And again, the principles that I have put to you may explain to you why this Theosophical Society, so weak, is yet so strong--weak in its numbers, weak in the qualifications of its members, not numbering amongst its adherents the most learned and the most mighty of the earth, made up of very mediocre, average people, not the great leaders of the civilisation of the day; but in them all, else would they not be members of the Theosophical Society, is the dawning aspiration after a n.o.bler condition, and some willingness to sacrifice themselves in order that the coming of that condition may be quickened upon earth. That is the justification of our Society now. We are like the nutrient material that surrounds the germ, and the germ grows out of the love, and the aspiration, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, which are found in our movement, however little developed to-day. And the fact that we recognise it as duty, as ideal, is the promise for the future. We are what our past has made us; we shall be what our present is creating; and if within your heart and mine the longing for the n.o.bler state is found, that marks our place in the future, and our right to be among the earlier members of the sub-race that is now preparing to be born. For our thoughts now are what we shall be in our next life; our aspirations now mark our capacities then. You know how the intermediate life is spent, between the death that will close your present lives and the birth that will open the portal of your next lives. You know that in the heavenly places you will be weaving into faculty, into capacity, every thought and every aspiration towards the higher life which in these days of your weakness you are generating, and are trying to cherish and cultivate. It is not you as you are who will make the future, but you as you shall be, self-created from your aspirations now. And just in proportion as each of you nourishes those aspirations, and cherishes those ideals, and tries, however feebly, to work them out amid the limitations of your past which cramps your present life, just so far will you, in the interval between death and birth, make the n.o.bler faculties which shall qualify you to be born in the sixth sub-race upon earth. That should be your keynote in your lives now, that the inspiring motive, the controlling power. And if you want to a.s.sure yourselves that that sub-race is on the threshold, as I said, then look at the world around you, and measure the change which is coming over it. I said we were weak in numbers, that we are only average and mediocre people; but what about the spread of our ideas? What about the way in which, during the last thirty years, these Theosophical ideas have spread through this Fifth Race civilisation, have permeated its literature, are beginning to guide its science, are beginning to inspire its art? That is the proof of the strength of the force, despite the feebleness of the vehicles in which that force is playing. Very clearly not to you nor to me is the spread of these ideas due, but to the Mighty Ones behind the Society, who give the forces in which we are lacking. For the whole Movement is Theirs; They are working outside as well as within. And Their outside working shows itself in the innumerable movements which are all tending in the same direction. It is not we who have spread the ideas.
The ideas are scattered in the mental atmosphere around us, and our only merit is that we caught them up a little more quickly than other people, and realise that they are a part of the Eternal Wisdom. That is our only claim, our only prerogative--consciously, deliberately we choose these ideas, and however weakly we carry them out, none the less the choice has been made and registered in the books of Destiny.
For whether you will or not, you must grow in the direction of your thought; and you cannot be part of this Movement without your thought being more or less colored by the Theosophical ideal.
People often say: "Why should I come into the Theosophical Society?
You give us your books. You spread your knowledge broadcast everywhere. I can buy it in the book-shops. I can hear it in the lectures. Why should I come in?" And I always say: "There is no reason why you should come in, if you do not wish to come. Take everything we can give, and take it freely. You are more than welcome to it. We are only trustees for you. And if you do not care to be among the pioneers, by all means stay outside, and walk along the smoother paths which others have carved out for you." But there is one reason that I may say to you--I do not say it to those outside--there is a reason why you should be within it. You are more in touch with the forces that make the future. You are surrounded, bathed, in the atmosphere in which the future shall grow. All that is good in you is nourished by those forces. All that is harmonious with them is strengthened by their overmastering might. You cannot be amongst us without sharing that inspiration; you cannot be a member without sharing the life which is poured out unstinted through all the vessels of the Theosophical Society. Outside it is not worth while to say this, for that is not a reason for inducing people to come in; but you may rejoice that good karma in the past has brought you into the Society in the present. It has given you the right to have this opportunity of a n.o.bler birth in the coming time, has given you the opportunity of taking part in that great work which is beginning to be wrought among humanity. It gives you, from your life in the heavenly places, touch with powers and opportunities that belong to these ideals in the world of men, and it gives you the possibility there of touch with the Mighty Ones whom here, however unworthily, we strive to follow. So that it is a great thing to be within it, and it means much for the future of you, if you can keep in it. For the immediate future of the Theosophical Society is the work of building that next sub-race which is to come. That is the work for which consciously it ought to be working now. In proportion as you realise it, so will be the strength of your labor; in proportion as you understand it, so should be your share in the gladder work of that happier time. For the future of the Theosophical Society is to be the mother, and even the educator, of the child sixth sub-race which already is going through its ante-natal life. That is its future, secure, inevitable; yours the choice if you will share that future or not.
Part III
The Value of Theosophy in the World of Thought
_An Address on taking office as President of the Theosophical Society.
