed
more confidence in the inevitability of social progress under the Utopian condi¬
tions which an ever-extending mechanical culture will make possible. One
reason for Dr. Hu’s extreme hopefulness is that he thinks the most permanent
attribute of the Chinese mind is its tendency to naturalism and rationalism. The
Chinese, he says, are not burdened like the Western races by “the tremendous
weight of a religious tradition”. This may be true of the Chinese modernists,
but in our opinion he has very strange views concerning the sages of antiquity.
Thus he calls Confucius an agnostic because the Sage said on one occasion:
“To say that you know a thing when you know it, and to say that you do not
know when you know it not, that is knowledge.” The following is his weird
version of Lao-tze’s doctrine:
Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism. . . . Lao-tze taught that
heaven and earth were unkind: they treated all beings like dogs and grass. . . . There
was only a natural process which he called the “Tao”, or way. Everything becomes
such of itself. The Tao does nothing; and yet it achieves everything. It was this nat¬
uralistic conception of the universe which in later ages always came up to serve as an
effective weapon against superstition and anthropomorphic religion.
After such judgments as these, his conclusions regarding the present state of
China are scarcely surprising. Many phenomena are appearing in his native
land as inevitable accompaniments of “modern progress”. Some of them are
painfully familiar to those of us who have the privilege of living in Western
lands,—the construction of factories, the organization of trading companies, the
spread of a secular education divorced from “the moralizings of the ancient
sages”, the concentration of population in the cities, the multiplication of
newspapers, the decay of the family, the spread of adultery, the facility of
divorce. “In one year (1921), there suddenly sprang up in Shanghai over 70
exchanges of stocks and bonds; and the effect was electrifying: hundreds of
school teachers deserted their profession to enlist in the new business that
promised greater rewards and less drudgery.”
These are a few of the important changes in the social life of the Chinese people. As
we look back on them and view them in the light of historical development, we cannot
but hail them as the greatest gains which Chinese civilization has received from its con¬
tact with the life and institutions of the West.
In spite of Dr. Hu’s many admirers among the “intellectuals” of the West,
those of us who reverence the inestimable contribution which “old China” made
to the world, must cherish some hope that “young China” is not the absolute
monstrosity which Dr. Hu’s diagnosis suggests. It does not require the vision
, f
REVIEWS
257
of a prophet to predict that if China be unable to adapt the wisdom of its past
to the problems of its future, nothing can save it from complete catastrophe.
S.L.
The Crystalline State, edited by Sir W. H. Bragg and W. L. Bragg; G. Bell
and Sons, London, 1933; price, 26s.
It is now many years since Sir William Bragg and his son, Dr. W. L. Bragg,
were first recognized as the pioneers in the then little explored field of crystal
analysis. They have ever since remained in the forefront of scientific research,
and the present volume (the first of a new series concerning crystalline life)
gives a general survey of the entire subject.
A hundred and fifty years ago, the reawakening interest in the fine structure
of matter, particularly as manifested in minerals, was heightened by a work of
Abbd Haiiy: Essai d'unc Theorie sur la Structure des Cristaux, published in the
last quarter of the eighteenth century—to be exact, in 1784. Huyghens, work¬
ing on the subject from the optical side a hundred years earlier still, had given
his testimony to Hauy’s later discovery that “different forms of the same crystal¬
line substance are based on a common underlying structure". Haiiy, by unan¬
imous sentiment, is looked upon as the father of crystallography, and any stu¬
dent of Theosophy will be sure to speculate as to how much he may have been
inspired and influenced by the marvellous knowledge of minerals, particularly
of precious stones, which the celebrated Comte de St. Germain was known to
possess. These two men may even have met and talked. Mineralogists of
to-day naturally have no idea of what this science must owe to St. Germain,
and we can only imagine how great is the world’s obligation, by fitting together
a few of the facts that we have. One of these alone will be suggestive: the well-
known account of the diamond with a flaw in it which Louis XV gave to St.
Germain to restore to its original purity of form and lustre. This, St. Germain
accomplished within the short space of a month, though by exactly what means
we do not know, for he was not in the habit of divulging the secrets of his occult
wisdom in the natural sciences. To-day we know of the law of rejuvenation
in the crystalline world, and we know that its working is very slow. Did the
great occultist know of some accelerated process by which this law (so far as
we are aware, entirely unknown to the science of that day) could be brought
into play?
It is to Haiiy that credit is given for the discovery of the geometrical law of
crystallization, and he may well have been assisted in his discovery by St. Ger¬
main, for The Secret Doctrine tells us that “Nature geometrizes univcrsi^in
all her manifestations.” Hauy’s conception of crystalline substance mayTeem
to us rather fixed and inflexible, but he had to use what facilities his era and
environment provided, and in all likelihood he imbibed only as much of the
knowledge which may have been offered him, as his natural capacity or aptitude
permitted. His theory is said to have been founded on close observation fol¬
lowing the accidental dropping and breaking of a calcite crystal. He noticed
the typical rhomb of calcite cleavage, and from this he formed his theory of
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
258
“additive molecules”—the stacking up of identical atoms in crystal formation.
This conception was later carried forward and etherealized by Bravais and others,
the idea of closely packed units of structure being replaced by “an assembly of
points”, out of which the “space-lattice” theory grew. It was not, however,
until the now famous X-ray experiment of 1912 was made, that crystal analysis
passed out of the realm of theory into that of fact. The value of the X-ray in
crystal analysis is due to the fact that the shortness of the wave-length is closely
approximate to the distance between the atoms of which the crystal is built up
—each crystal according to its own individual type. The ancient Wisdom tells
us that real matter is invisible, and we know that there are worlds within worlds,
grades beyond grades of substance ever more attenuated and rarefied as they
progress, and few of us can look at a “Laue photograph” without feeling that
we are gazing at matter at least one step nearer to reality than we have ever
done before. The diffraction of the X-ray by the atoms results in the most
beautiful patterns, and we can see the microstructure of matter on our plane
(though it looks like a glimpse into another world) spread out before us. In¬
deed, to some of us, it may reasonably suggest a living but subjective counterpart
of the physical mineral, a kind of shadowy though luminous double belonging
to another plane of existence, to a world of finer forces and texture. It has
been said that “by studying crystals and using them in other investigations,
much light is thrown on the ultimate significance of matter and on the nature
of the forces which, acting from one minute particle to another, result in the
cohesion of the universe.” We still have much to learn of crystalline life, but
the more we study it, the more fundamental and universal its principles appear
to be.
This is a very technical book, one that might easily frighten away those of us
who may have little or no mathematical knowledge, and yet, despite the techni¬
cality, any student of Theosophy will read it with great pleasure and benefit.
Its beautiful illustrations alone will repay the most careful examination, and
greatly help in an understanding of the fine structure of matter. T.D.
Long Lance , by Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance; Farrar and Rinehart, New
York; price, $2.50.
This book is so interesting that, in spite of its having been published six years
ago, we heartily recommend it to those who have not read it. It delights young
people. The author, we are told in the foreword, is a full-blooded Indian of the
Blood Band of the Blackfeet Indians, a college graduate, and a veteran of the
World War, which he entered as a volunteer with the Canadian Troops.
The book is very simply written. We live intimately in the tribe with Child
Long Lance. We meet the Medicine Man, at once doctor, diviner and priest.
He ranks with the Chief in importance and is greatly revered. Many of his
magical attainments are described. We go on raids across the plains; we hunt
the fast disappearing buffalo. The dread shadow of the white man looms in the
distance. We spend one dramatic winter in the Rockies. There is the massacre,
REVIEWS
259
the chase on snowshoes, the revenge, and the flight, with the beautiful story of
the warrior who, in order not to hold up the party, helps build his funeral pyre,
sets fire to it and dies singing his own death song. Soon after, the white man,
with his whiskey and missionaries, invades the last remaining stronghold of the
Indians. Young Long Lance shamefully learns to wield the hoe and to work like
a woman.
Codes of conduct have been drawn up by men of all races to help raise them
God ward. Such are the codes of Chivalry and of the Japanese Samurai. This
book depicts the code of the Blackfeet Indians who, up to 1897, still ranged
throughout the plains of the Northwest. Here are ideals of truth, courage,
loyalty, courtesy, obedience and, most particularly, of disregard for physical
comfort and of detachment from mere physical existence, which should make the
white men of the twentieth century envious. The disregard for material life
seems to have had a very beneficent effect upon Indian physique. They lived to
great old age, had perfect teeth, and were capable of extraordinary endurance.
The author speaks of having run in non-stop races of two hundred miles; on
one occasion, from Gleichen, Alberta, to Medicine Hat and back, he ran two
hundred and forty miles. Great stress was laid on bodily training, not however,
as a means of maintaining health, but in order to develop a fit instrument for the
service of heroism. This was the purpose of the baths in icy water, the whippings
with fir branches, the terrible ordeals by which a youth became a brave. We can
imagine a time in the future when our present frantic efforts to preserve physical
life regardless of the absurd or immoral means which we employ, will be read of
with the contempt we feel for the excesses of Nero or Caligula,—when vivi¬
section, for instance, will seem beyond human comprehension. Few people
realize that they are living very artificial lives, and that, in an effort to counter¬
balance the breaking of natural laws, some branches of medicine are uncon¬
sciously gravitating towards black magic. N.R.
Yoga and Western Psychology , by Geraldine Coster; Oxford University Press
1934; price, $2.00.
This is a very interesting little book. Miss Coster points out in her intro¬
duction that many persons who seek the aid of psychoanalysis are really looking
for a satisfactory solution of problems profounder than those of physical
' personal maladjustment. Their own form of religion, if they have been brof^ht
up in any church, has not been presented to them in a convincing or intelligent
way. They turn to psychoanalysis, and, in some cases, gain an insight into
certain phases of their own natures which enables them better to cope with
their circumstances, but there they are left, with “no place to go”. Miss Coster
suggests that the Eastern systems of philosophy, particularly that of Patanjali,
as set forth in the Yoga Sutras , provide steps beyond any which “Western
Psychology” has to offer. She seems to identify Western Psychology with what
is termed, in general, “psychoanalysis”, a definition which would exclude all
^pther Western thought, ancient and modern!
26 o
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
She gives an excellent r£sum£ of modem analytical theory and technique,
the schools of Freud, Adler, Jung, etc., which should be valuable to any one
wishing to learn the main facts about the subject. In Part Two, she discusses the
philosophy of Patanjali, and gives a version, with commentaries, of certain of the
Yoga Sutras. In Part Three, she compares the two systems, using chiefly the
sutras of Book Two, as giving that portion of the method of Yoga which corre¬
sponds to the work of the psychoanalyst. She says:
Now it is obvious to western readers that neither the attainment of the siddhis (powers),
nor the further attainment of kaivalya (liberation), which is reached through the prac¬
tice of unconscious samadhi, is a project for the ordinary analyst. . . . It is as if analyst
and yogi followed closely parallel paths up to a certain point, but beyond this point the
analyst has not yet ventured. . . . The technique by which the yogi is trained to a con¬
tinuous identification of the consciousness with the self, a sustained self-awareness, is in
many respects unsuited to western temperaments and western conditions of life. Yet
the goal is a worthy one. Ireud and his followers have given us, as it were, the first
two chapters of our western yoga sutras. It remains for experimenters to discover an
applicable equivalent for the remaining chapters.
Miss Coster’s very clear exposition of the philosophy and aims of the analysts,
in juxtaposition with the Sutras , even in her limited version of them, shows only
too plainly the vast, the almost immeasurable distance between the highly
Semitic materialism of psychoanalysis and the spirituality of the Indian system.
The doctrine of the unity of all life in the Oversoul, or, indeed, of any Oversoul
at all, is completely absent from the theories of “Modem Psychology”. Psycho¬
analysis, in its present form, is one more sign of the arrogance and ignorance of
twentieth century thought, which throws over as worthless the accumulated
wisdom of the past, and asserts that its limited and trifling investigations are
the triumph of the ages. Western philosophy, from Thales to Bergson, has
produced some ideas which might throw light upon the nature of the human
soul and mind. Christianity possesses its own science of yoga, painfully acquired
and set down by the great mystics. Its language may be repellent to Westerners
who are disgusted by the spectacle of the ignorance and failure of the priests and
“believers” of the churches, but it is just as easy to learn that language as San¬
skrit, and easier than the strange jargon of the psychologists. If Eastern methods
be unsuited to the Western mind in general, it had better turn to its own rich
heritage. The works of St. Teresa contain a whole system of self-analysis, and of
the stages of consciousness from meditation to contemplation. The Introduction
a la Vie D&vote of St. Francis de Sales, if studied with application, would “release”
the neurotic patient far more thoroughly from the toils of his psychic nature
than any substitution of one psychic delusion for another. However, all Yoga,
Eastern or Western, requires of its student a recognition of and an aspiration
towards Spiritual Consciousness, and a true contrition and willingness to mortify
the lower nature. The motive for the transformation of the personal self is quite
different in the mystical systems from that in psychoanalysis.
Of course, there are many persons who cannot perceive the inner meaning of
Christian mysticism, except through the fresh light thrown upon it by com-
REVIEWS
261
parison with other religions, philosophies and sciences, just as many Orientals
learn to appreciate their own thought by the study of Western methods. The
second object of The Theosophical Society is: “The study of ancient and modern
religions, philosophies and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance
of such study.” One result of Miss Coster’s book should be to convince any
earnest reader that Modern Psychology offers no spiritual consolations or nourish¬
ment of any kind, but that he can find, by devoted search, in the age-old religious
sciences of the world, a way to the realization of the Divine Consciousness and
Life. St.C. LaD.
Unwilling Passenger , by Arthur Osbum; Faber and Faber, London; price,
5 s -
This reviewer has read many books about the Great War,—some inspiring,
some mediocre, some revolting. Of all of them, this is the most pitiable. Its
author was an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He won the D. S. 0 .,
and undoubtedly did his duty, and more than his duty, with great bravery.
But he went into the war with bitterness and disgust, and came out of it with
a sort of venomous loathing,—most of his book, an effort to unload this on
his readers. He would excuse himself, perhaps, on the ground that he is trying
to “debunk” war, but, in order to do this, he will introduce, in the middle of
an account of some battle, a story told him years before about the alleged
monstrous behaviour of British troops in Burma, after the capture of Mandalay
in 1885, and will sneer viciously at the indignation of the House of Lords when
the Germans began the use of poison gas in 1915, arguing that poison gas is
no more barbarous than the use of the bayonet, and completely ignoring the
fact, the crucial fact, that the Germans had bound themselves, when ratifying
the Hague Convention of July, 1899, not to use it. Another “scrap of paper”!
And why pick on the Lords as the object of his contempt under this head?
Perhaps the answer is that he is a Fabian Socialist, of the tribe of Bernard
Shaw. In any case we are glad to be able to state that the indignation was not
confined to the Lords, but that in the cities and back-woods of Canada, and
even of the United States, this treachery of the Germans was execrated.
We know that war is hell (did not Sherman say so?); but we also know that
“what we bring, we find”; and this is as true of war as of all else. It is
always easy to see, behind the surface of things, their divinely beneficent pu^
pose; but there are those who can see nothing in Nature but “a world of plunder
and prey,” of bloody murder—birds “torturing” insects, and so forth—during a
stroll in Central or Hyde Park on a summer afternoon; and this man, by an¬
alogy, is one of them. He turns the same bilious and distorting vision on the
whole of life. What difference would it have made, he asks, if German Kultur
had replaced the English variety, seeing that English couples, misbehaving
in public places, are arrested by English policemen? According to him, “the
human lot on this planet could be dreary enough without the moralists and
puritans trying to deprive men and women of such antidotes and consolations,
oteucli temporary forgetfulness, as the senses provide”.
262
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
What a book! But because he writes as a witness of the War, even he can¬
not avoid recording incidents which show the beauty of which human nature
is capable,—capable, not when living at ease, in a Socialist’s paradise, but in
the very circumstances which he regards as the ultimate abomination.
Bursting through one of the small villages near Noyon [during the initial retreat], with
the enemy's machine-gun bullets singing amongst the telegraph wires and spitting against
the walls behind us, we had halted for a moment while our Horse Artillery tried to hold
up their advance. My horse, like myself, was suffering badly from thirst. An old dame
fleeing from some neighbouring village with her apron full of ornaments and odd trifles
she had saved, and with two small children hanging in pitiful terror at her skirts, realized
our condition. Emptying her treasure into the pinafore of one of the children, she hur¬
ried to the well.
“Your horse, m’sieur, and you—you are so thirsty. You must drink!”
Thirsty as I was, I was impatient to be off; the Germans had the range and the village
was becoming a hot corner.
“Never mind, madame! We must go. II faut partir tout de suite. Go yourself! Go
quickly or you and your two little ones will get hurt!”
“No, no, m’sieur. My grandchildren—the Germans won’t surely hurt. Let me get
you some water.” t
Boor old soul; she was panting as she wound up the full bucket on the chain; stagger¬
ing towards my horse she offered him the water. The greedy animal, nearly knocking
her over, thrust his great head eagerly into the bucket, drenching her.
“There!” she nodded triumphantly.
In a moment we were off. I left the old dame dazed and trembling in the street, gun-
carriages and limbers racing through at break-neck speed; some of the houses already
on fire.
Then, at Pdcy:
The enemy began bursting his shrapnel lower down, and numbers got wounded in the
groin and back, including several officers of the 9th Lancers. The wounds in the groin
were easier to get at than those in the back, but they bled more freely. Near the chateau
a French girl gallantly came to our aid and got some of the men’s breeches off whilst I
was dressing others.
Quite a young girl, she coolly kept her thumb pressed hard on bleeding arteries whilst
I got wads of gauze and tourniquets ready; several times she went through the village
to bring me warm water from a cottage, and I thought each time she would be killed.
Later that day she was killed! I found her body that afternoon when we recaptured the
far end of the village . . . outside a cottage in a narrow street.
Tragic: yes, if you choose; but some of us would be thankful to die at any
age with half that girl’s splendour on our souls. Spiritual values are infinitely
greater than those of material life, and the humanitarians (including, alas, the
majority of actively “religious” people), who regard the physical well-being
of humanity as of primary importance, and who look upon suffering as the
worst of evils, are doing as much to retard the evolution of the race as the
aggressively selfish and licentious.
Fortunately, the author of this book is so sour-minded, so envenomed, and
harps so incessantly in that strain, that he defeats his own ends and will do
little actual harm.
T.
Question No. 398. —In the Theosophical Glossary, Mesmer is given as the Lodge Messenger ,
while Saint-Germain “supervised the development of events ”. When we turn to the paragraph on
Saint-Germain we find that he receives a very long and detailed notice as a great Adept. Is it
possible to be told more of the exact relation in which these two men stood to one another and to the
Movement in the eighteenth century?
Answer. —The Theosophical Glossary does not say that Mesmer was the Lodge Messenger
of the eighteenth century: it says he was the “pioneer”. He began the outer work in 1775,
having, it would seem, the philosophy to inculcate, as he taught it in his esoteric organization,
the Order of Universal Harmony , while Cagliostro carried on the phenomenal work. These
two aspects of the Movement, the philosophy and the phenomena, were combined in the
person of H.P.B., the Lodge Messenger of the nineteenth century.
Saint-Germain is the great figure who stood behind the others, guiding and directing. He
came first, apparently preparing the way. After the advent of Mesmer and Cagliostro, he
supervised their work from behind the scenes, as it were; and, after Mesmer was recalled, and
Cagliostro had failed, and he, himself, was supposed to have died, he was seen on several
occasions. At one time or another, he appeared in most of the important European countries,
though most frequently in France, where the Movement was centred. Perhaps, at first, he
was picking up the loose ends left by the failure of the Movement in the seventeenth century.
It seems evident that he was trying to purify and reorganize the secret societies of Europe, in
the hope that they might become instruments fit for use. Also, he went on confidential mis¬
sions for Louis XV of France. Unquestionably, while it remained possible, he tried to save
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. H.P.B. says that he appeared to the Princesse de Lamballe
when she stood before the Revolutionary tribunal; and to Jeanne du Barry just before she was
guillotined. Also, there is the memorandum of the Comtesse d’Adh< 5 mar, pinned to her manu¬
script, in which she tells of seeing Saint-Germain in Paris in 1793 and after: at the execution
of the Queen; on the 18th Brumaire; when the due d’Enghien was shot; and still later. Per¬
haps he was trying to reinforce these victims; and, at the same time, it may be that he was
directing the efforts of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who was far from inactive durinatf^e
Revolution and until his death, which occurred the year before the Empire was establisl^^F
There is historical evidence to show that Saint-Germain did his utmost to close downThe
semi-occult Lodges, and to disperse the groups which had been formed before the close of the
century, and that in most cases he succeeded. The movement having failed, it became of the
greatest importance to reduce the amount of harm which any continuance of its activities
would cause. There are stories to the effect that Saint-Germain is still living in Europe, some
people say in Venice. G.M.W.K.
Question No. 399. —What is the difference, if any, between Belief and Faith?
Answer. —In the King James Version of the Gospels, no distinction is drawn, the Greek
noun pistis being translated as “faith”, whereas the corresponding Greek verb pisteud is
Ijiranslated by the English verb “believe”. In Matthew 17, 20, after the disciples had asked why
263
264
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
they had been unable to cast out a devil, Christ answered: “Because of your unbelief ( apistia ).
For verily I say unto you, if ye have faith ( pistis ) as a grain of mustard seed”. In the Revised
Version “little faith" has been substituted for “unbelief", so that the sentence reads: "Because
of your little faith". Modem usage tends to make “belief" imply little more than intellectual
assent, whereas faith implies also an element of trust, and a willingness to act upon it, that
belief may lack entirely. To believe in God is one thing. To have faith in Him involves that
and much more. There is a knowledge that is of the mind, and another kind of knowledge that
is of the heart and will. To use “belief" for the first and “faith" for the second would seem to
be a good way of making the distinction.
Perhaps we might say that faith is the reflection in the personality of the accumulated
knowledge of the soul. As the fruit of its experience in countless past lives, the soul knows
many things, and it tries to impart its own certainty to the personal consciousness. One form
that this takes is the instinctive perception, “That is true", carrying greater conviction than
beliefs arrived at by deductive reasoning. It may or may not be possible to give intellectual
reasons for one’s faith. In the last analysis, however, all of the conclusions of the reason rest
on faith, for all depend on some assumptions that cannot be proven, such as the accuracy of the
reasoning processes themselves, or the objective existence of anything at all outside of ourselves.
J.F.B.M.
Answer. “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." A prayer, a cry from a heart dis¬
tressed; an instinctive recognition of Reality; the beginning of faith. Perhaps, with it, an
intuitive inner realization of the part the mind had played in that recognition, of the tangible
proof the mind would later demand, of the possibility of the diminution or loss of that first
fervour. The heart, alive, sensed the need of further help to complete faith, and made its
demand then and there; and the help was given.
Ordinarily, when we say that we believe, we mean that we think thus or so. We analyze
things in terms of the mind, separating, weighing, sifting, choosing. As a result, through
real and earnest effort, we arrive at a conviction which is our belief, and upon which we are
prepared to take our stand. But, usually, there is too much of the mind in it all, and not
enough of the heart. We believe, but we cannot say that we know. There has not been that
turning of the heart to the unseen world, which may bring, in a flash, an instantaneous recogni¬
tion of Truth, of that wisdom which is not of the mind and which is above and beyond all
knowledge. When that comes, we no longer merely believe, we know. Conviction, illumined,
augmented, has become faith. From that moment we stop concentrating upon mental
processes, we cease to regard them as an end in themselves, and holding fast to such measure
of faith as we have grasped, we use the mind as an instrument for its further confirming and
strengthening. There is a change of polarity, there is the beginning of right self-identification.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Through
faith, those things which we have hopefully believed become real, nearer than hands and feet;
we can touch them, and see. Through faith, we penetrate the veil, in some measure at least,'
and know, beyond peradventure, of wisdom and love and power in the world of the unseen!
We could not see so long as our eyes were holden. Mind, alone, would have held us back
until the end of time, content with mere beliefs. It is the cry of our heart that has made all
things new, that has given us that faith through which all things are possible. C R A
u*
STANDARD BOOKS
Blavatsky, H. P. Isis Unveiled, Vols. I and II.doth, *12.50
r . _ Complbtb in one book.doth, 7.50
Key to Theosophy . 'T’ j ’J
Secret Doctrine, The, Vols. I and ii and Index."'.'.'. doth,’ it!so
~ _ Compute in one book, without subject-index volume! 7.50
THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY.. 2 2B
Transactions ok the Blavatsky Lodge .. doth. 2 50
Voice of the Silence. *
Cave. Fragments, Volume I... ......"!! i! bo
Volume II.bentos, 1.50
Gerat-d, John. Letters to Friends .ilm
Hillard, Katherine. Abridgment of the Secret Doctrine, .doth 3.00
Johnston, Charles. Bhagavad Gita .Translated, annotated; doth 1.26
Crbst Jewel „ WM x», tm. . 12
Great Upanishads, The, Volume I. cl Jr , 50
Parables of the Kingdom, The.. * B0
S Y °%t SUTRAS .Translated, annotated; cloth,’ 1^26
Judge, William Q. Bhagavad Gita .Edited; doth, 1.251 leather.’ i!so
Culture of Concentration . paper 25
Echoes from the Orient ..paper’ .25
Letters That Have Helped Me, Volume I and II, each, .doth ’ 1*00
Ocean of Theosophy . c ,°£ ,
Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms . cJoth ‘ 1>00
Keightley, Archibald. Theosophy as an Influence in Life Daoer' ’20
LaDow, Stanley V. Plotinus.JJJ ^
Mitchell, Henry Bedinger. Meditation, Special edition, .20, paper’ iso
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY AND THEOSOPHY, The .paper* [20
Mitchell, J. F. B. Collegiate Education and Standards of
„. Value....... . Paper, .10
omnett, A. P. Esoteric Buddhism . d ot h 2 m»
Occult World, The . .....doth', 2.50
lorrey, Kay E. Science and its Function in Education _paper. .50
Walker, E. D. Reincarnation.
Idyll of the White Lotus.* Vdoth,’ 1.3 1
Light on the Path.leather,*
Through the Gates of Gold.cloth, 1
THE QUARTERLY BOOK DEPARTMENT,
P. a Box 64, Station 0 , New York.
Devotional: Bhagavad Gita; Crest Jewel of Wisdom; Fragments; The Great Upani¬
shads; Letters That Have Helped Me; Letters to Friends; Light on the Path; The Par¬
ables of the Kingdom; The Song of Life; Through the Gates of Gold; Voice of the Silence.
Philosophical: Abridgment of the Secret Doctrine; Isis Unveiled; Key to Theosophy;
Plotinus; Reincarnation; The Secret Doctrine; Talks on Religion; Theosophical Glossary;
Transactions; Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
Introductory: Culture of Concentration; Echoes from the Orient; Esoteric Buddhism;
w dyll of the White Lotus; Meditation; The Occult World; The Ocean of Theosophy;
Tie Theosophical Society and Theosophy.
QTfte tKjeoSopfjical ££>octetp
Founded by f). P. Blavatsky at Hew York in 1875
HE Society does not pretend to be able to establish
at once a universal brotherhood among men* but
only strives to create the nucleus of such a body.
Many of its members believe that an acquaintance
with the world's religions and philosophies will
reveal* as the common and fundamental principle
underlying these, that “spiritual identity of all Souls with the
Oversoul 99 which is the basis of true brotherhood; and many
of them also believe that an appreciation of the finer forces
of nature and man will still further emphasize the same idea*
The organization is wholly unsectarian, with no creed,
dogma, nor personal authority to enforce or impose; neither
is it to be held responsible for the opinions of its members,
who are expected to accord to the beliefs of others that
tolerance which they desire for their own.
The following proclamation was adopted at the Conven¬
tion of the Society, held at Boston, April, 1895:
“The Theosophical Society in America by its delegates and
members in Convention assembled, does hereby proclaim
fraternal good will and kindly feeling toward all students of
Theosophy and members of Theosophical Societies wherever
and however situated. It further proclaims and avers its
hearty sympathy and association with such persons and
organizations in all theosophical matters except those of
government and administration, and invites their cor¬
respondence and co-operation.
“To all men and women of whatever caste, creed, race, or
religious belief, who aim at the fosteringof peace, gentleness,
and unselfish regard one for another, and the acquisition of
such knowledge of men and nature as shall tend to the eleva¬
tion and advancement of the human race, it sends most friendly
greeting and freely proffers its services.
“It joins hands with all religions and religious bodies whose
efforts are directed to the purification of men's thoughts and
the bettering of their ways, and it avows its harmony there¬
with. To all scientific societies and individual searchers after
wisdom upon whatever plane, and by whatever righteous
means pursued, it is and will be grateful for such discovery
and unfoldment of Truth as shall serve to announce and con¬
firm a scientific Basis for ethics •
“And lastly, it invites to its membership those who, seek¬
ing a higher life hereafter, would learn to know the paib to
tread in this."
Applications for membership should be addressed to the
Secretary T. S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York.
No
132
OCTOBER, 1936
VOL. XXXIII, No. 4
The Theosophical Quarterly
Subscription price, $2.00 per annum; single copies, 50 cents
Published by The Theosophical Society
at 64 Washington Mews, New York, N.Y.
July; October; January; April
Address all communications to P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York
In Europe, single copies may be obtained from and subscriptions may be sent to John
M. Watkins, 21 Cedi Court, Charing Cross Road, London, W. C. 2, England; or to
Mr. E. H. Lincoln, 9 Beaconsfield Road, Low Fell, Gateshead-on-Tyne. England from
whom all back numbers may be obtained. Annual subscription price, $2.00, postpaid
CONTENTS OF VOL. XXXIII, NO. 4
October, 1936
NOTES AND COMMENTS.
FRAGMENTS. ’ ^
BIBLICAL AND PYRAMID PROPHECY.
THE MIRROR OF NATURE AND OF ART.
SILENCE IS GOLDEN.
WITHOUT CENSOR, VII...
THE ART OF LIFE.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME.
CIVILIZATION, THE DEATH OF ART AND BEAUTY by
H. P. Blavatsky (Reprint).
REVIEWS.• .
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
INDEX. .
PAGE
. 267
. 278
279
288
292
294
304
307
324
333
349
35 i
Act of Ma t "h d 3 “ 8 ^ 0n<i ' Cla3S ma ‘ ter SeptembCT
s.
1923, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the
Copyright, 1936, by The Theosophical Society
caste or colour. The subsidiary objects ire T 7 T ° f race - "ced, sex,
'g'ons, philosophies and sciences andthe I ' e Study of an cient and modern
of such study; and the investigation u demonstration of the importance
‘he psychical powers latent^ man ^ UneXf>,ained of nature and
I he Theosophical Quartttrtv *• m .
Theosophical Society founded in New'vfrTb °L ** ° Hginal
calling itself Theos^hkd, JorTrlf,h^d T T* ° Tganization
with similar bodies, the purposes and 1/ ^ Besant > nor
foreign to our own. methods of which are wholly
Ewtohs, The Theosophy QtJARTERLr<
T up What Is a Comet?
eye. hTL'CSn^ToTcorpte them ,0 «“ ™ked
P«»d> Why do some mo ' °™Sib„& ° ? Ub!t “““ »- they co^
E«ed ? ,lip., *«*, ^ ^ *1. whde o.hem trace a ' el ”.
eir tails always point away from the Sun^n"’^ ° f ^ Sun? Why do
law of gravitation”? What part, if any doth ^ a PP arent defiance of the
and stellar evolution? y ’ they play in the drama of nebular
Astronomers can ask such questions but th •
even to themselves. They do not know whnf responses are unconvincing
remarkable—most of them admit that thev i C ° mets are > an d—what is quite'
t at every comet performs at least one beneficUoffi^T' ° ne ™ ight suggest
wanderings. It disturbs the self-esteem of 5 CC dunng th e course of its
humility where this is greatly needed. Corners, calling to life a little
If .oufd^TJI ,°7” AsTRO "°" v *
hints given out by students of fhe occSTJ* hypothes es some of tl#
the fortunate results. For exampl 7^ * « 7
The Secret Doctrine and elsewhere. Doubtless very V references to comets in
that an occultist may know more about cornet, ^ "* ready to admit
astronomy. One can only repeat the tra d,v^ , than a modem professor of
have studied the heavens for thousandsifTotm^l^^^ the Myste ries
during this period an immense amount of nCa^nT’ ? ^ and
No vision of one Adept was accepted till it ™ “ “ accum ulated.
the v>sions-so obtained as to stand as independent e d confi ™ed by
and by centuries of experience” (The Secret
267 W ' ' 2?4) '
268
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
They have steadfastly observed the heavens, with or without telescopes and
spectroscopes. It is recorded that their powers of observation, the instruments
of their vision, have penetrated to strata or planes of substance which are un¬
known and invisible to the ordinary undeveloped man of our race. Adepts
are “men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic
and spiritual organizations, to the utmost possible degree”. Thus a distant
nebula may appear to them as close at hand as “daisies in a near-by field”.
