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Gleanings from The Theosophical Path

( 45 Volumes, July, 1911 - Oct., 1936 )

Volume 2
Contents Archeology and Ethnology - Notes on Ancient Egypt - Ryan - Notes on Peruvian Antiquities - Dick - Archeology and Theosophy - Travers - Maori Lore - Neill - Woman's Mysteries of a Primitive People - Travers - The Unconquered Race of America - Kinnaman - Discoveries on the Janiculum Hill, Rome - Ryan - Egypt and the Stone Age - Travers - Homogeneous Civilization - Kinnaman - Mesa Verde "Sun-Temple" - Travers Greek Philosophy - The Myth of Prometheus - Edge - The School of Pythagoras at Crotona - Cervesato Ancient History - Classical Authors and Atlantis - Darrow - The Prehistoric Aegean Civilization - Darrow - Cyclic Law in History - Morris Science - Ancient Astronomy - Dick - Evolution and Involution: A Study in Biology - Coryn - The Trend of Invention - Malpas - Latent Life - Henry - The Poplar Tree that Smelt Water - Edge - The Turn of the Tide - Coryn - Science and Misc. Notes Psychology - The Etiology of Epilepsy - Ross - The New God - 'Psychology' - Edge - The Angel and the Demon - Dominguez - The Complex Nature of Man - Coryn - Our Complex Personality - Edge - The "Sex-Hygiene" Fad - Edge - Pride - Machell

General Theosophy - Adversity - Neresheimer - On Backsliding - Henry - The Common Sense of Theosophy - Knoche - Compassion and Wisdom - Henry - The Hindrance of Desire - Leonard - The Waters of Forgetfulness - Leonard - Friends or Enemies in the Future - Urban (Wm. Judge) - A Wanderer in the Hall of Learning - Edge - Karma and Memory - Karma and Suicide - Travers - The Law of Karma - Travers - Nature's Silence - Machell - Old Age and Senility - Edge - An Old Book - Malpas - Pessimism and Perfectability - Machell - Scientific Ghostology - Travers - Theosophy and Self-Culture - Edge - The Temple of Life - Dunn - The Secret - Dana (verse) - The Third Eye - H. Travers - Three Essays - Cibddar (Morris) - The Triple Man - Coryn -------------------Archeology and Ethnology Notes on Ancient Egypt - C. J. Ryan I. To the intelligent student for whom archaeology is not a dry-as-dust pursuit but a method of reconstructing the past in life and color, the words Ancient Egypt suggest long ages of vigorous existence of a contented people, a philosophic religion, veiling deep scientific knowledge under allegory and symbolism, a sublime form of art, and a dignified system of government. But, although the treasure-house of relics has been industriously explored for more than a century by experts, there are still enormous gaps in our knowledge, and vitally interesting problems are still matters of dispute. Unfortunately, a tendency to materialistic interpretations has prevailed in the minds of many modern Egyptologists. In freeing themselves from antiquated swaddling-clothes they have exposed themselves to the danger of ignoring the possibility that the religious and philosophic ideas of the Egyptians may be more than merely curious and interesting examples of folklore. While we must be sincerely grateful to the splendid enthusiasm of the Egyptologists, we may safely believe that greater progress will be made by accepting the possibility that the ancient Egyptians at their best knew certain things of profound importance to a well-balanced life which we, in this age of materialism and strife, have lost sight of. Dr.

Flinders Petrie, the famous explorer and historian of Egypt, says: "To know the past of mankind and to apply it to the present is the road of success in the future." Some distinguished Egyptologists like Erman, who are perhaps a little prosaic, have expressed surprise that certain methods which seem to us cumbersome and imperfect and in some cases superstitious, should have been adhered to for ages by such an intelligent race as the Egyptians. This criticism applies to their systems of hieroglyphic writing, of arithmetic and geometry. Though some of these charges may be true of the later dynastic periods, it is difficult if not impossible to believe that in geometry, mathematical astronomy and certain psychological subjects of which we are densely ignorant the accomplished builders of the Great Pyramid were uninformed. We must also recollect that our information about the inner side of the Egyptian temple-science is very limited indeed. Putting aside minor criticisms, the striking and impressive fact stands out for all men to see that throughout the Egyptian cycles of glory and of decline there runs an undercurrent of virile energy, serene dignity and immortal beauty. We feel the throb of the soul-life; we recognise that the divinity of man's immortal spirit was known in Egypt as a living fact; and if we are honest we must sorrowfully admit that our age has lost some valuable quality possessed by the ancient Egyptians. The aim of this paper is to bring forward a few points which will help in the appreciation of the ancient spirit of greatness. Innumerable are the ideas and inventions familiar to us today which have been handed down to us from Egypt. Not only in mechanical implements of every art and craft, but in religious and philosophical conceptions we are far more indebted to the Egyptians than we commonly imagine. The very calendar that we use, though partly spoiled by the Romans, is the same that the Egyptians had six thousand years ago. In the time of Mena (B.C. 4500, according to Petrie) the first king of united Egypt, medicine and surgery were divided into thirty-six departments, each with its own specialists. Dr. J.J. Walsh, Dean of Fordham College Medical School, says, in a learned paper on the history of medicine, that the testimony of the admirable bandaging of the mummies and the excellence of Egyptian dentistry - surgical evidences that we can test - strongly support the idea that the other departments of medicine were also efficient. The name of the earliest known professional physician was I-am-hetep, the 'Bringer of Peace,' also called the 'Master of Secrets.' King Teta, son of Mena, is credited with a book on anatomy and medicine, and his royal mother is said to have discovered a remedy for baldness! This recipe has unfortunately not been preserved. When we consider that the Egyptians had no steam machinery, their engineering feats are remarkable. They connected the Nile with the Red Sea by a canal, and permanently changed the course of the Nile near Memphis by a colossal dike. The latter undertaking was accomplished in the early days of Mena, yet it protects the province of Ghizeh to this day. Notwithstanding the enormous lapse of time since the early dynastic periods, several relics of the literature have been preserved. One of the earliest books in the world is the Prisse Papyrus, containing the Instructions of Ptah-Hetep. Ptah-Hetep was counselor to King Assa (or Isosi) who reigned not later than 5000 years ago, and his treatise deals with the conduct of life and the duty to the neighbor. It was widely read and was used for centuries as a writingcopy in schools. In perusing the kindly words of Ptah-hetep, a true gentleman if ever there was one, we gain a vivid picture of the social life of his time. It is very like ours. "We read of the wife, who must be treated kindly.... the genial generosity of of the rich