Delivered at the Queen"s Hall, Langham Place, London, W., on 10th July 1907._
The Value of Theosophy in the World of Thought
You will have seen on the handbill announcing the lecture, that we are holding this meeting in connection with my taking office as President of the Theosophical Society, and it is my purpose, in addressing you to-night, to try to show you, at least to some small extent, what is the value which the Society represents, as regarded from the standpoint of human activities, manifested in the world of thought. I want to try to show you that when we say THEOSOPHY we are speaking of something of real value which can serve humanity in the various departments of intellectual life. I propose, in order to do this, to begin with a very brief statement of the fundamental idea of Theosophy; and then, turning to the world of religious thought, to the world of artistic thought, to the world of scientific thought, and lastly to the world of political thought, to point out to you how that which is called Theosophy may bring contributions of value to each of these in turn.
Now Theosophy, as the name implies, is a Wisdom, a Divine Wisdom; and the name historically, as many of you know, is identical with that which in Eastern lands has been known by various names--as Tao, in China; as the Brahmavid?ya, in India; as the Gnosis, among the Greeks and the early Christians; and as Theosophy through the Middle Ages and in modern times. It implies always a knowledge, a Wisdom that transcends the ordinary knowledge, the ordinary science of the earth; it implies a wisdom as regards life, a wisdom as regards the essential nature of things, a wisdom which is summed up in two words when we say "G.o.d-Wisdom." For it has been held in elder days--although in modern times it has become largely forgotten--that man can really never know anything at all unless he knows himself, and knows himself Divine; that knowledge of G.o.d, the Supreme, the Universal Life, is the root of all true knowledge of matter as well as of Spirit, of this world as well as of worlds other than our own; that in that one supreme knowledge all other knowledges find their root; that in that supreme light all other lights have their origin; and that if man can know anything, it is because he is Divine in nature, and, sharing the Life that expresses itself in a universe, he can know at once the Life that originates and the Matter that obeys.
Starting from such a standpoint, you will at once realise that Theosophy is a spiritual theory of the world as against a materialistic. It sees Spirit as the moulder, the shaper, the arranger of matter, and matter only as the obedient expression and servant of the Spirit; it sees in man a spiritual being, seeking to unfold his powers by experience in a universe of forms; and it declares that man misunderstands himself, and will fail of his true end, if he identifies himself with the form that perishes instead of with the life which is deathless. Hence, opposed to materialism alike in science and philosophy, it builds up a spiritual conception of the universe, and necessarily it is idealistic in its thought, and holds up the importance of the ideal as a guide to all human activity. The ideal, which is thought applied to conduct, that is the keynote of Theosophy and its value in the varied worlds of thought; and the power of thought, the might of thought, the ability that it has to clothe itself in forms whose life only depends on the continuance of the thought that gave them birth, that is its central note, or keynote, in all the remedies that it applies to human ills. Idealist everywhere, idealist in religion, idealist in art, idealist in science, idealist in the practical life that men call politics, idealist everywhere; but avoiding the blunder into which some idealists have fallen, when they have not recognised that human thought is only a portion of the whole, and not the whole. The Theosophist recognises that the Divine Thought, of which the universe is an expression, puts limitations on his own power of thought, on his own creative activity. He realises that the whole compels the part, and that his own thought can only move within the vast circle of the Divine Thought, which he only partially expresses; so that while he will maintain that, on the ideal depends all that is called "real" in the lower worlds, he will realise that his creative power can only slowly mould matter to his will, and though every result will depend on a creative thought, the results will often move slowly, adapting themselves to the thought that gives them birth. Hence, while idealist, he is not impracticable; while he sees the power of thought, he recognises its limitations in s.p.a.ce and time; and while a.s.serting the vital importance of right thought and right belief, he realises that only slowly does the flower of thought ripen into the fruit of action.
But on the importance of thought he lays a stress unusual in modern life. It is the cant of the day, in judging the value of a man, that "it does not matter what he believes but only what he does." That is not true. It matters infinitely what a man believes; for as a man"s belief so he is; as a man"s thought, so inevitably is his action.
There was a time in the world of thought when it was said with equal error: "It does not matter what a man does, provided his faith is right." If that word "faith" had meant the man"s thought in its integrity, then there would have been but little error; for the right thought would inevitably have brought right action; but in those days right thought meant only orthodox thought, according to a narrow canon of interpretation, the obedient repet.i.tion of creeds, the blind acceptance of beliefs imposed by authority. In those days what was called Orthodoxy in religion was made the measure of the man, and judgment depended upon orthodox acquiescence. Against that mistake the great movement that closed the Middle Ages was the protest of the intellect of man, and it was declared that no external authority must bind the intellect, and none had right to impose from outside the thought which is the very essence of the man--that great a.s.sertion of the right of private judgment, of the supreme principle of the free intelligence, so necessary for the progress of humanity. But like all things it has been followed by a reaction, and men have run to the other extreme: that nothing matters except conduct, and action alone is to be considered. But your action is the result of your thought of yesterday, and follows your yesterday as its expression in the outer world; your thought of to-day is your action of to-morrow, and your future depends on its accuracy and its truth, on its consonance with reality. Hence it is all-important in the modern world to give back to thought its right place as above action, as its inspirer and its guide. For the human spirit by its expression as intellect judges, decides, directs, controls. Its activity is the outcome of its thinking; and if without caring for thought you plunge into action, you have the constant experiments, feeble and fruitless, which so largely characterise our modern life.