The following excerpts suggest the outline of an occult cometary hypothesis:
All hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding, cometary matter does not appear to
possess even the common law of adhesion or of chemical affinity. . . . The essence of
cometary matter must be—and the “Adepts” say is— totally different from any of the
chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest chemists and physicists of the
earth are familiar. ... It is to be feared that before the real nature of the elder progeny
of Mulaprakriti is detected, Mr. Crookes will have to discover matter of the fifth or
rtf-radiant state, et seq. (Five Years of Theosophy , p. 155).
[Cometary matter] is homogeneous in its primitive form beyond the Solar Systems,
and differentiates entirely once it crosses the boundaries of our Earth’s region; vitiated
by the atmospheres of the planets and the already compound matter of the interplane¬
tary stuff, it is heterogeneous only in our manifested world ( The Secret Doctrine , I, 127).
The sun is older than any of its planets—though younger than the moon. . . . [The
planets] were not suns in our, or their present solar system, but comets in space. All
began life as wanderers over the face of the infinite Kosmos. They detached themselves
from the common storehouse of already prepared material, the Milky Way (which is
nothing more or less than the quite developed world-stuff, all the rest in space being the
crude material, as yet invisible to us); then starting on their long journey they first set¬
tled in life where conditions were prepared for them by Fohat, and gradually became
suns. Then each sun, when its Pralaya arrived, was lesolved into millions and millions
of fragments. Each of these fragments moved to and fro in space collecting fresh ma¬
terial, as it rolled on like an avalanche, until it came to a stop through the laws of attrac¬
tion and repulsion, and became a planet in our own, as in other systems beyond our
telescopes. The sun’s fragments will become just such planets after the solar pralaya.
It was a comet once upon a time, in the beginning of Brahma’s Age. Then it came to
its present position, whence it will burst asunder, and its atoms will be whirled into
space for aeons and aeons, like all other comets and meteors, until each, guided by Karma,
is caught in the vortex of the two forces, and fixed in some higher and better system.
Thus the Sun will live in his children as a portion of the parents lives in their offspring
(Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge , pp. 145-146).
The Esoteric Doctrine . . . “recognizes the comets as forms of cosmic existence co¬
ordinated with earlier stages of nebular evolution”; and it actually assigns to them
chiefly the formation of all worlds (The Secret Doctrine , I, 656).
The assertion that all the worlds (stars, planets, etc.)—as soon as a nucleus of primor¬
dial substance, in the laya (undifferentiated) state, is informed by the freed principles of
a just deceased sidereal body—become first comets, and then suns, to cool down to
inhabitable worlds, is a teaching as old as the Rishis. . . . What does Science know of
comets, their genesis, growth, and ultimate behaviour? Nothing—absolutely nothing!
And what is there so impossible in that a laya-centre—a lump of cosmic protoplasm,
homogeneous and latent—when suddenly animated or fired up, should rush from its
bed in space, and whirl throughout the abysmal depths, in order to strengthen its homo¬
geneous organism by an accumulation and addition of differentiated elements? And
why should not such a comet settle in life, live, and become an inhabited globe? . . .
We must remember, moreover, that the law of analogy holds good for the worlds, as it
NOTES AND COMMENTS
269
does for man; and that as “Thf One (Deity) becomes Two (Deta or Angel), and Two be¬
comes Three (or Man)”, etc., so we are taught that the Curds (World-Stuff) become
Wanderers (Comets); these become stars; and the stars (the centres of vortices), our
sun and planets —to put it briefly. This cannot be so very unscientific , since Descartes
also thought that “the planets rotate on their axes, because they were once lucid stars,
the centres of vortices” (ibid. I, 224-227).
The Law of Analogy
As has been said, occult science is based upon the presumption, tested count¬
less times and always found to be true, that the “law of analogy holds good
for the worlds,” for all worlds, great and small. The growth of a plant from
the seed obeys the same fundamental laws as the growth of a solar system or
the growth of the spiritual man. Thus death and rebirth follow the lines of
corresponding processes in macrocosm and microcosm. One can trace a similar
separation of the higher from the lower principles after death, a similar reinte¬
gration of the higher and the lower marking the beginning of a new life-cycle,
a new period of exfoliation.
In the ancient symbology, the Sun often stands for the Father in Heaven,
the Master, the Higher Self which assimilates the spiritual harvest of each
life, drawing into its essence all those elements of personal consciousness which
aspire towards it and which faithfully reflect its attributes. On the other
hand, the Moon has from time immemorial represented the unregenerate por¬
tion of the personal man, that part of the human nature which has not been
transmuted into the likeness of the Sun and which lingers behind after death
as a spectre in hell or limbo. Thus the Moon has been called the Mother of
man, as the Sun has been called the Father, for the incarnated human entity
is a blending of the solar essence, which includes the pure self-consciousness
acquired in past lives, with the lunar “elementals”, the skandhas , the accumu¬
lated Karma, the “unfinished business” of other incarnations. From the Sun
come light and inspiration and spiritual force; from the Moon come the normal
forms of personal life as well as the passions and delusions which retard and
impede the natural growth of the real man—passions and delusions, however,
which, when transmuted, become essential parts of his complete manhood.
These venerable symbols are based upon the testimony of occult astronomy,
that each inhabited globe is formed, as it were, of a nucleus of cometar^jr
solar substance, under the impulsion of the life-elements and energies tq^s-
mitted to it from a dead planet, that is, from a Moon. The salvation offhe
new planet, as of each of its inhabitants, depends upon the transformation of
this lunar stuff into progressively higher states, culminating in its complete
identity with the substance of the nucleus, the “real form of the earth”. To
what stage, in human life does the cometary phase in the cosmic drama corre¬
spond? Perhaps the famous Kabalist, filiphas L6vi, suggested the truth when
he compared Lucifer to a comet—“the Lucifer of the Kabalah, not the ac¬
cursed and stricken angel, but the Logos, the Principle of Reason in Nature
and Man, the Force which struggles against death to conquer life, which ac¬
cepts the pain of existence to attain freedom.” It is as if the birth of a comet
270
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
in the great deep of space signifies some divine sacrifice of cosmic magnitude
which makes possible the resurrection of a world, as the sacrifice of the higher
to the lower is the final cause of all growth in every degree and department of
Nature.
A New Cosmic Force in Atoms
Science studies matter and its modes of motion. For all its practical pur¬
poses it is unconcerned with the causes of motion, with the reason why one
mode of motion can be transformed into another. It is sufficient for the engi¬
neer to know how heat can be converted into mechanical energy, how a magnet
can induce an electric current. But as scientific research extends into the zone
of invisible entities, like electricity and “radio-waves”, the physicist is obliged
to postulate the existence of atoms, positrons, electrons, neutrons, etc., all of
which are as “metaphysical”, in one sense, as the most abstract forms and
categories of mediaeval scholasticism. This is legitimate, of course, for the
physicist is merely trying to formulate an intelligible exposition of certain ob¬
scure electro-magnetic processes,—an exposition which may enable him to
dominate and control them. Illusion begins when what are actually mental
forms are mistaken for objective realities. Every mortal man falls into this
error whenever he imagines that his true Self is his personality,—which is, in
essence, merely a subjective form, an indispensable agency in the production of
Self-consciousness,-but incapable of real being in a real world. The difficulties
of the modem physicist seem to have their origin in a delusion of the same
order as that which inaugurated the fall of man. He tends to assume that the
“atoms” which he fashions in his mind are veritable paradigms or noumena of
the atoms which exist in Nature. It would seem that the confusion and the
contradictions of modem physical theory are almost wholly due to the effort
to make the Universe fit the pattern which a group of brilliant but over-spe¬
cialized mathematical physicists have designed for it. They formulate the
“laws of nature”, and are surprised, if not shocked, by the repeated discovery
that no law can be devised which is sufficiently comprehensive to be univer¬
sally applicable. Nature constantly overflows the moulds in which science is
trying to compress it.
For instance, there is Coulomb’s law, that similarly charged electrical parti¬
cles repel each other with a certain definite force, depending upon the distance
between them. This law has proved so useful in electrical engineering that its
universality has been virtually unquestioned. But it has become evident that
another law must be operative in the interior of the atom, if—as the physicists
insist—the hearts of the heavier atoms are composed of several particles which
are similarly charged but which do not fly apart. To explain this anomaly, it
has been necessary to postulate the existence of a new force. We -quote from
an article in the New York Times , May 2, 1936, reporting some recent experi¬
ments in this field.
Discovery of the existence within the hearts of atoms of a hitherto unknown force
forty times greater than electricity, in fact the very force which holds the universe to-
NOTES AND COMMENTS
271
gether and without which it would evaporate into a cloud of hydrogen gas, was reported
before the American Physical Society by physicists of the Carnegie Institute of Wash*
ington. . . . Protons [are] fundamental units of matter which carry a positive electric
charge, a single proton constituting the heart of an ordinary hydrogen atom. Protons,
being positively charged electrical particles, behave in accordance with Coulomb’s law.
But the universality and inexorableness of the Coulomb law created for scientists an
intricate puzzle in their study of the nucleus of the atom. For the hearts of the elements
heavier than hydrogen are known to contain more than one proton, and such protons,
according to the law of “like repels like”, should not be held within the atoms in the
tight embrace they are known to exist in. In fact, if the Coulomb law were applicable
to the realm of the atom, no atom heavier than hydrogen could exist. For this reason,
Werner Heisenberg, father of the famous “uncertainty principle”, theoretically postu¬
lates the existence of a force within the atom which is greater than the repelling force
between the protons and which is responsible for holding the universe together. More
recently, American physicists . . . found the strength of this nuclear force which Dr.
Bethe of Cornell University determined to be forty times the repelling force of similar
electric charges for each other. . . . The new atomic force, for which no name yet exists,
seems to serve the sole purpose of providing the cohesive force in the universe. Unlike
electricity, which has both attractive and repelling powers, this “universal binder” is a
“one-way force”, having only attractive powers. It seems to be for the atom what
gravitation is to the universe at large. But whereas gravitation is inversely proportional
to the square of the distance between two bodies, this new nuclear force is proportional
to the seventh power of the distance, so that it has a very small range indeed to exert
its influence on.
The Noumenon and the Phenomenon
As a matter of fact, this force has a well-known name,—well-known, that is,
to simple-minded folk who are neither scientists nor professors. It is called
the force of cohesion, and it has been recognized, if not measured, ever since
the beginning of history. It is not necessary to look within the hearts of atoms
to find it. As the writer suggests above, gravitation illustrates one mode of its
action. But it is particularly evident in all the manifestations of life. What
else holds together the parts of an organism so as to constitute a living
whole? What is the binding power of human social life? What unifies the
scattered elements of a human entity, forming a self or at least the semblance
of a self?
The modern scientist concentrates his powers, with admirable one-pointed-
ness, upon things which he thinks of as existing outside himself, but there is
one subject which he never studies, and that is himself, the states of his own
consciousness. However, according to the occult principle of analogies, one
can only know the real laws of the Universe in so far as he knows man, for
man is “the mirror of the Universe”. It is the tradition that the true occidtet
dominates the forces of the Cosmos because he completely understandable
causes and modes of their action within the compass of his own individual
being. If we accept the fundamental theosophical postulate of the essential
oneness of Nature and man, we shall expect to find similitudes between all
the processes and agencies which generate energy. We may formulate, or
rather re-formulate a simple law: if all the phenomena of the Universe corre¬
spond to one another, the noumena of these phenomena will correspond also.
272
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Conscious Causes
What is a noumenon? As Kant defined it, it is the reality, the thing-in-
itself, the essence and cause of the phenomenon which is apprehended by our
physical senses. It is the Platonic Idea, the Soul, the reflected form of which
is a body, an object of physical perception. But a noumenon is not a figment
of the philosophers, a metaphysical abstraction, like the mathematicians’ con¬
cept of the atom. It can be felt as an invisible presence behind every material
or psychic apparition. Its being is tacitly admitted even by the materialist,
whenever he experiences friendship, whenever he observes another person with
the least sympathy or kindness. A friend is not the more or less presentable
physical organism which is all that our bodily eyes can see. He is the noume¬
non, the soul, the “conscious cause” animating the phenomenon before us.
The Secret Doctrine constantly emphasizes this basic tenet, that no phenom¬
enon can exist apart from some noumenal prototype. Wherever there is mat¬
ter or form in Nature, there must be force or motion, and, completing the
“trinity,” there must be the “idea” and the “will” to manifest it, the conscious
cause, which force and form make visible. As Locke said, “Cause is a sub¬
stance exerting its power in act.” It is the theosophical teaching that, in this
deepest sense, Cause is inseparable from Consciousness: indeed, every noume¬
non is a conscious cause. It is not easy for the modem mind to grasp this
conception, for we habitually limit consciousness to the little sphere of the
human personality, which is all that most of us know of consciousness by di¬
rect experience. It is almost with reluctance that biologists and psychologists
concede the presence of some sort of consciousness in the higher animals. Nev¬
ertheless, it is virtually an occult dogma, that there is not one point in space
which is or can be devoid of consciousness of one kind or another. This ap¬
plies not only to the kingdoms of physical nature, from the mineral to man:
it points to the hidden reality of worlds and forces and beings beyond our
present perception and comprehension. Gods and demons, angels and ele-
mentals, hierarchies and orders of conscious entities in all the possible stages
of physical, psychic, spiritual and divine evolution, follow the cycles of their
existence in this greater Nature which Theosophy reveals to all who sincerely
seek a solution of the “Riddle of the Universe”.
The following quotations from Volume I of The Secret Doctrine open our
vision upon some of these cosmic vistas:
Matter, to the Occultist, it must be remembered, is that totality of existences in the
Kosmos, which falls within any of the planes of possible perception. We are but too well
aware that the orthodox theories of sound, heat and light, are against the Occult Doc¬
trines. But it is not enough for the men of Science, or their defenders, to say that they
do not deny dynamic power to light and heat. ... If they would fathom the ultimate
nature of these Forces, they have first to admit their substantial nature, however super-
sensuous that nature may be. Neither do the Occultists deny the correctness of the
vibratory theory. Only they limit its functions to our Earth—declaring its inadequacy
on other planes than ours, since Masters in the Occult Sciences perceive the Causes that
produce ethereal vibrations (p. 560). . . . Science . . . merely traces the sequence of
phenomena on a plane of effects, illusory projections from the region that Occultism has
NOTES AND COMMENTS
273
long since penetrated. And the latter maintains that those etheric tremors are not set
up, as asserted by Science, by the vibrations of the molecules of known bodies, the Mat¬
ter of our terrestrial objective consciousness, but that we must seek for the ultimate
Causes of light, heat, etc., in Matter existing in supersensuous states—states, however,
as fully objective to the spiritual eye of man, as a horse or a tree is to the ordinary
mortal. Light and heat are the ghost or shadow of Matter in motion. . . . Thus we put
forward the Occult teaching which maintains the reality of a supersubstantial and super¬
sensible essence of that Akasha—not Ether, which is only an aspect of the latter—the
nature of which cannot be inferred from its remoter manifestations, its merely phenom¬
enal phalanx of effects, on this terrene plane (p. 561). ... If it did not look pedantic,
an Occultist would even object to electricity being called a fluid—as it is an effect and
not a cause. But its Noumenon, he would say, is a Conscious Cause (p. 563). . . . It is
on the doctrine of the illusive nature of Matter and the infinite divisibility of the Atom,
that the whole Science of Occultism is built. It opens limitless horizons to Substance,
informed by the divine breath of its Soul in every possible state of tenuity, states still
undreamed of by the most spiritually disposed Chemists and Physicists (p. 566). . . .
Nor are they [i. e., the Occultists] so foolish after all, in rejecting even the “gravity” of
Modern Science along with other physical laws, and in accepting instead attraction and
repulsion. They see, moreover, in these two opposing Forces only the two aspects of the
Universal Unit, called Manifesting Mind; in which aspects, Occultism, through its great
Seers, perceives an innumerable Host of operative Beings: cosmic Dhyan Chohans,
Entities, whose essence, in its dual nature, is the Cause of all terrestrial phenomena. For
that essence is con-substantial with the universal Electric Ocean, which is life; and
being dual, as said—positive and negative—it is the emanations of that duality that act
now on Earth under the name of “modes of motion”. ... It is, as Occultism says, the
dual ejects of that dual essence, which have now been called centripetal and centrifugal
forces, now negative and positive poles or polarity, heat and cold, light and darkness,
etc. (p. 661).
The Healing Power of Nature
Physicians of the old school still speak with faith of the vis mcdicatrix na¬
turae , “the healing power of Nature”. According to an immemorial medical
theory, the remedy for every disease is produced within the body, and the
doctor’s function is to co-operate with the natural therapeutical processes,
clearing the channels where they act, strengthening the system against the
pain and fever that accompany its effort to throw off the sickness. Modem
serotherapy represents an attempt to reinforce the native army of the “anti¬
bodies” which the body mobilizes when it is attacked by bacteria or vin4R
Serums and antitoxins—if we may believe their apologists—introduce a sort
of “foreign legion” upon the battlefield. There is evidence, however, that not
infrequently this “foreign legion” may be converted into a force hostile to the
patient who enlists it. In other words, the cure may be at least as bad as the
disease. It is interesting to note that some physicians to-day prefer to use
“self-vaccines”, cultures prepared for each patient from his own serum. Thus
the individual is no longer forced to absorb the “living stuff” of other indi¬
viduals or of animals. Also, it becomes evident that human health does not
^epend upon the vicious practice of subjecting animals to every known kind
%i infection and to a lingering death.
The New York Herald Tribune , June 18, 1936, reports certain remarkable
274 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
developments in medical theory concerning the ways in which the vis medi-
catrix naturae works.
Summarizing investigations all over the world in recent years into the mystery of how
the body protects itself against disease, Dr. Sanford B. Hooker presented a picture in¬
volving electrical forces within the atoms and the configuration of atoms in space as the
significant factors which operate, so that the anti-bodies which protect the body are
created as the materialization of the mirror-image of the antigen in the disease-producing
body. [For example] there are thirty-two types of pneumonia, each caused by a par¬
ticular kind of antigen or bacteria, for only five of which serums have been developed.
Each kind of antigen develops one kind of anti-body and this depends upon its chemical
structure and, in particular, on the geometrical configuration of the 50,000 to the million
or more atoms that are built into the very complex atomic community. It is the external
aspect of these atomic communities that is most potent in the formation of anti-bodies,
Dr. Hooker pointed out. The action which the body takes when these disease-producing
molecules get into the blood can be likened to an almost magical process in which a crim¬
inal, intent on murder, is forced to see his image in the mirror, and almost immediately
some material objects in the room transform themselves and take the shape of the
criminal in the mirror, but come to life with the powers and purpose of a policeman.
The formation of such mirror-images of chemical compounds is a common phenomenon.
... In this way the destructive antigens are utilized by the body to fix a kind of space
configuration mould which is utilized with directions reversed to form protective sub¬
stances with antagonistic properties. Thus the body is able, with some not understood
exceptions, to build up chemical protective mechanisms against any specific invaders.
Astral and Psychic Configurations
It would seem that modem medicine is very close at this point to the so-
called astral plane, the zone where the projections or emanations of the nou-
mena or “conscious causes” are said to take form, to become configurations, the
original prototypes of physical bodies. However, the explorers of the astral
light have also described other configurations reflected in its lower strata.
These are, as it were, the inverted reflections of the higher, the emissions and
images of physical things which have fallen into corruption. Each of us can
find some confirmation of this old astral science by observing the subjective
psychic world where he spends most of his life and which may be assumed to
correspond to the larger astral world. Our thoughts and emotions and voli¬
tions are patently of two kinds. Some are gifts from the spiritual world above,
but others are infections from below; and the lower appear as inversions of the
higher. Thus human existence is a perpetual struggle between good and evil.
Every man is forced each moment to choose whether he will serve a veritable
ideal or its debased contrary, for on this plane no virtue can become manifest
without evoking the possibility of its perversion. Demon est Deus Inversus.
The theory of antigens and anti-bodies outlined above suggests how a proc¬
ess of perversion may be reversed, if it has not gone too far. As good can be
mirrored as evil, so the existence of evil can evoke the good which it has dis¬
torted. Everyone who is not morally dead knows this evocation in the stir¬
ring of conscience. The presence of a corrupting agent, a “Destroyer”, on the
astral or psychic as on the physical plane, stimulates the entity thus attacked
NOTES AND COMMENTS
275
to call into service the powers, the “Fiery Lives”, which preserve its proper
life and form.
An Ideal Social Order
When the body resists a disease, its first act, so to speak, is an act of sacri¬
fice. It surrenders part of its vitality and substance to generate a host of anti¬
bodies which constitute the physical or molecular basis or vehicle through
which the “healing power of Nature” can function. In other words, the body
does not cure itself automatically and mechanically; it is cured by the life-
stream which flows through it and which may be said to be the current joining
it to its noumenon.
An analogous sacrifice must be made by the soul which has been invaded by
evil. The mere repetition of some formula, as in Christian Science, is insuf¬
ficient. There is a profound reason why all religions have enjoined upon their
devotees various ascetic practices. The growth and enduring life of the soul
depends upon the continued sacrifice of the dearer to the better. The death of
the soul, the failure of spiritual life, is the effect of the failure of sacrifice.
Similarly, social disorders may become incurable unless by sacrifice a chan¬
nel can be kept open between the infected group and the collective soul, or
noumenon which overshadows every society, in so far as this has any organic
reality. No entity, biological or individual or social, can conceivably exist for
itself alone. In the noble language of past centuries, all things have their be¬
ing “for the greater glory of God”. If they sever themselves from God, they
perish, for they have no place in Nature.
All the societies of the modem world have been attacked by “antigens”.
How can the necessary “anti-bodies” be formed which will restore some sem¬
blance of health? There is no lack of response to this question. We select at
random a typical answer contained in a few sentences from an address at Cor¬
nell University by Professor Edwin G. Conklin, president of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science and a distinguished biologist.
He outlines “an ideal social order” which he calls “democratic socialism”.
We have before us to-day the strange paradoxes of overproduction and underconsump¬
tion, improved transportation and unimproved distribution, vast prosperity and ap¬
palling poverty, multiplied occupations and unparalleled unemployment, triumphant
medicine and widespread disease, prolonged life and useless and dependent old age,
scientific internationalism and economic nationalism, greater armaments and lesa^e-
curity, larger social units and less social unity, elimination of the unfit and survr%4K>f
the fit and protection of the unfit and elimination of the fit. . . . The most fundamental
cause of these contrasts is the conflict between altruistic science and acquisitive society.
. . . Democratic socialism avoids the extremes of communism, fascism and individual¬
ism, yet contains elements of all of these, and as such it conforms to that inexorable
biological principle of the necessity of preserving balance between contrasting principles
and opposing forces. . . . Democratic socialism is best for the education of the masses.
. . . The spirit of science and the method of science must spread to society and govern¬
ment. Scientists must take a more active part in solving social problems.
We do not know what Dr. Conklin means when he describes science as altru¬
istic or when he represents democratic socialism as biologically sound. Sci-
276
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
ence, at least in its modem form, is characterized by a singular indifference to
the use or abuse of its discoveries. Democratic socialism is a term, a sort of
slogan, for which it is quite impossible to find any corresponding actuality in
the biological or any other world. All the healthy forms and orders of Nature
are organized according to a hierarchical pattern. It would not be hard to de¬
fend the thesis that the ideal social order is an hereditary monarchy based
upon “divine right”, supported by the freely given devotion of a people, and
presiding with accepted authority over a hierarchy of classes in which the
citizens would be grouped, by a sort of “natural selection”, according to their
characters and capacities.
It might be argued that the social maladjustments which Dr. Conklin notes
are the inevitable consequences of the efforts of the occidental races to estab¬
lish a democratic-socialistic polity. Communism and fascism are themselves
merely normal effects of the French Revolution and the “liberal” movements
of the nineteenth century. To add more “democratic socialism” to modem
society would be to increase the quantity of the poison which is consuming our
system. What is needed is the restoration of religion, the revival of an ideal
of spiritual attainment to which political and economic considerations will be
subordinated, and for which a sufficient number of individuals will be willing
to sacrifice everything which they hold most dear, including life itself. Such
a group of individuals would constitute the “anti-bodies” through which the
collective soul, the noumenon, of their society could energize. Incidentally, it
is well to face the hard fact taught by history, that war may be the only pos¬
sible regenerator of a nation. When men fight in defence of the heritage of
their civilization, they have at least a real employment. It has been suggested
that the veritable cause of the widespread economic unemployment to-day is
that during the decade before the depression there had been a widespread
dearth of spiritual employment, and that what has happened on the physical
plane is, therefore, only a reflection of what had already happened on the plane
of the soul.
A Divine Rule of Life
What ideal can be imagined that is worthy of man’s highest aspiration and
to which he can honourably dedicate all the powers of his being? The “greater
glory of God”. It is most refreshing to find this goal set forth by another
scientist who is as eminent as Dr. Conklin. We quote from an address at
the University of Chicago by Professor Arthur H. Compton. One may find
certain major points of disagreement with the physicist’s argument; but the
student of Theosophy must be in accord with his fundamental thesis.
There is reason to believe that we may occupy at present the highest position in the
universe with respect to intelligent life. Does it seem, then, too bold to assume that the
intelligent Creator, whose existence seems by far the most reasonable basis for accounting
for our world, should take an active interest in the welfare of the perhaps uniquely intel¬
ligent beings He has created? The remarkable course of evolution, leading, as it has,
against tremendous odds, to organisms with the modicum of intelligence that we possess,
really seems to point in that direction. . . . We have in our hands the means of con-
NOTES AND COMMENTS
277
trolling to a large extent even the direction of our own evolution. In such attributes as
clarity of reason, appreciation of beauty or consideration of our fellows, our remote
descendants may be expected to excel us as greatly as we are in advance of the Java ape-
man. Considering the many obvious errors that we are making, we may be thankful
that we do not yet have complete control. Yet who can fail to respond to the opportunity
and challenge that are before us of working with the God of the Universe in carrying
through that final stage of making this a suitable world, and ourselves a suitable race
for what is perhaps the supreme position of intelligent life in His world? ... If indeed
the creation of intelligent persons is a major objective of the Creator of the Universe,
and if, as we have reason to surmise, mankind is now in his highest development in this
direction, the opportunity and responsibility of working as God’s partners in His great
task are almost overwhelming. What nobler ambition can one have than to co-operate
with his Maker in bringing about a better world?
A student of Theosophy cannot accept the gratuitous and groundless as¬
sumption that the men of this planet are “the perhaps uniquely intelligent be¬
ings” in the infinitude of space. If we were the best and only living souls in
the Universe, it would be flattery to describe the Creator as “intelligent”.
According to Theosophy, life and intelligence are co-extensive, potentially if
not actually, with the Cosmos. There is no such thing as “dead matter”.
Thus, regarding evolution always and everywhere as the exfoliation and un-
foldment of the divine consciousness latent in every atom, an occultist has
said that “the Author of Nature is Nature Itself”.
This does not imply that one is not deeply moved and inspired by Dr.
Compton’s appeal. In truth, there can be no nobler ambition than to co-oper¬
ate with the Divinity. But let us realize that such collaboration is only pos¬
sible, in the fullest sense, for the mystic. The Divinity is not likely to help
us to invent bigger and better machines, or to improve our markets for capital
goods, or to design more playgrounds for the masses. “The Blessed Ones have
naught to do with the purgations of matter.” Partnership with God implies
the transformation of human nature into an ever more perfect image of its
noumenon, the divine paradigm which is an undivided part of the Divine
Consciousness. It is, indeed, the theosophical teaching that the Divine Con¬
sciousness is not limited to a remote and abstract world where only archangels
and unimaginable non-human essences can exist. The scriptures of all the
world-religions have unanimously affirmed the fact that the Divine Mind, the
Logos, is in contact with the mind of humanity, and that the Logos has actu¬
ally incarnated itself in a few men of supreme genius, the Buddha and the
Christ and their brethren, the spiritual vanguard of the race. Theosophy
further avers that these men of supreme genius, the Masters of the Great
Lodge, are living to-day, ardently desiring to guide us to the summit of at¬
tainment where they stand. But they cannot guide us against our will.
The only conceivable solution of the problems which bewilder the western
nations is to turn towards the doctrine and example of the Christian Master
under whose particular spiritual dominion the vast majority of the men of the
West have been bom. In so far as we can co-operate with him, we collaborate
with the Lodge and the Logos, and begin veritably to live in accord with Nature.
FRAGMENTS
W AIT for the hour to come, do not move until it arrives; but see that
you are prepared, and act on its instant approach.
Neither hasten nor linger. Eternity is your medium, not time.
Only brush with your fingers the friable occupations of to-day, put no pres¬
sure upon them. But grasp firmly the essence of each hour that passes, and use
it for life’s divinest ends, the divinest you can see. Thus no opportunity will
pass you by, nor will you lose yourself in frivolities.
This is indeed a chela’s hair-line, which demands unbroken attention; but
it is fundamental, and essential for inner consolidation as well as for any worth¬
while performance. Without it a man sails in a rudderless ship, and, would-be
disciple or not, becomes but one more of the countless wrecks upon the shores
of endeavour.
Set yourself, therefore, whole-heartedly and with all diligence, to acquire this
faculty of selective appreciation, and facility in its swiftly instinctive use.
Memory is our past, that is to-day, and will be in our future,—one half of our
Eternity, which here we know by reflection, but there face to face.
Ca \t.
278
BIBLICAL AND PYRAMID
PROPHECY
T HE study of Biblical prophecy, for a long time of interest to only a
very few students, has suddenly begun to attract popular attention,
and while some of this is directed to interpretations that have been
progressively verified—so that they are now buttressed by an astonishing ar¬
ray of facts—much more involves misconceptions which, sooner or later, will
have to be corrected.
We shall not attempt to go back to the beginning; indeed there was no be¬
ginning, for as long as there has been prophecy there has been the need to
interpret it. But in the narrower sense, the systematic study of Biblical proph¬
ecy is relatively recent. Through the Dark Ages, knowledge of the Bible was
largely confined to Churchmen, and interpretation limited to the orthodox
explanations of Catholic theology. Following the Renaissance, however,
particularly after the Protestant Reformation, and the translation of the Bible
into common speech, independent thinkers began to read and interpret the
Scriptures for themselves, and to apply the prophecies to their own times, and
the condemnations and anathemas to their own enemies. It was a most natu¬
ral thing to do, but it laid the foundations for the popular study of the Bible
in a narrowness and bitterness of partisanship which have never been wholly
outgrown, and which, taken over into the investigation of the Biblical proph¬
ecies, have tended to confuse and distort the whole subject. It is not surpris¬
ing, therefore, that the field seemed unattractive to most scholars, though
there were always a few to whom it made a special appeal, these few finding,
in the revival of astronomical knowledge, particularly with reference to the
calendar, a key that they could use. In astronomy, they began to perceive,
was revealed the interplay of recurring cycles and rhythms which are the very
basis of what we mean by time, and which, entering into all the phenomena
of manifestation, enable the course of the future to be predicted from a knowl¬
edge of the past. Not only was astronomy applicable to the Bible prophets’
theme; it was indispensable for fixing their theories on a solid intellectual foun-^
dation, and the recognition that there was such a foundation, on which they^p
could safely build, proved a great stimulant to interest. Little by little, de¬
voted enthusiasts, some of them giving to it a whole life-time of research, ac¬
cumulated a mass of information which grew from generation to generation,
but which remained largely unco-ordinated until the late Dr. Hartley Grattan
Guinness collected and sifted it, publishing the result in 1878, with his own
studies and conclusions, under the title, The Approaching End of the Age.
Dr. Guinness’s work is thorough and painstaking, and he had equipped
himself well for his task. But though his qualifications were excellent, they
279
28 o
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
had nevertheless been acquired in the intolerant and bigoted school of the
Protestantism of his day, so that it was impossible for him to avoid identifying
Rome with one of the “Beasts” of Daniel’s vision, and equally impossible for
him to see that he was using important fragments of ancient wisdom long
antedating the Jewish, and which applied far more widely than to the Jewish
people. The great value of Dr. Guinness’s book is its identification of astro¬
nomical cycles with the “days” and “weeks” and “times” of the Bible.
He considers, for example, the prophecies made by Gabriel to Daniel, as
recorded in the Book of Daniel, with their very precise statements as to the
times in which various happenings will take place. Here a “day” is a year,
a “time” 360 years, or an Egyptian year of years. “Seven times” are thus
2520 years—a cycle that will be recognized by students of The Secret Doctrine.