man; of the scowling boor, a thorn in the side of his friends and relations; of the unquenchable talkers.... of the trusted counselor, weighing every word; of the obstinate ignoramus; of the scholar, conversing freely with learned and unlearned; of the master of the estate, treated with infinite respect by his subordinates; of the paid servants that are never satisfied; of the hard-working clerk who casts accounts all day; of the merchant who will perhaps give you credit if you have made friends with him previously; of the well-bred dinerout, contenting himself with plain fare, and of the gourmand who visits his friends at mealtimes." (W.G. Gunn) Here are a few sentences from the treatise as translated by Mr. Gunn: "Be not proud because thou art learned, but discourse with the ignorant man as with the sage. Fair speech is more rare than the emerald.... Love thy wife that is in thine arms and gladden her heart during her lifetime.... Be not harsh; gentleness mastereth more than strength. [Polygamy was not the custom at this time.] If thou wouldst be a wise man, and one sitting in the council, apply thine heart unto perfection; silence is more profitable to thee than abundance of speech.... If thou be powerful make thyself to be honored for knowledge and for gentleness.... The innermost chamber openeth unto the man of silence.... Exalt not thine heart, that it be not brought low. Beware of answering words with heat; control thyself.... it is a man's kindly acts that are remembered of him in the years after his life...." The age of civilized man in Egypt is unknown. Recent geological discoveries show that the Nile has run in its present direction at least since the Miocene period, and beautifully made flint implements and ornaments from the valley of the Nile were exhibited in New York in 1914, whose age, reckoned from the probable length of time required to produce the thickness of the surface patina, is claimed to be far more than a hundred thousand years! However this may be, and it seems highly probable, archaeology is learning to speak very guardedly of the 'Childhood of the Race,' and the 'Dawn of Civilization.' We learn from the Prisse Papyrus that the Egyptians of five or six thousand years ago regarded their civilization as past its prime. Professor Mahaffy and other authorities agree that it is possible that they were right, and that we only know them, historically, in the autumn of their history. Mahaffy says: "Not only in practical civilization but in all the moral bearings of an advanced life, the Egyptians of the early dynasties were on a plane differing in no essential degree from that of modern Christendom." Petrie says: "The population at the beginning of the history of Egypt was apparently well-to-do and possessed better things than are made in Egypt today...." Even in the latest days of decline Egypt commanded the admiration of great nations. Greek intelligence, while deprecating the superstitions into which the masses had fallen in the old age of the nation, had the highest opinion of Egyptian wisdom. It can hardly be doubted that Greece derived the foundations of its art from Egypt, directly or through Crete, and Plato had no hesitation in quoting the words of the aged priest of Sais: "O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and there is never an old man who is an Hellene.... in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition; nor any

science which is hoary with age." In even a rapid glance at a few of the leading architectural wonders of Egypt, we must not ignore the Great Pyramid, familiar though its general features may be. It stands on the verge of the mysterious desert the most impressive of human monuments, the only survivor of the Seven Wonders of Antiquity. It was called the Flame or the Light, and when it was perfect, with its polished casing shining in the blaze of the Egyptian sunshine, it must have been a marvelous sight. Its immense size and the perfection of its workmanship have commanded universal admiration. Petrie says: "The entrance-passage and the casing are perhaps the finest; the flatness and squareness of the joints being extraordinary, equal to opticians' work of the present day, but on a scale of acres instead of feet or yards of material. The squareness and level of the base is brilliantly true, the average error being less than a ten-thousandth of an inch of the side in equality, in squareness and in level.... The Queen's chamber is also very finely fitted, the joints being scarcely perceptible. Above that the work has not that superlative fineness...." How did the Egyptians learn to build with a perfection "equal to opticians' work" in the very short time - about a century or a little more - allowed by Petrie for the development of stone architecture and the introduction of copper tools? The thing is incredible. We know that an Eastern people blended with the original population at some very early period, and brought their civilization with them. If they built the Great Pyramid it must be far older than the Fourth Dynasty of regular Egyptian kings to which it is generally attributed, for the immigrants arrived ages before. There is a strange mystery here, and the finding of the name of Khufu (B.C. 3969), the second king of the Fourth Dynasty, roughly scrawled on some of the interior chambers, does not conclusively prove that he built it! Nor do the alleged statements of Herodotus, which bear marks suggesting unreliability. Many attempts have been made by astronomers to calculate the date of the Great Pyramid by comparing the angle of the descending passage with the position of certain stars when in significant places, but nothing conclusive has been proved. Madame Blavatsky, in suggesting a far greater age than six thousand years, points out that, according to the accepted view of the precession of the equinoxes, similar phenomena would recur at intervals of about twenty-six thousand years, and that the evidence of the Denderah planisphere with its three Virgos leads to the conclusion that the Great Pyramid may have seen more than one Precessional Cycle. Nothing in Egypt or in any other land duplicates the Great Pyramid. Within it is unique, and in at least one external feature, i.e., the flat platform at the summit, it differs from the other Egyptian pyramids. The very singularities of its workmanship have a symbolic meaning, as we have learned from the researches of Marsham Adams.* In connection with the extraordinary passages and chambers inside the Pyramid there is a key to the mystery in the shape of the papyrus called by Lepsius the 'Book of the Dead' (more properly, according to its own text, the 'Book of the Master of the Secret House'). This sacred papyrus, a copy of which was buried with the mummy as a kind of memorandum on inner worlds, describes the soul's progress on its way through the mystic portals and regions of terrible trials to the throne of the Savior Osiris, with whom the perfected man is finally identified. As the Egyptians believed in Reincarnation, they must have known that this process of spiritual development in its entirety occupied many lifetimes; the adventures of the ordinary good man in the intervals between lifetimes only covered a small part of the story. -----------* The Book of the Master, and The House of the Hidden Places, by W. Marsham

Adams. -----------Very rarely may the candidate have been so prepared and purified by his past lives as to be qualified to enter fully into communion with Divinity. To most men the Book of the Dead would only be the record of a future ideal, though no doubt it helped them in life and after death. Marsham Adams seems conclusively to have demonstrated that the Great Pyramid, in its passages and chambers and its terrestrial location, represents on the material plane the conditions described in the 'Book of the Dead.' [Illustration] Whether the 'King's Chamber' was ever used for a tomb in the ordinary sense or not, Adams has brought apparently undeniable evidence in support of Madame Blavatsky's statement that the Pyramid was the Temple in which the greatest initiation of advanced candidates for divine wisdom took place. He claims that it provided an indestructible means of preserving, without betraying, the doctrines upon which the whole organization of Egyptian national life rested. Marsham Adams was the first to discover the close resemblance between the Pyramid and the descriptions in the Book of the Dead, but Professor Maspero, the eminent French Egyptologist, quickly adopted the idea, saying they "reproduce the same original, the one in words, the other in stone." The Judgment Scene from the Book of the Dead is so well known that we need not linger over it: the weighing of the heart in the presence of Osiris, representing the Higher Self; the record being read by Thoth, the Personified Law of Karma; the presence of the monster who will eat the heart if it is not pure, are all intelligible enough, but a word should be said about the forty-two assessors above, many of whom have animal heads. We can never begin to understand the animal-headed gods unless we recognise that they were introduced by imaginative thinkers who found in certain animals the various qualities which best symbolized the forces they wished to represent. Herodotus is responsible for most of the modern criticism Egypt has received on account of the animal-worship. He visited the court in its decline, when the superstitions of the multitude were pandered to by the degenerating priesthood; in the greater periods we hear very little of it. The ancient Egyptian philosopher known as Hermes Trismegistus, the 'Thrice-Greatest,' foresaw what has happened when he said: "Alas, alas, my son, a day will come when the sacred hieroglyphs become but idols. The world will mistake the emblems of science for gods, and accuse grand Egypt of having worshiped hell-monsters." Osiris was the symbol of the Higher Self, and the mythological events of his birth, his divine life, his efforts to do good, temporary overwhelming by evil, cruel death and resurrection into glory, are all typical of the progress of the soul. Until the struggling soul begins to identify itself with the divine it is unable to destroy the enemies that face it. "I am Osiris," says the candidate, "I am Sothis (Sirius), the star of the Eternal Dawn." and the furious beasts, the lower desires, flee. "Not one of the Christian virtues," writes Chabas, "is forgotten in the Egyptian code [found in the Book of the Dead and elsewhere]; piety, charity, gentleness, self-command in word and action, chastity, protection of the weak, benevolence towards the needy, deference towards superiors, respect for property in the minutest details." Near the Great Pyramid is the Sphinx, whose origin is still a mystery, but which stands as the sublimest existing monument of the true meaning of Evolution - the domination of the animal by the intelligence of divine man. Champollion declared the existence of a subterranean passage between the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid. This seems to have been