Pa.s.s, then, from that first a.s.sertion of the importance of right thinking, to see what message Theosophy has for the world of religious thought. What is religion? Religion is the quenchless thirst of the human spirit for the Divine. It is the Eternal, plunged into a world of transitory phenomena, striving to realise its own eternity. It is the Immortal, flung into a world of death, trying to realise its own deathlessness. It is the white Eagle of Heaven, born in the illimitable s.p.a.ces, beating its wings against the bars of matter, and striving to break them and rise into the immensities where are its birthplace and its real home. That is religion: the striving of man for G.o.d. And that thirst of man for G.o.d many have tried to quench with what is called Theology, or with books that are called sacred, traditions that are deemed holy, ceremonies and rites which are but local expressions of a universal truth. You can no more quench that thirst of the human Spirit by anything but individual experience of the Divine, than you can quench the thirst of the traveller parched and dying in the desert by letting him hear water go down the throat of another. Human experience, and that alone, is the rock on which all religion is founded, that is the rock that can never be shaken, on which every true Church must be built. Books, it is true, are often sacred; but you may tear up every sacred book in the world, and as long as man remains, and G.o.d to inspire man, new books can be written, new pages of inspiration can be penned. You may break in pieces every ceremony, however beautiful and elevating, and the Spirit that made them to express himself has not lost his artistic power, and can make new rites and new ceremonies to replace every one that is broken and cast aside. The Spirit is deathless as G.o.d is deathless, and in that deathlessness of the Spirit lies the certainty, the immortality of religion. And Theosophy, in appealing to that immortal experience, points the world of religions--confused by many an attack, bewildered by many an a.s.sault, half timid before the new truth discovered every day, half scared at the undermining of old foundations, and the tearing by criticism of many doc.u.ments--points it back to its own inexhaustible source, and bids it fear neither time nor truth, since Spirit is truth and eternity. All that criticism can take from you is the outer form, never the living reality; and well indeed is it for the churches and for the religions of the world that the outworks of doc.u.ments should be levelled with the ground, in order to show the impregnability of the citadel, which is knowledge and experience.
But in the world of religious thought there are many services, less important, in truth, than the one I have spoken of, but still important and valuable to the faiths of the world; for Theosophy brings back to men, living in tradition, testimony to the reality of knowledge transcending the knowledge of the senses and the reasoning powers of the lower mind. It comes with its hands full of proof, modern proof, proof of to-day, living witnesses, of unseen worlds, of subtler worlds than the physical. It comes, as the Founders and the early Teachers of every religion have come, to testify again by personal experience to the reality of the unseen worlds of which the religions are the continual witnesses in the physical world. Have you ever noticed in the histories of the great religions how they grow feebler in their power over men as faith takes the place of knowledge, and tradition the place of the living testimony of living men? That is one of the values of Theosophy in the religious world, that it teaches men to travel to worlds unseen, and to bring back the evidence of what they have met and studied; that it so teaches men their own nature that it enables them to separate soul and body, and travel without the physical body in worlds long thought unattainable, save through the gateway of death. I say "Long thought unattainable"; but the scriptures of every religion bear witness that they are not unattainable. The Hindu tells us that man should separate himself from his body as you strip the sheath from the stem of the gra.s.s. The Bud?d?hist tells us that by deep thought and contemplation mind may know itself as mind apart from the physical brain. Christianity tells us many a story of the personal knowledge of its earlier teachers, of a ministry of angels that remained in the Church, and of angelic teachers training the neophytes in knowledge. Islam tells us that its own great prophet himself pa.s.sed into higher worlds, and brought back the truths which civilised Arabia, and gave knowledge which lit again the torch of learning in Europe when the Moors came to Spain. And so religion after religion bears testimony to the possibility of human knowledge outside the physical world; we only re-proclaim the ancient truth--with this addition, which some religions now shrink from making: that what man did in the past man may do to-day; that the powers of the Spirit are not shackled, that the knowledge of the other worlds is still attainable to man. And outside that practical knowledge of other worlds it brings by that same method the distinct a.s.sertion of the survival of the human Spirit after death. It is only in very modern times that that has been doubted by any large numbers of people. Here and there in the ancient world, like a Lucretius in Rome, perhaps; like a Democritus in Greece; certainly like a Charvaka in India, you find one here and there who doubts the deathlessness of the Spirit in man; but in modern days that disbelief, or the hopeless cynicism which thinks knowledge impossible, has penetrated far and wide among the cultured, the educated cla.s.ses, and from them to the ma.s.ses of the uneducated. That is the phenomenon of modern days alone, that man by hundreds and by thousands despairs of his own immortality. And yet the deepest conviction of humanity, the deepest thought in man, is the persistence of himself, the "I"
that cannot die. And with one great generalisation, and one method, Theosophy a.s.serts at once the deathlessness of man and the existence of G.o.d; for it says to man, as it was ever said in the ancient days: "The proof of G.o.d is not without you but within you." All the greatest teachers have reiterated that message, so full of hope and comfort; for it shuts none out from knowledge. What is the method? Strip away your senses, and you find the mind; strip away the mind, and you find the pure reason; strip away the pure reason, and you find the will-to-live; strip away the will-to-live, and you find Spirit as a unit; strike away the limitations of the Spirit, and you find G.o.d.