Half of this, 1260 years, which is “forty-two months” of years, are “time,
times and a half” (i. e. three and a half “times”). The Bible part of it is thus
quite simple. The real trouble comes in with the astronomical part. What
is a “year”? There is the solar year of approximately 365 days, 5 hours, 48
minutes and 46 seconds; the sidereal year, 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes and 9
seconds; the calendar year of 365 days, when it is not leap year; the lunar
year of 354 days; also a calendar year of 360 days; not to mention the Julian
year. Unfortunately the movements of the heavenly bodies, and the revolu¬
tions of earth and moon, are not all exactly commensurate, and what you are
to call a year depends upon the point of view you adopt, the small differences
between the different kinds of “years” adding up to a considerable amount,
when taken over the centuries that separate Daniel’s vision from its present-
day fulfilment. Then, too, there is the question as to the date from which
the given times are to be reckoned. Gabriel was perfectly definite in his state¬
ment: “Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the com¬
mandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince
shall be seven weeks, and three score and two weeks.” But when did the
commandment go forth to restore and build Jerusalem? The problem is com¬
plicated; still, when its various and varying factors have been fixed, it is ex¬
traordinary how accurately it works out. And everything points to one con¬
clusion : it is our own time that is the end of the particular age shown to Daniel.
Let us pause for a moment to glance at some of the questions which are in¬
volved, not so much in the interpretation of prophecy, as in the very fact and
possibility of prophecy. It is a curious contradiction that our age should be so
sceptical of the prophecies of the past, when it has such unquestioning confi¬
dence in those it makes to-day. In no period in historic times have human ac¬
tivities been more dominated by the belief that it is possible to predict the
future, and the consequences of acts. We do not call this prophecy, but “sci¬
ence”, or perhaps “planned economy”, but it is none the less a belief that fore¬
sight, in great detail, is possible, since nature’s processes are so orderly that
they can be trusted to follow in the future the same cycles of cause and effect,
the same rhythm of waxing and waning, they have followed in the past. Yet
we tend to limit this belief to the material world, to which we have also limited
BIBLICAL AND PYRAMID PROPHECY
281
our “science”. We believe in the tides of the ocean, and have tabulated them
for years ahead; but we appear entirely sceptical as to tides in the affairs of
men, and the cycles of the spirit. Why is this? Perhaps it is merely an aspect
of our general and deep-seated materialism, or perhaps it is an instinctive
feeling that to admit the possibility of prophecy regarding human lives, is to
posit a fatalism and predetermination that deny the freedom of the will and
our responsibility for our own acts and destiny. There may be the same type
of difficulty here that many people seem to find in accepting the theosophic
principle of Karma. It is not realized that what is predetermined is the oper¬
ation of certain forces, or tendencies, which have been set in motion, and
which, if left to themselves, will inevitably produce certain results or condi¬
tions, but which need not be left to themselves, but may be met by opposite
forces, which we are free also to set in operation.
Suppose we consider a small scale model of this truth. On Friday of each
week our room rent is due, and our landlady is not at all disposed to wait-
On the 13 th of each month we are visited by the collector, who calls for the
instalments we are still paying on our now battered Ford. Each of these “un¬
lucky days comes around in its regular cycle. They are part of our Karma,
and we have to face them. We can “prophesy” with great accuracy the type
of unpleasantness, of wars and rumours of wars, which these days will bring,
if we do not put regularly aside the requisite sums, thus meeting the Karma
of sfcif-indulgence by the exercise of self-denial. But more than this, we can
prophesy a terrible day, from which it is almost impossible for us to escape
scathless, Friday the 13th”, when the two payments fall due together. We
can prophesy it, but it is not so easy as one might think to calculate just when
it will come. If a month had always thirty days, as a week always has seven,
it would be easy, for they would then fall together every 210 days,—which is
the same as every seven months or thirty weeks, the period for the coincidence
of two cycles being the least common multiple of their separate periods. But
some months have thirty-one days, and February has sometimes twenty-eight
and sometimes twenty-nine, and this so complicates the calculation that per¬
sonally we abandon it and consult the calendar. In 1936 there are two such
objects of prophecy, March 13th and November 13th; in 1937 there is but one,^^fc
the 13th of August.
This illustrates both the simplicity and the complexity of cyclic law, and
the way in which lesser cycles interweave to make up the greater. The cycle
of 2520 years which we have already mentioned, the seven “times” of 360
years each, is the least common multiple of the first ten digits; that is to say
that if there had been ten Wandering Jews instead of one, and they had all
started out together from Jerusalem to wander round the world, the first mak¬
ing the circuit in one year, the second in two years, the third in three and so
on, the first two would meet again in Jerusalem each two years, they would
be joined by the third each sixth year, but it would be 2520 years before all
ten would be again together.
It%fthis cycle of 2520 years which is now running out, according to the
282
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
calculations of the experts in Biblical prophecy. Heavenly bodies, centres
and symbols of inner forces, are approaching again the configuration they
had twenty-five centuries ago, closing a cyclic period and gathering in its har¬
vest of good or ill,—the end of one age, the beginning of a new.
This conclusion of the Biblical students finds independent support from re¬
searches of an utterly different kind, carried out in relation to the Great Pyra¬
mid. Pyramid surveys, as is now well known, show remarkable mathematical
and astronomical relations between its different dimensions, and in its orienta¬
tion and the angles of its slopes. More than this, however, it has been shown
that if the Pyramid inch be taken as the unit corresponding to a year of time,
the measurements of the inner passages and galleries correspond to the time
scale of astronomical cycles, and that the architectural features of these pas¬
sages—where they intersect one another or change their character—mark
dates of obvious importance as turning points in history. The Edgar brothers,
and Davidson and Aldersmith, have been the early and chief, though by no
means the only, workers in this field, and their results parallel to a remarkable
degree the deductions of Dr. Guinness. The length of the 2520 year cycle,
for example, is built into the pyramid masonry as definitely as into Daniel’s
prophecy; and if one starts from the corresponding dates in the Old Testa¬
ment, one enters the Grand Gallery with the time of Christ, coming to the
first “Low Passage” in August, 1914, to leave it for the Ante-chamber (where
one is again able to stand upright) in November, 1918. This first Low Pas¬
sage thus corresponds to the World War. The second Low Passage, to which
the Ante-chamber leads, begins with May, 1928 (determined as are all these
dates by counting an inch of length equal to a year of time), and ends on
September i5th-i6th, 1936. The pyramid prophets see in it our economic de¬
pression. It leads into the King’s Chamber, the Hall of Judgment, the Test¬
ing of the Nations. This date, September 15th-16th, is given in many proph¬
ecies as crucial. By the time this article is read, it will have come and gone;
but it does not follow that of necessity it will, even if the prophecy be true,
correspond to anything whose importance will be immediately recognized.
It is unfortunate that the pyramidologists have been almost as blind as the
Biblical scholars in being unable to see that they were actually dealing with
great cyclic laws and forces whose scope is universal, and by no means con¬
fined to Jewish and European history. They appear unable to comprehend
that the Great Pyramid can be something more than a symbol in stone of
Christian chronology. The Great Pyramid , by Davidson and Aldersmith, is a
voluminous work, packed with an immense amount of information, valuable
records of measurements, a heterogeneous mass of pre-Christian history (of
doubtful or obviously erroneous nature), apposite astronomical data, and
really valuable tables and references relative to most of the ancient and mod¬
ern calendars; but its authors, like Dr. Guinness and the Edgar brothers, take
altogether too much for granted regarding the Hebrews. Substantially all
the matter which they exhibit as being Jewish is no more Jewish than any¬
thing else. By the very nature of their work, one would have thought that
BIBLICAL AND PYRAMID PROPHECY
283
they, of all men, should have been able to avoid theological bias, and recognize,
within the history and religion of the Jews, the echoes of ancient wisdom and
culture, picked up and adopted by the Jews, and relabelled by them as their
own. Both Biblical and Pyramid prophecy are befogged and belittled by
Hebrew tradition. The Jews have been mixed up and confused with all peo¬
ples. They have been in the past, as they are now, associated with important
aspects of the material world, controlling great wealth, with wide international
ramifications and influence. They have suffered (and inflicted) grievous, ven¬
omous and sustained persecutions. But they are nevertheless of far less im¬
portance in the world than these students of prophecy would have us think,
when they deal with cycles as though they concerned none but this “chosen”
people.
On the other hand, we must not forget that the universe being one, and the
infinitely great being reflected in the infinitely little, that which portrays the
life of a solar system, should also portray the life of a planet, of races, of conti¬
nents, of nations, as of individuals. We do not in the least mean to deny that
the Great Pyramid may contain a prophecy of the World War, our economic
depression, or even of Roosevelt as “the Final Tribulation”,—these may all
be included, together with the whole history of the Jews, and the ten lost
tribes, and the decline of the Papacy, and the expulsion of the Turks from Jeru¬
salem. The greater properly includes the less, and cosmic and inter-cosmic
happenings may be, must be, reflected even in the most trivial of our daily
affairs. The mistake that is made by these expounders of prophecies is not
in including the little, but in presenting the comparatively insignificant as
though it were the only or chief application and meaning.
The close parallelism, amounting often to identity, between the results of
Biblical and pyramid prophecy, is specially interesting in view of the totally
different types of prophecy they appear to represent. In the pyramid, everything
appears to be the result of the most close calculation. Nothing is too minute,
nothing too great, to be taken into account, and as all are brought together
and synthesized, the result is reached as the outcome of a mathematical equa¬
tion, or the resultant of a polygon of forces, which is as indisputable as it is
impersonal. The exact opposite marks the Hebrew prophecy. There nothing
seems calculated. No account is taken of the individual factors that enter
into the problem. Indeed there is no problem. The result is given. It stands
alone, and is seen in a single flash of intuition, or is shown or told the prc^pfet
in vision. “Thus saith the Lord.” ‘‘And I Daniel alone saw the vision.^^.
Yet heard I the voice of his words.” It is shot through and through with
personality.
In general, both Biblical and Pyramid prophecies point to certain dates as
crucial without specifying the exact form the crisis is to take. The dates speci¬
fied correspond very accurately with important historical happenings, but
what they really mean, the experts are rarely able to tell us, either before or
after the event. After the event, the interpreters are always able to point to
objective happenings in the outer world, and would have us believe that it
284
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
was to them the prophecy referred. This is because the outer world is the
only one with which the interpreters are familiar. The real event may be a
hidden thing, or the causal aspect of the visible thing, whose real significance
does not appear until much later. But there are instances in which an outer
event, such as the fall of Jerusalem, was clearly indicated by the interpreters, in
books printed years before the occurrence, and with a very remarkable pre¬
cision as to time.
As we have seen, the interpretation of such prophecies as that of the Book
of Daniel involves questions both as to the unit of measurement for time, and
as to the exact date from which the measurement is to begin. Dr. Grattan
Guinness has to deal with these questions when he discusses the application of
the prophecies to the hold of the Moslem power upon Jerusalem. On page
473, of the 1880 edition of his book, he writes:
“Dated from the earliest possible starting point, the commission given by
Artaxerxes to Ezra, b.c. 457, this period expired as we have seen in 1844, which
was a marked epoch in the fall of that Mohammedan power which has long
defiled the sanctuary and trodden down Jerusalem. But dated 145 years
later, from the era of the Seleucidae, this period measured in lunar years ex¬
pires seventy five years later , in a.d. 1919. We have noted various indications
in the condition of Palestine and of Israel, and in the political events of our
own day, which seem to indicate that the cleansing of the sanctuary and the
restoration of Israel are not distant. When these shall take place, and when
the Moslems, now driven out of Bulgaria, shall be driven out of Syria, when
the nations of Europe, actuated it may be by mutual distrust and political
jealousy, or it may be by higher motives, shall conspire to reinstate the Jews
in the land of their forefathers, then the last of the unfulfilled predictions of
the Scripture, as to events prior to the great crisis, will have received its
accomplishment. ’ ’
Mr. Henry James Forman, in his recent and very interesting book, The
Story of Prophecy , In the Life of Mankind from Early Times to the Present Day ,
says that, writing in 1886, Dr. Guinness set the date as 1917, as that was the
year reached by starting from Mohammed’s Hegira, a.d. 622, and adding
1260 lunar years (the half of the cycle of 2520 years), together with the cor¬
rection for the epact. It was in 1917 that General Allenby took Jerusalem,
“putting an end to nearly thirteen centuries of Mohammedan rule”, and Mr.
Forman adds that “the Mohammedans themselves had a prophecy, attrib¬
uted to their prophet and poet Ibn Khasri of the tenth century, that ‘the man
who will conquer Jerusalem and redeem it from the infidel for all time to come,
will enter the Holy City humbly on foot, and his name is God’s Prophet’. The
Arabic for the last two words is Allah Nebi—of striking similarity in sound to
Allenby, who did enter Jerusalem on foot in 1917.”
It was not until after the peace, however, that “the nations of Europe, actuated
it may be by mutual distrust and political jealousy, or it may be by higher
motives”, conspired to reinstate the Jews, and this illustrates the fact that
the events to which the prophecies refer may not be such as to be accom-
BIBLICAL AND PYRAMID PROPHECY
285
plished at a single stroke. Dr. Guinness emphasizes this particularly in refer¬
ence to the crises that have been foretold for our own immediate future, Sep¬
tember 1936, 1942, 1951. “That the transition from this age to the next will
occupy a period , and not a point of time, seems likely from analogy, and seems
to be indicated in the two brief supplementary periods added to the main one,
and in the closing words of the angel to Daniel. That there will be marked
stages in the accomplishment of the stupendous changes from the world that
is, to the world that shall be, and that it is impossible to fix their dates, or to
determine beforehand the precise order of the various events, revealed and
destined to occur in the course of the great crisis and consummation, may be
freely admitted without detracting the least from the momentous weight and
solemn importance of this most blessed conclusion” (p. 487).
On the whole, Biblical and Pyramid prophets have not identified specific
dates with particular events, but have rather deduced from the Pyramid and the
Bible that certain important cycles were drawing to a close, and that a crisis
on a large scale was thus impending. Just why Dr. Guinness is so sure it will
be a “blessed conclusion” we do not ourselves know. It is quite true that the
angel’s closing words to Daniel were as a blessing on him. “Blessed is he that
waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.
But go thy way till the end be, for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the
end of the days.” But in the verses before, it is foretold that “Many shall be
purified and made white and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and
none of the wicked shall understand.” In the Pyramid, the corresponding
date brings us to the “Hall of Judgment” and the “Cleansing of the Nations”.
May Dr. Guinness’s confidence be justified!
The question inevitably arises as to why the builders of the Great Pyramid
should have chosen its interior passages as the symbol of, or medium for record¬
ing, their prophetic knowledge of the course that human history would take.
To the ordinary Egyptologist of a generation ago the pyramids are tombs,
the Great Pyramid perhaps the greatest of tombs, but still a tomb and little
if anything more. The King’s chamber, the Queen’s chamber, the passages,
the open coffer, all point to the tomb and the trappings of Death. Mr. David¬
son and the majority of the pyramidologists, on the other hand, completely
reject the tomb theory, and consider they have sound engineering evidence
against it. Part of this evidence is the provision made for ventilating Jfre
King’s and Queen’s chambers. To these enthusiasts the Great Pyramid i»t
only a stupendous scientific monument, a compendium of the ancient learning
and wisdom of men who had foreknowledge of the future, but is a monument
that was erected for our special benefit. Its secrets were intended to remain
secrets until we came and rediscovered them,—until the turning of the cycles
should have brought*again a scientific age capable of understanding this learn¬
ing. That is why, they say, the Pyramid prophecies all refer to our era; and
the ventilating shafts were provided for our special comfort while studying
these prophecies! There is a colossal egotism in this view that almost matches
I the grandeur of the Pyramid itself, and we suspect that few readers of the
286
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Quarterly will be able to rise to it. As we have already suggested, we do
not wish to deny that the prophecies apply to us, but only that they apply
solely to us,—that in the less, no greater is reflected.
Most students of Theosophy have, we think, been led to associate the Great
Pyramid with the Egyptian Lodge and the ancient Adept Kings, and the
theory that its inner passages and chambers were used as a place of initiation
for disciples in the ceremonies of the Mysteries, has much to support it. It
would explain both the ventilating shafts and the symbols of the tomb, and
give a compelling and wholly sufficient reason for the exact correspondence be¬
tween its passages and galleries and the cycles of human evolution and history.
“Out of Egypt have I called my son.” All the Christian symbolism can, it
is said, be found in ancient Egypt: the coming and rejection of the Messiah,
his crucifixion, death and burial, his resurrection and ascension. In the his¬
toric life of Jesus of Nazareth, was re-enacted for our Western race, the eternal
drama of the Mysteries, through which the Christ, the soul, “the anointed”,
is initiated into immortal life and union with “the Father”. It is all part of
the great ritual of the Egyptian Lodge, and not only of the Egyptian Lodge,
but also (except for its special colouring), of the Great Parent Lodge as well,—
for it is inherent in the very nature of Being. Therefore we find it in the
Upanishads as well as in Egypt. It is to the House of Death that Nachiketas
comes for his initiation; there, a pure guest, he abides three nights before
Death speaks; there he rejects all other gifts, that he may learn of Death the
secret of life. Light on the Path tells us that to come to this initiation—to
reach and lift the bars of the Gates of Gold—the neophyte must accomplish
in himself that which, “in the far spaces of Time”, Necessity, the slow com¬
pulsion of the cycles, will have accomplished in all men. But he who would
do this, lifting himself out of his servitude to Time, must do, by the unaided
force of his own will and desire, all that Time would otherwise do for him.
He can neither omit nor evade any stage of the Path, but must travel them
all. Therefore, in exact and literal truth, the Way that leads to the disciple’s
Initiation is a projection into the present of the future course of the whole
race. Every step of it is prophecy. It is no miracle that the words of the
angel to Daniel, and the stones of the ascending passages that lead to the Hall
of Judgment and the King’s Chamber, the Chamber of the Open Tomb, should
tell the same story of the Way of Man.
It is prophecy. But with what difference is the same ascent made, the same
Path trodden, by the ch 61 a, consciously following in the footsteps of his Mas¬
ter, consciously taking his own nature into his own hands, coming to his
dark hours of trial and combat with the knowledge that they must be part
of the self-sacrifice that he has himself willed,—and by the blind multitudes
of peoples, slaves of Time and of Necessity, slaves most of all to themselves,
driven they know not how, or why, or where. With blind, self-centred igno¬
rance, have the races of men stumbled and dragged themselves through the
long passages, crawled through the low ones, scrambled up the Grand Gallery
of Time for its twenty-five hundred and twenty years—jostling, crowding,
BIBLICAL AND PYRAMID PROPHECY
287
fighting, buying, selling, cheating, begging, bullying, until they have found
themselves suddenly poised on a level, in an obscure place and in a helpless,
hopeless mass. The ascending grade, which coaxed them along, they knew
not why, has lost the enticement of the activity it called forth. Frightened at
the emptiness of the sombre void, crushed and terrified at the personal losses
they have suffered (no one goes up the “Grand Gallery” without great per¬
sonal loss and deprivation), in their yearning for surcease, they intuitively
sense the proximity of the place of silence, of peace of mind, of freedom from
all that now distracts and torments them. In their need and longing and
terror they cry out, and in compassion a Voice answers:
“Who are you?”
“We are men, burdened and borne down with unbearable confusion.”
“What do you want?”
“We come to you for—we must know who you are?”
“I am He whom you have forgotten, in the personification of Time.”
“We pray you bring us to the place of peace and comfort and consolation.”
“That, even I have no power to do now. You can only go to that place
with the magic of the power I gave you in the magic of My Time. It is not you,
as you think, who have come; it is I who have led you to Myself with the persua¬
sion of My silent Presence in the duration of My time. The one you have
ignored, and the other you have wasted. To Me you bring only the nothing¬
ness of yourselves, from which you even now wish to be released. I have
brought you to the end of Time when we always meet.
“Mark you that you be attentive to Me at all times until the next Time,
for by that attention and that only can I lead you into the timeless reality of
My Presence.”
Like Sisyphus, one by one, we fall away and sink into the future. Think of
the infinite variety of beautiful flowers that must have the warmth and light
of the Sun to bring them into bloom, and how they accept that and take it for
granted, just as a little child accepts his mother. Think of some, like the sun¬
flower which not only accepts, but recognizes the sun, salutes him with bold,
unswerving attention, keeping his face turned toward him throughout the
day, even when the sun is behind the clouds—being ready, after the night, to
face him again in the morning—growing all the while amidst the rankest weeds,
yet towering above them.
There is for each cycle a particular Purpose, involved in a Plan, actuate^Dy
a Power. The thing that counts, the only thing that is worth while, is not
what we achieve, nor with what great adventure we acquire, but to what
the accomplishment is referred—to Christ, the Lodge, the Master, or to some¬
thing less—so much less that with all our hoarding, saving, holding, when the
time of the lesser comes to the Time of the Greater, the lesser fades away,
leaving us empty and desolate.
K.R.
THE MIRROR OF NATURE
AND OF ART
For Dionysus or Bacchus, because his image was reflected in a mirror, pursued
it, and thus became dispersed into all things. But Apollo re-formed him and resur¬
rected him; being a deity of purification, and the true saviour of Dionysus; and on
this account he is styled in the sacred hymns, Dionusites .— Olympiodorus.
HE mirror has always been a mysterious object to man, presenting to
him his own image, unsubstantial, unprejudiced, the same and yet
another. All over the world it is a sacred object and a symbol. Perhaps
this whole universe of Maya is a mirror held up to the Absolute. Thus man’s
consciousness also is a mirror, and so is physical nature. In the innermost Shinto
Shrine there is a mirror. Man, Know Thyself, was the most profound of the
Oracles.
Every atom reflects in itself the essential Being, but this Being must be
perceived. There must be something, someone aware of the reflection. It is
the divine element in man which knows itself and which knows the divine in
Nature. The perceiving consciousness, in a sense, creates the image it sees; it
confers on it an existence. Thus, man’s intellect, leaning over the expanse of
Nature, creates in it a form, an entity, just as the Manasaputra cast upon nascent
humanity the sun-rays of their Mind. The mirror of Nature, however, is not
crystallized, static and unevolving, as is the polished bronze or the quicksilvered
glass. It corresponds, it responds, it lives, it gives of itself and it receives.
Man turns upon Nature the fire of his meditation and it stirs. What has man
done to Nature—and by man we mean now merely the semi-evolved being of
this planet? What is his influence upon the vegetation, the forms of mountains
or of flowers? How has he modified the rose, and who is responsible for the tent
caterpillar, the Japanese beetle and the mosquito?
The influences of climate and soil are held by some scientists to be responsible
for all the psychic activities of the race. But how much more profound is the
influence of the psychic atmosphere of a group of men upon the landscape. One
crosses an imaginary line between California and Mexico and one is in a different
country at once. The two handsome Carabinieri on the platform at Domo
d’Ossolo are not the only intimations that one has come at last to enchanting
Italy. Two dogs who live on adjoining properties know exactly where their
respective domains end. A land that is loved is full of marvellous qualities; it
responds like a plant or an animal to care and affection. It has a coquetry of its
own, a desire to please.
Another quality of the living mirror of Nature is that it reflects both ways.
It reflects God and man. It ever evolves from within outwards the potentialities
288
THE MIRROR OF NATURE AND OF ART
289
of the divine essence, and shows them forth to those who look attentively into
it. Man is a part of Nature, his life is unfolding from the same source, but he
has, in varying degrees, that mind which makes him capable of sharing the
consciousness of the gods. “Man is the Thaumaturge of the Earth.” It is in
observing Nature that he becomes aware of those samenesses which are cor¬
respondences, and which exemplify for him the laws of his own being. It is,
doubtless, impossible for a man to obtain wisdom by looking only into himself
and not also upon the globe of which he is a part.
Late one night this winter the ground was covered with deep snow. The
earth and trees were silent with that heavy hush which the snow lays upon the
countryside. The moon was rising in the eastern sky like a brilliantly shining
silver mirror. “The moon”, said Proclus, “is the cause of nature to mortals,
and the self-revealing image of the fountain of nature.” It was in this aspect
that Apuleius hailed her with the magnificent words;
Te superi colunt , observant Inferi: tu rotas orbem , luminas Solem , regis mundum ,
calcas Tartarian. Tibi respondent sidera , gaudent numina , redcunt tempora ,
serviunt elementa.
“The supernal gods reverence thee, and those in the realms beneath attentively
give homage to thy divinity. Thou dost make the universe revolve, illuminate
the sun, govern the world and tread on Tartarus. The stars answer thee, the
gods rejoice, the hours and seasons return by thy appointment, and the elements
serve thee.”
This profound poetry is the reward of the contemplation of Nature. All
that men pour out in contemplation is returned enriched. We look upon a lovely
landscape, the moonlight on snow or the sun’s rays striking into prismatic
showers the mist above a waterfall, and it delights us, but when we draw upon
the arts to supplement our enjoyment we heighten it by the experience of greater
men, we deepen it by the richness of the whole culture of our race. As Apollo
has re-formed Dionysus, so he has produced the arts. The sun’s rays have
drawn back out of their descent into the world, form, organized being, individu¬
ality. Man, gazing upon Nature, has re-created it and stamped upon it some¬
thing of his own image, stamped it so that this image remains and can be seen
long after he has departed from it. Jules de Gaultier, in his book, La Vie Mys¬
tique de la Nature , devotes a chapter to this interchange between Nature and tlm
artist. He asks, “Does not the human mirror here show itself to be compdBff
of the same substance as the object that it will reflect?”, and he goes on to
describe Nature with premeditation separating the artist from herself, as if he
were a plant whose sole function it were to contemplate her and to reproduce
her own image in the beauty of art.
The mediaeval illuminator intending his thought upon a violet, penetrating
the secret of its form, left its image upon the burnished gold of the page like a
crystal of amethyst, with his love and reverence intact through the ages.
Leonardo da Vinci, fascinated by the complexities of the blue columbine, drew
it over and over again, and, in one of his loveliest paintings—now attributed to
wmeone else!—he places it in the hands of a young woman and invests it with
290
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
a profound suggestiveness, something almost beyond definition in words. We
look upon this little flower and sense the vast mystery of manifestation.
Art is, in its turn, a living mirror. By art we mean here the arts in the largest
sense, every expression of man which embodies with beauty and clarity his
perceptions of the true essence of being, every production which is not an
imitation but a creation, adding to Nature that self-conscious vision which is
the seal of divinity. There, in the treasure of the arts, it is possible for us to
share the conquests and triumphs of the human spirit. There is the fountain
whose waters perpetually renew and nourish the thirsting and dry little mind
of the personal man; there he can widen his comprehension until he passes out
of his own narrow brain into a universal being.
Cosa bella mortal passa e non d } arte. “In life, beauty perishes, not in art”,
Leonardo wrote in his notebook. The Western world has always been filled
with melancholy by this contrast, and all the gilded paradises of the painters
do not console it.
Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth’s sweet-scented Manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the Branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!
Men too often have thought of themselves as going down to the grave and
perishing. They see the dissolving aspects of vegetative nature and its continual
rebirth and return, but for themselves they see no return. The apple blossom
that falls, decays, and the flower of next year is altogether another. So, they
say, the man dies; other men are bom, but never the same one again. But the
great work of art which man is to produce is his immortality. A propos of
apples, someone has said that innumerable thousands of people had seen them fall
from the trees before Newton, but they had only thought of eating them. Perhaps
here we actually see the beginning of the process of becoming immortal. No!
Not by giving up eating apples, but by looking behind and through the apple.
Through the Looking Glass.
The secret is not in looking in the mirror and becoming enchanted with
reflections, as did Dionysus in the myth: it is in looking for the divine essence
which breathes through all forms and animates them. It was the light of the
god which drew back the scattered fragments into a new whole. This allegory,
the descent of the soul into matter, its experiences, and its restoration to its
pristine glory, was the subject of the Bacchic Mysteries, as the story of Demeter
and Persephone was of the Mysteries of Eleusis.
The sunlight of Greece falls upon us as we read the Homeric Hymn to Demeter:
“Persephone was playing with Okeanos’ deep-breasted daughters, and pluck¬
ing flowers, roses and crocus and pretty pansies, in a soft meadow, and flags and
hyacinth, and that great narcissus that Earth sent up for a snare to the rose-
faced maiden, doing service by God’s will to Him of the Many Guests. The
bloom of it was wonderful, a marvel for gods undying and mortal men; from the
root of it there grew out a hundred heads, and the incensed smell of it made
THE MIRROR OF NATURE AND OF ART
291
the wide sky laugh above, and all the earth laugh and the salt swell of the sea.
And the girl in wonder reached out both her hands to take the beautiful thing
to play with; then yawned the broad-trod ground by the Flat of Nysa, and the
deathless steeds brake forth, and the Cronos-born king. He of the Many
Names, of the Many Guests; and He swept her away on his golden chariot.”
The narcissus was created because a youth, gazing upon his reflection in a
pool, became enamoured of his own image, and falling into it. was drowned, and
metamorphosed into the flower. It is this same flower which leads Persephone
into the power of Gloomy Dis or Pluto, the King of Hades.
The god of death is the Great Initiator. It is by manifestation that the
whole universe attains form and consciousness. It is through the experience of
incarnation that man achieves self-consciousness. Nature is borne on in its
evolution by the pure but unindividualized hierarchies of the divine light, but,
fortunately for him, man is aided directly by those who have triumphed and who
embody the divine mind. In another great poem of initiation, the Katha
Upanishad, Nachiketas stands before Death, having returned from his voyages.
He has seen through all the illusions of the world and has no longer any desire for
“chariots and lutes”. He has perceived the Eternal Essence of Being in all
beings, and desires only That. Therefore he has constrained Death to teach him
all of its lessons, and is victor over it. He has attained immortality.
“This is too difficult. This is impossible. This can not be expected of us.”
But it is. It is just what we are here for. It is just what everything is here for.
Every little ladybird on the potato vine, and every small weed, every pebble
and every star is accomplishing this throughout the incalculable aeons of time
Moreover, we have arrived—God knows how!—at the stage of evolution where
we meet with the mystery of the supernal Grace. This is that Blood of Christ
which the fifteenth century represented in the mystical Fountain of Life.
Sanguis , animarum lavacrum , lava nos.
Sanguis , piscina languentium, salva nos ,
Sanguis , fons puritatis , irriga nos.
Every great work begins at an infinitesimal beginning; the raising of the hand,
the grain of sand. We are not at the beginning. A long past of experience
surrounds us, our own, that of Nature and that of other men. Every time we
perceive the spiritual world behind an object, we add one more brick to our
structure, one more atom to the form which we are creating by contemplation.
We are the artisans of our own work of art. Every correspondence to which we
are awake unites us with the Law. Whenever we are aware of the meaning of a
work of beauty we are allied to the consciousness of immortality. This is the
dazzling radiance of pure joy. This is the root of ecstasy. This is the splendour
and richness of real life. This is the transforming light of Apollo which restores
our dispersed, fragmentary consciousness to its lost divinity.
Sauvage.
SILENCE IS GOLDEN
Set a watch , 0 Lord , before my mouth. Keep the door of my lips.
I T is obvious that as we go forward on the path of discipleship, we shall have
to acquire, gradually, complete and unfailing control of our speech, and it
is safe to assume that such control will exceed anything we can imagine at
present. One of the motives for this form or aspect of self-conquest, will be an
ever-increasing realization of the direct effect which our words have on ourselves.
In view of the importance of the matter (the reaction of speech on the
speaker) it seems strange that so little attention is given to it. Painful
experience has taught people a few simple facts about speech, as, for example,
that the more you talk about your troubles the worse they seem. But it must
be admitted that when one thinks of the probable effect produced by certain
words, one’s thoughts are generally directed to the hearer, not to the speaker.
No one worries much about what they do to him!
Nevertheless, as has already been suggested, that side of the question is the
one of real, and ever-increasing importance, to the student of Theosophy who
endeavours to combine study with practice. His objective (or one of them)
might be stated to be the attainment of a state of consciousness which is fixed,
unwavering; unshaken by the vibrations of life. As he observes the variations
in consciousness to which he is subject, the swing from higher to lower states
and back again, endlessly, he can hardly fail to perceive that the words he
speaks, and the spirit or motive behind them, often have a great deal to do
with these oscillations. A state of happy serenity may be changed abruptly
to one of gloomy resentment or bitterness, as the result of a brief conversation.
The usual procedure, in such cases, would be to blame the other person, the
“antagonist” of the occasion, for ruining the day. But having awakened to
some perception of the potency of words, from this different standpoint, the
student may, conceivably, ask himself, “Why did I say that?” or, “What
wrong element was there in my words? Ought I to have said nothing ?” Inci¬
dentally, it will be remembered that Christ told his disciples: “Let your
conversation be yea, yea; nay, nay; for more than this cometh of evil.”
When one has come to recognize the fact that there are kinds of talk, perhaps
not ordinarily regarded as in the least reprehensible, but which nevertheless
cause undesirable repercussions in one’s consciousness, it becomes of increased
importance to discover what they are; to identify them despite their disguises.
At the head of a list of elements of speech that are found to be deleterious
would doubtless be self-defence and excuse; criticism and condemnation of
other persons; complaining and fault-finding from a personal standpoint.
From Light on the Path , that text-book of discipleship, the following may be
quoted in this connection:
292
SILENCE IS GOLDEN
293
“But this conquering of self implies a destruction of qualities most men
regard as not only indestructible but desirable. The ‘power to wound’ includes
much that men value, not only in themselves, but in others. The instinct of
self-defence and of self-preservation is part of it; the idea that one has any right
or rights, either as citizen, or man, or individual.” “All weapons of defence and
offence are given up.” “Never again can another man be regarded as a person
who can be criticized or condemned; never again can the neophyte raise his
voice in self-defence or excuse .”