lost to sight; its rediscovery would be interesting and important. Mariette Bey described a tablet found near by which tells of the restoration of the Sphinx by Khufu, the supposed builder of the Great Pyramid. The Temple of the Sphinx, so called, is a very remarkable building whose purpose is unknown. In plan it is a cross, and it is built of immense blocks of granite, of exceptionally beautiful workmanship. Nowhere is there any trace of inscription or decoration. It is certainly as old as the Second Pyramid, or possibly far older, and its lack of all sculpture gives added countenance to the ancient saying that the earliest Egyptians made no images of the gods. It stood in a class by itself until the great discovery at Abydos, the burial place of Osiris and the seat of his Mysteries from the dawn of history, was made in 1913-14 by Professor E. Naville, the French archaeologist, and his American colleagues. Close to the well-known and magnificent Temple of Abydos of Seti I (B.C. 1355) and thirty feet below the ground, an extraordinary subterranean building was excavated, precisely resembling in style the Temple of the Sphinx, but like nothing else in Egypt. A full description, with illustrations, of this mysterious edifice, will be found in The Theosophical Path for October 1914 and April 1915. It is to be noticed, from the splendid quality of the workmanship of these buildings, in which enormous stones were used freely, that there is nothing very 'primitive' about them, yet their age is very great. It is more than probable that such examples set the pattern for the prehistoric cyclopean monuments in northwestern Africa and various parts of Europe. Madame H.P. Blavatsky, in her great work The Secret Doctrine, gives some valuable information of a very ancient journey from Egypt to western Europe and Britain, during which initiated teachers showed many primitive peoples how to build and use great religious and astronomical structures, such as Stonehenge in England, Carnac in Brittany, Callernish in Scotland, or New Grange in Ireland. Sir Norman Lockyer, the British astronomer, has lately brought strong evidence to show that the prehistoric British cyclopean temples were oriented to certain stars, like some in Egypt, and that many prehistoric buildings, such as stone circles and dolmens, were primarily used as temple-observatories and not only for burial purposes, as generally believed. Carved upon some of these, symbolic Egyptian carvings are found, such as the sacred Tau-cross and the Solar Boat of Amen-Ha. There are many other traces of the widespread influence of Egypt in very ancient times, for instance the close resemblance - nay, the identity - of the syntax (not the words) of the Welsh tongue to the language of Egypt, lately demonstrated by Professor Morris Jones. In considering this subject we are irresistibly reminded of the singular resemblance between some of the leading Egyptian symbols and principles of design and those of Ancient America. Maya buildings at Chichen Itza have a marked Egyptian flavor, and the great Pyramids of the Sun and Moon near Mexico City would be quite in place in the Nile Valley. In the symbolism of both Ancient America and Egypt we find, among others, the Tau-cross and the Winged Globe. Also the symbolic attitudes of certain important figures in Central America are identical with those of India. For instance, the exceedingly beautiful low relief called 'Le Beau,' at Palenque, has so many unusual and striking features, characteristic of the Hindu Krishna, and the Hindu Buddha or 'Yoga' position is so exactly represented in other figures that some definite community of ideas between the philosophers of the two hemispheres must have existed. The question is: Was this before or after the destruction of the continent of Atlantis? The Temple of Edfu, of which a picture is given, is referred to here because it is a characteristic temple of the kind we usually associate with Egypt, and it affords a striking contrast to the archaic buildings we have been considering. It was finished in B.C. 57, the year Caesar set out to conquer Britain, so it seems a thing of yesterday. The gap between the buildings erected in this style, with round columns and capitals, cornices, sloping pylons,

and rich carving, and the archaic ones, has not been filled. Though the Egyptians knew and very rarely used the principle of the arch, they preferred the simplicity of the flat lintel and the flat roof. In its present state, the temple of Denderah is also late (B.C. 120 - A.D. 60), but it occupies the site of the first temple erected by the 'Followers of Horus' in the extremely distant past. These Followers were probably the early immigrants from 'Eastern Ethiopia' Asia - who brought the knowledge of iron and of architecture with them. King Pepi of the VIth Dynasty discovered the plan of a second archaic temple and adopted it for his temple. This plan is said to be founded upon a map of the heavens, and there are some romantic traditions about the mysterious way it was preserved to be found at the right time. Pepi's temple vanished - perhaps traces exist in the foundations - and two thousand five hundred years after his time the Ptolemies built the present one. It contains portraits of the celebrated Cleopatra VI and of Caesarian, and inscriptions relating to the Roman Pharaoh-Emperors Tiberius, Antaninus and Nero. Hathor, a permutation of Isis, to whom the temple was dedicated, was the Great Mother of light and joy and family love, a benevolent patroness. Her face, with symbolic cow's ears, is found on the capitals of the pillars, though terribly disfigured by fanatic hands. Much has been written about the star-chart or planisphere, and the zodiac of Denderah. The former is particularly interesting from the indication given by the three repetitions of the zodiacal figure of the Virgin that the Egyptians knew, and recorded thus, three Precessional Cycles of the sun in the zodiac, each representing an immense period of about 26,000 years. There is said to be a similar one in a temple in Northern India, in which country we know records of enormously long astronomical periods have been kept. Madame Blavatsky gives some curious information about the Denderah star-maps in The Secret Doctrine, and the subject has been considerably worked out by Professor Fred. J. Dick.... ["Ancient Astronomy in Egypt," Theos. Path, vol. 10, pp. 287-303] A little further up the Nile stands 'Hundred-Gated Thebes,' as Homer calls one of the greatest cities the world has ever seen. Champollion says: "One is overcome and astounded by the splendor of the sublime remnants, the prodigality and magnificence of the workmanship to be seen everywhere. No people in ancient or modern times has conceived the art of architecture upon a scale so sublime, so grandiose as existed among the ancient Egyptians; the imagination falls powerless at the feet of the columns of Karnak." H.P. Blavatsky, who spent much time in Egypt, says of Thebes: "If we are stupefied by its contemplation, what must have been the general aspect in the days of its glory? He must indeed be devoid of the spiritual perception of genius, who fails to feel as well as to see the intellectual grandeur of the race that planned and built it." Most of the stupendous groups of temples remaining at Thebes were built by the mighty XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties of the thirteenth century B.C., when Egypt was on the crest of one of its waves of greatness. The great temple at Karnak was dedicated to AmenRa, the Highest, the Hidden One, the Uncreate, " from whom proceeds the heaven and the earth, the gods, and all that is." On the sacred Lake the Mysteries of Amen-Ra were celebrated, during which the Solar Bark of Ra was floated on the waters - the Boat whose fame was carried to far northern Europe. Mr. Weigall, until recently Inspector-General of Egyptian Antiquities, says: "To this day there is a native tradition that upon this Karnak Lake a