Those are the steps: told in ancient days, repeated now. "Lose your life," said the Christ, "and you shall find it to life eternal." That is true: let go everything that you can let go; you cannot let go yourself, and in the impossibility of losing yourself you find the certainty of the Self Universal, the Universal Life.
Pa.s.s again from that to another religious point. I mentioned ceremonies, rites of every faith. Those Theosophy looks at and understands. So many have cast away ceremonies, even if they have found them helpful, because they do not understand them, and fear superst.i.tion in their use. Knowledge has two great enemies: Superst.i.tion and Scepticism. Knowledge destroys blind superst.i.tion by a.s.serting and explaining natural truths of which the superst.i.tion has exaggerated the unessentials; and it destroys scepticism by proving the reality of the facts of the unseen world. The ceremony, the rite, is a shadow in the world of sense of the truths in the world of Spirit; and every religion, every creed, has its ceremonies as the outward physical expression of some eternal spiritual truth. Theosophy defends them, justifies them, by explaining them; and when they are understood they cease to be superst.i.tions that blind, and become crutches that help the halting mind to climb to the spiritual life.
Let us pa.s.s from the world of religious thought, and pause for a moment on the world of artistic thought. Now to Art, perhaps more than in any other department of the human intelligence, the ideal is necessary for life. All men have wondered from time to time why the architecture--to take one case only--why the architecture of the past is so much more wonderful, so much more beautiful, than the architecture of the present. When you want to build some great national building to-day you have to go back to Greece, or Rome, or the Middle Ages for your model. Why is it that you have no new architecture, expressive of your own time, as that was expressive of the past? The severe order of Egypt found its expression in the mighty temples of Karnak; the beauty and lucidity of Grecian thought bodied itself out in the chaste and simple splendor of Grecian buildings; the sternness of Roman law found its ideal expression in those wondrous buildings whose ruins still survive in Rome; the faith of the Middle Ages found its expression in the upward-springing arch of Gothic architecture, and the exquisite tracery of the ornamented building.
But if you go into the Gothic cathedral, what do you find there? That not alone in wondrous arch and splendid pillar, upspringing in its delicate and slender strength from pavement to roof, not there only did the art of the builder find its expression. Go round to any out-of-the-way corner, or climb the roof of those great buildings, and you will find in unnoticed places, in hidden corners, the love of the artist bodying itself forth in delicate tracery, in stone that lives.
Men carved for love, not only for fame; men carved for beauty"s sake, not only for money; and they built perfectly because they had love and faith, the two divine builders, and embodied both in deathless stone.
Before you can be more than copyists you must find your modern ideal, and when you have found it you can build buildings that will defy time. But you have not found it yet; the artist amongst us is too much of a copyist, and too little of an inspirer and a prophet. We do not want the painter only to paint for us the things our own eyes can see.
We want the artist eye to see more than the common eye, and to embody what he sees in beauty for the instruction of our blinded sight. We do not want accurate pictures of cabbages and turnips and objects of that sort. However cleverly done, they remain cabbages and turnips still.
The man who could paint for us the thought that makes the cabbage, he would be the artist, the man who knows the Life. And so for our new Art we must have a splendid ideal. Do you want to know how low Art may sink when materialism triumphs and vulgarises and degrades? Then see that exhibition of French pictures that was placed in Bond Street some years ago, which attracted those who loved indecency more than those who loved the beautiful, and then you will understand how Art perishes where the breath of the ideal does not inspire and keep alive. And Theosophy to the artist would bring back that ancient reverence which regards the artist of the Beautiful as one of the chief G.o.d-revealers to the race of which he is a portion; which sees in the great musical artist, or the sculptor, or the painter, a G.o.d-inspired man, bringing down the grace of heaven to illuminate the dull grey planes of earth. The artists should be the prophets of our time, the revealers of the Divine smothered under the material; and were they this, they would be regarded with love and with reverence; for true art needs reverence for its growing, and the artist, of all men--subtle, responsive, sensitive to everything that touches him--needs an atmosphere of love and reverence that he may flower into his highest power, and show the world some glimpse of the Beauty which is G.o.d.
And the world of science--perhaps there, after the world of religion, Theosophy has most of value to offer. Take Psychology. What a confusion; what a ma.s.s of facts want arrangement; what a chaos of facts out of which no cosmos is built! Theosophy, by its clear and accurate definition of man, of the relation of consciousness to its bodies, of Spirit to its vehicles, arranges into order that vast ma.s.s of facts with which psychology is struggling now. It takes into that wonderful "unconscious" or "sub-conscious"--which is now, as it were, the answer to every riddle; but it is not understood--it takes into that the light of direct investigation; divides the "unconscious"
which comes from the past from that which is the presage of the future, separates out the inheritance of our long past ancestry which remains as the "sub-conscious" in us; points to the higher "super-conscious," not "sub-conscious," of which the genius is the testimony at the present time; shows that human consciousness transcends the brain; proves that human consciousness is in touch with worlds beyond the physical; and makes sure and certain the hope expressed by science, that it is possible that that which is now unconscious shall become conscious, and that man shall find himself in touch with a universe and not only in touch with one limited world.