It is significant that self-defence is here said to become, after a certain stage
of progress, not merely undesirable or wrong, but impossible. Why? If our
thesis be correct, because of the effect on the man himself.
It should be remembered that as one advances on the way, he becomes more,
not less, sensitive. Words and actions of his, which formerly would have
appeared to have slight significance, if any, as far as their affecting him was
concerned, will be seen as definite hindrances, as obstacles to further progress.
Speaking of such a seeker of truth, the Gates of Gold says, “He utters no idle
word; he performs no unconsidered action.” The condition of irresponsibility
has been left behind.
The foregoing will perhaps suffice to make clear the central point. Assuming
our view to be correct as far as it goes, the implications for the earnest student
are obvious. Eventually he will have to govern his tongue, the unruly member,
absolutely; and, as we are all so largely creatures of habit, the earlier he turns
his attention to the matter and arouses his higher will to appropriate action, the
better for him. Moreover, conquest of self at any point brings its own sure
reward. The task is far from easy, but recognition of the problem is in itself a
start in the right direction. If you discover a snake in your cellar, you are
likely to do something about it; you would not harbour it as a permanent guest.
It is interesting and helpful to remember that control of speech is a subject
which is given much importance in the great religions of the world. There are
innumerable references to it in the Bible, though the prevailing custom among
Christians, even among the ministry, seems to be to take many of them with a
“grain of salt”. This, however, is only natural, since all the other teachings
which have to do with conduct, both inner and outer, are taken in much the same
way. But the fact that silence is enforced to such a large extent in the religious
Orders is worthy of serious consideration. Their saintly founders may well have
had far more knowledge and understanding of spiritual laws, and the occult or
hidden side of man’s nature, than sceptical seculars imagine.
In any case we know that an effective way to combat a wrong desire or an
unruly emotion is to suppress its manifestation, in word as well as in deed.
Lower nature is complex; our knowledge of self only partial. It is therefore more
than likely that if, when anxious to talk, one maintains a discreet silence, one
is thereby fighting some fault of which he is not yet conscious, though it may
be well known to his fellows. Speech, no doubt, may be silver. But silence—
mor«£ten—is golden.
A. WOODBY.
WITHOUT CENSOR
VII.
T HE first and only night then, which I passed at La Fert£-sous-Jouarre,
was quiet and uneventful, and early the following morning, July 31st,
I presented myself at Headquarters First American Army, and re¬
ported to the Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Hugh A. Drum. He was ex¬
tremely busy, but he found time to receive me with much kindness, and
informed me that I had been assigned for duty to the Operations Section of the
General Staff. He took me down the hall to the office of Colonel (later Brigadier
General) R. McCleave, Chief of G-3, and introduced me in a few words, and
then, after wishing me good luck, left me with my new Chief. My first short
interview with General Drum was all that was needed to show me why, as
I found out later, he was able to drive his staff night and day with a maximum
of efficiency, loyalty and co-operation; force and charm and the ability to
understand men and to handle them in exactly the right way, were character¬
istics of his which stood out at that very first meeting. Colonel McCleave
was most friendly, and during a pleasant chat over a cigarette we discovered
that we had several friends in common. The wall of the large room, which
was his office, was covered with an immense map of the front, which showed,
corrected to within a few minutes, the latest positions and dispositions of all
the units in the sector of the First American Army Corps, and also of those
in the area of the Third American Army Corps, commanded by Major General
Bullard, which was now operating on the right of the First Corps. Colonel
McCleave soon got to business, and informed me that at present our First
and Third Army Corps were in the Sixth French Army, under General De-
goutte, and under his tactical command; that Headquarters First American
Army was not yet tactically functioning as such, but that it was planned to
take over the command, within a very few days, of the entire Army front from
the Sixth French Army, and that the interval was to be employed in redupli¬
cating the whole French Army staff organization, our staff functioning side
by side with the French and gradually assuming their duties, so that when the
change of command actually took place, it would be a change in name only, and
not in fact. General Pershing was, of course, to be Commander of the First Army.
Colonel McCleave then told me that, while a member of the Staff of First
Army Headquarters, I was not to be on duty there at that time, but that, as
part of the plan of taking over from the French which he had just outlined, I
was to be sent at once to Headquarters First Army Corps, as Liaison Officer
there from Headquarters First Army. He then handed me a letter, in dupli¬
cate, dated July 31, 1918, addressed to the Chief of Staff, 1st Army Corps, and
signed: “By command of General Pershing,—R. McCleave, Colonel, General
Staff, A. C. of S., G-3.” This letter read as follows:—
294
WITHOUT CENSOR
295
1—The bearer of this letter, Captain-, 77th Division, has been directed to re¬
port to you for duty as Liaison Officer, from the Headquarters First Army. His duty
will be to transmit to these headquarters information concerning the progress of the dif¬
ferent divisions of your Corps, together with any general information that might prove
of value.
I read this over twice in silence, under my new Chief’s watchful eye. It
read like a large order, but it read, too, as if I had fairly high authority to sup¬
port me, coming as I would from a higher unit of command to a lower one.
It certainly seemed like the real thing. I finished reading, and looked up at
Colonel McCleave, who inquired whether I had any questions. I asked him
if he would tell me what divisions and other units were in line on the First
Corps front, and what their positions were. He replied that it would be almost
impossible to do that, for, owing to the rapidity with which things were moving
in the forward areas, any information which he might give me then, would
probably be old and useless a few hours later, and that I would find all that
out after I had arrived at First Corps Headquarters. I asked him what form
the transmission of my reports should take, and he told me to send them prefer¬
ably as dispatches over the Signal Corps telegraph wires, as that method was
far quicker than any other; but that I could use the field telephone, and couriers
whenever necessary. I asked him whether my messages should be coded, and
he replied that they should be, although, because of the rapidity with which
the Germans were now moving out of the old Ch&teau-Thierry salient, it was
unlikely that they could effectively tap our field wires; he said that I would
get copies of all the codes which I needed at First Corps Headquarters. He
volunteered that the general information alluded to in my orders simply meant
that I was to keep my eyes and ears wide open, and that I was to send them
back at once any fact I might discover, or any rumour or report I might hear,
carefully specifying which it was, that I thought would be of any assistance
to them in conducting this operation. He asked me how soon I could go, and
I told him that I could go at once. He then said that his car would be wait¬
ing for me outside my billet in an hour, and that I should find in the car another
captain, who was going to our Third Corps Headquarters as Liaison Officer
there, after I had first been left at First Corps Headquarters. He rose to his
feet, and so did I. I saluted, and departed.
Promptly, one hour later, an army Cadillac limousine, and in it my travel¬
ling companion, drove up to the door of my billet; I loaded my things on board,
and off we started. Our road led through Ch&teau-Thierry, as Headquarters
First Army Corps was that day at Moucheton Chateau, near Epieds, a little
town a few miles to the northeast. We drove through what had been the bat¬
tlefields of the preceding fortnight. The dead had been removed and buried,
but everywhere, on all sides, was the wreckage and destruction of war. It
was the first sight of it, for both of us, and it made a profound impression.
We were constantly off the road and in the fields, where poppies were still
growing, in order to avoid shell holes, only to have to circumvent others which
we fot^d there. The air was full of Allied planes, on their way to, or returning
296
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
from, the lines. There were very few troops in evidence, except for the ever¬
present Military Police and scattered detachments; but this was easily under¬
standable, as reliefs and troop movements took place only at night, when the
roads were free from aerial observation. Ch&teau-Thierry itself was a mass
of wreckage; constant pounding by artillery fire had practically demolished
the greater part of the town, and, where the Marne ran, great masses of debris
and rubble had slid down, or had been blown, into the river, blocking it up.
Already, however, American Engineer regiments and Pioneer Infantry were
engaged in the effort to reduce some order out of this chaos. In spite of the
difficulties of travel, it did not take us long to make our journey, as we really
had not far to go; it certainly did not seem long, for there was so much to see
that we lost all track of time. But shortly after midday we drove through
the village of Epieds, or what was left of it, which was not much, and almost
immediately afterwards turned into the front gate of Moucheton Chateau, a
country house on the outskirts of the village. Just as we did so, a French 150
mm. howitzer, down in a hollow just beside the road, let go with a great roar;
we had not seen it, as it was carefully camouflaged with the usual coverings,
and it scared us out of a week’s growth, as we thought for a moment that it
was an arrive and not a depart. We had not learned, then, that it is the arrive
which you hear, that does not hurt you; it is the one which you never hear,
that does the trick. A few moments more took us to the front steps of the
Chateau, my property was hastily unloaded, and I exchanged farewell salutes
with my temporary companion, who departed across country to Third Corps
Headquarters.
Moucheton Chateau was a typical small French country residence, which,
for some unknown reason, had remained intact and was untouched by shell
fire. In the cellar, which was of stone and, therefore, the best protected portion
of the house, the Signal Corps had their telephone and telegraph wires, so that
the service would be uninterrupted in the event of shelling or bombing. The
principal staff offices were on the main floor, and the top floor was occupied
as sleeping quarters by Major General Liggett, the Corps Commander, his
ranking staff officers, and his aides. The stables, outbuildings and offices
were used for the functioning of other sections of the Staff, and as sleeping
quarters and a mess for the officers. I reported myself to the Corps Chief of
Staff, Brigadier General Malin Craig, and gave him my letter; he received me
briefly, but with great friendliness, and presented me to the different Colonels
who were Chiefs of Section of the Staff, each of whom in turn introduced me to
his various assistants. These formalities were soon over, and after I had stowed
my belongings in a little room, already occupied by two other officers, on the
top of one of the stables, I started to acquaint myself with my new duties and
to acquire the information which I needed.
The Chief of the Operations Section of the Staff, G-3, gave me at once,
through two of his officers, the data which I lacked in regard to the divisions
and units under the Corps Command, and their positions, and it was while I
was engaged in writing all this down, and in working out the positions on the-
WITHOUT CENSOR
297
map, that I had my first experience of being shelled. We were grouped around
a large table in the dining-room, when, suddenly, there was a whistling, tear¬
ing sound, followed by a loud explosion, and I glanced out of the window be¬
hind me, to see, something over one hundred yards away, a mass of earth and
rubbish apparently suspended in the air. One of the officers said, quietly,
that it looked as if they had our range. Almost immediately, it seemed to me,
there was another similar explosion, this time on the other side of the CMteau,
and about an equal distance away, and one of my new friends remarked that
probably they would now “cut the bracket”, and that we should have the next
one on the dining-room table. There seemed to be no disposition on their part
to discontinue the work which we were doing, so I said to myself that, if they
could like it, I could, too, and I stuck to the job, although my attention wan¬
dered somewhat for the next few minutes. The third shell never arrived, and I
found out, later that afternoon, that a Boche plane had been flying just over
us, sending the co-ordinates of our position on the map by wireless to the German
battery that was firing, and correcting their range for them at each shot; the
final corrected range had never been sent, for, just in time, an American plane
had gone up, directed by our Corps Headquarters, and had driven the Boche
away.
I had now identified the units under the Corps Command, and had their
positions, and also knew what divisions were in reserve in the rear of the Corps
area. When, however, I asked for the code which I was to use, I was told
that they had no code for me there, and that this should have been given to
me at Headquarters First Army. I was in a quandary. My instructions were
clear; my reports were to be sent in code. It was equally clear that there was
none. It was up to me, therefore, to make up some sort of a code that I could
use, and to have it typed, and a copy sent back to G-3, Headquarters First
Army by the first courier. Obviously, there was no time in which to make
it an elaborate one; it seemed to me, in the circumstances, that if I were to
camouflage the names of all units, and were to send the rest of my messages
in the clear, it would probably fill the bill. If not, I should certainly hear of
it! I thought hard for a few minutes, and then had an idea. I wrote down,
in parallel columns, leaving in each case a blank column between, the number
of each division under the Corps Command, followed by the numbers of its
infantry and artillery brigades and of their component regiments, and then the
numbers and names of the other combat units in the divisions which I thought
it might be necessary to mention in messages. In the blank columns, opposite
the names and numbers of each division and of each of their component units,
I wrote, in one column, the names of all the fishes I could think of; in another
column, the names of all the birds; in a third column, all women’s names; and,
in succeeding columns, men’s names, names of trees and of flowers, names of
cities in the United States and-of the States of the Union, names of colours,
names of animals. Finally, I had a code word for each unit. If anyone imagines
that it an easy job to think up all those names, under pressure and in great
haste. l^Rhem try it and see. It was simple enough for the first ten or fifteen
298
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
names in each case, but after that, the very necessity of haste made the memory
stop working. I enlisted the assistance of the two officers who had been post¬
ing me; they entered enthusiastically into the spirit of the game, and, with
their help, my make-shift code was soon completed. I had it typed in dupli¬
cate by one of the field clerks, and directed that a copy, together with an ex¬
planatory letter which I wrote, should go back to G-3 at Headquarters First
Army by the next courier. Unfortunately, no courier went out that night;
the next one did not leave, for some reason or other, until early the following
morning. Meanwhile, blissfully unconscious of this, I sent my first messages
that afternoon and evening, following them with others the first thing the
next day. My messages of course arrived at Headquarters First Army before
the copy of my code, and they told me afterwards that for some hours they
were considerably mystified, and very much entertained, to read that Sturgeon
had fallen back one kilometer, quite a leap for any fish, while Narcissus was
apparently blooming to the fullest extent at a place to which “no flowers” should
be sent.
Our system of liaison was borrowed from the French, and was modelled on
their plan. There was vertical liaison, as, for instance, in my own case, when
an officer was sent from a higher command to a lower one. There was hori¬
zontal liaison, as when an Army Corps Headquarters sent liaison officers to the
Headquarters of the Army Corps on its right and on its left, receiving back in
each case liaison officers in return. The French system was, of course, very
highly developed indeed, while ours was in its infancy. The French liaison
officers were usually older men who had had years of army experience; had
been in combat units, and had, perhaps, been wounded and rendered incapable
of further service in the line. They were invaluable for liaison work because of
this very combat experience, and because they could visualize what was going
on in the front areas, and understood what troops would do under given con¬
ditions; they knew what to expect. The French relied greatly upon the opinion
and judgment of their liaison officers, not only in matters of strategy and tactics,
but also where plain common-sense was involved. They were often of fairly
high rank, and so could be used to influence indirectly and diplomatically
an otherwise efficient subordinate commander, who might be showing a dis¬
position to disregard his orders and to fight the War by himself. On account
of this rank and experience, they were at times vested with considerable au¬
thority. I was told that a French liaison officer, going from an army, say,
to a corps, would be so completely in the confidence of his army commander,
and so thoroughly familiar with the mission of the army and the way in which
it was to be carried out, that, if he found the corps commander to whom he
had been sent was interpreting the army orders wrongly, and was issuing orders
of his own which might obstruct or place in jeopardy the plan of the army
command, the liaison officer would be empowered to rescind on the spot, in
the name of the army commander, those corps orders, and even, if time were
a factor, to indicate new orders to the corps commander and to insist that they
be carried out. The French system had thus obviously been evolved through
WITHOUT CENSOR
299
years of war experience; at the start of things, as we were, we could not hope
to have anything like it. Our officers did not have the experience, to begin
with, and it was impossible to invest them with any such authority as indi¬
cated above. If the war had continued, we should probably have developed
our system into something approaching that of the French, but at the outset,
with us, the extent to which he could be of service depended very much upon
the individual liaison officer himself, and upon his own intelligence and adapt¬
ability.
My mission, as I understood it, was to anticipate, in my capacity as an
individual observer, the arrival at Headquarters First Army of the regular
official reports of progress from the Operations Section of the Corps General
Staff. These official reports were usually not sent at once, nor until they had been
carefully verified. My messages were more in the nature of gossip, and usually
began with a code word—I had further amplified my code by that time—
which meant, “a liaison officer states that”, or, “it is reported but not verified
that”, this change or the other of position had taken place in the shifting battle.
As a matter of fact, I obtained much of my information from the constant
reports which G-2, the Intelligence Section, and G-3, the Operations Section,
were receiving from telephone and telegraph wires laid up to the front, by
radio, by carrier pigeon from the front lines, and by messages dropped by aero¬
planes on their way back from flights of observation and of reconnaissance.
These constant reports were in most cases verified later, and were officially
reported. But in the meanwhile my unverified messages had already gone,
bringing to First Army Headquarters the first intimation of what was subse¬
quently to be confirmed, and I was told later that the forward line on the great
map on the wall at La Fert£-sous-Jouarre was tentatively changed with char¬
coal tracings as my, and other, messages came in, and was blacked in when
the official General Staff reports arrived. It was always possible for me to go
forward to the front lines, and there observe personally what was going on,
in order to obtain information for my reports. I found, however, that it did
not pay, for whenever I was absent from Corps Headquarters for any length
of time, some piece of information invariably came in which far transcended
in importance that which I brought back with me, and I missed the chance of
sending it, for it was too old when I received it. Corps Headquarters was
like a vast clearing-house for information, with things happening too rapidly
to miss; one lost the perspective of the Corps operation when one concentrated
upon anything less than the whole. My job was a twenty-four hour one. I
never slept through a night; it would not have been possible in any event, as
all through the darkness the Boche was dropping interdiction and harassing
fire from his artillery upon the roads, on the chance of catching them crowded
with transport and with moving troops, and was drenching the rear areas with
gas in the same pious hope. Several times in each night I would go to G-2 and
G-3, find out all that they knew of what had happened in the interval since
my last visit, write out a message if there was anything important, and send
it o^ My handwriting, never anything to boast of, had become atrocious,
3 °°
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
and I was so afraid that the telegraph operators would misread some essential
parts of my messages, and get them wrong through no fault of their own, that
I always printed my messages out instead of writing them, and gradually
attained such proficiency that finally I was able to print almost as fast as I
could write. Owing to the fact that I came from Army Headquarters, I found
that, as representing the Army Commander, I had priority for my telegraph
messages over all others except those of the Corps Commander and the Corps
Chief of Staff, which was a great piece of luck, as it greatly expedited their
transmission and consequently their receipt at the other end.
As my work developed, I found it necessary at times to cover in my mes¬
sages the progress of divisions in the Army Corps on our right and on our left,
because operations would often overlap on the Corps flanks, and this necessi¬
tated further amplification of my improvised code. Several days had now
elapsed, and I had heard nothing whatever from Colonel McCleave at G-3,
First Army Headquarters. That did not worry me, however, for I knew enough
of the Army to understand that, if things had not been going as they should,
I would have heard of it without fail. On the morning of August 3d, how¬
ever, I received from him the following typewritten message:—
Headquarters First Army, A. E. F.
Office of G-3
August 2, 1918.
Memorandum for Captain-.
1. Your telegraphic messages are coming in in excellent shape. It is believed that this
method of sending your messages is preferable to all others. Send telegraphic messages
in the clear, except that the Corps and Divisions should be indicated by code names.
For the present you can send telephone messages in the clear until your code is completed
and sent to us, which should be as soon as possible.
2. Your present reports are very satisfactory.
3. It is impossible to furnish you transportation until the motorcycles and sidecars
are received here. They have not come yet.
R. McCleave
Colonel, General Staff
A. C. of S., G-3.
Reports from 1st Corps indicate satisfaction with your present
methods.
R. McC.
G-3
Apparently, even then, the final installment of my code had not yet been
received. It must have reached them the next day. But this message relieved
me considerably, for, as far as we had gone, everyone was pleased, including
myself! The Colonel had told me in the first instance to send my messages by
telegraph, and this method was working satisfactorily, and now he was telling
me to go on doing so, and all would be well. He confirmed my lucky guess
that it would be sufficient camouflage to code the names of units only, and
told me to do what I had already been doing in this respect, which is simply
the Army method of making it seem as if the arrangement had been thought
of first by those in higher authority, and that I was merely carrying out their
WITHOUT CENSOR
3 o<
original orders. His message breathed sufficient encouragement however to
make me want to work even harder than ever.
I received a great deal of general information from French liaison officers
at First Corps Headquarters, and some criticism of our methods, always justi¬
fied as far as I could see, which criticism they apparently thought stood a better
chance of reaching the ears of higher authority through a liaison officer than
through imparting it to those actually in command. I remember sending a
message back to the Army to the effect that the French were very disturbed be¬
cause our regimental commanders were marching their troops, coming into
support, in column of squads on the roads in the daytime with bayonets fixed.
The dark column on the road, and the glittering of the bayonets in the sun,
were perfectly visible to the Boche from the air, with the result that the Ger¬
mans, even if they did not try to bomb the moving troops at the time, or ma j
chine-gun them from low-flying planes, knew that a relief in the line was about
to start, and searched out the sector that night with artillery interdiction-fire
in the effort to find the incoming troops. All this, the French felt, and properly,
was absolutely wrong, and made things unnecessarily unpleasant. As a result
of my message, an Army Order was issued, calling attention to this practice,
and prohibiting it for the future. Upon another occasion, the French criti¬
cized the choices which our regimental commanders were making for their
P. Cs. (Headquarters). They always chose, the French said, the best looking
house or chateau in their area which was still intact, no matter how exposed,
and settled themselves in it, without in the least realizing that this was the
very thing which the Boche wanted them to do. The Germans had just passed
through this area in their retreat, they had spotted every chateau that was still
standing, and had left it untouched in each case with a very definite purpose
and hope. They had the exact co-ordinates on their maps of every such build¬
ing, and knowing that we should be sure to pick them out as desirable Head¬
quarters, they were certain to shell them severely. I reported this criticism
also to First Army Headquarters, but, before any Army Order in this regard
was issued, point was added to the remarks of the French by the fact that,
shortly afterwards, an exposed chateau near us, in which a whole regimental
staff had taken up quarters, was practically blown to pieces, and the Colonel
and most of his staff killed.
By far my best source of information during this period was Brigadier General
Craig, the Chief of Staff himself. I had liked him immensely from the begin¬
ning; he had gone out of his way to be pleasant to me when I had first arrived,
and in seeing that I got off to a good start in my work and that I received all
the help which I needed. After a day or so, he got in the way of stopping me
sometimes when we met during the day around the Corps Headquarters, and
of saying, “Captain, I don’t know whether or not you have heard this’’, and
of proceeding to tell me something which I could not possibly have heard about,
as he had either only just heard of it himself, or it had originated in his own
mind ajew minutes before and had to do with some proposed change in the
condu^k|f operations. All such information, which was of great value in my
302
THE 0 S 0 PHICAL QUARTERLY
reports, was immediately put on the wire. Apparently he was testing me out,
for shortly afterwards he told me that if I would come that evening, after
dark, to the top floor of the Chateau, he might have something to give me.
I presented myself at the appointed hour, and was shown by a sentry, who
was standing in the hall, into a little room, the black curtains of which were
tightly drawn. Major General Liggett, the First Corps Commander, sat at
a little table, upon which was spread a map of the Corps front, and facing him,
on the other side of the table, was Brigadier General Craig; the only light
came from two candles. General Craig told me to sit in a chair beside the table,
and gave me a large pad and a pencil, saying that I would probably want to
make some notes. He then proceeded to dictate his observations upon the
day’s operations, criticizing the conduct of the offensive by the commanding
officers in the line whenever he thought criticism was indicated, and not for¬
getting to watch me as I wrote, slowing down his dictation whenever I failed
to keep up. He then gave his estimate of the military situation as it existed
at that hour, and outlined the plan for the next attack which was to take place
early the following morning, giving his reasons for the dispositions, and stating
what it was purposed to accomplish. From time to time General Liggett
would interrupt, making a correction or a change. Now and then the dicta¬
tion would be held up, while they went over again some phase of the operation,
or made some modification in their original plan. What they were giving me,
for immediate transmission to the Army Commander, was the result of their
deliberations before I had entered the room. The Staff did not yet know it,
and they did not want the Staff to know it, until it had been received at First
Army and approved. There were some general observations at the end, and
then I was told that that would be all for that evening. I made my way to the
cellar, tremendously elated, for I could not possibly have had any more red-
hot information than this to send in my dispatches, and I put it all on the
wire without delay. Through General Craig’s kindness, there were several
other such evening dictations, and the material which I was given to send was
always of a similar nature, and calculated greatly to enhance the value of my
reports. This, I think, was exactly what General Craig wished to do. He
wanted to give me a “leg up”, and took that way of doing it.
All messages which the Chief of Staff personally gave me to send, were pre¬
faced by a code word which meant,—“The Chief of Staff directs me to say”.
General Craig was not aware of this. The Chief of Staff of the Third American
Army Corps on our right was Brigadier General Bjomstad, who was a very
able and efficient officer, but who, apparently, was somewhat of an eccentric
in certain respects. One evening, there not being the same pressure of busi¬
ness as usual, General Craig began to dictate in a humorous vein, describing
some device or other, rather unusual in character—something to do with hand
grenades, I think—with which General Bjomstad was making his front line
troops experiment. General Craig made his description of this device sound
perfectly ludicrous. He ended with the remark,—“This contraption is the
invention of a Norwegian named Bjomstad”; he looked quizzically at me, and
WITHOUT CENSOR
303
ended the dictation. He was putting it up to me, and I knew it. He wanted
to see what I would do. He felt sure that I would not dare omit anything
which he had dictated, and he was anticipating a good laugh at my expense
on the part of all concerned when my message, containing this trenchant and
humorous criticism and ending with the sentence quoted above, was received
at First Army Headquarters with my name signed at the end of it. But I
had my line of retreat all ready, although the General did not know it. I pre¬
faced the message with my code word, which made the whole thing something
which the Chief of Staff himself had directed me to say, and escaped from the
hole in which I found myself. Moreover, I found out later at First Army
Headquarters that I had turned the tables on General Craig, and had raised
a laugh at his expense instead, for it was perfectly clear to them what had
been going on, and what his original intention had been.
The First Army Corps had a very remarkable Signal Battalion, composed
of specially selected men, all volunteers, and all of them telephone and wire
experts in civil life. The wire communications were frequently broken by
enemy shelling, but owing to the skill and efficiency which these men displayed,
the interruptions never lasted for long. The telegraph operators were experts,
and, from the start, I was able to obtain such speed in the transmission of
my reports, that when, for instance, a message was dropped on the panel at
First Corps Headquarters by one of our planes returning from the lines, stat¬
ing that elements of our infantry had been seen at a point in advance of our
previously known front line, it was possible to have this information on a type¬
written slip of paper on the desk of the Chief of the Operations Section at
Headquarters First Army within twenty minutes after the aeroplane observer
had first spotted the troops and their position.
By now the Boche was in full retreat up the old Ch&teau-Thierry salient,
but was holding back our pursuit with stubborn rear-guard actions, and with
constant and aggressive counter-attacks. The salient had been full of enemy
supplies, but while the Boche was getting himself out successfully, he neces¬
sarily had to leave a great part of these behind, and we took a number of am¬
munition dumps and great quantities of quartermaster stores. All this told
of the enemy’s breaking morale. He would never have left these supplies
behind him if it could have been avoided, for not only did he lose the immediate
use of them, but he had to mark time until fresh ammunition and stores could
again be sent up from his rear. It was a retreat on his part, and incipient
demoralization had set in.
Centurion.
(To be continued)
THE ART OF LIFE
I T has been said that the Art of Life is the supreme and most difficult of all
arts because it deals primarily with consciousness rather than things, with
causes rather than effects. To mould physical matter into forms of enduring
beauty is no small achievement; but to fashion life itself into some slight sem¬
blance of Truth or Beauty or Goodness is a task no man can hope to accomplish
without help from divine powers.
How is any art learned and finally mastered ? Is there not, first, the persistent
desire to produce something and to do this as well as possible? The effort to
produce or “create”, whether the result be success or failure, awakens the first
dim perception of an ideal that seems existent, somewhere. If the desire be
rooted sufficiently deep to urge unwearied search, the man will discover that his
ideal can be made manifest only through the right shaping of the stubborn and
resistant materials of his own nature, of actual conditions and circumstances.
As a painter compels pigment on canvas to embody in a Madonna’s smile a
glimpse of the Eternal Beauty, or a sculptor compels marble almost to pulse
with breath, so man can compel the harsh and uncouth conditions of his life
gradually to become the embodiment of that ideal which exists, because it
always has existed, in the unseen, timeless world of the Real.
One hundred years ago, in a vigorous and eloquent paragraph of Sartor
Resartus, Carlyle gave poetic expression to this thought: “The situation that has
not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by man. .. . The Ideal is in thyself,
the impediment too is in thyself; thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape
that same Ideal out of. ... 0, thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual,
and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know
this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, ‘here, or nowhere’,
couldst thou only see”. Truly, the seed becomes the plant, and then the
flower, only because the seed has within it the potentialities of both plant and
flower.
For those who would learn the Art of Life, their ideal is not far off or dim or
shadowy, as many have imagined, but substantial and at hand, tangible and
visible in the actual lives of Masters, of Avatars who have incarnated among men,
a Gautama Buddha, a Christ. These, living as men among men of earth, have
given to the world, not alone their doctrine, but the matchless example of their
lives; and the man who would become the follower or disciple of such as these,
needs but to sit down before that consummate model of life, that finished work
of art, to study it, to contemplate it, and, touch by touch, begin to reproduce it.
Let him avoid, however, the mistake of undertaking at once to imitate the
many-sided richness of a Master’s life and nature; that is far too general and
vague an effort, and likely to lead to discouragement. Rather, he should, at
first, make a selection of one or two qualities at most, that appeal particularly to
304
THE ART OF LIFE
305
him. From concentrated attention and effort upon that specific and narrowed
goal, he is far more likely to make headway, than from vague, diffusive, or spas¬
modic bursts of energy. If the particular quality chosen is one that the beginner
knows to be especially lacking in himself, has he not in that void a special in¬
centive towards truly creative work ? Is he, for instance, too easily thrown out
of balance by unexpected incidents, however trivial? Let him take, then, the
peace and serenity of a Master as his goal. Does he shrink from the open
ridicule or half concealed whispers of acquaintances who are suspicious of his
new turn in the road? Let him hold steadily before his mind’s eye the superb
moral courage, the utter fearlessness of the Western Avatar, serenely going up to
Jerusalem to meet certain torture and a felon’s shameful death. Or, does he
find a moving appeal in the life of one less exalted than a Master, some historical
character whose career is conspicuous for sacrifice of self to heroic principles, a
Jeanne D’Arc, a Francis of Assisi, a Roland, or a Washington? Not that he is
limited to history for his inspiration and models: imaginative literature, whether
or not based upon actual events, can supply almost inexhaustible examples of
noble and heroic achievement. Tennyson’s King Arthur, and Hawthorne’s boy,
Ernest (in the story of The Great Stone Face), and many a character and incident
in the volumes of Kipling, Scott, or Bulwer, are a few from a host of examples.
Having recognized an ideal, and recognized it as something far greater than
oneself, one must guard against thinking of it as so remote as to be almost in¬
accessible. We need to remind ourselves again and again that the ideal is at
hand, and, like the Kingdom of Heaven, is within us. “Look within—thou art
Buddha’ , says the Eastern wisdom. That a man admires the selfless devotion
of a King Arthur is proof that that same devotion is already in him, latent and
potential—how else could he admire it in another? The serenity which in
hours of turmoil he longs for, is already his—buried as a seedling in the earth—
needing but to be brought to growth and exfoliation to blossom finally in the
actual. And so with moral courage and any other virtue in the gamut of good
qualities.
The moment an individual begins to desire a particular thing, he begins to
brood upon it; and (as has so often been said) what we permit our attention to
feed upon, that, in the course of time, we inevitably become. This is a mental
and moral law impossible to gainsay. The faces of men and women, their very
walk and carriage and voice, are infallible proof of its universality.
Brooding over one’s ideal, contemplation of it, leads naturally to action, to
virile efforts to bring it into incarnation. Here a new and startling discovery is
sometimes made. The beginner may have imagined that to achieve his ideal he
must leave home and the humdrum duties of home, and travel perhaps to far-off
places beyond the seas. Perhaps he was restrained with difficulty from re¬
pudiating all natural ties and claims—home, family and business. Better
acquaintance with his ideal, however, carries him from day-dreams to manly
action, and the reward of honest effort is the discovery that those far-off seas
and imknown shores await him in his own cellar, attic, and back yard. The
IndflBid Tibet of opportunity lie open for his taking—right in that office or
306
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
class-room where clamorous demands seemed to alienate him hopelessly from
his real quest—in that home where for years he has obstinately refused to give
courteous attention and affectionate interest to the needs of others. Amazed,
he now discovers that his quest lies through “the trivial round, the common
task”. Opportunities for the accomplishment of his first great task, the re¬
pudiation of self, are thick around him; he will find no new and large ones until
he uses the many which are thrust upon him every hour of his days and nights,
begging him to act and to act at once.
“The repudiation of self” is a brief and simple phrase, but really to do it is a
long and arduous task, the most arduous that a man can undertake, and, conse¬
quently, not without periods of discouragement. However, for all phases of that
life-long struggle against self—that something of the Great Self may incarnate—
there is no lack of instruction and encouragement. Poets and philosophers, as
well as Avatars and saints, have written words to hearten us on our way.