golden boat may sometimes be seen: evidently the barque of Amen." When perfect, the Hypostyle Hall must indeed have been awe-inspiring in its magnitude. It covers 50,000 square feet; its larger pillars are 80 feet or more high and 33 feet in circumference. But it does not depend alone upon size and proportion for its beauty. Some eccentric person recently published rather widely a theory that the gigantic size of Egyptian monuments was due to the supposed eye-strain from which the builders must have suffered: they could not clearly see small objects! In reply to this we only have to examine the minute chasing of their exquisite jewelry, some of which has designs composed of eighty tiny pieces of gold to the inch; and in regard to the delicacy of the paintings in the Hypostyle Hall, when a reduced copy was made for the Crystal Palace in London, the best average decorative painters were quite unable to copy their refinements; it was a task that would have severely tried accomplished artists. Another proof of the subtlety of the Egyptian artist is shown in the capitals of the gigantic pillars, which are not mechanically level, but slightly irregular in position, obviously with the intention of giving life to the lines. Egypt had several remarkable Queens. The unique mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsu at Deir-el-Bahari, near Thebes, reveals the influence of a delicate feminine imagination. This Queen was one of Egypt's greatest rulers, and within this temple are a number of pictures vividly portraying the adventurous marine expedition she sent to a far country in the south of the Red Sea. Another represents the supernatural birth of the Queen. It is semi-allegorical and illustrates a symbolism startlingly like that of the nativities of other divine personages in other countries. Gerald Massey, in The Natural Genesis (Vol. II, p. 398) describes a similar scene in the temple of Luxor. He says: "In these four consecutive scenes the maiden queen, Mut-em-Ua, the mother of Amenhetp (Amen-hotep III) a Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, impersonates the Virgin Mother who bore without fatherhood, the mother as the solar boat, the mother of the Only One. "The first scene on the left hand shows the god Taht (Thoth) the lunar Mercury, the divine Word or Logos, in the act of hailing the virgin queen, announcing to her that she is to give birth to the coming son. In the next scene the god Kneph (in conjunction with Hathor) gives life to her. This is the Holy Spirit.... Next the mother is seated and the child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity Kneph, on the right, three men are kneeling and offering gifts with the right hand and life with the left. The child thus announced, incarnated, born and worshiped, was the Pharaonic representative of the Aten sun, the Adon of Syria, and Hebrew Adonai, the child-Christ of the Aten cult, the miraculous conception of the ever-virgin mother represented by Mut-em-Ua." Mr. Weigall becomes quite enthusiastic about the figure of one of the midwives at Deirel-Bahari, saying: "Her figure is beautifully drawn and quite lacks the conventional faults which so often minimize the artistic value of Egyptian drawing; it might have been the work of a Greek." It was, however, drawn a thousand years before such work was produced in Greece. It is known that when the Egyptians represented persons in humble ranks of life they frequently disregarded their artistic conventions and indulged in realism. We must not fall into the error of imagining that they always conventionalized because they knew no better. Near the temple of Deir-el-Bahari the famous statue of the divine Hathor Cow was found, which amazed the world a few years ago. It easily challenges comparison with animal sculpture of any age or country. Among the obelisks set up in honor of various great kings at Karnak there are two (one fallen) erected by Queen Hatshepsu to Amen-Ra. The inscription reveals the powerful

character of that great sovereign, who was not a blood-thirsty conqueror but a strong worker for peace. "I will make this known to the generations which are to come, whose hearts will enquire after this monument which I have made, and who will talk enquiringly and gaze upon it in future. I was sitting in the palace. I was thinking of my creator when my heart urged me to make for him these two obelisks whose points reach unto the sky." She then describes how the two obelisks were quarried, carved, polished and set up in the amazingly short time of seven months. After making a tremendous oath that this is true, she adds: "Then let not him who shall hear this say it is a lie which I have spoken, but let him only say 'How like her!'" There is independent evidence proving that her statement was true. The obelisks are ninety-seven and a half feet high, and are each made of a single stone; the pyramidion at the top was plated with gold. The temple of Luxor, built by Amenhetep III (fifteenth century B.C.), is one of the finest in Thebes, and is in fair preservation. During the long reign of this king, thirty-six years, Egypt enjoyed great peace and prosperity, and Thebes became one of the wonders of the world. Accounts still existing written by ancient scribes speak of the magnificence of the temple of Luxor as overwhelming. It had doors of electrum (silver and gold alloy), floors of silver, bronze doors studded with gold, and exquisite flower gardens. This richness was not barbaric, but blended with perfect taste. The memory of Amenhetep III has been kept green by the two grandest, if not quite the largest statues ever made, the famous Colossi of the Plain of Thebes. Each is made of a single stone weighing about 900 tons! Each foot is ten and one-half feet long and the height of the seated figures when perfect was seventy feet. One is the so-called 'Vocal Memnon,' which gave out a melodious sound at sunrise. There is no record of this happening till B.C. 27, when there was a serious earthquake which damaged it. Two hundred years later it was restored, and it has never spoken since. Harriet Martineau says: "I can never believe that anything else so majestic as this pair has been conceived by the imagination of art. Nothing, certainly, even in nature, ever affected me so unspeakably.... The impression of sublime tranquillity which they convey when seen from distant points is confirmed by a nearer approach...." How were they carved, how were they transported down the Nile and set in place? This is not fully cleared up. They were erected in front of a temple of Amenhetep III of which no vestige remains. Further up the Nile is the Great Valley of the Tombs of the Kings: a barren, desolate place with steep cliffs cut by the action of water when the climate was entirely different. About thirty-five years ago a marvelous collection of royal mummies was discovered here, concealed in a pit to which they had been carried when the integrity of of the mountain had been threatened by robbers. When the mortal remains of the renowned Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, including the Liberator Aahmes I, Rameses the Great, his father Seti I, Thothmes I, and other great national heroes, were floated down the Nile to the Museum at Cairo, a most touching and remarkable incident happened. The inhabitants of the villages along the river came out and saluted the royal procession as it passed. They bowed down with cries of lamentation, the women with disheveled hair, the men firing off shots as they do at funerals. The very soul of Ancient Egypt had come to life once more in the persons of the simple fellahin to do honor to its glorious dead on their last journey down the sacred river.