That which Myers sometimes spoke of as the "cosmic consciousness," as against our own limited consciousness, is a profound truth, and carries with it the prophecy of man"s future greatness. Just as the fish is limited to the water, as the bird is limited to the air, so man has been limited to the physical body, and has dreamed he had no touch with other s.p.a.ces, to which he really belongs. But your consciousness is living in three worlds, and not in one, is touching mightier possibilities, is beginning to contact subtler phenomena; and all the traces of that are found in your newest psychology, and are simply proofs of those many theories about man which Theosophy has been teaching in the world for many a century, nay, for many a millennium.
And physics and chemistry is there anything of value along Theosophical lines of thought and investigation, which might aid our physicists and our chemists, puzzled at the subtlety of the forces with which they have to deal? Has it never struck some of the more intuitive physicists and materialists that there may be subtler senses which may be used for investigation of the subtler forces? That man may have in himself senses by the evolution of which he will able to pierce the secrets that now he is striving vainly to unveil? Has it never even struck a physicist or a chemist that, if he does not believe in the possibility of himself developing those subtler forces, he might utilise them in others in order to prosecute further his own investigations? They are beginning to to do that in France. They are beginning to now try to use those whom they call "lucid"; that is, people who see with eyes keener than the physical; they are beginning to use those in medicine, are using them for the diagnosis of disease, are using them for the testing of the sensitiveness of man, are beginning to use them to try to discover if man has any body subtler than the physical. And while I would not say to the scientific man: "Accept our theories," I would say to him: "Take them as hypotheses by which you may direct your further experiments, and you may go on and make discoveries more rapidly than you can at the present time." For there is many a clairvoyant who, put before a piece of some elemental substance, could describe it very much better than is done by your fractional a.n.a.lysis. And along other lines--chemical and electrical--surely there is something a little unsatisfactory, when a few years ago men told us that the atom was composed literally of myriads of particles, and during the last year it has been suggested that perhaps one particle is all of which an atom is composed. Might it not be wise to try to get hold of your atoms by sight keener than the physical, as it is possible to do, whether by the ordinary clairvoyant who is sometimes developed up to that point, or by an untrained sensitive whose senses are set free from the limitations of the physical brain, and from that sensitive try to gather something of the composition of matter which may guide you in your more scientific search? I realise that what one, or two, or twenty people see, is no proof for the scientific man; but it may give a hint whereby mathematical deductions may be made, and calculations which otherwise would not be thought of. So that I only suggest the utilising by science of certain powers that are now available, keener than those of the ordinary senses--a new sort of human microscope or human telescope--whereby you may pierce to the larger or the smaller, beyond the reach of your physical microscopes and telescopes, made of metal and not of intelligence showing itself in matter.
Is there anything of value in Theosophical ideas, shall I say to the science of medicine? Some say it is not yet a science, but works empirically only. There is some truth in that; but are there not here again lines of investigation which the physician might well study? For instance, the power of thought over the human body, all that ma.s.s of facts on which partly is built up such a science as Mental Healing, or what is called Faith Cure, and so on. Do you think that these things have been going on for hundreds of years, and that there is no truth lying behind them? "The effects of imagination," you say. But what is imagination? It does not matter of what it is the effect, if it brings cure where before there was disease. If you put into a man"s body a drug that you do not understand, and find that it cures a disease and relieves a pain, will you throw the drug aside because you do not understand it? And why do you throw the power of imagination aside because you cannot weigh it in your balance, nor find that it depresses one scale more than the other? Imagination is one of the subtlest powers of thought: imagination is one of the strongest powers that the doctor might utilise when his drugs fail him and his old methods no longer serve his purpose. Suggestion, the power of thought.
Why, there are records of cases where suggestion has killed! That which has killed can also cure, and man"s body being only a product of thought, built up through the ages, answers more rapidly to its creator than it does to clumsier products from the mineral and vegetable kingdoms. Here again I only ask experiment. You know that you can produce wounds upon the body of the hypnotised patient, in a state of trance. By suggestion lesions are made, burns are caused, inflammation and pain appear by the mere suggestion of a wound. A blister is placed on a patient and forbidden to act; the skin is untouched when the blister is removed: a bit of wet paper is given by thought the qualities of the blister, and it will raise the skin, with all the accompaniments of the chemical blister. Now these things are known. You can see the pictures of wounds thus produced, if you will, in some of the Paris hospitals, for along this line the Frenchman is investigating further than the Englishman has done. And along that line also lies much of useful experiment to be brought to the relief of the diseases of humanity.