We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides;
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides.
But tasks in hours of insight will’d
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.
If we persist honestly in our determination, we become aware of companions,
fellow-soldiers in that spiritual warfare. It is not a lone fight that a man wages,
nor is he an isolated unit threatened by an encompassing universe of hostility.
Men, brothers, are at his side, the noblest of the earth. Still others, greater than
these, make up the exhilarating companionship that marches toward the goal of
life. For the “spirits of just men made perfect”, those who have, in some degree,
consummated their work—great and magnanimous artists—join themselves to
the novices of this Way. However rough the road and dark the night, however
suffocating the pressure that hems us in, it is they who guide us along this “narrow
path” of the Art of Life, which leads to the Eternal.
R.H.B.
Of nothing may we be more sure than this: that if we cannot sanctify our presen
lot , we could sanctify no other. Our heaven and our Almighty Father are there or
nowhere. The obstructions of that lot are given us to heave away by the concurrent
touch of a holy spirit , and labour of strenuous will; its gloom for us to tint with
some celestial light; its mysteries are for our worship; its sorrows for our trust; its
perils for our courage; its temptations for our faith. Soldiers of the Cross , it is
not for us, but for our Leader and our Lord , to choose the field; it is ours , taking
the station which He assigns , to make it the field of truth and honour , though it be
the field of death .— J. Martineau.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
T HE Historian had been asked what he thought of the situation in
Europe. We had been discussing the effect of war upon business con¬
ditions in America, and had agreed that although this country would
go to almost any lengths to remain neutral, it would be difficult, if not im¬
possible, for the Government to maintain such an attitude for long. Before
the Historian could answer our question, a visitor arrived, and it seemed only
courteous to tell him the drift of our conversation. It became evident at once
that he was an ardent Pacifist. “Never again”, he said, “should America be¬
come involved in war. War is inherently evil. We should maintain friendly
relations with our neighbours, thanking God that the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans keep the rest of the world at a safe distance.”
“Forgive me”, the Philosopher commented, “but are you not making some
questionable assumptions? War, you say, is inherently evil; but if Japan
were to land an army on the West Coast and were to destroy San Francisco,
and were then to march her army toward the Rockies, would you say that the
armed effort of this country to throw the Japanese into the Pacific would be
evil? Would you advocate a policy of non-resistance?”
“The Japanese know better than to attempt such a thing”, was the reply.
“But you are not answering my question.”
“There is no need. Your question is based upon an impossibility.”
“That, too, is an assumption. Huxley, perhaps the greatest of the Ag¬
nostics, laid it down that ‘nothing is impossible except a contradiction in
terms’. I must maintain, therefore, that the only factor which might make a
Japanese invasion impossible would be the ability of the American fleet to sink
the Japanese fleet and the transports conveying the Japanese army of in¬
vasion. Would you object to that? It would mean, of course, the death of a
hundred thousand Japanese or so, but, as against that, saving the lives of
more than a hundred thousand peace-loving Americans like yourself. Would
you object to that? Would the act of the American navy be ‘inherently
evil’?”
“I can only repeat”, replied our visitor, “that you are postulating some¬
thing that is fundamentally inconceivable.”
“I am sorry, but if you cannot conceive of it, I can. So, I believe, could
most people. Allow me, however, to ask you another question. Can you con¬
ceive of an invasion of France by Germany,—and, before you reply, let me
remind you that such a thing has happened.”
“I can conceive of it”, was the reply; “but to be able to conceive of an event
does not imply the probability of its occurrence.”
“Fortunately”, smiled the Philosopher, “the question of probability is not
involved. I am glad you can conceive of the repetition of an invasion. Now
3°8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
may I ask: would it be inherently evil or wrong of France to use armed force
to repel the invaders?”
“There will never be any peace in the world”, said our visitor, “until the
nations disarm.”
“That is not an answer to my question; but let me ask you this: do you
think there would be no fighting in Spain to-day if neither side had cannon?”
“How could they fight if they had no deadly weapons?”
“There is always the family carving-knife”, suggested the Philosopher
mildly; “and what is good enough for the family pig is likely to come in handy
against a neighbour. Have you ever seen two unarmed men fight, not accord¬
ing to Queensberry or any other rules, but with naked hands, trying to gouge
out one another’s eyes? I have, and I should have vastly preferred to see them
fighting with swords or revolvers or bombs, while a fight at long range, with
rifles or cannon, would have been humane—positively refined—in comparison.”
The Philosopher is patient, and his whole tone and manner had been polite
throughout; but our visitor’s refusal to meet the problem squarely and honestly
had become exasperating, so there was sharpness in the statement that fol¬
lowed. “The trouble with you is that you have lived all your life under the
protection of an Irish policeman, whose revolver is not visible, though it is
there to be used just the same. You do not realize that you are alive to-day
solely because of that other man’s readiness to draw, shoot, and kill. You
live in a world of utter illusion, refusing to look at any fact which is not pleas¬
ant and which does not fit into your theory of things as they ‘ought’ to be.
You are typical of Pacifists the world over.”
As usual, after a discussion of this sort, our visitor remained of the same
opinion still. It was evident that his views were based, not upon reason or
experience, but solely upon emotional preferences. Hating the idea of war,
both for himself and his children, war forthwith became for him an inexcus¬
able evil, regardless of the motive which prompted it. His fear of it being
infinitely greater than his respect for facts, he did not even have to shake these
off him: they fell off him, as water from a duck’s back. He had, indeed,
reached the point at which facts, in this connection, no longer irritated him;
he smiled at them as one smiles at some childish notion long since discarded.
Most people are like that in some direction or another. All of us live in a
world of illusion; a few know it; the majority, within the universal illusion,
build around them a cocoon of cultivated, carefully conserved illusions, to pro¬
tect themselves against the unpleasantness of the larger unreality. They
seem to find this less trouble (for man, though frenziedly busy, is fundamentally
inert) than forcing their way through the surface of things to the underlying
truth—to the beauty and joy and promise which appearances conceal.
We did not say this, however, to our visitor; it would have been useless.
No man is past praying for; but he was one of the many who are past any
other manner of approach. So we reminded the Historian of our original ques¬
tion: what did he think of the situation in Europe?
“You might as well ask me what I think of the weather”, was his response.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
309
“Naturally I have an opinion as to to-day’s weather, just as you have; but this
is August, and the Quarterly will not appear until October. To-day is sul¬
try, threatening, suffocatingly hot; by the time the merciless and, at this mo¬
ment, perspiring Recorder turns in his ‘copy’, he may be shivering in a gale
of icy wind, with hailstones as big as cherries hurtling at him, amidst ear-
splitting thunder and appalling lightning; on the other hand it may be a bright
autumn day, with the wind set for fair. Like the present weather, the situa¬
tion in Europe changes with disconcerting rapidity, and although matters
seem to be going from bad to worse, anyone who attempted to forecast a
month ahead, would write himself down an ignoramus. Meanwhile, the effort
of the Lodge, as I interpret it, is to force each nation to show its hand, to re¬
veal its real nature and aims. I believe, in other words, not so much because,
as in spite of the Great Pyramid-plus-Bible interpreters, that we are approach¬
ing a Judgment of the Nations,—not a final Judgment, but something re¬
sembling a cyclic stock-taking. Even this country, which seems to care for
nothing except its own material comfort, which seems to seek nothing except
‘prosperity’, may not be hopelessly damned. Events might easily arouse its
somnolent manhood, and might, in time, free it from its prevailing Pacifist,
materialistic obsessions. Instead of feeding themselves on glittering generali¬
ties, Americans might be forced to think —though I suspect it would need a
rain of bombs from the air on New York and Washington, to bring this about.
However, such things might happen.”
“To what kind of ‘glittering generalities’ do you refer?” someone asked.
“This morning’s paper supplies at least one illustration of what I mean.
There is a heading: ‘Text of Roosevelt Letter to Labor’. The letter contains
this paragraph:
I am certain that you and your associates are coming to Washington to join in
a thorough consideration of the vital issues of the time, and to consider how best to co¬
operate in the great task of promoting national progress and of enlarging the sphere of
human rights through democracy of opportunity.
“If the words italicized are not a glittering but quite meaningless generality,
please tell me what they mean. Labour is said to have been delighted with
them, as with similar expressions in the same letter,—such as, ‘seeking new
means for the restoration of equality of opportunity’, and, ‘the restoration
and preservation of human liberty and human rights’. If an ordinary poli¬
tician, instead of the President of the United States, had enunciated those
sentiments, one could imagine him saying to himself, with immense satisfac¬
tion: ‘That will tickle them; it sounds as if it might mean a lot; but no one will
be able to hold me to anything; they can read all the meanings they choose
into it.’ Incidentally—although this is not my point—there is much in that
letter about human rights, and not a single reference to human duties; yet all
of the world’s great men have declared, and all of history proves, that the
performance of a duty is the only possible justification for the assertion of a
righti^Xhus, no man has a right to a day’s pay until he has done his duty,
until l^has done a day’s work. It is a principle of universal application.
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
310
“What, again, is the meaning of ‘democracy of opportunity’? A phrase
without a meaning, so far as I can make out! Democracy means, ‘govern¬
ment by the people’; but how can the people control opportunity? Nature
will have none of it. One man is bom blind; one has a strong body, his neigh¬
bour a weak one; one has a good brain in a sound body, but a weak will, while
another (like Darwin) has a good brain in a sickly body, and revolutionizes
human thought. Is character something that can be legislated into a man?
I could keep a whole Legislature busy on mine, if that would do me any good!
“Theosophy, of course, goes into the problem more deeply than that, by
showing how man creates his own opportunities; but a modicum of thinking
should be sufficient to show the emptiness of such words as ‘democracy of
opportunity’. None the less, not only the American mob, but a large section
of the American ‘intelligentzia’, loves and is bewitched by cant of that kind,—
the more vacuous, the more impressive.’’
“There was a delightful instance of that the other day”, commented the
Student, “in the New York Times , which publishes daily a signed review of
some book which is likely to be read by people of the reviewer’s immediate
circle. The book reviewed was The People , Yes , ‘a magnificent poem’ (accord¬
ing to the reviewer) by Carl Sandburg: ‘a great and moving affirmation of the
sort that could have come only out of America, a statement, in free verse
forms, of much that America has stood for and stands for. It is a vast metric
democratic vista . . . poetry of a vital, stirring American sort.’ One is led to
think of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and perhaps, in another cate¬
gory, of Poe, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell and others.
“Now for the reviewer’s demonstration, his proof: he quotes a verse from
this ‘magnificent poem’. Here it is; I cut it out:
Haven’t the people gone on and on
always taking more of their own?
How can the orders of the day
be against the people in this time?
What can stop them from taking
more and more of their own?”
Some of us gasped; then we laughed,—the “verse” was such an anti-climax
to the praise.
“Inspiring, isn’t it?”
“Very much so”, the Philosopher unexpectedly agreed. “Just a second,
and I’ll be inspired to compose some more.” Then, in a deep voice with a
sort of wail in it, he declaimed:
Oh the people, the people, pouring out of their homes for the movies, the movies,
Like smoke belched from the chimneys of a factory town,
A beastly factory town with smoke-belching chimneys, black and sooty chimneys.
Pouring up to the frost-bitten sky, the aquamarine sky,
Ever-moving, like the movies, the movies;
The People, Yes; the great American people,
Ever struggling for freedom, nobly struggling for freedom, at the movies.”
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
3 ”
“If you were to recite that at a political meeting, you’d bring the house
down”, laughed the Historian.
“What kind of political meeting?”
“Any kind”, was the reply, “though university ‘parlour Bolshies’ would be
especially enraptured. They would think it was something of Carl Sand¬
burg’s very own, presumably unpublished, perhaps in his ‘earlier manner’.”
“Has the New York Times no editor?” someone asked sardonically.
One of the editors of the Quarterly was present, and the question appeared
to worry him.
“You cannot expect an editor to censor everything”, he said; and he would
have added more, but the Recorder, who wanted to get back to the main sub¬
ject, signed to him to wait for a chance later. The editor, by his silence, ac¬
quiesced ; whereupon the Englishman spoke up:
“I agree with the Historian in principle”, he said, “but I like to note redeem¬
ing features; and they exist in this country as in most. The other day I drove
behind a car with these words painted in red on its rear end: ‘Step on it
Buddy. Hell is only half full.’ Bright idea,—what? Too many accidents
and all that sort of thing.”
“But you had no business to see the joke”, expostulated the Student, with
mock indignation (they are very good friends). “Englishmen are notoriously
deficient in a sense of humour.”
“Sad but true”, the other replied. “It is notorious. But I did not suggest
that I saw the joke quite as you did.”
“Score”, muttered the Scotchman.
In response to a mute appeal from the Recorder, the Historian now resumed
his theme. “The subject of ‘glittering generalities’ ”, he said, “was a digres¬
sion, to which I must plead guilty. I had been saying that in my opinion
there is hope, even for America, in what I believe to be the approaching Judg¬
ment of the Nations. There is hope for England, because events may compel
her to make up her mind. Prime Minister Baldwin has no policy, no pro¬
gramme; he is waiting to see what will happen. He hesitates, because England
hesitates,—most Englishmen seeming to feel ‘safer’ under Mr. Baldwin’s
leadership than they would if, unlike themselves, he knew his own mind. Be¬
cause policy is no longer based upon principle, there is confusion everywhere^
about everything. France is a house divided against itself. The present gov¬
ernment, headed by a Jew, is Socialistic, Masonic (which in France means
atheistic), and pro-Soviet,—which throws the best and most intelligent of the
French people into the arms of Fascist Italy. Wherever you look, next to an
intense nationalism—too often perverted to evil ends, as in Germany—you
find that what divides the world are the opposing principles now being fought
out in Spain. But the Judgment of the Nations will not be based upon the
conflict between Left and Right, if only because, taking Russia and Germany
as representative of the two extremes, both are equally wrong,—are merely
opmite aspects of the same evil spirit. The real issue is and ever will be: to
wh^is each nation devoted in its heart ? To Comfort, or Power, or to ‘envy,
312
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
hatred, and malice’, or to the preservation of its own material existence,—or
to God? And events must bring that issue to the surface, must make it para¬
mount, if, as I believe, the time for judgment is at hand. Once more, I do
not mean the final judgment, although it is entirely possible that some na¬
tions, deservedly, will be wiped out of existence. Has not the same thing
happened before? What is left of Assyria, except her bones!
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. . .
. . . Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
‘‘Won’t you go into further detail about the probable alignment of the na¬
tions?” the Student asked.
‘‘That would be to attempt to judge them in advance”, the Historian re¬
plied. ‘‘You can read articles in dozens of magazines published in England
and France, and in two or three published in America, which attempt to do
this. It is for us, as students of Theosophy, and on behalf of the Quarterly,
to emphasize the basic principles at issue. Events will compel the nations
to align themselves, some for God, some for the devil, in obedience to the domi¬
nant motive of each. When an Avatar incarnates, ‘the thoughts of many
hearts’ are revealed, and certain crises or turning-points in the cyclic progress
of the world, have a similar effect on nations. My belief is that we are rapidly
approaching such a crisis. It was pointed out not many days ago in the Wall
Street Journal , that for the first time in history as known to us, men are fighting
against religion as such ,—in Spain to-day; yesterday in Russia.”
‘‘Do you suppose that the Lodge will take any part outwardly in what you
speak of as the Judgment of the Nations?” asked a younger student.
‘‘Impossible to say; even if it did, there is not much likelihood that any but
the few would recognize its intervention. Lord Kitchener was a Lodge instru¬
ment (notice, please, that I do not say or mean, agent), who saved Europe
from destruction—saved civilization from barbarism; but even his admirers
did not guess what lay behind his impenetrable mask. Envious politicians,
such as Lloyd George, worked incessantly for his downfall, and would have
succeeded if his elder brothers in the Lodge, outraged and indignant, had not
called him home through the easy and welcome way of death. The world’s
debt to King Albert of Belgium, and, later, to Clemenceau, was incalculable,
for how could the war have been won without them! But in those two cases
the world, at least in some degree, recognizes its debt, while, in the case of
Kitchener, his slanderers and detractors have succeeded in disparaging him to
an extent which it will take years to counteract.”
‘‘You amaze me!” said the same younger student. ‘T have never thought
of Kitchener in that light. Please tell me why you think he was an instru¬
ment of the Lodge.”
“I cannot give you all my reasons”, was the reply; ‘‘but his entire life sug¬
gests it. Obviously, from first to last, he was ‘a man of destiny’,—was being
prepared for the supreme service he rendered. His brief experience of the
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
3i3
Franco-Prussian war in 1870; his early days in Palestine, Cyprus, Egypt;
later in the Sudan, and as Commander-in-Chief in India, finally in Egypt again—
all combined to give him an experience, both inner and outer, without which
it would have been almost impossible for him to achieve what he did between
August, 1914, and June, 1916, when he was drowned on the ‘Hampshire’. Al¬
ways, and with ever-increasing clearness, he sensed the responsibility that
lay ahead of him. It was his duty, while commanding in India, to prepare
for a possible attack by Russia; but even then, as his letters show, he was
making the Indian position ready for the war he knew would be precipitated
by Germany in Europe. I say he ‘knew’ it, because, in a sense, he was told
such things interiorly. Some people who worked with him received the im¬
pression that he was a slow thinker, or that he was unduly reticent, or that
he was ‘uncanny’ if not ‘queer’. The explanation is that he was always strug¬
gling to ‘bring through’, into the front of his mind, the perception which had
been given him from within, and that he concealed this effort with a mask of
impassivity. He was guided and knew that he was guided,—although it was
not until after his death, I think, that he understood fully the mystery of his
‘double consciousness’. Most people would say that it was his extraordinary
popularity and organizing ability which enabled him to get, first, 100,000 men
within a fortnight, and then, within a year, 2,000,000 men to join the British
army. But they cannot explain his prevision on any such basis as that. He
alone among the military leaders of Europe, foresaw that the war would last
for at least three years, as he announced to a sceptical Cabinet at the first
meeting he attended as Secretary of State for War. Certain of this, he acted
accordingly, refusing to send to the front, men whom he needed to train the
new armies he had set out to create. Sir John French, Sir Henry Wilson, even
Joffre and Foch protested that the war must be over in a few months; that
new armies could not possibly be prepared in time to be of use, and that every
available man should be sent over immediately. Kitchener was immovable;
he knew; the others did not. He would send more than the number of men
France had been promised, but he would not win battles at the cost of losing
the war, and the millions he was determined to raise and train would be needed
if ever the war were to be won.
“Then, Sir John French, Wilson, Sir Archibald Murray all insisted, in ac¬
cord with Joffre, that the British Expeditionary Force should concentrate at
Maubeuge. Kitchener declared Maubeuge to be too far forward, and favoured
Amiens instead. Wilson, in his deplorable diary, relates that on August 12th,
he, Sir John French, Murray, and three French officers, met in Kitchener’s
room at the War Office. ‘There we wrangled with K. for three hours. K.
wanted to go to Amiens. ... He still thinks the Germans are coming north
of the Meuse in great force, and will swamp us before we concentrate.’ The
question had to be referred to the Prime Minister, who felt obliged to support
the majority opinion against Kitchener’s. The British army, therefore, con¬
cent at Maubeuge, was pushed as far forward as it could go, and nar-
rowly^caped annihilation in the course of its heroic retreat after the battle
314
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
of Mons. Kitchener, who had been absent from Europe for many years, with
no opportunity to study the question with either the French or English General
Staff, had ‘divined’ the German plan of envelopment,—the events of the fol¬
lowing week proving that he had been right, and that the commanders of the
English and French armies had not only been wrong, but had been wholly un¬
prepared for what happened. He knew; the others did not. Yet he never
reproached them for this; never claimed credit for his foresight.”
“But you said that he had saved Europe.”
“I did. In the case I have just cited, he was not allowed to save the British
Expeditionary Force from the disasters of its initial retreat; but he was al¬
lowed, shortly afterwards, to prevent the betrayal of our Allies, the occupa¬
tion of Paris by the Germans, and action which would have made impossible
the Allied Victory of the Marne, without which, Germany undoubtedly would
have won the war.”
“How did he do that?”
“He did it by vetoing, on September ist, 1914, the decision of Sir John
French to withdraw the British army from the fighting line, and to make a
definite and prolonged retreat, regardless of the needs of the French armies.”
“I had forgotten that”, said the younger student. “Are the facts on record?”
“Certainly they are”, the Historian replied. Then, turning to the Recorder,
he asked: “Have you Sir George Arthur’s Life of Lord Kitchener within easy
reach?” Supplied with this, he continued, after a moment’s search: “In the
third volume, chapter ninety-seven, you will find all the particulars. Kitchener
first heard of Sir John’s decision from General Robb, the Inspector-General
of Communications in France. In reply to Kitchener’s urgent inquiry, Sir
John telegraphed: ‘I have decided to begin my retirement to-morrow in the
morning behind the Seine in a south-westerly direction west of Paris. This
means marching for some eight days. . . .’ Sir John followed this with a
letter in which he said: ‘I have been pressed very hard to remain, even in
my shattered condition, in the fighting line; but I have absolutely refused to
do so, and I hope you will approve of the course I have taken’.
“Kitchener’s self-control in these circumstances was extraordinary. General
Sir Ian Hamilton, who knew him well, wrote of him that although he was
‘Impassive as a rock in appearance, he was really a bundle of sensitive and
highly-strung nerves kept under control 999 hours out of 1000 by an iron will’.
Yet, instead of giving vent to his indignation, as he might well have done, he
telegraphed to Sir John: ‘I am surprised at your decision to retire behind the
Seine. Please let me know, if you can, all your reasons for this move. What
will be the effect of this course upon your relations with the French Army and
on the general military situation? Will your retirement leave a gap in the
French line or cause them discouragement [Kitchener knew well that both re¬
sults would follow], of which the Germans might take advantage to carry out
their first programme of first crushing the French, and then being free to at¬
tack Russia?’
“Sir John’s reply only reiterated his reasons for the independent retreat
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
3i5
which Kitchener regarded as intolerable, knowing, as Sir George Arthur says,
that the mere appearance of deserting the French when their troops were giv¬
ing ground to the invader and Paris was threatened, would be an irreparable
disaster. Most fortunately, on this occasion, the Prime Minister and the
Cabinet supported Kitchener, who decided to cross the Channel immediately
and to see Sir John in person. They met at the British Embassy in Paris,
at first in the presence of the Ambassador, and of Millerand and Viviani. Ac¬
cording to Arthur Hodges, in his recent book, Lord Kitchener —which is recom¬
mended both by Field-Marshal Sir William Birdwood and by Sir George
Arthur—Sir John obstinately adhered to his previous determination. The
Frenchmen then suggested that Kitchener and Sir John should see Joffre.
Sir John objected. Kitchener then asked for a private room in which he and
Sir John could talk together alone. What happened in that room is not known.
The fate of Europe was at stake, and Kitchener knew it. According to
Hodges, the result of this private interview was that Sir John left the room
‘subdued, sobered and obedient’. What we know is that Kitchener wrote to
Sir John that evening (September 1st), saying he had telegraphed to the Cabi¬
net in London that Sir John’s ‘troops are now engaged in the fighting line,
where he will remain conforming to the movements of the French army’, and
that Kitchener, to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding, concluded his
letter by saying: ‘Please consider it [the decision conveyed in the telegram]
as an instruction ’. Four days later (September 5th), the Battle of the Marne
was begun,—the British army in the fighting line, an essential link in the Allied
chain. All authorities are agreed—German included—that the resulting vic¬
tory won the war. Am I not justified in saying that Kitchener saved Europe?”
The rest of us had listened breathlessly to the Historian’s recital. How it
brought back the agony of that time! None of these details were known then
(save on the ‘inside’); but more than one of us had realized the danger almost
as if the life of our dearest had been at stake. So we did not wait for the
younger student’s assent, but agreed that the Historian had proved his case.
‘‘I should like to understand better about Kitchener”, someone now said.
‘‘Do you mean that he was conscious of his Lodge connection?”
‘‘I think he was one of those incarnations, not infrequent in history, of a
chela of the Lodge who sacrifices, during the whole or the greater part of that
lifetime, much of his awareness of the Lodge, in order to do some special work
in the world. He leaves behind him, as it were, some of his spiritual attainments,
certain strata of his consciousness, partly because these would hinder rather than
aid him in the fulfilment of his mission, partly because the Karma of his nation
and of the world would not justify the outer participation of a fully conscious
ch£la in positions such as Kitchener occupied. The same principle applies to a
few of the Christian saints: they could not have accomplished what they did if
they had been aware, during incarnation, of their Lodge connection; their
personal consciousness had to be coloured by orthodox conceptions.
“fcHtchener was remarkable in many ways. It was said, after his campaign
in tlwfcudan, that women completely lost their heads over him. He received
316
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
innumerable letters from that source. He would not read them, but turned
them over to a friend to bum, with instructions to make sure first that there
was nothing of importance in them. Hodges quotes Lord Edward Cecil as
saying of this that Kitchener ‘placed women on a far higher level than is usual
in these days, and it really hurt him to see or hear anything which touched
his ideal’. He had warm friends among women, the old Marchioness of Salis¬
bury, with whom he constantly corresponded, among them; but, for him,
affection was impossible without respect, and his standards were both high
and exacting.
“I wonder how many of you remember the message he sent to the rank and
file of the Expeditionary Force before its departure for France in August,
1914. He must have been overwhelmed with work, but he made time, none
the less, to draft this message with his own hand:
(This paper is to be considered by each soldier as confidential , and to be kept in his Active
Service Pay Book.)
You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against
the invasion of a common Enemy. You have to perform a task which will need your
courage, your energy, your patience. Remember that the honour of the British Army
depends on your individual conduct. It will be your duty not only to set an example of
discipline and perfect steadiness under fire, but also to maintain the most friendly rela¬
tions with those whom you are helping in this struggle. The operations in which you
are engaged will, for the most part, take place in a friendly country, and you can do your
own country no better service than in showing yourself in France and Belgium in the
true character of a British soldier.
Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. Never do anything likely to injure or
destroy property, and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act. You are sure to
meet with a welcome and to be trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and that
trust. Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly on
your guard against any excesses. In this new experience you may find temptations both
in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all
women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.
Do your duty bravely.
Fear God.
Honour the King.
Kitchener,
F ield-Marshal.
“All his life, Kitchener had practised what he now preached. Not often,
if ever, in history, do you find advice of that kind given by an outstanding
military leader to his troops.
“He had purity in the occult sense also. Sir George Arthur—a man of wide
experience, who ‘knew everybody’, and who acted as Kitchener’s Private
Secretary at the War Office from 1914 to 1916—writes that the masses, usu¬
ally suspicious of prominent soldiers, regarded him as ‘supremely trustworthy
because supremely selfless ’. The same authority says of him: ‘No one could
leave his company without the impression of a personality majestically soli¬
tary in an inexplicable distinction’. The natives of India used to say of him:
4 He should be a King’.”
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
3i7
“ ‘Let us talk of great men’,” quoted the Philosopher. ‘‘What a delight it
is. Please go on. More than ever do we need it in this day of pygmies.”
Said the younger student: ‘‘I agree that you have proved your case, which
was, that Kitchener had saved Europe; but the’facts you have recited, while
of intense interest, might be accounted for, I think, on the basis of extraordi¬
nary but entirely normal military foresight. What did he do which would
suggest supernormal guidance?”
‘‘You must remember”, the Historian replied, ‘‘that those early days of the
war, before Kitchener had raised, armed and trained his millions, and before
trench warfare had stabilized the situation, were immensely critical. Until
the end of 1914, an extra Division of British troops, thrown into the fighting
line at the right moment , made all the difference. I have mentioned already
that Kitchener, resisting the urgent entreaties of Sir John French, of Joffre
and Foch, to send over every available man immediately, took the stand that
he must keep enough of all ranks in England to train the new armies he was
creating, and, at first, to enable him to deal with any attempt by the Germans
to land an invading force on the English coast. Meanwhile, however, he was
desperately anxious to reinforce Sir John in so far as that was wise and pos¬
sible, and was replacing regular British troops, stationed in India, Malta,
Egypt, China, Singapore and other British possessions, either with native
troops from India, or with untrained Territorials from England.
‘‘In reply to a cry of distress from Sir John during the retreat from Mons,
Kitchener wrote him (August 27th):
But pray do not increase my troubles by the thought that if the [Sixth] Division had
been with you, some of your men’s lives might have been saved. Do remember that we
shall have to go through much more fighting before we are out of the war, and that by
prematurely putting all our eggs in one basket we might incur far greater losses. Believe
me, had I been consulted on military matters during the last three years [as Sir John
had been], I would have done everything in my power to prevent the present state of
affairs in which this country finds itself.
‘‘What I am leading up to is that the greatest military genius could not
have foreseen the successive crises which occurred, nor have arranged that re¬
inforcements should reach Sir John, in a seemingly miraculous way, at times
when they made all the difference. Thus, the Fourth Division arrived in time
to prevent disaster at the battle of Le Cateau, while, as Sir George Arthur
says, if the Sixth Division had been despatched immediately after the Fourth,
they would only have been involved in the retreat, and more or less crippled,
without materially affecting the issue; instead of which they arrived fresh on
the scene and contributed greatly to the success of operations at the battle
of the Marne. Even more striking was Kitchener’s provision of the Seventh
to turn the scale against the German onslaught at the first battle of Ypres.
The British Government wanted to keep this Division in England for
Home Defence. No one, by ordinary means, could possibly have foreseen the
dire at Ypres. My thesis is that there were those in the Lodge who did
fores®it, and that they were able to impress Kitchener with their foreknowl-
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
318
edge. Acting on this, he finally succeeded, though with considerable difficulty,
in ‘squeezing’ this extra division from the Government ('squeezing’ is Arthur’s
term), without which—and I again quote Arthur—‘Ypres would almost cer¬
tainly have fallen into the enemy’s hands, Dunkirk must have been let go,
and Calais itself could scarcely have been saved’.
“I am convinced that if, after Kitchener had raised the new armies and
had completed his arrangements for the production of the guns and ammunition
which the new armies would require, he had been placed in command of the
armies in the field, and had been given a free hand without interference by the
politicians,—he would have brought the war to a victorious end before his
estimate of three years had been exceeded: that is, before September, 1917.”
“That would have been several months before America took part in the
actual fighting, would it not?”
“Yes. The American marines were the first unit to take the aggressive,—
at Ch&teau-Thierry (Belleau Wood) in June, 1918.”
“Which means”, commented the Philosopher, “that if the Allies had won
the war by September, 1917, practically no American lives would have been
lost in France; America would have had no opportunity to show what she
can do when she tries, and that, instead of the ‘never again’ attitude of to-day,
this country might almost be looking for a chance to prove that she is not ‘too
proud to fight’!”
“I want to reinforce my opinion that Kitchener, if given the chance, could
have won the war long before November, 1918”, the Historian resumed. “If
you are sufficiently interested in the subject, let me refer you to the defence
of Kitchener in Lord Birkenhead’s Points of View , against the detestable Trag¬
edy of Lord Kitchener by Esher. Have you Birkenhead’s book?” When this
was produced, the Historian continued: “Some of you may remember Lord
Birkenhead better as F. E. Smith. He writes very moderately, evidently
being a personal friend of most of those involved. This is the statement I
had in mind:
Lord Esher has himself recognized the fundamental truth in a passage which exposes
the unsoundness of many of his own conclusions: “If the conduct of the war had been
placed in his [Kitchener’s] hands, if he had had from the first the help of a trained Gen¬
eral Staff Officer of anything like the calibre of Sir Douglas Haig [evidently a pet of
Esher’s] ... he might have altered the course of the War, and ended it in 1916.”
“The point is that Kitchener had no Staff, was compelled to perform its
proper functions as well as his own, and that, above all, his authority, in little
as in big, was at the mercy of politicians, only a few of whom supported
him,—the others either thinking they knew more about war than he did, or
hating him for his popularity and because he stood in the path of their am¬
bition to shine as national saviours.”
“What is known about Kitchener’s religion?” the younger student asked.
“He was not communicative on that or on any other subject”, the Historian
replied. ‘‘It is known that while a very young man at the School of Military
Engineering at Chatham, he was on intimate terms with one of the Instructors,
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
3 i 9
Colonel Williams; that both of them were High Churchmen, and that Wil¬
liams, after Kitchener’s death, wrote of him:
He was a practical and practising Churchman always, and at Chatham habitually
observed fast and festival—the former none too easy a matter in a military mess. He
would whisper to me as we sat next one another, “This is a fast day; we must get hold of
something we don’t like.” ... I am sure his real attitude towards the Church knew no
change.
“In 1876, after his first visit to Palestine, he was enrolled in the Army Guild
of the Holy Standard, of which he remained a member to the end of his life.