The full story of this striking event was told to Madame Katherine Tingley by the son of the Governor of Thebes, a member of the Khedive's Tribunal of Justice. Many remarkable details have never been published and Madame Katherine Tingley holds that no one who hears the full account can fail to realize that it is a strong testimony to the truth of Reincarnation. On the boundary between Egypt and Nubia, close to the First Cataract, lies the once beautiful and romantic Island of Philae, or Pilak, the scene of the tragedy of Egyptian archaeology. The illustrations show the appearance of the temples before they were submerged under the waters of the artificial lake which has been created to control the irrigation. Every effort was made to save the temples, but in vain. All the existing buildings at Philae are late, but in design and detail very beautiful. Egyptian architecture is here seen in its most graceful and fanciful phase. In the chambers of the temple of Isis, portraits are found of Hadrian, Augustus, Claudius - all represented in the conventional manner as Egyptian Pharaohs! It may seem strange to see the Roman emperors worshiping Osiris and Isis, but they were not very particular, and, no doubt, they recognised their own gods under different names; any way, in religious matters the Romans were very tolerant, except when they thought the stability of the State was threatened. Philae was the last stronghold of the ancient religion. Under Justinian, in A.D. 527, the celebration of the rites of Isis was prohibited; Christianity became the official creed of Egypt, only to be superseded by Mohammedanism in the next century. The Mohammedans, however, were tolerant and permitted the Christian Copts to maintain and worship with freedom in their own churches in Egypt ever since that period. The dominion of ancient Egypt extended to far-off Nubia at very early times, and the two rock-cut temples of Abu-Simbel are among the most wonderful of all the structures in the Nile Valley. The great temple of Ra, built by Rameses the Great, is one of the most impressive of the works of man on this planet. The four colossal figures of the king, which form the chief feature of the facade, are nearly seventy feet in height, and nothing can exceed their calm majesty and beauty. Surely the creators of these noble effigies of Rameses must have realized the potential divinity of man! But when the mysterious interior is entered, with its silent and shadowy halls and chapels, excavated one hundred and fifty feet deep in the living rock, covered with dim carvings and inscriptions, and hoary with the memories of three thousand years, the impression is still greater. The best time to approach the altar is just at the moment when the beams of the rising sun, or the full moon strike upon it. In Mr. Weigall's, words "Those who visit it at dawn and pass into the vestibule and sanctuary will be amazed at the irresistible solemnity of that moment when the sun passes above the hills and the dim halls are suddenly transformed into a brilliantly light temple.... one may describe the hour of sunrise here as one of profound and stirring grandeur. At no other time and at no other place in Egypt does one feel the same capacity for appreciating the ancient Egyptian spirit of worship." Madame Katherine Tingley, who spent some time at Abu Simbel in 1904, writes about the Rameses colossi of the Great Temple: "The superb repose, the calmness and power of concentration, are marked in those faces of stone. The eyes, defined as though life were behind them, look out over the land, as if they saw into futurity; and as if they knew that the glory of old Egypt were coming back again. There they sit, waiting; the sentinels of a mighty past, and the heralds of a glorified future. One could sit all day, and look at those mighty things of stone, and feel spiritual life all

about.... From where I stand, I can see straight into the entrance, through which one might expect to see some of the old mystics coming forth to meet the day." -----------II. The Egyptians were essentially an artistic people; they took great pride in their works of art, and the social position of the artist-craftsman was respectable; the architect was the most highly esteemed. During the Old Empire, the high priest of Memphis was called the 'Chief Leader of the Artists,' and, as the principal ecclesiastic of the god Ptah - one of the personifications of the Creative power of Divinity - his duties included the guardianship of the creative arts. Throughout the whole course of Egypt's long and checkered career art remained an integral part of the life of the people, and Egypt created an individual and, not withstanding its idiosyncrasies, a great art. The conservatism of the people is demonstrated by the fact that the differences between styles of Egyptian architecture separated by thousands of years are less than those between medieval styles only a hundred years apart. Until the hieroglyphics - until the last century a lost art - were finally deciphered, some of the latest Ptolemaic temples were attributed to the earlier periods of Egyptian history. What is left of Egyptian art on a large scale consists chiefly of buildings, carvings and paintings devoted to religious or funereal purposes. In style the artists were mostly confined to set forms and governed by strict conventions, but "in architecture, as in sculpture and painting, side by side with the stiff and conventional style, a more living art was developed, which shook itself free from the dogma of tradition; unfortunately it is almost unknown to us, as it was exclusively employed in private buildings which have long since disappeared."* (* Life in Ancient Egypt, Erman.) Little or no really bad art has been preserved, and the Egyptians seem to have had reasons, though obscure, for their curious conventions. These included, in reliefs and pictures, the artificial postures of certain of the human figures, the absence of front-faces and the calm expression of the profiles even under excitement, the neglect of perspective, the absence of light and shade in painting, the hieratic position in full-length figure sculpture, and other peculiarities. From the occasional abandonment of some of these in favor of naturalism it seems to be proved that the artists were perfectly aware that they were conventions. If it were not for the furnishings and decorations of the tombs many departments of Egyptian life and some of the best art would be unknown. For instance, the greatest portraitsculptures of all - those of the early Fourth and Fifth Dynasties - were found concealed in tombs. Among these are the world-famed wooden statue of an unknown man, called by the native workmen who excavated it the Sheik-el-Beled (Mayor of the Village), because of its strong resemblance to the local functionary living then. There are also the marvelous portraitstatues of Prince Ra-hetep and Princess Nefert, and many others who lived about six thousand years ago. Crystal and metal are inlaid into the eyes of some of these, and they are so lifelike that when the tombs were first opened the Arabs thought they were Jinn, supernatural beings, guarding treasures. To protect themselves from the spirits, the Arabs have mutilated more than one priceless statue. At the period we are considering, the stiff, conventional treatment, commonly associated in our minds with Egyptian sculpture, was not adopted in funerary statues; a bold realism was aimed for. Though some are imperfect in a few technical details, these figures have an extraordinary, almost magical power of impressing the spectator that they are symbols of the soul; they are spiritually as well as