But as I have touched upon medicine, let me say--for I ought here to say it--that there are some methods of modern medicine which Theosophy emphatically condemns. It declares that no knowledge which is gained from a tortured, a vivisected creature, is legitimate, even if it were as useful as it has been proved to be useless. It declares that all inoculations of disease into the healthy body are illegitimate, and it condemns all such. It declares that all those foul injections of modern medicine which use animal fluids to restore the exhausted vitality of man are ruinous to the body into which they are put. Here again France, by the very excess of its methods, is beginning to recoil before the results which have come about. Only two years ago I was told by a leading physician of Paris that many of the doctors had met together to look at the results which had grown out of the methods that for years they had been following without hesitation and without scruple, and that they feared that they had caused more diseases than they cured. Why are these things condemned as illegitimate? Because the building up of the human body is the building by a living Spirit of a temple for himself, and it is moulded by that Spirit for his own purposes. The higher powers of intelligence have made the human body what it is, different from the animal bodies out of which, physically, in ages long gone by, it has grown. Your delicacy of touch, the exquisite beauty and delicacy of your nervous system, these things are the outcome of the higher powers of the Spirit expressing themselves in the human body, where they cannot express themselves in the animal form. And if you ignore this, if you forget it, if you forget that this splendid human temple built up by the Spirit of man through ages of toil and of suffering, to express his own higher qualities--compa.s.sion, tenderness, love, pity for the weak and the helpless, protection of the helpless against the strong--if you forget the whole of that, and act as a brute even would not act, in cruelty and wickedness to men and animals alike, you will degrade the body you are trying to preserve, you will paralyse the body you are trying to save from disease, and you will go back into the savagery which is the nemesis of cruelty, and ruin these n.o.bler bodies, the inheritance of the civilised races.
I pa.s.s from that to my last world, the world of political thought. Now Theosophy takes no part in party politics. It lays down the great principle of human Brotherhood, and bids its followers go out into the world and work on it--using their intelligence, their power of thought, to judge the value of every method which is proposed. And our general criticism on the politics of the moment would be that they are remedies, not preventions, and leave untouched the root out of which all the miseries grow. Looking sometimes at your party politics, it seems to me as though you were as children plucking flowers and sticking them into the sand and saying: "See what a beautiful garden I have made." And when you wake the next morning the flowers are dead, for there were no roots, but only rootless flowers. I know you must make remedies, but you should not stop at that. When you send out your Red Cross doctors and nurses to pick up the mutilated bodies that your science of war has maimed, they are doing n.o.ble work, and deserve our love and grat.i.tude, for the wounded must be nursed; but the man who works for peace does more for the good of humanity than the Red Cross doctors and nurses. And so also in the political world. You cannot safely live "hand-to-mouth" in politics any more than in any other department of human life. But how many are there in the political parties who care for causes and not only for effects? That is the criticism we should make. We see everywhere Democracy spreading; but Democracy is on its trial, and unless it can evolve some method by which the wise shall rule, and not merely the weight of ignorant numbers, it will dig its own grave. So long as you leave your people ignorant they are not fit to rule. The schools should come before the vote, and knowledge before power. You are proud of your liberty; you boast of a practically universal suffrage--leaving out, of course, one half of humanity!--but taking your male suffrage as you have it, how many of the voters who go to the poll know the principles of political history, know anything of economics, know anything of all the knowledge which is wanted for the guiding of the ship of the State through troubled waters? You do not choose your captains out of people who know nothing of navigation; but you choose the makers of your rulers out of those who have not studied and do not know. That is not wise. I do not deny it is a necessary stage in the evolution of man. I know that the Spirit acts wisely, and guides the nations along roads in which lessons are to be learned; and I hope that out of the blunders, and the errors, and the crudities of present politics there will evolve a saner method, in which the wise of the nation will have power and guide its councils, and wisdom, not numbers, shall speak the decisive word.
Now there is one criticism of politics that we often hear in these days. It is said that behind politics lie economics. That is true. You may go on playing at politics for ever and ever; but if your economic foundation is rotten, no political remedies can build a happy and prosperous nation. But while I agree that behind politics lie economics, there is something that lies also behind economics, and of that I hear little said. Behind economics lies character, and without character you cannot build a free and a happy nation. A nation enormous in power, what do you know of the way in which your power is wielded in many a far-off land? How much do you know about your vast Indian Empire? How many of your voters going to the poll can give an intelligent answer to any question affecting that 300,000,000 of human beings whom you hold in your hand, and deal with as you will? There are responsibilities of Empire as well as pride in it, and pride of Empire is apt to founder when the responsibilities of Empire are ignored. And so the Theosophist is content to go to the root of the matter, and try to build up for you the citizens out of whom your future State is to be made. Education, real education, secular education, is now your cry. They tried secular education in France; they destroyed religious teaching; they tried to give morality without religion. But the moral lessons had no effect: they were too cold and dull, and dead. Is it not a scandal that in a country like this, where the vast majority are religious, you are quarrelling so much about the trifles that separate you, that the only way to peace seems to be to take religion out of the schools altogether, and train the children only in morality, allowing an insignificant minority to have its way?