Sir George Arthur, who knew him in much later years, says,—here is the
passage:
... It seemed as if a conflict between good and evil had been fought and decided in
his soul at some early stage of existence, as if in respect of so many things that matter so
much to the man of the world, the prince of this world might come to him and find noth¬
ing. . . . Christianity was to him not an attitude but an atmosphere—and an atmos¬
phere wherein he could breathe freely, without stinting his admiration for the intensity
of devotion which marks religion in that East, where so much of his manhood was spent.
“What he was in himself, aided, doubtless, by his long residence in the East,
his close contact with Oriental peoples, and by his command of several Oriental
languages, made Kitchener, not a member of the Society, but a Theosophist
in fact. In a book entitled These Men were Masons , it is said that he was
initiated into Freemasonry while in Egypt in 1883, and that, continuously
active as a Mason, he was ‘exalted’, several years later, into Royal Arch Ma¬
sonry, occupying positions which involved an immense amount of hard work
in order to become proficient. In 1899, he became head of the Craft in Egypt.
While Commander-in-Chief in India, out of the many Lodges there, he se¬
lected the Himalayan Brotherhood Lodge of Simla as his own, and in 1907 had
the unusual experience of initiating an Amir of Afghanistan into Masonry—
the Amir who remained, in spite of German intrigue, staunchly loyal to Eng¬
land throughout the Great War, largely, it is said, on account of his personal
regard for, and sense of indebtedness to, Kitchener. It is interesting to note,
by the way, that the Koran was used during the Amir’s initiation.
“But that is all of the surface,—a pale reflection, at best, of his inner life.
He was a man of meditation and prayer, a mystic in the truest and deepest
sense. .Often during the Great War, in the very early morning, he was to
be seen in Westminster Abbey, in the dim chapel behind Poet’s Comer,
praying.
“With all this, he was a delightful host, entertaining lavishly at Simla and
whenever his position required him to do so. He was happier in his garden,
working and supervising, than anywhere else. He disliked a crowd, but al¬
ways wanted friends with him. He keenly enjoyed humour, so long as it kept
within the bounds of good taste. (Coarse men would have called him a prude,
if they had dared).”
“Why did you lay such emphasis on the name of the Masonic Lodge he
joined in Simla?”
320
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
“Because I think that most students of Theosophy will see the significance
of its title,—not, the Himalayan Lodge, but, the Himalayan Brotherhood
Lodge. Remember that when H.P.B. was in Simla in the early days of the
Society, the Great Lodge was usually referred to as the Himalayan Brother¬
hood. Kitchener’s Masonic Lodge had been named after that Brotherhood,
not after the Himalayan mountains. Does not the fact of his joining it, when
every Lodge in India would have welcomed him, suggest that he knew what he
was doing, and why,—that he believed in, if he did not positively know of, the
existence of the Lodge of Masters?”
“His critics say that he failed, with tragic consequences, to supply the Brit¬
ish armies with the ammunition—especially with the high explosive shells—
which they so badly needed.”
“A cruel and monstrous slander”, the Historian replied. “It is too long a
story to tell this afternoon. I must refer you to the third volume of Arthur’s
Life , or to the inexpensive Kitchener: Soldier and Statesman , by S. Stuart
Starritt. Briefly stated the facts are that when Kitchener was called to the
War Office in 1914, his first comment after he arrived there was: ‘There is
no Army’; second, that he began at once to prepare for an unlimited supply
of ammunition; that this involved the creation of huge new factories, innumer¬
able tools, the training of mechanics, the production of chemicals in quantities
previously unheard of, and that as soon as Kitchener’s organizing ability and
untiring energy and foresight had begun to bear fruit, Lloyd George stepped
in; got himself appointed Minister of Munitions, reaped what Kitchener had
sown; thereafter claimed the credit for Kitchener’s achievement, and has
never protested against the allegation by Kitchener’s enemies that he, Lloyd
George, ‘saved the day’ after the War Secretary’s ‘failure’.”
“Who were his enemies?”
“Politicians: a few of them in the army; most of them—just politicians.”
“It has been said by some of his admirers”, the Philosopher now remarked,
“that if he had been alive during the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919, he
would have adopted the same generous attitude toward the Germans that
he had adopted in South Africa (in opposition to Lord Milner) toward the
Boers. What do you think of that?”
“I am sorry he should have such admirers, for they attribute to him the
sentimentality and rabbit-mindedness which exist in themselves. Kitchener
knew differences, and would not have treated Arabs, Egyptian fellahin, Sikhs,
Pathans, Bengalis, French, Russians, Germans and Boers, as if they were all
alike. The Boers fought like gentlemen, and British Army officers had the
greatest admiration and respect for the Boer leaders—men like Botha, Smuts,
De la Rey, and many others—not merely for their military genius, but for
their humane treatment of prisoners, and for their personal integrity. Kitch¬
ener, who fought them to a finish, knew that they deserved to be treated gen¬
erously, and that, furthermore, once they had signed a Treaty, they would
abide by it. He knew, on the other hand, that the Germans did not fight like
gentlemen; that they were inhuman and untrustworthy. Let me read to you
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
321
what Sir George Arthur, in close daily contact with Kitchener, has to say on
this subject:
Professional zeal and almost cloistral notions of discipline may well have served to
provoke a soldier’s admiration for the splendid military machine revealed in the German
Army. . . . But his military, no less than his human, sense was unutterably shocked by
the baser uses to which a great engine of war was put. His own experience in contact
with Germans had not been specially happy, but he had no reason to suppose that their
fighting, however bitter, would be stained by positive dishonour. It was therefore with
amazement, and some scepticism, that he received the first accounts of outrages in Bel¬
gium and France; and before accepting absolutely the reports of cruelties practised on
British prisoners of war he caused the most careful inquiries to be made. But, when the
truth was established to his full satisfaction, a marked change, to which he never hesi¬
tated to give expression, came over his feeling towards the enemy. 1 he gross insults, the
wanton torture, the more refined cruelties to which gallant folk were subjected, callously,
constantly, and by authority, roused in him hot indignation. He knew how tragically
the sufferings of the soldiers must react on their friends at home, and he knew to his grief
that no exchange of prisoners could be effected before at least the equivalent of Germans
was in our hands. “Until this maimed and scarred generation has passed away”, he ex¬
claimed to a friend, “no German should be allowed anything like permanent residence
or social status in this country. Business must of course be done, but how can there be
friendly relations?” A well-founded report of some more than usually diabolical outrages
on wounded prisoners happened to reach him simultaneously with a note from a pluto¬
crat of enemy birth, who asked him to be a guest on any evening he would name. “I am
too busy fighting the Germans to dine with them”, was the scornful comment.
“I had no intention, however, of occupying the better part of your after¬
noon with talk about Kitchener. The Recorder will not bless me for it!”
“On the contrary”, the Recorder replied, “all is grist that comes to my
mill; besides which, I have been deeply interested.” Then, turning to that
editor of the Quarterly whom he had “headed off” earlier in the conversation,
he added with a laugh: “Now is your chance! It was to be a defence of edi¬
tors, was it not?”
“Not exactly”, was the reply. “My motives are mixed, as you will perhaps
see” (with a slight emphasis, and a smile, at the “perhaps”). “I had wanted
to say something to this effect:—appeals have often been made to members of
the Society to learn to write, that they may contribute to the Quarterly
without imposing too much labour on its editors. Not that its editors set
themselves up as experts (we wish we were). All we claim is that long and
rather exhausting practice has made us alive to certain cruder errors, and has
familiarized us with certain fundamental principles, such as that there cannot
be clear writing except as a result of clear thought,—a principle which applies,
not only to the subject as a whole, and to logical sequence, but to each sen¬
tence and paragraph. Doubtless much escapes us, in spite of our best efforts;
but, partly to illustrate what we mean, and perhaps partly to console ourselves
for many failures, recognized only when the Quarterly is in the hands of
our readers, beyond our reach, we quote from the London Times Literary
Supplement , edited by some of the best among professionals,—and we are
mec^mateurs.
“Sinewing a book of African travel, the writer says (and the editors passed
322
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
it): ‘For this young woman was travelling to Kenya with the apparently ridic¬
ulous hope of patting elephants hot within her.’ As we read it, we caught
our breath: ‘elephants hot within her’—surely, a large order! It could not
mean elephant steak, or elephant cutlet; besides, while some people appear to
gloat over what they eat, we had never heard of their patting the thing once
swallowed—not, that is, in ‘good society’. So, without much effort, we con¬
cluded that what the reviewer had intended to say, and what the editor ought
to have helped him to say, was: ‘For this young woman was travelling to
Kenya with the apparently ridiculous hope, hot within her, of patting elephants’.
“Of course we too might have missed it; but, as editors, we feel aggrieved
when called upon to correct errors of that sort; we say to ourselves—Why on
earth doesn’t the man think! or, If only he had read it aloud to himself, he
might have caught it! For this last method has saved us from many ghastly
blunders, though too often, particularly in recent years, we have persuaded
ourselves that lack of time does not permit this additional penance. Still, we
should like our contributors, or some of them, to remember the lesson of the
‘elephants hot within her’,—even as we shall try to remember it.”
“Who will sum it all up?” the Recorder now asked, turning to the Ancient.
“That there is but one thing in this wide universe which really matters”,
was the response, “namely, a man’s relation with his Master, with his spiritual
Father,—with the Master at the head of his Ray.”
Eagerly one of our visitors, silent till now, interrupted with this question:
“Just what do you mean by a ‘Master’?”
“The stereotyped answer to that is: one who, by his own efforts, has at¬
tained to union with the Supreme. My objection to that answer is that it
may suggest a successful effort to achieve ‘greatness’. The modern mind can¬
not conceive of anything superior to personal success; yet the first step to¬
ward spiritual attainment is to kill out personal ambition, while working as
those work who are ambitious. Attainment means the complete abandonment
of personal considerations. I should prefer to say, therefore, in reply to your
question, that a Master is one whose love, and the wisdom which flows from
perfected love, have not only obliterated self-love, but have raised him to one¬
ness with the Oversoul or Logos.”
“But what do you mean by the Master at the head of my Ray?”
“ ‘Ray’ is a term used to suggest an idea which is also a fact. The universe
is not an accident; it is constructed on the spiritual archetype of mathematical
and architectural principles. In other words, it is a hierarchy of souls, ex¬
tending from the infinitely great to the infinitely little, the greater transmit¬
ting the Divine Light and Life to those of lesser grade in the evolutionary
scale. You receive from the grade above you in the hierarchy, or, as a Hindu
might express it, along the line of the Guruparampara chain, leading back,
or ‘up’, to a Master who, for you, focusses and transmits the Universal Light,
—who, in truth, is the source of your own ‘inner light’, and who, in the case
of a full ch£la, has made that light an extension, as it were, of himself. Your
‘Ray’, then, is the ray of Divine Light which reaches you in that way.”
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
323
“But how am I to know on which Ray I am? How am I to know who, out
of many Masters, my Master is?”
“In the first place, as you were born in that part of the world which is pre¬
sided over by the Master Christ, it may be that he is the head of your Ray
(though that by no means necessarily follows), no matter how much ‘further
back’ or ‘higher up’ that Ray may extend. Did not he speak of his ‘Father in
. Heaven’? And is it not logical to suppose that even that greater ‘Father’
looks up to another Father still greater?
“In the second place, if you are conscious of receiving spiritual help from
anyone who, though far from being a Master, at least knows who his Master
is, you may find in this some indication of the direction in which to look. For
the rest, ‘Seek and ye shall find’.”
“But why is it of such supreme importance ‘to find’? Surely, if you live an
upright and good life, if you work unselfishly for those you love, the future
will take care of itself?”
“My friend”, replied the Ancient, “I am not suggesting that you should
worry about your future. Further, if you are satisfied with yourself as you
now are, and with your life as it now is,—I can only wish you a speedy awak¬
ening. Until then, Theosophy is not for you. I am thinking of those who
feel that life is a heavy burden, and who long for more Light; of those who
find the rewards of life empty, and the best even of their love, a beginning
rather than an end; of those who love justice and hate injustice, and who,
seeing what looks like injustice everywhere, realize their impotence to prevent
it. Above all, I am thinking of those who, in their heart of hearts, feel that
there must be a meaning to things, if only they could find it, and a purpose
in life which escapes them, but which perhaps they might share in, if only
they could look beyond the surface to—they know not what. It is to these
that Theosophy comes as a gift from heaven, with explanation, and a marvel¬
lous promise; for it points to experience as proving that man can know, can
trust the highest and best in himself to lead him to the source of wisdom and
understanding,—to the Master whose child he is, and whom to know and love
and serve is, as I began by saying, the one thing in this wide universe that
really matters, seeing that all else, in comparison, is trivial and lifeless. Apart
from that Master, we may seek wisdom, but shall never find it, may seek peace
of soul, or moral strength, or the ability to help our fellows,—only to learn
at last that we have built on sand, and that ‘dust to dust, ashes to ashes’, is
the end of all earthly or man-made things. ‘Soul of my soul’: until that cry
is wrung from a man as a result of his innermost realization, he has not seen
the way to himself, to his centre; has not, in the true sense, begun to
live. That, as I see it, is the lesson, not only of our talk this afternoon, but of
every hour of our existence. It is the teaching of every religion, and it is the
beginning and end of Theosophy.”
T
CIVILIZATION, THE DEATH OF ART AND BEAUTY 1
I N an interview with the celebrated Hungarian violinist, M. Remenyi, the
Pall Mall Gazette reporter makes the artist narrate some very interesting
experiences in the Far East. “I was the first European artist who ever
played before the Mikado of Japan”, he said; and reverting to that which has
ever been a matter of deep regret for every lover of the artistic and the pic¬
turesque, the violinist added:—
On August 8th, 1886, I appeared before His Majesty—a day memorable, unfortunately,
for the change of costume commanded by the Empress. She herself, abandoning the
exquisite beauty of the feminine Japanese costume, appeared on that day for the first
time and at my concert in European costume, and it made my heart ache to see her. I
could have greeted her had I dared with a long wail of despair upon my travelled violin.
Six ladies accompanied her, they themselves being clad in their native costume, and walk¬
ing with infinite grace and charm.
Alas, alas, but this is not all! The Mikado—this hitherto sacred, mysterious,
invisible and unreachable personage:—
The Mikado himself was in the uniform of a European general! At that time the
Court etiquette was so strict, my accompanist was not permitted into His Majesty’s
drawing-room, and this was told me beforehand. I had a good remplacement , as my
ambassador, Count Zaluski, who had been a pupil of Liszt, was able himself to accom¬
pany me. You will be astonished when I tell you that, having chosen for the first piece
in the programme my transcription for the violin, of a C sharp minor polonaise by Chopin,
a musical piece of the most intrinsic value and poetic depths, the Emperor, when 1 had
finished, intimated to Count Ito, his first minister, that I should play it again. The
Japanese taste is good. I was laden with presents of untold value, one item only being a
gold-lacquer box of the seventeenth century. I played in Hong Kong and outside Can¬
ton, no European being allowed to live inside. There I made an interesting excursion
to the Portuguese possession of Macao, visiting the cave where Camoens wrote his
“Lusiad”. It was very interesting to see outside the Chinese town of Macao a European
Portuguese town which to this very day has remained unchanged since the sixteenth
century. In the midst of the exquisite tropical vegetation of Java, and despite the ter¬
rific heat, I gave sixty-two concerts in sixty-seven days, travelling all over the island,
inspecting its antiquities, the chief of which is a most wonderful Buddhist temple, the
Boro Budhur, or Many Buddhas. This building contains six miles of figures, and is a
solid pile of stone, larger than the pyramids. They have, these Javans, an extraordinarily
sweet orchestra in the national Samelang, which consists of percussion instruments
played by eighteen people; but to hear this orchestra, with its most weird Oriental chorus
1 This article by H. P. Blavatsky appeared in Lucifer in May, 1891. the last number before her death, when she
was too ill to read it in proof. Had she written it in 1936. what would she not have said, considering the world's
vertiginous descent since her day, into further depths of degradation!— Editors. * .
324
CIVILIZATION
325
and ecstatic dances, one must have had the privilege of being invited by the Sultan of
Solo, “Sole Emperor of the World”. I have seen and heard nothing more dreamy and
poetic than the Serimpis danced by nine Royal Princesses.
Where are the Esthetes of a few years ago? Or was this little confederation
of the lovers of art but one of the soap-bubbles of our fin de sibcle , rich in promise
and suggestion of many a possibility, but dead in works and act? Or, if there
are any true lovers of art yet left among them, why do they not organize and
send out missionaries the world over, to tell picturesque Japan and other coun¬
tries ready to fall victims that, to imitate the will-o’-the-wisp of European cul¬
ture and fascination, means for a non-Christian land, the committing of suicide;
that it means sacrificing one’s individuality for an empty show and shadow; at
best it is to exchange the original and the picturesque for the vulgar and the
hideous. Truly and indeed it is high time that at last something should be
done in this direction, and before the deceitful civilization of the conceited na¬
tions of but yesterday has irretrievably hypnotized the older races, and made
them succumb to its upas-tree wiles and supposed superiority. Othenvise, old
arts and artistic creations, everything original and unique will very soon dis¬
appear. Already national dresses and time-honoured customs, and everything
beautiful, artistic, and worth preservation is fast disappearing from view. At
no distant day, alas, the best relics of the past will perhaps be found only in
museums in sorry, solitary, and be-ticketed samples preserved under glass!
. Such is the work and the unavoidable result of our modem civilization. Skin-
deep in reality in its visible effects, in the “blessings” it is alleged to have given
to the world, its roots are rotten to the core. It is to its progress that selfishness
and materialism, the greatest curses of the nations, are due; and the latter will
most surely lead to the annihilation of art and of the appreciation of the truly
harmonious and beautiful. Hitherto, materialism has only led to a universal
tendency to unification on the material plane and a corresponding diversity on
that of thought and spirit. It is this universal tendency which, by propelling
humanity, through its ambition and selfish greed, to an incessant chase after
wealth and the obtaining at any price of the supposed blessings of this life, causes
it to aspire or rather gravitate to one level, the lowest of all—the plane of empty
appearance. Materialism, and indifference to all save the selfish realization of
wealth and power, and the over-feeding of national and personal vanity, have
gradually led nations and men to the almost entire oblivion of spiritual ideals
of the love of nature to the correct appreciation of things . 2 Like a hideou
leprosy our Western civilization has eaten its way through all the quarters of
the globe and hardened the human heart. “Soul-saving” is its deceitful, lying
pretext; greed for additional revenue through opium, rum, and the inoculation
of European vices—the real aim. In the far East it has infected with the spirit
of imitation the higher classes of the “pagans”—save China, whose national
conservatism deserves our respect ; 3 and in Europe it has engrafted fashion —
save the mark—even on the dirty, starving proletariat itself! For the last
thirty years, as if some deceitful semblance of a reversion to the ancestral type
leave this sentence as printed in Lucifer, in spite of an obvious omission or error by the printer.— Editors.
[China also has now fallen! In 1891. American-educated Chinese—old bottles filled with new and very
raw wine— had not yet destroyed the conservatism for which H.P.B. expressed respect.— Editors.
326
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
—awarded to men by the Darwinian theory in its moral added to its physical
characteristics—were contemplated by an evil spirit tempting mankind, almost
every race and nation under the sun in Asia has gone mad in its passion for
aping Europe. This, added to the frantic endeavour to destroy Nature in every
direction, and also every vestige of older civilizations—far superior to our own in
arts, godliness, and the appreciation of the grandiose and harmonious—must
result in such national calamities. Therefore do we find hitherto artistic and
picturesque Japan succumbing wholly to the temptation of justifying the “ape
theory” by simianizing its populations in order to bring the country on a level
with canting, greedy and artificial Europe!
For certainly Europe is all this. It is canting and deceitful from its diplomats
down to its custodians of religion, from its political down to its social laws,
selfish, greedy and brutal beyond expression in its grabbing characteristics.
And yet there are those who wonder at the gradual decadence of true art, as if
art could exist without imagination, fancy, and a just appreciation of the beau¬
tiful in Nature, or without poetry and high religious, hence, metaphysical
aspirations! The galleries of paintings and sculpture, we hear, become every
year poorer in quality, if richer in quantity. It is lamented that while there is a
plethora of ordinary productions, the greatest scarcity of remarkable pictures
and statuary prevails. Is this not most evidently due to the facts that (a) the
artists will very soon remain with no better models than nature morte (or “still
life”) to inspire themselves with; and ( b ) that the chief concern is not the crea¬
tion of artistic objects, but their speedy sale and profits? Under such condi¬
tions, the fall of true art is only a natural consequence.
Owing to the triumphant march and the invasion of civilization, Nature, as
well as man and ethics, is sacrificed, and is fast becoming artificial. Climates
are changing, and the face of the whole world will soon be altered. Under the
murderous hand of the pioneers of civilization, the destruction of whole primeval
forests is leading to the drying up of rivers, and the opening of the Canal of Suez
has changed the climate of Egypt as that of Panama will divert the course of the
Gulf Stream. Almost tropical countries are now becoming cold and rainy, and
fertile lands threaten to be soon transformed into sandy deserts. A few years
more and there will not remain within a radius of fifty miles around our large
cities one single rural spot inviolate from vulgar speculation. In scenery, the
picturesque and the natural are daily replaced by the grotesque and the artificial.
Scarce a landscape in England but the fair body of nature is desecrated by the
advertisements of “Pears’ Soap” and “Beecham’s Pills”. The pure air of the
country is polluted with smoke, the smells of greasy railway-engines, and the
sickening odours of gin, whiskey, and beer. And once that every natural spot
in the surrounding scenery is gone, and the eye of the painter finds but the
artificial and hideous products of modem speculation to rest upon, artistic
taste will have to follow suit and disappear along with them.
“No man ever did or ever will work well, but either from actual sight, or
sight of faith”, says Ruskin, speaking of art. Thus, the first quarter of the
coming century may witness painters of landscapes, who have never seen an
CIVILIZATION
327
acre of land free from human improvement; and painters of figures whose ideas
of female beauty of form will be based on the wasp-like pinched-in waists of
corseted, hollow-chested and consumptive society belles. It is not from such
models that a picture deserving of the definition of Horace—“a poem without
words”—is produced. Artificially draped Parisiennes and London Cockneys
sitting for Italian contadini or Arab Bedouins can never replace the genuine
article; and both free Bedouins and genuine Italian peasant girls are, thanks to
“civilization”, fast becoming things of the past. Where shall artists find gen¬
uine models in the coming century, when the hosts of the free Nomads of the
Desert, and perchance all the negro-tribes of Africa—or what will remain of
them after their decimation by Christian cannons, and the rum and opium of the
Christian civilizer—will have donned European coats and top hats? And that
this is precisely what awaits art under the beneficial progress of modem civiliza¬
tion, is self-evident to all.
Aye! let us boast of the blessings of civilization, by all means. Let us brag
of our sciences and the grand discoveries of the age, its achievements in mechani¬
cal arts, its railroads, telephones and electric batteries; but let us not forget,
meanwhile, to purchase at fabulous prices (almost as great as those given in
our day for a prize dog, or an old prima donna’s song) the paintings and statuary
of uncivilized, barbarous antiquity and of the middle ages: for such objects of
art will be reproduced no more. Civilization has tolled their eleventh hour. It
has rung the death-knell of the old arts, and the last decade of our century is
summoning the world to the funeral of all that was grand, genuine, and original
in the old civilizations. Would Raphael, O ye lovers of art, have created one
single of his many Madonnas, had he had, instead of Fomarina and the once
Juno-like women of the Trastevero of Rome to inspire his genius, only the present-
day models, or the niched Virgins of the nooks and comers of modem Italy, in
crinolines and high-heeled boots? Or would Andrea del Sarto have produced his
famous “Venus and Cupid” from a modem East End working girl—one of the
latest victims to fashion—holding under the shadow of a gigantic hat & la
mousquetaire , feathered like the scalp of an Indian chief, a dirty, scrofulous brat
from the slums? How could Titian have ever immortalized his golden-haired
patrician ladies of Venice, had he been compelled to move all his life in the so¬
ciety of our actual “professional beauties”, with their straw-coloured, dyed
capillaries that transform human hair into the fur of a yellow Angora cat ? May
not one venture to state with the utmost confidence that the world would never
have had the Athena Limnia of Phidias—that ideal of beauty in face and form —
had Aspasia, the Milesian, or the fair daughters of Hellas, whether in the days
of Pericles or in any other, disfigured that “form” with stays and bustle, and
coated that “face” with white enamel, after the fashion of the varnished
features of the mummies of the dead Egyptians . 4
4 It would be a joy for our readers and for us if H.P.B. were alive to criticize Epstein and others of his kind, and
were able to express herself freely on the subject of gore-coloured finger-nails, yellow-ochre lips, and the unrestricted
nudities of recent years. Automobiles, airplanes, wireless, the radio, the cinema, and "jazz”—all of them develop¬
ments since 1891—would have given her further cause, and opportunity, to denounce the false gods she detested,
andj^msist that the real, the true, and the beautiful must for ever be the fruits of civilization, if it is to be worthy
of tnBfcame.— Editors.
328
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
We see the same in architecture. Not even the genius of Michael Angelo
himself could have failed to receive its death-blow at the first sight of the Eiffel
Tower, or the Albert Hall, or more horrible still, the Albert Memorial. Nor,
for the matter of that, could it have received any suggestive idea from the
Colosseum and the palace of the Caesars, in their present whitewashed and re¬
paired state! Whither then shall we, in our days of civilization, go to find the
natural, or even simply the picturesque? Is it still to Italy, to Switzerland or
Spain? But the Bay of Naples—even if its waters be as blue and transparent
as on the day when the people of Cumae selected its shores for a colony, and its
surrounding scenery as gloriously beautiful as ever—thanks to that spirit of
mimicry which has infected sea and land, has now lost its most artistic and
most original features. It is bereft of its lazy, dirty, but intensely picturesque
figures of old; of its lazzaroni and barcarolos, its fishermen and country girls.
Instead of the former’s red or blue Phrygian cap, and the latter’s statuesque,
half-nude figure and poetical rags, we see now-a-days but the caricatured speci¬
mens of modern civilization and fashion. The gay tarantella resounds no longer
on the cool sands of the moonlit shore; it is replaced by that libel on Terpsichore,
the modern quadrille, in the gas-lit, gin-smelling sailor’s trattorias. Filth still
pervades the land, as of yore; but it is made the more apparent on the thread¬
bare city coat, the mangled chimney-pot hat and the once fashionable, now
cast-away European bonnet. Picked up in the hotel gutters, they now grace
the unkempt heads of the once picturesque Neapolitans. The type of the latter
has died out, and there is nothing to distinguish the lazzaroni from the Venetian
gondoliere , the Calabrian brigand, or the London street-sweeper and beggar.
The still, sunlit waters of Canal Grande bear no longer their gondolas, filled on
festival days with gaily dressed Venetians, with picturesque boatmen and girls.
The black gondola that glides silently under the heavy carved balconies o£ the old
patrician palazze, reminds one now more of a black floating coffin, with a solemn-
looking, dark-clothed undertaker paddling it on towards the Styx, than of the
gondola of thirty years ago . 6 Venice looks more gloomy now than during the
days of Austrian slavery from which it was rescued by Napoleon III. Once on
shore, its gondoliere is scarcely distinguishable from his “fare”, the British M. P.
on his holiday-tour in the old city of the Doges. Such is the levelling hand of
all-destroying civilization.
It is the same all over Europe. Look at Switzerland. Hardly a decade ago,
every Canton had its distinguishing national costume, as clean and fresh as it
was peculiar. Now the people are ashamed to wear it. They want to be mis¬
taken for foreign guests, to be regarded as a civilized nation which follows suit
even in fashion. Cross over to Spain . 6 Of all the relics of old, the smell of rancid
oil and garlic is alone left to remind one of the poetry of the old days in the
country of the Cid. The graceful mantilla has almost disappeared; the proud
hidalgo-beggar has taken himself off from the street-comer; the nightly seren-
* To-day. even the black gondola is a relic; motor-boats have taken their place. Motor-boats are faster, and
Venice must be "done” in twenty-four hours.— Editors.
• And Spain to-day. in the throes of a savage civil war, with a hideous outcome, probably, whichever side winsl
—Editors.
CIVILIZATION
329
ades of love-sick Romeos are gone out of fashion; and the duenna contem¬
plates going in for woman’s rights. The members of the “Social Purity” Asso¬
ciations may say “thank God” to this, and lay the change at the door of Chris¬
tian and moral reforms of civilization. But has morality gained anything in
Spain with the disappearance of the nocturnal lovers and duennas? We have
every right to say, no. A Don Juan outside a house is less dangerous than one
inside. Social immorality is as rife as ever—if not more so—in Spain, and it
must be so, indeed, when even Harper's Guide Book quotes in its last edition as
follows: “Morals in all classes, especially in the higher, are in the most degraded
state. Veils, indeed, are thrown aside, and serenades are rare, but gallantry and
intrigue are as active as ever. The men think little of their married obligations;
the women . . . are willing victims of unprincipled gallantry” (Spain, “Ma¬
drid,” page 678). In this, Spain is but on a par with all other countries civilized
or now civilizing, and is assuredly not worse than many another country that
could be named; but that which may be said of it with truth is, that what it has
lost in poetry through civilization, it has gained in hypocrisy and loose morals.
The Cortejo has turned into the petit crevt; the castanets have become silent, be¬
cause, perhaps, the noise of the uncorked champagne bottles affords more ex¬
citement to the rapidly civilizing nation; and the Andalouse au teint bruni having
taken to cosmetics and face-enamel, “la Marquesa d’Almedi” may be said to
have been buried with Alfred de Musset.
The gods have indeed been propitious to the Alhambra. They have per¬
mitted it to be burnt before its chaste Moresque beauty had been finally dese¬
crated, as are the rock-cut temples of India, the Pyramids and other
relics by drunken orgies. This superb relic of the Moors had already suffered,
once before, by Christian improvement. It is a tradition still told in Granada,
and history too, that the monks of Ferdinand and Isabella had made of Alham¬
bra—that “palace of petrified flowers dyed with the hues of the wings of angels”
—a filthy prison for thieves and murderers. Modern speculators might have
done worse; they might have polluted its walls and pearl-inlaid ceilings, the
lovely gilding and stucco, the fairy-like arabesques, and the marble and gossamer¬
like carvings, with commercial advertisements, after the Inquisitors had already
once before covered the building with whitewash and permitted the prison-
keepers to use Alhambra Halls for their donkeys and cattle. Doubting but
little that the fury of the Madrilenos for imitating the French and English must
have already, at this stage of modern civilization, infected every province of
Spain, we may regard that lovely country as dead. A friend speaks, as an eye¬
witness, of “cocktails” spilled near the marble fountain of the Alhambra, over
the blood-marks left by the hapless Abancerages slain by Boabdil, and of a
Parisian cancan pur sang performed by working girls and soldiers of Granada,
in the Court of Lions!
But these are only trifling signs of the time and the spread of culture among
the middle and the lower classes. Wherever the spirit of aping possesses the
heart of the nation—the poor working classes—there the elements of nationality
disappear and the country is on the eve of losing its individuality and all things
1
330
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
change for the worse. What is the use of talking so loudly of “the benefits of
Christian civilization”, of its having softened public morals, refined national
customs and manners, etc., etc., when our modem civilization has achieved quite
the reverse! Civilization has depended, for ages, says Burke, “upon two prin¬
ciples . . . the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion”. And how many
true gentlemen have we left, when compared even with the days of half-barbarous
knighthood? Religion has become canting hypocrisy and the genuine religious
spirit is regarded now-a-days as insanity. Civilization, it is averred, “has de¬
stroyed brigandage, established public security, elevated morality and built
railways which now honeycomb the face of the globe”. Indeed? Let us analyze
seriously and impartially all these “benefits” and we shall soon find that civili¬
zation has done nothing of the kind. At best it has put a false nose on every
evil of the Past, adding hypocrisy and false pretence to the natural ugliness of
each. If it is true to say that it has put down in some civilized centres of Europe
—near Rome, in the Bois de Boulogne or on Hampstead Heath— banditti and
highway-men, it is also as true that it has, thereby, destroyed robbery only as a
speciality, the latter having now become a common occupation in every city
great or small. The robber and cut-throat has only exchanged his dress and
appearance by donning the livery of civilization—the ugly modern attire. In¬
stead of being robbed under the vault of thick woods and the protection of
darkness, people are robbed now-a-days under the electric light of saloons and
the protection of trade-laws and police-regulations. 7 As to open day-light
brigandage, the Mafia of New Orleans and the Mala Vita of Sicily, with
high officialdom, population, police, and jury forced to play into the hands
of regularly organized bands of murderers, thieves and tyrants 8 in the full glare
of European “culture”, show how far our civilization has succeeded in establish¬
ing public security, or Christian religion in softening the hearts of men and the
wdys and customs of a barbarous past. Modern Cyclopaedias are very fond
of expatiating upon the decadence of Rome and its pagan horrors. But if the
latest editions of the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography were honest
enough to make a parallel between those “monsters of depravity” of ancient
civilization, Messalina and Faustina, Nero and Commodus, and modern Euro¬
pean aristocracy, it might be found that the latter could give odds to the former
—in social hypocrisy, at any rate. Between “the shameless and beastly de¬
bauchery” of an Emperor Commodus, and as beastly a depravity of more than
one “Honourable”, high official representative of the people, the only difference
to be found is that while Commodus was a member of all the sacerdotal colleges
of Paganism, the modem debauchee may be a high member of the Evangelical
Christian Churches, a distinguished and pious pupil of Moody and Sankey and
what not. It is not the Calchas of Homer, who was the type of the Calchas in
the Operette “La Belle Helene”, but the modem sacerdotal Pecksniff and his
followers.