physically realistic. It may be that these portrait statues were publicly exhibited during the lifetime of the sitter, but they were rarely, if ever, intended to be seen by human eye after being set in their concealed place in the tomb. Yet it was important that they should be as lifelike as possible; they must not be conventionalized in the manner of those that were exposed publicly in honor of kings or high officers of state, or of those that formed integral portions of the architectural design of many temples. At first sight this seems a curious thing, but it is explained when we learn of the Egyptian belief in a semi-material image or duplicate of the human body - an 'astral body' of some sort. This Double, which existed before birth and lasted after death, was called the Ka, and its preservation was necessary for the comfort and, it would almost seem, for the very existence of the ordinary personality of the deceased for a while after death. The chief seat of the vitality of the Ka was the mummy itself, but this was liable to accidents. In such cases a statue was the best thing to fall back upon; hence the necessity of the greatest realism, so that the unfortunate Ka should not find the artificial bodily supporter a misfit! More than one Ka statue is frequently found, as an extra measure of precaution. But if everything else was destroyed, there still remained a last resource in the pictures upon the walls of the tomb. This is the accepted explanation of the multitude of Ka statues and the innumerable representations of the deceased painted on walls in his familiar surroundings; all hermetically sealed from intrusion. Pictures of the life of the people are found in the Etruscan tombs, and an explanation different from the above has been advanced to explain them. It is suggested that they represent the happy future life on earth of the soul of the deceased when reincarnated after the long sojourn in the subjective world. It is not unlikely that the Egyptian desire to preserve the Ka has some more pregnant meaning than that mentioned above, for our archaeologists, trained in modern methods of thought, naturally find it difficult to enter into the mental attitude of a race so far removed from us in time as the ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians certainly did not believe the Ka to be the immortal Ego; that had a very different experience to undergo. The whole subject is obscure and full of pitfalls, particularly for those who approach it from a commonplace, materialistic standpoint, and are not prepared to acknowledge that the ancient Egyptians possessed a knowledge of the inner forces of life which has almost disappeared in a civilization principally concerned with external phenomena. A modern trace of the ancient belief in the Ka is found in Upper Egypt, where the people often put a vessel of water on a grave to quench the thirst of the departed. In the latest days of Egypt, under the Ptolemies, painted portraits of quite modern appearance were placed with the mummies in the Fayum: the materials used were encaustic or tempera; they were executed by Graeco-Egyptian craftsmen in natural tints and with realistic shadows in a very different style from the earlier, flat-toned profiles. One has been discovered enclosed in a frame; probably it was hung on the wall of a house before being placed in the mummy-case. The Egyptians were a good-humored people, and many amusing caricatures have been found. One famous one represents a lady improving her complexion, and others depict battles between armed and drilled cats and rats, and games of chess in which the players are donkeys, etc. Notwithstanding the attention the Egyptians gave to religious and other-worldly matters, it would be a great error to imagine they lived in funereal gloom "sitting around on ruins meditating on the vanity of all things." Egyptian architecture in comparison with other antique styles may fairly be called ascetic or spiritual. The Greek, which followed it as the next sublime expression of the potentialities of the human soul, is the more graceful demonstration of truth through pure beauty, and the Roman, the latest, although strong and vigorous, is certainly the most

material and luxurious. To a degree this orderly flow of the building impulse was repeated in a measure in the Christian cycle: the Gothic, with its ascetic tendencies, followed by the classic beauty of the Renaissance, declined into the extravagances of the Rococo. At the present time we are in an interregnum, fishing vainly for inspiration. Will reinforced concrete suggest a new, natural and effective style? The Egyptians depended largely upon the impression produced by great size and weight. In this way they obtained repose and dignity, and any heaviness was relieved by the charm of decorative color, an essential part of everything they touched. They were masters of flat color, and even the most vivid hues were skillfully used by their designers. The brilliantly painted decorations of the dim halls and corridors in the temples took away the sense of gloom, while leaving the grandeur undiminished. The Greeks followed the example of their Egyptian masters and painted their temples, and the Saracenic architects made strong color an integral part of their compositions; even the medieval Gothic buildings were brilliant with painting or mosaic, at least within, as recent discoveries have proved. Modern designers have lost the ability to use color in architecture with the skill of former ages. An interesting topic in the study of ancient art and philosophy is that of Egypt's influence upon Greek and thereby upon all subsequent culture. That the Greeks were acquainted with Egypt and Nubia as early as B.C. 600 is proved by the archaic Greek inscriptions carved upon the Colossi of Rameses the Great at Abu-Simbel, in the reign of Psammetik II. There has been much difference of opinion on the degree in which Greece was influenced by Egypt. It is undoubtedly true that historic Greece derived a few art motifs from the prehistoric Aegean civilization, such as the Doric frieze with triglyphs, but this in no way militates against a powerful influence from Egypt, either directly or through the Aegean and Mesopotamia. If, as H.P. Blavatsky tells us, Egyptian civilization was in an advanced state thousands of years before the so-called Pyramid Age, it seems only reasonable that it should have strongly affected all the surrounding nations. In the case of the Greek Doric column we have no reason to believe it was derived from the Aegean column, inverted in appearance with its smaller end down, but in Egypt shafts closely resembling the Doric and with round or square capitals had been in constant use for centuries before the earliest known Doric in Greece. They are found at Karnak, Deir-el-Bahari, Beni-Hassan and Kalabshe. They were thick and short, like the pillars of the early temple of Corinth. Among the supreme refinements of Greek architecture we find subtle curves and other modifications of apparently straight lines, and certain irregularities in the spacing of parts, all evidently intentional. It used to be taught that these were all designed for the purpose of correcting optical illusions, but a newer and better hypothesis suggests that most of them were devices to give the sparkle and movement of life to an otherwise rigidly mechanical structure. The Greeks followed the example of the Egyptians in this, for similar artifices have been found at Medinet Habu and elsewhere. The columns of the great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak are slightly irregular in spacing - just sufficiently so to take away the monotony without attracting attention to the means employed. As Dr. Siren says,* the influence of the Egyptian temple upon the Greek is unmistakable. Some of the single-celled Egyptian temples (the Mammisi) are almost identical in design with the simpler Greek forms. (* Theos. Path, Oct., 1912) It is not easy to deny the Egyptian influence in decorative art. The lotus plant so extensively used was not only an admirable motif for design but it had a profound meaning in symbolism. We find ornamental forms derived from it, such as the anthemion, widely distributed in western Asia and eastern Europe. The fret, the Mycenean 'heart-leaf,' the astragal, the rosette and other patterns formerly supposed to be essentially Greek are all found in earlier Egypt. The palm-leaf capitals at Philae somewhat resemble the Greek

Corinthian of the Temple of the Winds, and the rich floriated capitals of Kom Ombo are very like the fully-developed Corinthian. In the Minoan paintings of the human figure with flat feet, twisted shoulders and profile faces, and in the archaic Greek figure sculptures which stand in the conventional Egyptian 'hieratic' position, the traces of Egypt are unmistakable. In socalled primitive races away from the Mediterranean, we do not find anything like so many points of resemblance between their artistic conventions and those of Egypt. These conventions, in fact, are not necessarily the ones that beginners would fall into. In the very earliest known carvings in Europe - the human figures from the Quaternary caverns in the Dordogne, France, - the attitudes are not abnormally twisted, nor conventionalized, but are clumsy attempts at realism. Nor are Egyptian conventions found in the Far East. The Greeks having no such long sacerdotal tradition behind them as the Egyptians, soon dropped the formal poses of the archaic type and developed into a perfection which transcended even the naturalistic portrait sculpture of the Fifth Dynasty. The principle of the round arch was well known to the Egyptians, though like the Greeks, they preferred the flat lintel. A leading architectural principle common to both peoples was stability. The upper parts of their buildings rested firmly upon the lower; no part was balanced in unstable equilibrium; no buttresses or thickening of walls was necessary to prevent roofs or arches collapsing by their outward thrust. Compare this fundamental principle of permanence with its dignity, with the unstable feeling produced by even the finest ecclesiastical Gothic of the Middle Ages. Beautiful and fanciful though it be, a Gothic cathedral of the fourteenth century is a fragile structure of conflicting stresses, the roofs and pointed arches trying to push out the walls, which the buttresses and flying buttresses reinforce by their counter-resistance. The calmness and repose so characteristic of Egyptian and Greek religious architecture could not exist under such uncertain conditions. The Egyptian climate compelled certain principles to be adopted that are not so desirable in the Gothic style of the grayer northern regions. In the blazing, southern sunshine, large, simple masses and flat planes are more effective than the spires and pinnacles and intricacies of fretted detail which give interest to buildings illuminated by the subdued and diffused light of more foggy latitudes. The Moslems in Egypt instinctively followed the same principle in their Mosque architecture; they delighted in large and simple features, well proportioned, with here and there a concentration of rich and elaborate detail. As Egyptian art was an integral part of the life of the people, the architecture was not always ponderous and solemn, but was modified into lightness and gaiety for domestic and other familar uses. In sculpture when realism was demanded it appeared, as in the Ka statues in the tombs, but when not specifically needed, as in the reliefs and statues in the temples, conventional forms were largely adopted. It would be a mistake to imagine that the conventionalized carvings were indifferently executed or that their peculiarities arose from incapacity. Maspero says: "The peculiar properties of the bas-reliefs are soon revealed to anyone who examines them with close attention, and he then almost despairs of reproducing them adequately by any ordinary means. The line which encircles the bodies with so precise a contour is not stiff and inflexible in its whole length as it appears at a first glance, but it undulates, swells out and tapers off and sinks down to the structure of the limbs it bounds and the action that animates them. The flat parts it defines contain not only a summary definition of the anatomy and of the flesh surfaces, but the place of the muscles is marked by such minute excrescences and hollows that we marvel how the ancient sculptor could produce them with the rude tools at his disposal. It required the suppleness of the white limestone of Tourah to enable them to work in a relief some ten-thousandth of an inch high, a thing that modern pen, pencil or brush is