Why! we have done better than that in India, we Theosophists. Hind?u Theosophists have founded there a College in which, despite all their sects and all their religious quarrels, they have found a common minimum of Hind?uism on which their children can be trained in religion and morality alike. I grant it was a Theosophical inspiration that began the movement; but the whole ma.s.s of Hind?us have fallen in with it, and are accepting the books as the basis of education.
Government has recognised them, and has begun to introduce them for the use of Hind?us in its own schools. That is the way in which we Theosophists work at politics. We go to the root to build character, and we know that n.o.ble characters will make a n.o.ble and also a prosperous nation. But you can no more make a nation of free men out of children untrained in duty and in righteousness, than you can build a house that will stand if you use ill-baked bricks and rotten timber.
Our keynote in politics is Brotherhood. That worked out into life will give you the nation that you want.
And what does Brotherhood mean? It means that everyone of us, you and I, every man and woman throughout the land, looks on all others as they look on their own brothers, and acts on the same principle which in the family rules. You keep religion out of politics? You cannot, without peril to your State; for unless you teach your people that they are a Brotherhood, whether or not they choose to recognise it, you are building on the sand and not on the rock. And what does Brotherhood mean? It means that the man who gains learning, uses it to teach the ignorant, until none are ignorant. It means that the man who is pure takes his purity to the foul, until all have become clean. It means that the man who is wealthy uses his wealth for the benefit of the poor, until all have become prosperous. It means that everything you gain, you share; everything you achieve, you give its fruit to all. That is the law of Brotherhood, and it is the law of national as well as of individual life. You cannot rise alone. You are bound too strongly each to each. If you use your strength to raise yourself by trampling on your fellows, inevitably you will fail by the weakness that you have wronged.
Do you know who are the greatest enemies of a State? The weak, injured by the strong. For, above all States, rules an Eternal Justice; and the tears of miserable women, and the curses of angry, starving men, sap the foundations of a State that denies Brotherhood, and reach the ears of that Eternal Justice by which alone States live, and Nations continue. It is written in an ancient scripture that a Master of Duty said to a King: "Beware the tears of the weak, for they sap the thrones of Kings." Strength may threaten: weakness undermines.
Strength may stand up to fight: weakness cuts away the ground on which the fighters are standing. And the message of Theosophy to the modern political world is: Think less about your outer laws, and more about the lives of the people who have to live under those laws. Remember that government can only live when the people are happy; that States can only flourish where the ma.s.ses of the population are contented; that all that makes life enjoyable is the right of the lowest and the poorest; that they can do without external happiness far less than you, who have so many means of inner satisfaction, of enjoyment, by the culture that you possess and that they lack. If there is not money enough for everything, spend your money in making happier, healthier, purer, more educated, the lives of the poor; then a happy nation will be an imperial nation; for Brotherhood is the strongest force on earth.
Part IV
The Field of Work of the Theosophical Society
_The Presidential Address delivered to the Convention of the British Section of the Theosophical Society, held in Ess.e.x Hall, London, 7th July 1907._
The Field of Work of the Theosophical Society.
It is my duty now to bring to a close this Convention, and to bid you all farewell, to scatter to your various places and to do, let us hope, with fresh courage and deeper knowledge, the varied works which you are called upon to perform. And let me, before I take up the subject upon which I am to speak--"The Field of Work of the Theosophical Society"--let me, ere beginning that subject, say one word of grat.i.tude to her without whom the Theosophical Society could not till any field, nor sow any seed--to H.P.B., our Teacher and our Helper, let us offer our heart"s grat.i.tude; for without her we could not have met together, without her we could not have learned the Theosophical teaching. It may be that many of us have learned much since she first taught us, but she was the first Teacher, and the Bringer of the Light. It may be that some, since they met her, have known their Master face to face; but it was she who led them to His presence, she to whom the possibility in this life was due. It may well be that had she not come some other might have come to do the work, but that matters not to us; that she did it is her claim to our homage, and we, who live in the light she brought, may well pay tribute of grat.i.tude to her.
What is the Field of our Society"s work? It is sketched in our Three Objects; and those of you who have looked upon the Objects with care, in the various recensions through which they have pa.s.sed, may have noticed that each one of them covers one of the aspects of human consciousness. In the first, that which declares the truth of the Universal Brotherhood, we have the field of work of the Activity aspect, the active principle of the consciousness, of the Spirit, which seeks expression in service to the race. In the second, the study of the religions and the philosophies of the world, we have the field of work for the Cognition aspect of consciousness, that which gathers together the fruit of knowledge; it is the Knower gathering the food by which he unfolds his powers. And in the third we have the field of work of the Will, the Power aspect of the consciousness, the deepest root of our being, that by which the worlds exist, as they are supported by the Wisdom, as they are created by the Activity. So that when we thus look at the objects of the Society and realise the relation that they bear to our conscious selves, we see that the field of the work of the Theosophical Society is wide as the world, and knows no limit where Will and Knowledge and Activity can make their way. And it is true, now and always, that everything which helps and benefits man is Theosophical work, and that nothing can be excluded from the sphere of our work which includes every aspect of consciousness. So let us take this natural, this scientific division of our work, and see what we may do in each field which offers itself to the appropriate power in our nature.