As to the blessings of railways and “the annihilation of space and time”,
7 Fifth Avenue in New York to-day has as many robberies and murders as any locality in the past.— Editors.
* Read the “Cut Throats' Paradise" in the Edinbitrgh Review for April. 1877. and the digest of it in the Pall Mall
Gazette of April 15th, 1891. “Murder as a Profession" (H.P.B.).
CIVILIZATION
33i
it is still an undecided question—without speaking of the misery and starvation
the introduction of steam engines and machinery in general has brought for
years on those who depend on their manual labour—whether railways do not
kill more people in one month than the brigands of all Europe used to murder in
a whole year. The victims of railroads, moreover, are killed under circumstances
which surpass in horror anything the cut-throats may have devised. One reads
almost daily of railway disasters in which people are “burned to death in the
blazing wreckage”, “mangled and crushed out of recognition” and killed by
dozens and scores. 9 This is a trifle worse than the highwaymen of old Newgate.
Nor has crime been abated at all by the spread of civilization; though owing
to the progress of science in chemistry and physics, it has become more secure from
detection and more ghastly in its realization than it ever has been. Speak of
Christian civilization having improved public morals; of Christianity being the
only religion which has established and recognized Universal Brotherhood! Look
at the brotherly feeling shown by American Christians to the Red Indian and
the Negro, whose citizenship is the farce of the age. Witness the love of the
Anglo-Indians for the “mild Hindu”, the Mussulman, and the Buddhist. See
“how these Christians love each other” in their incessant law litigations, their
libels against each other, the mutual hatred of the Churches and of the sects.
Modern civilization and Christianity are oil and water—they will never mix.
Nations among which the most horrible crimes are daily perpetrated; nations
which rejoice in Tropmanns and Jack the Rippers, in fiends like Mrs. Reeves,
the trader in baby slaughter—to the number of 300 victims as is believed—for
the sake of filthy lucre; nations which not only permit but encourage a Monaco
with its hosts of suicides, that patronize prize-fights, bull-fights, useless and
cruel sport and even indiscriminate vivisection—such nations have no right to
boast of their civilization. Nations furthermore which from political considera¬
tions, dare not put down slave-trade once for all , and out of revenue-greed,
hesitate to abolish opium and whiskey trades, fattening on the untold misery
and degradation of millions of human beings, have no right to call themselves
either Christian or civilized. A civilization finally that leads only to the de¬
struction of every noble, artistic feeling in man, can only deserve the epithet of
barbarous. We, the modern-day Europeans, are Vandals as great, if not
greater than Attila with his savage hordes.
Consummatum est. Such is the work of our modern Christian civilization and
its direct effects. The destroyer of art, the Shylock, who, for every mite of gold
it gives, demands and receives in return a pound of human flesh, in the heart-
blood, in the physical and mental suffering of the masses, in the loss of every¬
thing true and lovable—can hardly pretend to deserve grateful or respectful
• To take one instance. A Reuter’s telegram from America, where such accidents are almost of daily occurrence,
gives the following details of a wrecked train: ‘‘One of the cars which was attached to a gravel train and which
contained five Italian workmen, was thrown forward into the centre of the wreck, and the whole mass caught fire.
Two of the men were killed outright and the remaining three were injured, pinioned in the wreckage. As the
flames reached them their cries and groans were heartrending. Owing to the position of the car^and the intense
heat the rescuers were unable to reach them, and were compelled to watch them slowly burn to death. It is under¬
stood that all the victims leave families.” (To the foregoing footnote by H.P.B., the editors of the Quarterly add
tlu^^e total of deaths resulting from automobile accidents in America in 1935. exceeded the total of killed in
th^l^ernan army during the Great War.j
332
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
recognition. The unconsciously prophetic fin de sikcle , in short, is the long ago
foreseen fin de cycle; when, according to Manjundtha Sutra , “Justice will have
died, leaving as its successor blind Law, and as its Guru and guide— Selfishness;
when wicked things and deeds will have to be regarded as meritorious, and holy
actions as madness”. Beliefs are dying out, divine life is mocked at; art and
genius, truth and justice are daily sacrificed to the insatiable mammon of the
age—money grubbing. The artificial replaces everywhere the real, the false
substitutes the true. Not a sunny valley, not a shadowy grove left immaculate
on the bosom of mother nature. And yet what marble fountain in fashionable
square or city park, what bronze lions or tumble-down dolphins with upturned
tails can compare with an old worm-eaten, moss-covered, weather-stained country
well, or a rural windmill in a green meadow! What Arc de Triomphe can ever
compare with the low arch of Grotto Azzurra at Capri, and what city park or
Champs Elys^es, rival Sorrento, “the wild garden of the world”, the birth-place
of Tasso? Ancient civilizations have never sacrificed Nature to speculation,
but holding it as divine, have honoured her natural beauties by the erection of
works of art, such as our modern electric civilization could never produce even
in dream. The sublime grandeur, the mournful gloom and majesty of the
ruined temples of Paestum, that stand for ages like so many sentries over
the sepulchre of the Past and the forlorn hope of the Future amid the mountain
wilderness of Sorrento, have inspired more men of genius than the new civiliza¬
tion will ever produce. Give us the banditti who once infested these ruins, rather
than the railroads that cut through the old Etruscan tombs; the first may take
the purse and life of the few; the second are undermining the lives of the mil¬
lions by poisoning with foul gases the sweet breath of the pure air. In ten years,
by century the XXth, Southern France with its Nice and Cannes, and even
Engadine, may hope to rival the London atmosphere with its fogs, thanks to
the increase of population and changes of climate. We hear that Speculation
is preparing a new iniquity against Nature: smoky, greasy, stench-breathing
Juniculaires (baby-railways) are being contemplated for some world-renowned
mountains. They are preparing to creep like so many loathsome, fire-vomiting
reptiles over the immaculate body of the Jungfrau, and a railway-tunnel is to
pierce the heart of the snow-capped Virgin mountain, the glory of Europe.
And why not? Has not national speculation pulled down the priceless remains
of the grand Temple of Neptune at Rome, to build over its colossal corpse and
sculptured pillars the present Custom House?
Are we so wrong then, in maintaining that modem civilization with its Spirit
of Speculation is the very Genius of Destruction; and as such, what better words
can be addressed to it than this definition of Burke:—
“A Spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and con¬
fined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look back¬
ward to their ancestors.” H.P.B.
REVIEWS
mr
w 1 —‘W
«3BL
^oo
Psycho-Analysis and Social Psychology , by William McDougall, F.R.S.;
Methuen & Co. Ltd., London; price, 75. 6 d.
Professor McDougall has undertaken a disagreeable but apparently neces¬
sary task. He has exposed the errors and futilities of psycho-analysis with
“ruthless frankness”. It is not Professor McDougall’s fault that his book
fills the reader’s mind with disgust, if not with despair. In order to make his
criticism effective, he has been obliged to quote freely from Freudian sources.
It is a commentary upon the gullibility and the degeneracy of the so-called
“high-brow” mind, that Freud’s filthy musings should ever have been taken
seriously by more than a few cranks, or that it should have seemed expedient
for a scientist of Professor McDougall’s rank to take serious notice of these
productions of a diseased intellect.
It is a terrible fact, however, that Freud has directly or indirectly influenced
the thoughts and lives of thousands of people. It is terrible, because, as has
been said, Freud has probably done more to corrupt the human mind and to
soil the image of every normal human relationship, than any other individual
known to history. The Dark Powers who obstruct the true progress of hu¬
manity, could have chosen no instrument better fitted for their purpose. It
is impossible to go into detail here to prove this point, nor indeed do we recom¬
mend anyone to think about these matters at all, unless it becomes a positive
duty, which is fortunately apt to be a rare occurrence.
Our only quarrel with Professor McDougall is that he is not “ruthless”
enough; that he still seems to imagine some sort of entente to be possible be¬
tween psycho-analysts and respectable people like himself. As he points out,
Freud may be given some credit for his emphasis upon the connection be¬
tween abnormal psychic states and various neuroses, as well as for his explora¬
tion of the sub-conscious memories, complexes and inhibitions which determine
so much of the average man’s conscious behaviour. But after allowing full
credit with interest, we return to the evidence that Freud has vitiated his dis¬
coveries—if they be discoveries—by one gross misinterpretation after another.
He can be false to truth, to logic, and to nature, in more ways than would
seem possible for a single mind.
The havoc wrought by what Professor McDougall calls the “pan-sexual
doctrine”, is obvious enough. But in vet another way Freud’s teachings have
•
333
334
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
acted like poison upon the minds of his contemporaries. Professor McDougall
quotes some remarks of a medical psychologist, Dr. W. H. Sheldon, on “the
emergence of the waster mind to dominance in our civilization”.
The real enemies of character are not to be found among atheists or critics of religion
or non-conformists, but they are lusty noise-loving expressionists, who believe in living
for the moment, in having their fling, and who say, “Let’s have no more long faces, no
inhibitions, and no wet blankets at our party”. They are the good livers, unchastened,
unreverent souls. Popularly they have become associated with the term extravert,
though it would be more meaningful to call them the feebly inhibited. They live at the
surface of awareness and are dissociated from their own deeper consciousness. They
have moved sharply away from the principle of reminiscent contemplation, and have
gravitated far over toward the principle of extreme sensuality, thus dissociating the
conscious focus from the deeper levels. They perforce seek over-stimulation, love city
life, and have a profound terror of the inferiority complex. Their God is Expression,
and their spiritual counsellors are the Freudian psycho-analysts. Flushed with the
successful overthrow of Christian theology, they are resolved to smash away all that was
ever associated with the spiritual, or religious, or reminiscent, or chastened mental
outlook.
It is just to remark, however, that Freud is not the only psychologist who
can be held responsible for the prevalence of the “waster mind”. Practically
without exception, all modem psychologists are in agreement as to one dogma,
that the whole of the consciousness of civilized man can be explained by the
study of savages and animals, and in no other way. The higher is interpreted
in terms of the lower,—religion, for example, being regarded as a survival of
taboo and totemism. Is it any wonder that the popular mind becomes con¬
fused, or that self-indulgence is justified in the “high-brow’s” alleged intellect
by some vague notion that at all costs he must free himself from primitive
constraints ?
There is no hope for psychology—quite apart from psycho-analysis—unless
it discovers the existence and nature of the soul. Moreover, as the great re¬
ligions and philosophies have always taught, the soul is not a product of ani¬
mal evolution, but is, as it were, an entity of a higher order which incarnates
in a physical body when this is ready to receive it. The function of the true
psychologist is very noble, being indistinguishable from that of the true priest.
It is, first, to find the soul within his own consciousness, his own real self; and
then to aid other men to repeat in their own experience his revelation. After all,
psychology is, by definition, the science of the psuche , that is, of the soul.
S.L.
India Mosaic , by Mark Channing; J. B. Lippincott Co., 1936; price, $2.75.
This is a book that can be recommended highly to all students of Theos¬
ophy. It is first-class light reading. The author served in the Indian Army
for several years, and at first adopted the customary attitude of good-natured
disdain toward the Indian people and their religions. His experience, interest¬
ing throughout, he relates with humour, and with none of the coarseness which
disfigures when it does not debase so many modem books of a similar kind.
REVIEWS
335
His duties took him from as far south as Ceylon, to Peshawar and Srinagar
in the extreme north. He was evidently a bom soldier and first-class officer.
Little by little his experience led him to seek the heart of India, instead of
turning from its surface appearance with something approaching disgust; and
he found what he sought, chiefly because he evidently had a heart to guide
him in his search. Winning the trust, respect, and in many cases the warm
affection of the natives, he found it easy to reciprocate. By no means blind
to the darker side of Indian life—and it is appallingly dark—he became
convinced that the good greatly outweighed the evil. Finally he met a guru
of the better kind, who seems to have known him in some Hindu incarnation
of the past, and who opened his eyes to many of the eternal verities; in
other words, to the principles of Theosophy,—and, so far as can be deter¬
mined from this book, to a genuine Theosophy. In any case, the guru's teach¬
ing did not turn him into a socialist, or into a follower of Gandhi, or into the
type of fanatic who would turn the Western world from Christ to Hinduism.
On the contrary, he declares that “there is nothing in the spiritual concept of
the Hindu philosophy that runs counter to the teachings of Christ”, while,
as to the political situation, he says that “at present India is unfit to govern
herself”, and that “the problem of India is neither political nor social, but
religious”—a profound truth which Indian “reformers” have proved themselves
incapable of understanding.
Students of Theosophy can never forget the debt they owe to India through
the labours of H.P.B. and Judge. It is a delight, therefore, to be reminded of
India’s better, nobler qualities, after having suffered for years from the “bawl¬
ing monstrosity” (to use the author’s term for it) represented as being India,
by Indian politicians, by the radical press of England, and by the entire press
of the United States. The harm that has been done to the honour and reputa¬
tion of India by the self-styled patriots of the National Indian Congress, by
Gandhi, Mrs. Annie Besant and others, is incalculable, but a book like this,
which is in no way controversial, will help to off-set the effect of their
propaganda. T.
The Problem of Poverty , A Plain Statement of Economic Fundamentals , by
John Rustgard; D. Appleton-Century Co., N. Y.; price, $2.00.
A copy of this book was recently presented to one of our members by an,
official of the Publishing Company which handles it, with the remark that it
would not sell because its economics was “too hard boiled” to suit the popular
taste. This unpopular judgment seemed a promise of its real value, a promise
which was thoroughly fulfilled by its perusal. In handing it to us for review,
he assures us that it is the simplest and sanest economic treatise he has read.
The problem of poverty is the age-old problem of the masses, and since the
democratic masses are at present asserting the power vested in them, and
attempting to fit their economics to their desires, an honest study of economic
fundamentals is of great interest and importance. John Rustgard sets forth
here an interpretation, clarifying if not encouraging, of the present politico-
336
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
economic situation based upon statistics and the facts of his own wide experi¬
ence. It is refreshing, after so much tenuous academic theorizing, to come
upon a writer who says in effect: I have lived with lumbermen, fishermen,
and coal miners, and I know that the vast majority of labourers behave like
children in money matters; the problem of poverty is the problem of moral
deficiency and irresponsibility.
Recognizing that law governs the universe, political and economic as well
as physical, the author shows that obedience to law conduces to economic
prosperity and political well-being, and that arbitrary legislation in any phase
of economics, disrupts the equilibrium which nature tries to maintain and
causes a maladjustment and an unfair distribution of the products of national
wealth. For instance, if a disproportionately high wage is insisted upon by
the building-trade unions, labourers in other fields of endeavour (at present
the farmer) must suffer a corresponding decrease in income.
In attacking the “mirage of equality”, Rustgard, following Herbert Spencer,
sees the law of evolution as a movement from the simple to the complex, from
a state of undifferentiation to one of intense specialization and division of la¬
bour. In accordance with this law, and supported by statistics, he shows
that technological improvements have profited the labourer and not the capi¬
talist, despite the prevalent and short-sighted Marxian teaching that the
machine deprives men of work. Records show that the introduction of ma¬
chinery has not only increased the demand for labour, but has consequently
raised the labourer’s wage while reducing the cost of living. In 1879, manu¬
facturers could offer only 49,000 jobs per million people; in 1929, after fifty
years of amazingly rapid mechanization, there were 73,000 jobs per million,
a fact which indicates that the problem of poverty is not a problem of employ¬
ment and distribution economics, but pertains to mental and moral inferiority.
Thrift is a virtue little known to the impecunious masses, yet the whole
structure of a complex civilization rests upon the ability of a group of citizens
to save. Capital may be defined as “that part of the products of labour which
is saved and not consumed”, and a nation is economically sound only when its
capital is steadily, even though slowly, increasing. Fact after fact is brought
forward to substantiate the conclusion that poverty is prevalent among the
masses of people, not because they lack opportunity to outgrow their situa¬
tion, but because they are morally and mentally unable to spend their very
sufficient income wisely. The erroneous idea that the masses suffer because
of insufficient remuneration leads to the taxation of property and capital.
But if capital is thus reduced, its ability to employ labour to create new goods
is likewise reduced, and the resulting shortage of goods causes high prices and
social unrest. Likewise the present excessive taxation of property makes it
impossible for citizens with moderate savings to hire the labour necessary
to build lodgings which, even when built, are subjected to ruinous taxation.
Much as we may abhor the ideals of modem Germany, we must commend
her intelligence in managing her finances. By reducing taxation on property,
she has encouraged savings among the poorer classes who are thereby given
REVIEWS
337
the opportunity to own their homes. Permanent improvements on property
are not taxed—the whole effort is directed to an increase in national wealth,
the only condition which brings about natural wage increases and sound pros¬
perity.
This attempt to condense the work of Rustgard into a short summary may
give the reader the idea that the book is technical and difficult. On the con¬
trary, it strips away the camouflage and needless complexities of modem eco¬
nomic problems and reveals their true relation to principles of justice and fair
dealing. We realize more completely than ever the pathetic moral bank¬
ruptcy of modern civilization. The problem of poverty is not a matter to be
settled by legislation, sentimental philanthropy or any external panacea; it is
basically the ancient problem of individual morality. Until the poverty-
stricken learn to satisfy their needs before their desires, they cannot release
themselves, and their would-be benefactors cannot unshackle them from the
bonds of poverty. C.E.C.
What Has and Will Come to Pass , by the Reverend Walter Wynn; Rider &
Company, London; price, is.
Pyramid students will find this book little more than a synopsis of the works
of the Edgar brothers, of Grattan Guinness, Davidson and Aldersmith, etc.
The Reverend Mr. Wynn is obviously an educated man, having an honest,
enthusiastic faith in his subject, and as such will be able to stimulate many
minds that are disposed to be attentive. His book, however, will not stand
the test of critical scrutiny, even though it be friendly scrutiny. His earnest
faith in his work would be a force to drive home his arguments and assertions,
except for the unfortunate appearance he gives them of having originated
with himself. While attributing the source of his material to Davidson and
Aldersmith, he does not state with sufficient clearness that, with very few
exceptions, his entire collection of chapters, dates and deductions, is copied
from the works of his predecessors. He falls, too, into their common error of
attributing altogether too much importance to the Jews, and of labouring
hard to identify them with Biblical prophecies, as though such predictions
(predictions couched in very general and ambiguous words) were not sound
unless given a specific and religious application. Mr. Wynn fails to see ir^
cyclic action the impersonal and general significances which are essential t<r
even a superficial understanding of the subject.
It is thus in the suggestiveness of certain of Mr. Wynn’s incidental com¬
ments, rather than in his treatment of his main theme, that the book may be
of interest to those acquainted with the literature of the field. On page 70,
he notes, for example, that in the possibility of Germany or Russia getting
control of the eastern end of the Mediterranean is the threat of their gaining
command of the world. We could wish the author had expanded this and
driven it home to the British audience which he is directly addressing. There
a 4 fclfhose who believe (and with reason) that the last war was waged by Ger-
338
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
many for the primary purpose of getting control of the Dardanelles; and that
it was a misfortune of the first magnitude that England failed there, since it
leaves all the major issues still to be fought out. It can rarely be fair to blame
an author for what he does not undertake to do, but had the Reverend Mr.
Wynn not been content to leave his own thought undeveloped, while so facilely
adopting the work and errors of others, he could, we believe, have made his
book more valuable than it is, and given his readers a truer picture of the great
realities to which the Pyramid points as symbol. If one takes a terrestrial
globe (a map will not do, for it distorts the perspective), and, placing the point
of a compass at Giza, sweeps circles round it, one will see how the world’s
capitols and strongholds are related to the Pyramid, so that that ancient
monument, in its silent, desert sands, unchanged through all the changing
cycles, appears as the still centre of a whirlpool, surrounded by gyratory zones
of violent turbulence. It symbolizes the comprehensive, silent, unaltering
purpose of the Great Lodge, the central pivot of human history, around which
swing our Western nations, unaware of the hidden r 61 e they fulfil as a matter of
cyclic destiny. K.R.
By Light , Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism , by Erwin R.
Goodenough, Professor of the History of Religion, Yale University; Yale Uni¬
versity Press, New Haven, Conn., 1935; price, $5.00.
The title of this excellent book is explained by a quotation from Philo Judaeus:
“They are on the road to Truth who apprehend God by means of Divinity,
Light by its Light.” Philo, who lived in Alexandria at the beginning of the
Christian era, is not as well known as he deserves to be. In histories of phi¬
losophy, he is generally described merely as a devout Jew whose love of Greek
learning led him to undertake the task of proving that Moses and Plato taught
the same doctrines. Some scholars have compared his description of the Logos,
or Word of God, with the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel. In his study of
“Paul the Disciple”, Mr. Charles Johnston pointed out that the spirit of Gama¬
liel, ^t whose feet sat St. Paul, is “thoroughly in harmony with the spirit of
Philo”, and that, in his allegorical interpretation of the Torah, St. Paul “fol¬
lows in Philo’s footsteps, besides accepting the whole Platonic background of
Philo’s thought” (cf. Theosophical Quarterly, vol. XIII, pp. 243, seq.).
It is true that before his conversion, St. Paul was a Pharisee, whereas Philo
seems to have belonged to the rival caste of the Sadducees. However, if Profes¬
sor Goodenough’s theory be accepted, the common elements in Philo, Paul
and the Fourth Gospel might be partly explained by the existence of a Jewish
Mystery to which both Pharisees and Sadducees were admitted. Among the
Jews of the Diaspora, who were in daily contact with Gentile influences, a
mystical religious life became prevalent, no counterpart of which can be found
in the “normative” legalistic and rabbinical tradition of Palestine. Its af¬
finities are with the secret orders of Greece, Egypt and Persia, with the Mys¬
teries of Bacchus and Orpheus, of Isis and Osiris and Mithra. As Professor
REVIEWS
339
Goodenough shows, it is quite certain that the Alexandrian Jews had their own
organization of the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries, with occult rites and in¬
structions and a hierarchy of initiates. Many, at least, of the details of this
organization may have been deliberately copied from Pagan originals. It
was not painful for the Jews to “borrow” such things from their neighbours,
for whenever they found something praiseworthy in a Gentile environment,
they had only to yield to their racial sense of self-satisfaction, to convince
themselves that it must have been conceived in the first instance by a Jew.
They could claim the Egyptian and Greek wisdom as their own, because they
identified Moses with Hermes Trismegistus and with Musaeus, the teacher of
Orpheus.
Alexandria was the centre of the Jewish Mystery, and Philo was its most
distinguished exponent. A student of Theosophy would suggest that Plato
was a real Initiate, in a profounder and broader sense than Professor Good-
enough’s research indicates. It is possible that Hellenistic Jewish mysticism
was only an adaptation of a very old tradition to changed conditions. In
that event, Philo’s Mystery resembles those of Hermes and Orpheus, not merely
because he or his predecessors imitated them, but because he was, in some
degree, familiar with the great common source of all forms of the Mysteries,
the universal Wisdom-Religion. It is natural that he should have sought and
found mystical truth in the scriptures of his own people. He was convinced
that the Jewish Mystery had existed in pure form in the remote age of the
Patriarchs. Above all, he exalted Moses, the Hierophant, the Sage-King, who
had set forth and embodied the Torah, the Law of Divine Nature, the Logos,
and had proved in his own person the possibility of transforming the mortal
into the Immortal and of reuniting the individual with the universal Being.
It is of exceptional interest to students of Theosophy, that Philo seems to
have believed in the continuing existence of the “Mystic Moses” as the guardian
of those of his race who genuinely sought liberation and enlightenment. “I my¬
self have been initiated by the God-beloved Moses into the Greater Mys¬
teries”, he wrote. There is this prayer to the supreme Hierophant:
Oh, thou hierophant, though the eyes of our soul are closed because we do not desire
to see, or cannot do so, still do thou uphold us and help us and not cease to anoint us
until thou hast initiated us into the hidden meaning of the sacred words and revealed
those locked beauties which are invisible to the uninitiated. This it is meet for thee
to do.
In another passage, Philo numbers Moses and Abraham among the Saviours
of humanity.
Households, cities, countries, tribes, and regions of the earth have enjoyed great happi¬
ness when a single individual has taken heed of beauty and righteousness, and especially
when God has given this individual, along with the good character, an irresistible power,
to serve him as musical instruments or constructive tools serve a musician or craftsman,
or as sticks of wood serve a fire. For in reality the just man is the foundation prop of
the human race. And he brings everything he has into the common stock and gives it
340
THE0S0PHICAL QUARTERLY
without stint for the benefit of those who will use it: what he himself lacks, he asks from
God who alone has unlimited wealth.
Professor Goodenough’s reflections upon Philo’s famous Logos Doctrine are
of great interest and value. He believes—with good reason, we think—that
some form of the Logos Doctrine was present as the nucleus of every Mystery
in the ancient world. It was the enduring purpose of the initiate of every
degree to “apprehend God by means of Divinity, Light by its Light”. As one
might say, the Unmanifested and the Incorporeal is known through the de¬
scending scale of its manifestations and embodiments. This theory of emana¬
tion , as it has been called, was widely disseminated in the Hellenistic world,
even in exoteric circles, and it is quite probable that Philo consciously made
use of the Gentile imagery in which it had been cast. It is instructive, for ex¬
ample, to compare his work with that of Plutarch and Apuleius, whose funda¬
mental doctrines so often recall his, although they were addressing very dif¬
ferent groups.
One of the most familiar facts about Philo is that to him God was the Absolute, a sin¬
gle and unique Being beyond even the Monad and the number One, as well as beyond
the Good and all other categories. Yet, like the God of later Neo-Platonism, Philo’s
Deity had somehow to be brought into relation with the world. . . . The sun was taken
as the figure, that orb which bums, to all appearances eternally, yet without need of
fuel from outside itself. Independent of the world, a self-sufficient existence, it sends
out its great stream of light and heat which makes life possible upon the earth. This
stream may be called a stream of light, or of heat, or of life, or of creation. ... It is not
the sun, but it is the projection of the sun to us.
This Light-Stream from the Absolute or within the Absolute is the Logos,
the “Light of Light”. The image is, indeed, universal. It is repeated, in many
forms, in the Hindu scriptures, and is to be seen, carved upon the monuments
of ancient Mexico.
Two main types of formulation of the Stream had arisen, what may be called the Per¬
sian type of pleroma, and the Female Principle type. According to the Persian type,
God is a solar source sending out rays. In the Pseudo-Aristotelian Dt Mundo , the satraps
of the Great King are used as figures, for they projected out through the great realm of
Persia the Royal Power which was invisibly concealed at its source in the capital. . . .
This, the Hellenistic writer used as a myth of the Absolute God, sending out his [Poten¬
cies] to be the divine forces and representations in the material world. In oriental reli¬
gions themselves there were families of deities, theogonies and . . . descending groups
of deities. [Professor Goodenough mentions, by way of example, the six Amesha Spentas,
the personified Potencies of the Persian Ahura Mazda]. . . . The highest of the lower
deities is the mystic guide along the Way through the pleroma to the Greatest. . . .
Over against this general organization of the Light-Stream . . . stands the Female
Principle type of formulation. . . . According to Plutarch, Osiris, the light god and the
Logos, has a wife, Isis, through whom he produces Horus, the type of the projection of
divine light into the lower realm. Horus would seem to be the Divine Stream as clothed
in matter, the Cosmic Logos. Just what Isis typifies does not clearly appear. She is
the “Female Principle in nature, the recipient of all coming into being”. . . . Her long¬
ing for Osiris, her gathering his fragments together, is a symbol of the whole spirit of
REVIEWS
34i
mystic ascent, the desire to find the whole of God in place of fragments, and the intense
longing for union.
Philo uses and blends both the Persian and the Egyptian-Greek representations
of the Logos. Sometimes he describes the Patriarchs’ progress toward union,
as a series of self-transformations, whereby they become assimilated to one after
another of the Potencies or Attributes of Divinity. Sometimes he symbolizes
initiation as a mystic marriage with Wisdom, with the Divine Sophia, who like
Isis is the lover and the beloved of God. The splendour of his conception is
illustrated in such a passage as the following, defining the veritable function
of the high-priest.
For the cosmos is a temple in which the high-priest is the Protogonos, the Logos, . . .
of which the one who offers up the ancestral prayers and sacrifices is a material imita¬
tion. He is commanded to put on the . . . tunic as a copy of the universal cosmos,
that the world may worship together with man, and man with the universe.
S.V.L.
Clashing Tides of Colour , by Lothrop Stoddard; Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York, London, 1935; price, $3.00.
For four centuries before the Great War, says this author, the basis of world
politics had been the ascendancy of the white race, attaining its climax in
1900 when “Western man stood the indisputable master of the planet”. The
Russo-Japanese war, in 1904, was a prodigious shock to Western prestige,
though it left the West still strong enough to discourage rapid and violent
changes. With the Great War, however, white supremacy was clearly fore¬
doomed, the only question being whether the white man “would be strong
enough to beat an orderly retreat”. The rising tide, or the clashing tides of
colour (he has written books under both titles), he views then, as a rising tide
of chaos.
The book is a survey, admirable in many respects, of the outstanding prob¬
lems in contemporary world affairs. Dealing with each of the great racial
groups in turn, the author outlines its social and economic conditions, sketch¬
ing just enough historical background to show its distinctive line of evolution
and the origins of its basic racial traditions, ideals and culture. He then shows
the effect of the introduction of Western civilization and the machine age.
“We realize”, he writes, “the profound transformations which the machine
civilization has already brought to us Occidentals among whom it arose. So,
when we ponder what it has already done to us, we may well ask what it will
do to peoples of widely different blood and temperament on whom it is break¬
ing suddenly without warning or preparation.” “Western civilization has
literally conquered the world. The world —hut not the man!" The triumphs
of our civilization have been triumphs over the forces of nature, and have
transformed the outer material world, “but Man remains practically
unfejpged”.
342
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
He shows Western industrialism—and less obviously but more insidiously,
Western individualism—affecting ancient political, economic and social institu¬
tions, venerable traditions, age-old religions, with the result, as in Asia for in¬
stance, that “all is in profound ferment. This ferment arises not from within
but from without. Its causes are external, foreign. The process is thus a dis¬
solvent rather than an organic growth. Herein lies the full gravity of the
situation. Acute though our Western crisis may be, it is less serious than that
of Asia. For our problems are fundamentally those of adaptation to changes
engendered by ourselves and possessing a logical connection with our past.
The peoples of Asia, on the contrary, are suddenly compelled to rebuild from
the ground up an edifice continuously shaken to its foundations by strange
new forces. ... If the West is threatened with disintegration, the East is
menaced with downright dissolution.”
A third of the book is devoted to the problems of the Western world, includ¬
ing Latin America and its Indian problem; the remainder to those of China,
Japan, India, Islam and Africa,—four hundred concisely written pages. In a
book of this character, it is a relief to find consistently carried through, a recog¬
nition of values above the material plane. “Can Man adapt himself to the
machine?” the author asks. “No one will seriously deny that our mechan¬
istic civilization logically implies an increasing degree of human co-operation;
that some sort of world-order is needed if our civilization is to endure. Yet
can it be a world-order which puts economic considerations ahead of every¬
thing else? At such a price may not men refuse even the boon of material
prosperity?” “The necessity of making due allowance for non-material ele¬
ments cannot be exaggerated, because it is just these which modem man is
prone to ignore. Yet he does so at his peril, for he thereby remains unaware of
the deeper realities of our time.” Deploring the fact that attempts to bring
about unity in Europe have appealed chiefly to sentiments of fear or material
self-interest, he writes: “Economics usually has the last word. At any rate
we never find it subordinated to cultural or spiritual values. Herriot typifies
this attitude when, as already noted, he asserts: ‘First give Europe a body,
then give it a soul!’ However, do not his own words prove why Herriot and
his ilk have not succeeded? How can they expect to create anything truly
constructive and enduring unless it possesses from the very first that vital
spark which kindles lofty enthusiasms and engenders a burning idealism evok¬
ing self-sacrifice? Unless the soul be ever-present, you have either a corpse or
a robot—a lifeless automaton.”
Variety and breadth of view are obtained through frequent use of quotations
from recent books or magazine articles written by specialists in their respective
lines. Whatever the bias of the reader regarding controversial points, this book,
with its long view of the past and its extensive panorama of the present, affords
a good background into which to fit the kaleidoscopic changes of current events,
—the fragmentary reports of which, in newspapers and magazines, are so often
confusing and difficult to gauge in their true relationship and proportion.
J.C.
REVIEWS
343
Wake Up and Live!, by Dorothea Brande; Simon and Schuster, New York,
1936; price, $1.75.