impotent to transcribe exactly on paper." The two chief styles of Egyptian relief carving are shown in the accompanying cuts. In the wall-picture of Isis nursing the Child, from Abydos, the plain, bold reliefs resemble in the method of cutting, the ordinary principle adopted in ancient and modern times. Concerning the subject of this picture, Dr. Budge, in The Gods of the Egyptians (II, 220) says: "There is little doubt that in her character of the loving and protecting mother she appealed strongly to the imagination of the Eastern peoples.... and that the pictures and sculptures wherein she is represented in the act of suckling her child Horus formed the foundation for the Christian figures and paintings of the Madonna and Child.... and if the parallels between the theological history of Isis and Horus and the history of Mary and the Child be considered, it is difficult to see how they could avoid perceiving in the teachings of Christianity reflections of the best and most spiritual doctrines of the Egyptian religion.... The knowledge of the ancient Egyptian religion which we now possess fully justifies the assertion that the rapid growth and progress of Christianity in Egypt were due mainly to the fact that the new religion, which was preached there by St. Mark and his immediate followers, in its essentials so closely resembled that which was the outcome of the worship of Osiris, Isis and Horus, that popular opposition was entirely disarmed." The second, less costly and elaborate style, the intaglio, in which the figures are nearly flat, and only distinguished in outline by a deep groove, was introduced by Rameses II about 1200 B.C., but finally a return was made to the older and more effective method. The Egyptian artist made no attempt at perspective as we understand it; he represented nature in the Oriental way, and, accustomed as we are to our photographic style, the Egyptian compositions are confusing. The distant objects are placed above, or, as in rows of figures, slightly in advance of the nearer ones, and the most important persons are usually made larger than the rest, irrespective of distance. The decorative effect, in composition of masses or colors, is always good. The hieroglyphs, quaintly picturesque in their forms, gave the artists unusual opportunities, and, like the Arabic inscriptions on the Moslem mosques of a later date, were utilized to add to the beauty of the decorative scheme. The large figures in low relief on the outside walls of Egyptian temples are very striking, and colossal statues were used as architectural features more frequently and boldly than we find elsewhere. Unfortunately the only remaining specimens of the most gigantic of these architectural statues, the Colossi of the Plain of Thebes, have lost the backing of the great temple to which they were attached, so that we cannot judge of the full majesty of the design. The rock-cut temples of Abu-Simbel in Nubia, impressive though they be, only give a partial idea of the combination of gigantic figures with architecture, because the main part of the building is concealed within the hill. It is clear, however, that the Egyptians showed better judgment than the Greeks in the use of architectural figures; their statues did not support any superincumbent weight, but stood or sat in front of the wall; they never gave the spectator the idea that they must be getting tired or that they might soon be crushed by the pressure above - an impression conveyed by the Greek caryatids or telamones upon which the superstructure directly rests. The hieroglyphic inscriptions on temple walls are not the only remains of Egyptian literature. Books were widely read. In the scanty relics that have survived the ages we find religious rituals, treatises on magic, state papers, books of travel, medical, astronomical and mathematical works, fairy stories and romances, poems and love-songs. No regular historical work has yet been found, but there are several poetical accounts of famous campaigns and

victories. Rameses the Great was never tired of representing his victory over the Hittites, in Syria in hieroglyph and bas-relief. The enemy cut him off from the main part of his army and it was only by his own personal valor that he saved the day and so kept the northern frontier of Egypt from invasion. After peace was made he gave the Hittite king his daughter in marriage and a treaty was made and adhered to. It shows the high state of humanity of the conflicting peoples, and is a remarkable example of international law more than three thousand years ago. It arranged for the return home of prisoners of war and civilians who had been held by either government. The humanity of the Egyptians in war is shown in the pictures wherein they are seen saving and resuscitating their drowning foes. Rameses II is erroneously branded by some as a bloodthirsty conqueror; as a matter of fact, after making his northern frontier safe, he settled down for the remaining forty-six years of his life in peace and devoted his energies to government and architecture. An interesting side-light into ancient Egyptian life is contained in the unique temple of Queen Hatshepset at Deir-el-Bahari. The wall-pictures represent the main incidents in the maritime expedition that great ruler sent to Punt in eastern Africa near the entrance to the Red Sea. Punt, now usually (and perhaps wrongly) called Somaliland, was an incense country, and Egypt greatly needed pure incense, undefiled by the hands of vulgar traders, to honor Amen-Ra and the other gods in fitting manner. The expedition left and returned to Thebes in several large ships, and it is an unsettled problem how it reached the Red Sea. It cannot have circumnavigated Africa,* and the only apparent way is by some canal joining the Nile and the Red Sea. Such a canal was certainly in existence a little later than the reign of Hatshepsu, and has been attributed to Seti I, but with very little reason; it is well within the bounds of probability that the energetic queen built it to open the trade route to Punt; such a feat would be quite in accord with her enterprising character. -----------* Nine hundred years later an Egyptian expedition actually sent by King Nekau performed the daring feat of circumnavigating the continent. -----------On reaching Punt a river was ascended and the expedition landed from boats. In one picture we see the leading ships furling their sails while the rest still come on. In another the Egyptians have landed and are bartering with the native chief. The commander displays fifteen bracelets, two golden collars, eleven strings of glass beads, poniards, battle-axes, and other treasures. The natives - who are not negros - ask with amazement: "How did you reach this unknown country? Have you descended from the sky?" A bargain is finally made and clinched at a sumptuous banquet. A later picture shows the Egyptians loading their vessels with great stores of incense, elephants' tusks, gold, ebony, myrrh, cassia, leopards, baboons, apes, greyhounds, oxen, even a giraffe; slaves, and best of all, thirty-one incense trees carefully packed to protect the roots. In the hieroglyphs we read scraps of conversation between the men. One says: "Do not throw so much weight on my shoulder," and his comrade retorts that he is a lazy fellow. The whole story is amazingly modern. A great festival was held when the ships safely arrived at Thebes. The incense trees were planted at Deir-el-Bahari and grew well, and the Queen gave most of the perfumes to the great temple of Amen-Ra at Thebes, though she reserved some for herself. In the British Museum is preserved the magnificent throne of Hatshepset; it is not interesting alone for its extreme beauty, but on account of its material - a rare red wood which is believed to have come from Punt. A great development in navigation took place soon after Hatshepset's time, and it may