The first will naturally cover all active working for humanity, all service which one can offer to another; and it will be well, in the days that lie before us, if we realise that there is no scheme for human helping, no possible effort for human uplifting, which is outside the field of work of the First Object of our Society. Every Lodge of the Society should make it one of its activities to serve humanity in the place where the Lodge is founded; and the value of the Lodge should be in the knowledge that is there gathered with the object of spreading it. For Theosophy should be your touch-stone as to the value of every scheme, as to the tendency of every proposition. In all the countless schemes around us in these active times, some work only for the moment; others, based on sound principle, are preparing the world for a better and happier future. By your Theosophical knowledge you can judge the value of every such scheme, and throw yourselves into those alone which work on lines beneficial to the future, which are laying the foundations of a civilisation greater than our own. For among the many schemes and many methods there are ways in which each man inspired by the Spirit of Brotherhood may find work that satisfies his reason and is justified by his conscience. And there is no one particular method, no one special road, along which the Society, as Society, can go. It lays down the principle of Brotherhood as an active working spirit in the life of every member, and then it leaves the member free to use his own judgment and his own conscience as to which among the many methods recommends itself most to him as an individual. So that in speaking of that field of work, it is not for me to say: "This plan, that method, the other means, that is what you ought to follow"; but only that you are not carrying out the First Object of the Society, unless you are engaging your activity in some task which in your intelligence and conscience is working for the benefit of your fellow-men. That is a point I want to put to your Lodges; for when I see questions discussed as to giving new life to Lodges, vivifying Lodges, and so on, I know well that the only cause for the need of such discussion is because men allow the life to stagnate within the Lodge, instead of sending it forth a living stream to fertilise the place in which the Lodge is built. There would be no lack of life were it not that you keep it bottled up for your own advantage, for your own needs. The source of life is inexhaustible, and it only ceases to flow where there is stagnation, because it is not allowed to run out to the people who have need of it, but is kept within the narrow limits of a Lodge. If you worked as well as talked, if you labored as well as discussed, if you served as well as praised service, there would be no time and no need to discuss how the Lodges of the Theosophical Society shall be vivified.
Your Lodge should be your place of inspiration, the place where you learn how you are to serve, the place where you find the bread of life. But the bread of life is meant to feed the hungry, and not to surfeit those already filled, to feed the hungry crowds around you starving for knowledge, that life may be made intelligible and thus tolerable to them; and it is yours to feed the flock of the Great Shepherd, and to help those who, without this Wisdom, are helpless.
And all need it; not the poor alone, nor the rich alone, but every child of man. For the one thing that presses upon all alike, the bitterness of life, is the sense of wrong, the want of intelligibility in life, and therefore a feeling of the lack of justice upon earth; that is the sting which pierces every heart; whether the heart belong to the rich or the poor, it matters not. When you understand life, life becomes bearable; and never till you understand it will it cease to be a burden grievous to be borne; but when you understand it, everything changes. When you realise its meaning, its value, you can put up with the difficulties. And our work with regard to those around us is to bring that knowledge, and by that knowledge to lift them to a place of peace. That is the work which demands to be done, and which your Lodges have the duty of doing. For there ought not to be one scheme for human helping, in any place where a Lodge of the Theosophical Society is established, where in that Lodge workers may not be found ready and eager to give labor to the helping of their brothers amongst whom they live. What is the use of prattling about Universal Brotherhood, if you do not live it? Sometimes, in discussions on Brotherhood, it is spoken of as though it only meant soft words and well-turned phrases, sentimentality and not reality. It means work, constant, steadfast, unwearied work, for those who require service at our hands; not soft words to each other, but work for the world, that is the true meaning of Brotherhood.
Pa.s.s from that to our next field of work, sketched out by our Second Object. Without that you cannot rightly work for Brotherhood, for you will not understand the knowledge already garnered. You must learn in order to teach, you must study in order to understand, and this Object is not carried on in our Lodges as effectively as it ought to be; for it is translated into one man studying, and pouring out the fruits of his study into the open mouths round him on every side. That is all very well in the beginning when the young bird comes out of the egg.
It is necessary that the father and mother bird should pour food into the wide open beak; but some of you ought to have gone beyond that in the thirty-two years of life of the Society: you ought to be ready to help, and not only to be helped. And the life of the Society will not be healthy while so few are students, and therefore so few are fit to teach. Every Lodge should have its cla.s.ses for study under this object. There are other ways in which you must learn as well as by the teaching of brother Theosophists, and there is a plan they are just adopting in the Paris Lodge for the work of the coming winter, which is a very good one; instead of Theosophists studying the books of scholars, and then giving out what they have learned, the French Lodge is inviting leading representatives of the various branches of thought, those specially interesting to us, in order that they may put their knowledge from their own standpoint, and that the Theosophist may have the advantage of listening to them at first hand. That seems to me a very admirable plan, and I know not why in some of the London Lodges you should not try to take a leaf out of our French neighbor"s book, and why one Lodge at least should not try, if only for one six months, to bring to that Lodge some leader in the world of thought, who shall tell it what he believes, and explain the lines of his work.