It is no doubt significant that this book should have aroused widespread
and eager interest. Its remarkable popularity would lead one to think that
many people nowadays are dissatisfied with the trend of their lives, and are
looking for inspiration and light from any available source. Mrs. Brande
does not cater to the laziness and cowardice so prevalent to-day, nor does she
offer a formula for instant success. She outlines a course of self-discipline which
will lead to a competent control of one’s mental and emotional equipment, and
fit one to succeed in any work which one may undertake. She gives practical
advice as to how to make a dream come true, urging “do something every day
towards your intention, however remote your goal may have to be”. Again
she writes: “We all live so far below the possible level for our lives that when
we are set free from the things which hamper us, so that we merely approach
the potentialities in ourselves, we seem to have been entirely transfigured.”
The book is based on the author’s own experience, and the introduction
describes how her life was transformed two years ago by reading a sentence
by F. W. H. Myers. It was then that she began to evolve the point of view and
the method shown in her book. She has no sympathy with what she calls
the alibis of our age. “We all know a little too much about Glands Regulating
Personality, and the Havoc raised by Resistances, and so on. Never since
the world began were there such good opportunities to be lazy with distinc¬
tion. . . . Remarkable cures of resistances, however, have been observed in
those who took solemnly our ancestors’ outmoded synonym for the same thing:
‘bone-laziness’. It is not quite so much fun, nor so flattering, to be foolishly
lazy as it is to be the victim of a technical term, but many are crippled for
knowing an impressive word who would have had no such trouble if they had
lived in a simpler and less self-indulgent society.”
Mrs. Brande has read widely, and draws on a variety of systems of thought
for her ideas and illustrations. She quotes from Pico della Mirandola and
Joubert, for example, in some very helpful paragraphs on the distinction be¬
tween passive fancy and creative imagination. Readers of the Quarterly
would probably disagree with her estimate of such men as Freud and Adler,
but her conclusions on the whole seem sound and constructive. She is least
convincing when trying to find a basis in modern psychology for the impulse
which she calls the Will to Fail, as opposed to the well-known Will to Live and
Will to Power of the German school. She is at her best when outlining practi¬
cal methods of discipline, and it is these which might be of interest and value
to those seeking a higher life. She allows no excuses, no weakening; and a
person whole-heartedly following the methods she outlines could hardly fail to
increase greatly his effectiveness and capacity.
It is deeply to be regretted that the writer of such a stimulating book, who is
endowed with considerable insight, and shows so much enthusiasm for a life of
discipline, and energy in pursuing it, should have no better goal to offer than
to “dance, study calculus or Greek, become better-looking, or hear more
344
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
music”, or even ‘‘travelling, modelling, writing, farming”. Her method of achiev¬
ing success in these worldly fields, which at best would only gratify the per¬
sonality, if applied with vigour and persistence for purposes of the soul, should
help us to become more useful instruments of the Cause the Quarterly repre¬
sents, and which we all long to serve in any way we can.
H.M.
My Country and My People , by Lin Yutang, published by John Day in as¬
sociation with Reynal and Hitchcock, New York, 1935; price, S3.00.
Dr. Lin Yutang was educated in Christian Mission schools and took degrees
at Harvard and Leipsic. He says that he is no longer a Christian but a Pagan.
Perhaps he means by this that he has returned to the philosophy of his ances¬
tors. His book is hailed by many critics as ‘‘the best book on China”. It is,
certainly, full of information, thought and wit. It not only throws light on
China and the Chinese, but also, by contrast, upon the civilization of the West.
In his first chapter on ‘‘The Chinese People”, Dr. Lin Yutang gives a table
of the cycles of Chinese history, which should interest students of Theosophy.
He says:
For the striking fact is that Chinese history can be conveniently divided into cycles
of eight hundred years. Each cycle begins with a short-lived and militarily strong
dynasty, which unified China after centuries of internal strife. Then followed four or
five hundred years of peace, with one change of dynasty, succeeded by successive waves
of wars, resulting soon in the removal of the capital from the North to the South. Then
came secession and rivalry between North and South with increasing intensity, followed
by subjugation under a foreign rule, which ended the cycle. History then repeats itself
and with the unification of China again under Chinese rule, there is a new bloom of
culture.
The fourth of these cycles is now, after six hundred years, at the point where
the capital has been removed from the North to the South, from Peking to
Nanking, and it would seem as though the period of foreign invasion were at
hand. Dr. Lin Yutang says: ‘‘The parallelism of events within each cycle
unfolded itself with an unreasonable mechanical exactness as to time and
sequence.” It appears that a great engineering feat is repeated ‘‘with fatal
regularity and at the exact stage in each cycle”. It would be interesting to
compare these periods with those given for the West by Flinders Petrie in his
fascinating little book, The Revolutions of Civilization.
In his second chapter, Dr. Lin Yutang discusses the Chinese character.
“Character”, he says, “is a typically English word. Apart from the English,
few nations have laid such stress on character in their ideal of education and
manhood as the Chinese. The Chinese seem to be so pre-occupied with it that
in their whole philosophy they have not been able to think of anything else.”
He lists fifteen traits of character as most typical of the race: sanity, simplicity,
love of nature, patience, indifference, old roguery, fecundity, industry, fru¬
gality, love of family life, pacifism, contentment, humour, conservatism and
sensuality. He points out that some of these characteristics are vices rather
REVIEWS
345
than virtues, the weakness as well as the strength of the nation. “Old rogu¬
ery” he especially enlarges upon with a charming wit. It is the peculiar quality
of mellow disillusionment and common-sense, gained by a long experience of
life. Cranmer-Byng, in his book, The Vision of Asia , draws an interesting
comparison between the Greek love of youth and horror of old age and decay,
and the Chinese veneration for age and experience, so exquisitely illustrated
in the painting by Sesshu of the God of Longevity, Jurojin, an old man with
long white hair and beard, standing with his pet deer under a flowering tree.
The Chinese are an essentially rural people, and have always remained at¬
tached to the soil and to nature. This is one of the secrets of their persistence
as a race, and the cause of the particular form of many of their qualities. Dr.
Lin Yutang says: “The Chinese ideal of happiness was, then, not ‘the exercise
of one’s powers along lines of their excellence’, as was that of the Greeks, but
the enjoyment of this simple rural life together with the harmony of social
relationships.” Another reason for the renewal of the race has been the possi¬
bility for men to rise from any class of society into the highest official positions
through the system of examinations. This was what Napoleon endeavoured
to establish in France: la carrikre ouverte aux talents; “all careers open to
talent”.
Dr. Lin Yutang’s remarks on Taoism and Buddhism must seem to the stu¬
dent of Theosophy so lacking in mystical understanding as to be pathetic.
What a pity that so brilliant a person should have perceived so little of their
inner meaning! He was educated as a Christian and should return to his own
racial traditions with an extended comprehension. Perhaps the brand of Christi¬
anity inculcated by missionaries and Western universities is profoundly ma¬
terialistic and shuts the mind to the intuition of spiritual consciousness. Dr.
Hu Shih, the much lauded “Father of the Chinese Renaissance”, describes
Lao Tze as an “old bum” and an anarchist. Fortunately, we are told that as
Chinamen grow older they lose their veneration for Western smartness and
revert to the racial ideals. They do not grow old fast enough.
In his Epilogue , Dr. Lin Yutang wonders what can save China from the
frightful anarchy of to-day. He seems to think that Justice is what is most
needed, impartial Justice for all classes of men. Just how this reign of Justice
is to be achieved is mysterious. He says: “That time will come, but it re¬
quires a change of ideology; the family-minded Chinese must be changed inter
the social-minded Chinese, and the pet ideas, age-old, of ‘face’, favour and!
privilege and official success, and robbing the Nation to glorify the family,
must be overthrown.” Alas! Is this the only result of so much cerebration?
“When the Great Tao ceased to be observed, benevolence and righteousness
came into vogue. Then appeared wisdom and shrewdness, and there ensued
great hypocrisy.” We may well add that when individual virtue ceased to be
popular, social-mindedness became fashionable. Meditation upon the inner
meaning of the sayings of those agents of the Great Lodge, Lao-Tze, Confucius,
Bodhidharma, who gave to China its Way of Salvation, and putting an under¬
stating of them into action in the individual life, will alone save China.
346
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
The Tao in its regular course does nothing for the sake of doing it, and so there is
nothing which it does not. If princes and kings were able to maintain it, all things
would of themselves be transformed by them.
If this transformation became to me an object of desire, I would express the desire by
the Nameless Simplicity.
. St.C. LaD.
Ancient Irish Tales , edited by Tom Peete Cross and Clark Harris Slover;
Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1936; price, $3.75.
The purpose of this volume, as stated by the editors, is to present in intelli¬
gible modem English a representative collection of ancient Irish sagas and
romances at present not accessible in translation, except in little-known tech¬
nical periodicals or in books now rare or long since out of print. In the early
centuries, “so powerful was the influence of the Latin tongue that, in the West,
only nations outside the Roman Empire succeeded in preserving any early
records in their native speech. Of the western peoples beyond the immediate
sway of Rome, few learned the art of writing early enough to record for pos¬
terity any native pagan traditions in the vernacular. Chief among these were
the Irish, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Icelanders. Of the three, the Irish were
the first to receive letters and to develop a national literature, and it is per¬
haps ultimately to Irish influence that we owe the oldest written records in
Anglo-Saxon and in Icelandic.” Some of the material here used was handed
down by word of mouth from long before the Christian era,—from a time
when a people “of the Greeks of Scythia”, “a-rowing the Caspian Sea”, and
wandering till they reached the great Northern Ocean, invaded and took pos¬
session of Ireland, followed later by other invading tribes. The tales immortal¬
ize the deeds of the heroes of a fiercely warlike people, with a background of
amazon-sorcerers, of druids with their magic, white and black, and of fairy
people who, some modern commentators conclude, were earth gods. It is
probable that many of the extraordinary feats attributed to an individual
were actually the achievements of a tribe; probable too, that in the very early
periods highly developed occult powers were by no means uncommon (Atlantean
origins and connections seem almost certain). In the re-telling by generation
after generation, the tales have become embroidered and magnified and exag¬
gerated until no invention seems too fabulous to meet with acceptance. It
may be remembered that some of this same material was translated, thirty
or more years ago, by Lady Gregory, who, instead of modem literary English,
used the current Irish idiom as being nearer to the spirit of the original.
Whether on the lattef score, or because of her method of expurgating, or for
the beauty of her selections,—of the two versions, hers would possess, for some
readers, the greater charm.
Three great cycles are included in the present book, the earliest or Mytho¬
logical, the Ulster and the Ossianic cycles, with a dozen or so additional tales
for good measure. The first group is refreshing, those from late centuries
somewhat wearisome, while perhaps the most invigorating is the middle group
REVIEWS
347
or Ulster cycle, centring about the deeds of the youthful hero Cu Chulain,
comeliest of the men of Erin, outdistancing all others in his swift chariot, versed
in the arts of druidry, prudent in battle till the warrior flame was upon him,
the unconquerable champion of his people. The code of a champion of those
days, as indicated in the successive incidents, is an absorbing study,—the
standard of honour, loyalty, friendship, valour. There is the unusual story
of sworn friends, through trickery compelled to fight one another to the death
as a matter of honour—fighting from dawn to dusk, then exchanging the kiss
of friendship; retiring for the night to opposite banks of a stream, each send¬
ing his servant, one with food, the other with healing herbs to ease his oppo¬
nent’s need, then up at daybreak and on with the fight with renewed ferocity;
this for three days, until one lay dead and the other was free to give himself
to heartfelt grief. Those were days when fighting was an art, a test of the
true worth of the individual, and the valleys rang with the clash of shields and
the battle-shout of the victor. The warrior spirit is a splendid feature of the
stories: the unflagging will to achieve, the determination that regards nothing
as impossible, brooks no obstacle, recognizes no defeat. Cu Chulain’s short
life was, of course, the epitome of it and his death a fitting climax. Cu Chulain
the invincible, overwhelmed at last by appalling odds, and dying of wounds
from which any ordinary mortal would have been helpless and senseless, gath¬
ered himself together (in the most literal sense); he “went to a pillar-stone
which is in the plain, and he put his breast-girdle round it that he might not
die seated nor lying down, but that he might die standing up. Then came
the men all around him [his foes], but they durst not go to him, for they thought
he was alive.”
Because of their highly imaginative quality and their spirit of martial valour,
the stories would serve admirably for growing boys and girls; it is the more
regrettable, then, that they cannot be recommended for such use without
expurgation.
X.Y.Z.
St. Jerome; The early years, by Paul Monceaux; translated by F. J. Sheed;
Sheed & Ward, New York; price, $2.00.
To many of us, St. Jerome is perhaps best known because of the almost endless
pictures which Renaissance Italy has painted of him; we are as familiar with his
lion as we are with the famous wolf of Gubbio—probably more so, for Brother
Wolf was only one of the many other animals who fell victim to the irresistible
charms of St. Francis, while the lion of St. Jerome has no rivals in his faithful
companionship. But St. Jerome was far more than a desert recluse—the r 61 e in
which most laymen imagine him; and although his life is little known to the
general reader, “among the Fathers of the Church there is no more original writer.
none more individual, vivid, witty- He is a bom writer; fresh, sparkling with
verve and malice, with bursts of satire and flashes of genius-a furious contro-
ver(®tst, a pamphleteer at need”, in fact a most brilliant and versatile saint!
348
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Particularly since the seventeenth century, however, there has been much con¬
fusion concerning the various periods of his life, his longevity, and the actual
chronology of events, so that “the whole study of St. Jerome had to begin again
at the beginning”. The saint has thrown the scholar into the shade, and the
object of this small book is to give a more accurate account of his early years
than has hitherto been available in popular form. Fortunately St. Jerome liked
very much to talk about himself, to tell the many and various experiences which
befell him, and being an enthusiastic writer of letters, what he says in them is
naturally the source of most of our information. We are taken from his child¬
hood at Stridon, through his school days and the completion of his studies in
Rome, and then we follow his wanderings, we share his temptations (to which,
as he frankly admits, he all too often yielded), and we go with him into the
desert where he sought solitude and peace, and where he found neither. We are
not taken beyond the first thirty years of his life, when he left the desert and went
back to the world, and it is, of course, the study of his character which interests
us chiefly—his unflagging energy, his splendid tenacity of purpose, his fiery deter¬
mination to follow and serve that which he loved, for these are all necessary steps
toward discipleship. His very defects helped to keep him vibrant and keen:
“he was stormy and sensitive, quick to anger, resentful, capable even of terrible
bursts of violence”; but with all this he was “a mighty warrior with the soul of an
apostle, an unwearied student, a fresh and original writer; such was Jerome at
thirty, when he turned his back on the monks of the desert, to re-enter the
world and face the unknown future.”
This book was first published in two articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes.
It has been well translated and will be valuable both to serious students and to
the more casual reader.
T.D.
The Last of the Empresses , and the passing from the Old China to the New , by
Daniele Var£; John Murray, London, 1936; price, 155.
The Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi (the “old Buddha”, as she was sometimes
addressed) was the last of the great Asiatic rulers, and it is in this sense that
the author speaks of her as the last of the Empresses. We recommend the
book because the author is fair-minded. His account of the Boxer outbreak and
of the siege of the Legations, is particularly interesting.
The old Empress had standards very different from ours, but which, in some
respects, were superior to those of her American-educated Chinese detractors,
who are “neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red-herring”. Further, she held
China together, which is more than they have done or ever will do. This book
shows with what amazing courage and ability she did it.
F.
Question No. 400 .—Does every soul come into incarnation with an innate sense of right and
wrong?
Answer. —The extent of this innate sense must depend upon past incarnations. What
happened then? This life is a continuation. We take things up where we left off. If, in
past lives, we have deliberately dulled our perception of right and wrong through self-in¬
dulgence and self-will, we shall have the same dullness of perception now. If, in the past,
we have been on the side of the angels; have fought in all ways, inner and outer, for vision
and understanding and wisdom and growth; have attained to some degree of perception,—
we must be profiting by it now. C.R.A.
Answer. —It is said in The Mahatma Letters that the highest Planetary Spirits appear on
earth only at the origin of every new human kind, in order to impress the eternal truths
so forcibly upon the mind of the new races that they will not be lost or entirely for¬
gotten in ages thereafter. “The mission of the Planetary Spirit is but to strike the Key¬
note of Truth. The vibrations of the Primitive Truth are what your philosophers call ‘in¬
nate ideas*.' 1
How many souls have responded to the eternal truths impressed upon the race? So few,
probably, that the majority come into incarnation in darkness, although they may later
learn to see the light. When a soul has “brought over” from a past incarnation the ability
to distinguish between right and wrong, he has earned it by past obedience to the light he
had then seen. The knowledge remains latent unless, by renewing the effort of the previous
incarnation, the sense of right and wrong previously possessed is regained; but, if the effort
is not made, that knowledge would be deadened, and persistent refusal to obey the light
would result eventually in losing it altogether. G.H.M.
Question No. 401 .—If every individual was meant to il walk with the Gods"—that is to say t
if every individual has the innate capacity for regeneration—can he not be certain that his an¬
nihilation will never be?
Answer. —Not unless he does something about it, and the longer he puts this off, the more
likely it is that regeneration will never take place. There is nothing positive, in itself, in thia
innate capacity. Until a man is converted, “turned about”; until he sets his face to comply
with Universal Law; until he comes to some understanding of himself and of his lower nature,
and aligns his will with that Law in an effort to change himself and his life, it profiteth him
nothing. The longer he puts off doing these things, the more difficult is his task. C.R.A.
Answer. —The doctrine of annihilation, or the death of the soul, is a difficult one for West¬
ern man to comprehend. On the material plane he can understand that, because of improper
acts and associations, he may be cut off from what, otherwise, would be his rightful heritage.
This is within his experience, if not directly, at least indirectly. On the spiritual plane he
350
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
does not function as clearly. He has but slight, if any, knowledge of reincarnation. Also,
the priests and clergy have vitiated the teaching of the Master Christ in their efforts to ap¬
peal to the materially active, but spiritually lazy, man of the West. He is made to think
that immortality is his, regardless of his omissions and commissions; yet, on the material
plane, he knows that success is conditioned: that to have and to hold, he must earn and con¬
serve. The sages of old held that immortality is conditioned: that, while man was meant
.to “walk with the Gods”, he must prove himself worthy of, and keep himself fit for, their
company, or forego their companionship. One way of speaking more directly to the point,
is in terms of the seven principles. Theosophical philosophy, which is based on the truths
held and lived by the sages of old, shows man as a creature of seven principles, three of which
are, to use English words: at one pole, Divine Will, pure and eternal; at the other pole, its
perversion, Personal Desire, selfish and transitory; and, oscillating between the two, Mind
or Self-consciousness,—man's sense of I am I. Briefly, he is immortal if his mind, or self-
identity, gravitates upward towards Divine Will, finally becoming conjoined with it; he is
mortal if his mind gravitates downward towards Personal Desire, finally merging with it.
If, over a series of incarnations, he persists in identifying himself with the selfish and transi¬
tory, to the exclusion of the pure and eternal element within him, he is severed from the lat¬
ter, somewhat as, on the material plane, he would be disinherited for years of misconduct.
Thus, the personality, or soul—the sense of I am I —goes its way with the selfish and transi¬
tory Personal Desire, finally dying ignominiously with, and as, it. The Real, or Higher,
Ego does not die. It continues, and, eventually, attaches to itself another personality, or
soul, in the hope that this soul will properly prize and use the divine force coming to
it through the Higher Mind, or Soul. G.M.W.K.
Answer. —Man’s destiny is to become divine; that is the object of evolution. The Lodge
is constantly striving to arouse man to a realization of his divine potentialities and to take
the steps necessary to claim his inheritance. But, regardless of whatever “innate capacity"
he may have or have had in the past, his progress will depend upon whether he strives con¬
sciously to identify himself with the divine part of his nature. If he persists in refusal to do
so, and identifies himself with his lower nature, he will gradually lose his divine heritage, and
the personality eventually will be annihilated. In The Mahatma Letters reference is made to
matter which is found to be entirely divorced from spirit, being thrown over into the still
lower worlds; the perishing by the million of the laggard Egos; the solemn moment of the
“survival of the fittest"; the annihilation of those unfit. Therefore, no man “can be certain
that his annihilation will never be". G.H.M.
Answer. —An engine may be “meant" or “destined" to produce steam, but it can do so
only if supplied with fire and water. The engine that is not used will finally rust, disintegrate,
and be reduced to its original elements. It should not be necessary to interpret this in terms
of direct reply to the question. H.
NOTICE
The regular meetings of the New York Branch of The Theosophical Society will be held
throughout the winter and spring at 64, Washington Mews (between Washington Square and
East Eighth Street), on alternate Saturday evenings, beginning at half-past eight and closing
at ten o’clock. Branch members will receive a printed announcement giving the dates. The
same announcement will also be mailed to non-members who send their names to the Secre¬
tary T.S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York. Out-of-town members of the Society are in¬
vited to attend these meetings whenever they are in New York, and visitors who may be
n terested in Theosophy are always welcome.
INDEX TO VOLUME XXXIII
Art of Life, The; R. H. B .
Biblical and Pyramid Prophecy; K. R .
H. P.B .’.27,
R.H.B .
Cav6 .16, 101, 190,
Centurion .140,
Civilization, The Death of Art and Beauty; H. P. B. (Reprint) .
Confucius, I, II; Stanley V. LaDow .117,
Convention of The Theosophical Society, Report of the.39,
Cornwall and Its Magic; Wayfarer .
Flowers; Sauvage .
Fragments; Cavt .16, 101, 190,
Historical Mysteries; X .
In Memoriam.
Indrawal, Our Great Opportunity; H. G .
LaDow , Stanley V . 117,
Land of Mystery, A, III, IV; H. P. B. (Reprint).
Mirror of Nature and of Art, The; Sauvage .
Mitchell , H.B .
“Nations Can Live at Home”; R. E. T .
Notes and Comments.5, 91, 179,
Oak and the Nuthatch, The; L. S .
On the Screen of Time; T . 17,
Questions and Answers.87, 174, 263,
Remarks by the Way.
Reprints: Civilization, the Death of Art and Beauty; H. P. B .
Land of Mystery, A, III, IV; H. P.B .
K.R .
Reviews:
Ancient Irish Tales; ed. by Tom Peete Cross and Clark Harris Slover. .
By Light, Light; Erwin R. Goodenough .
Chinese Renaissance, The; Hu Shih .
Civilization of the East, The: China; Rent Grousset .
Clashing Tides of Colour; Lothrop Stoddard .
Convictions and Controversies; Ralph Adams Cram .
Crystalline State, The; ed. by Sir W. H. Bragg and W. L. Bragg .
Entities of Thomas Traherne; cd. by Sir Arthur Quillcr-Couch .
35i
35 o THE 0 S 0 PHICAL QUARTERLY
does not function as clearly. He has but slight, if any, knowledge of reincarnation. Also,
the priests and clergy have vitiated the teaching of the Master Christ in their efforts to ap
peal to the materially active, but spiritually lazy, man of the West. He is made to think
that immortality is his, regardless of his omissions and commissions; yet, on the material
plane, he knows that success is conditioned: that to have and to hold, he must earn and con¬
serve. The sages of old held that immortality is conditioned: that, while man was meant
.to “walk with the Gods”, he must prove himself worthy of, and keep himself fit for, their
company, or forego their companionship. One way of speaking more directly to the point,
is in terms of the seven principles. Theosophical philosophy, which is based on the truths
held and lived by the sages of old, shows man as a creature of seven principles, three of which
are, to use English words: at one pole, Divine Will, pure and eternal; at the other pole, its
perversion, Personal Desire, selfish and transitory; and, oscillating between the two, Mind
or Self-consciousness,—man’s sense of I am I. Briefly, he is immortal if his mind, or se -
identity, gravitates upward towards Divine Will, finally becoming conjoined with it; he is
mortal if his mind gravitates downward towards Personal Desire, finally merging with it.
If, over a series of incarnations, he persists in identifying himself with the selfish and transi¬
tory, to the exclusion of the pure and eternal element within him, he is severed from the lat¬
ter, somewhat as, on the material plane, he would be disinherited for years of misconduct.
Thus, the personality, or soul—the sense of I am I —goes its way with the selfish and transi¬
tory Personal Desire, finally dying ignominiously with, and as, it. The Real, or Higher,
Ego does not die. It continues, and, eventually, attaches to itself another personality, or
soul, in the hope that this soul will properly prize and use the divine force coming to
it through the Higher Mind, or Soul. G.M.W.K.
Answer. —Man’s destiny is to become divine; that is the object of evolution. The Lodge
is constantly striving to arouse man to a realization of his divine potentialities and to take
the steps necessary to claim his inheritance. But, regardless of whatever “innate capacity
he may have or have had in the past, his progress will depend upon whether he strives con¬
sciously to identify himself with the divine part of his nature. If he persists in refusal to do
so, and identifies himself with his lower nature, he will gradually lose his divine heritage, and
the personality eventually will be annihilated. In The Mahatma Letters reference is made to
matter which is found to be entirely divorced from spirit, being thrown over into the still
lower worlds; the perishing by the million of the laggard Egos; the solemn moment of the
“survival of the fittest”; the annihilation of those unfit. Therefore, no man “can be certain
that his annihilation will never be”. G.H.M.
Answer. —An engine may be “meant” or “destined” to produce steam, but it can do so
only if supplied with fire and water. The engine that is not used will finally rust, disintegrate,
and be reduced to its original elements. It should not be necessary to interpret this in terms
of direct reply to the question. H *
NOTICE
The regular meetings of the New York Branch of The Theosophical Society will be held
throughout the winter and spring at 64, Washington Mews (between Washington Square and
East Eighth Street), on alternate Saturday evenings, beginning at half-past eight and closing
at ten o’clock. Branch members will receive a printed announcement giving the dates. The
same announcement will also be mailed to non-members who send their names to the Secre¬
tary T.S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York. Out-of-town members of the Society are in¬
vited to attend these meetings whenever they are in New York, and visitors who may be
n terested in Theosophy are always welcome.
i- «
INDEX TO VOLUME XXXIII
Art of Life, The; R. H. B . 304
Biblical and Pyramid Prophecy; K. R . 279
H. P. B .27, 324
R. H. B . . 304
Cav 6 .16, 101, 190, 278
Centurion .140, 294
Civilization, The Death of Art and Beauty; H. P. B. (Reprint). 324
Confucius, I, II; Stanley V. LaDow .117,191
Convention of The Theosophical Society, Report of the.39, 201
Cornwall and Its Magic; Wayfarer . no
Flowers; Sauvage . 153
Fragments; Cav 6 .16, 101, 190, 278
H.G .,. I5 o
Historical Mysteries; X . 129
In Memoriam. ^5
Indrawal, Our Great Opportunity; H.G . 150
LaDow, Stanley V .117,191
Land of Mystery, A, III, IV; H. P. B. (Reprint). 27
Mirror of Nature and of Art, The; Sauvage . 288
Mitchell, H. B . 102
“Nations Can Live at Home”; R. E. T . 136
Notes and Comments .5, 91, 179, 267
Oak and the Nuthatch, The; L. S . 126
On the Screen of Time; T .17, 307
Questions and Answers .87, 174, 263, 349
Remarks by the Way. 159
Reprints: Civilization, the Death of Art and Beauty; H. P. B . 324
Land of Mystery, A, III, IV, H.P.B . 27
K. R . 279
Reviews:
Ancient Irish Tales; ed. by Tom Peete Cross and Clark Harris Slover. . 346
By Light, Light; Erwin R. Goodenough . 338
Chinese Renaissance, The; Hu Shih . 255
Civilization of the East, The: China; Rent Grousset . 85
Clashing Tides of Colour; Lothrop Stoddard . 341
Convictions and Controversies; Ralph Adams Cram . 81
Crystalline State, The; ed. by Sir W. H. Bragg and W. L. Bragg . 257
Felicities of Thomas Traherne; ed. by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch . 83
35 i
352
INDEX TO VOLUME XXXIII
85
I Speak for the Silent; Professor V. V. Tchernamn . ^
India Mosaic; Mark Channing .
Joan of Arc; Milton Waldman. . -• • ..
Last of the Empresses, The; Daniele V art .
Long Lance; Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance- ••••••• „ '' ,
Modem Trends in World-Religions; ed. by A. Eustace Hayd .
My Country and My People; Lm Yutang..... ■ ■ .
Philosophy of Spinoza, The; Harry Austryn Wolfson .
Problem of Poverty, The; John Rustgard. •••••-•
Psycho-Analysis and Social Psychology; William McDougall .• • 000
St Terome; Paul Monceaux .* •; ‘ * * * * '' " V T n T
Spinoza ani Buddba : Visions of a Dead God; S. M. .
Spirit of Man in Asian Art, The; Laurence Binyon . ^
Unwilling Passenger; Arthur Osburn .
Wake Up and Live!; Dorothea Brande .. • • • • • • • • • • •
What Has and Will Come to Pass; Reverend Walter Wynn...
Yoga and Western Psychology; Geraldine Coster .
169
348
258
84
344
170
335
333
Sauvage .
Silence Is Golden; A. Woodby .
. ..
Theosophy: Inspiration and Incarnation; H. B
T. S. Activities.
R.E.T .
Wayfarer .
Without Censor, VI, VII; Centurion.
Woodby , A .
X .
. . • 343
• • • 337
. . . 259
.i53» 288
292
126
Mitchell.
• 39
102
176, 201
.17
. 140,
307
136
no
294
292
129
standard books
Blavatsky, H. P. In gi-ft
sas sss^SstSeSSS^^& *j£
*•••••• • doth* 2iZ5
Theosophical Glossary. .... # * o so
Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge . 1>0 o
Voice of the Silence... .'/.‘.boards. i.bo
Cave. Fragments. Volume .. ...boards. i.bo
y T oume 5..S2 1.™
Gerard, John res Secret' DoctrIne'. .doth, a!00
John"on!chSs .
Crest Jewel of Wisdom, The.....
Great Upanishads, The, Volume I.^
Parables of the Kingdom, The... . . '**?*T* ,
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras .. annotat'd-. do^. 1.^
JodSwStofq. T BhagaVad Gm! ZZ *S
Culture of Concentration . wiper, .25
S?t 0 e“ F St T fA^H^MEZv^i«ai;;achZ.^ x.00
Ocean of Theosophy .. cloth ' i. 00
Keightley^Archib^dL Tkbosothy" as"an Influence in Life w* -j«
s
Mitchell, J. F. B. Collegiate Education and Standards o ^ ^
Sinn^T P .' Esoteric Buddhism..; ” • ^
Tomey! R T ay W E RL Sc. E NC E Z ndZtY Fun™ « E—JJ
Walker, E. D. Reincarnation . .^th, 1.35
Idyll of the White Lotus .V.V. . ..leather, .85
Light on the Path •••••■••• .. cloth, 1.20
Through the Gates of Gold.
THE QUARTERLY BOOK DEPARTMENT,
P. 0 . Box 64, Station O, New York.
The Theosophical Society and Theosophy.
• ' ' ...
... V.
s' 3 « * Z t *, ,
<■ sL
■■
Applications for membership should be addressed to the
Secretary T. S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York.
Founded by b. P. Blaoatsky at Bew York in 1S75
-lHE Society does not pretend to be able to establish
at once a universal brotherhood among men, but
only strives to create the nucleus of such a body.
Many of its members believe that an acquaintance
with the world’s religions and philosophies will
reveal, as the common and fundamental principle
underlying these, that “spiritual identity of all Souls with the
Oversoul'' which is the basis of true brotherhood* and many
of them also believe that an appreciation of the finer forces
of nature and man will still further emphasize the same idea.
The organization is wholly unsectarian, with no creed,
dogma, nor personal authority to enforce or impose * neither
is it to be held responsible for the opinions of its
who are expected to accord to the beliefs of others that
tolerance which they desire for their own.
The following proclamation was adopted at the Convene
tion of the Society, held at Boston, April, 1895:
“The Theosophical Society in America by its delegates and
members in Convention assembled, does hereby proclaim
fraternal good will and kindly feeling toward all students ot
Theosophy and members of Theosophical Societies wherever
and however situated. It further proclaims and avers its
hearty sympathy and association with such persons and
organizations in all theosophical matters except those ot
government and administration, and invites their cor-
respondence and co-operation.
"To all men and women of whatever caste, creed, race, or
religious belief, who aim at the fostering of peace, gentleness,
and unselfish regard one for another, and the acquisition of
such knowledge of men and nature as shall tend to the eleva-
tion and advancement of the human race, it sendsmostfriendly
greeting and freely proffers its services.
"It joins hands with all religions and religious bodies whose
efforts are directed to the purification of men's thoughts and
the bettering of their ways, and it avows its harmony there-
with. To all scientific societies and individual searchers after
wisdom upon whatever plane, and by whatever righteous
means pursued, it is and will be grateful for such discovery
and unfoldment of Truth as shall serve to announce and con¬
firm a scientific basts for ethics,
"And lastly, it invites to its membership those who, seek¬
ing a higher life hereafter, would learn to know the padb to
tread la this."
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
View as JSON for agents & LLMs