be rather a surprise to many to learn that Egypt was fighting naval battles in huge warships a thousand years before King Alfred of England gathered the primitive nucleus of the British fleet. Ptolemy Philopater possessed a ship four hundred and twenty feet long. It was rowed by four thousand sailors, and had several banks of oars; four hundred others worked the sails, and it carried three thousand soldiers. The royal dahabiyeh, three hundred and thirty feet long, was elaborately fitted and had staterooms of considerable size. Another vessel contained, in addition to the ordinary cabins, large bath-rooms, a library, and an astronomical observatory. From its eight towers machines could hurl stones weighing three hundred pounds, and arrows eighteen feet long. In the region of romance a number of Egyptian stories of great antiquity have lately been found which resemble popular tales current still, such as Cinderella, and some of the tales from the Arabian Nights. One story of the Twelfth Dynasty partly resembles Sindbad the Sailor. The hero is wrecked upon a fairy island of incense and delights where he meets a talking serpent, a friendly beast who turns out to be the magician king of the island. After various adventures on the island, which ultimately vanishes, the Egyptian Sindhad returns safely to Egypt with many treasures. This tale is said to have an inner meaning. It symbolizes the voyage of the soul after death to the happy Otherworld, its meeting with the purified and wise, and its return to earth-life. 'The Two Brothers' is another curious fairy tale with a distinct philosophical meaning. The first part treats in a simple and touching manner of life in a farm. The character of the younger brother, Bata, a lovable youth, is charmingly drawn. A leading incident reminds us of the Bible story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. The latter part is obviously mystical; it brings in the reincarnation of the hero in an unusual manner, but which is found in some Irish legends another hint of the connection between ancient Egypt and western Europe, now well established. Two volumes of curiously interesting Egyptian tales, published by Dr. Petrie, and another by Professor Maspero, containing true as well as fictional stories, are to be found in the public libraries. As no serious, consecutive history of Egypt by any native historian has been discovered, it is with great difficulty that even an approximate record of the reigns of the Pharaohs has been constructed in modern times. The two schools of Egyptian archaeology differ greatly about the dates preceding B.C. 1500. The uncertainty chiefly arises from the Egyptian method of reckoning one of the fundamental cycles of time. This started on a certain day when the star Sothis (Sirius), 'the home of Isis,' first appeared in the eastern sky at dawn after being hidden behind the sun. Owing to the ignoring of the extra day in leapyear, the nominal date on which this beautiful celestial phenomenon took place annually did not remain long the same. It recurred, however, on the same nominal day of the Egyptian year after 1460 years, which therefore constituted a Sothiac Cycle. Events were dated as having occurred in such a year of such a Sothiac Cycle. As the successive Sothiac Cycles were not separately distinguished by the Egyptians, there is confusion about early dates which cannot be checked by independent records. This should always be borne in mind when we hear positive statements about the age of the Great Pyramid and the early Empire. The Egyptians, in common with other nations, far and near, believed in a primitive Golden Age when Divine Beings ruled, followed by declining periods of Demi-gods and ordinary human kings. The length of the reigns gradually diminished from thousands of years to normal human periods at the beginning of the historical age. According to Plato, the Egyptians knew of the destruction of Atlantis by water, and in the tomb of Seti I there is a written account of the destruction of mankind in a deluge of blood, which strongly reminds us of the deluge of the blood of the giant Emer, out of which the new earth emerged, in

Scandinavian mythology. These legends may be allegorical in detail, but they stand for actual events. The reigns of the Gods and Heroes refer to the earlier races of mankind, less material perhaps, from which evolved the purely human through stages or steps downward into greater materiality, out of which we have ultimately to rise. In tracing this illuminating and fundamental principle of the descent into matter, a Theosophical concept strongly accentuated in Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, Indian and other philosophies, we may find some profitable suggestions, with a practical bearing upon our own lives. Though we have no complete Egyptian works on their philosophy, enough scattered material exists to enable the leading features to be distinguished. We must use the comparative method in the light of Theosophy, which unlocks the more or less Secret Teaching or Doctrine of antiquity, partly revealed under the popular forms of religion, partly concealed either intentionally or by the fabrications of inferior minds. One of the widest generalizations of the Secret Doctrine is that of evolutionary progress through emanation and reabsorption. One after another, the great Life-Cycles proceed from their spiritual origin 'downwards' through gradual stages of materialization into the objective and material, and then take the upward curve again to a higher level, rich with experience, and so forth in eternal progress. Smaller cycles are contained within the greater. Here are two singular diagrams which illustrate the principle of emanation in the universe and in man. The first from the tomb of Seti and reproduced by Dr. Budge in his learned work, The Gods of the Egyptians, is the 'Creation.' The zigzag groundwork is dark green, and represents the mystical 'Waters of Space,' - 'Chaos' - the container of all the potentialities of existence, from which all proceeds. Thales of Miletus, called the founder of Greek philosophy, studied in Egypt and adopted the teaching that the primeval 'Water' is the substratum of the universe, placing it earlier than the active principle 'Fire.' From what Thales learned in Egypt later Greek philosophers developed their systems. In the diagram, the god Nu, holding up the Solar Boat, is a personification of the celestial Waters. The body of Osiris is bent into a circle, inclosing, a White Space, symbolic of the Divine Unity; his body may also be taken as forming the border of the Underworld, Tuat, the inner kingdom of forces. Notice the inverted position of Osiris. Descending still more in evolution is a goddess, Nut, springing from the head of Osiris, and also inverted. She touches the Solar Disk, Ra, the Egg with the seeds of life associated with the Scarabaeus Beetle of Khepera, the symbol of ever-renewing life and reincarnation. Many other indications can be found in this remarkable diagram, such as the Circle, the Square, and the Triangle, in significant arrangement. The Triangle - the arms of Nu - is inverted. The Solar Boat or Ark with the ten fructifying gods is also of great interest to students of universal symbolism. The picture may also be taken to represent the apparent passage of the sun across the skies - perhaps its real journey through space. We know by the texts* that in very early times the Egyptians knew of the rotation of the Earth and its movement in space. ----------* See Chabas, Zeitschrift fur Aegypt, Sprache, 1864; and Leiblin, Transactions of the Provincial Congress of French Orientalists, I Bulletins, Vol. II. ----------The hieroglyph to the right is another symbolic representation of evolution or emanation from the spiritual to the physical; it stands for the complex nature of man. It is taken from an article on 'The Wisdom of the Egyptians,' in the Sphinx, of Munich (1883), by Franz Lambert. The article deals with the Egyptian and Kabalistic teachings about the 'Seven Principles of Man,' and is referred to with high approval by H.P. Blavatsky in The Secret

Doctrine, where she recommends the study of the facts given. (Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 633) The diagram represents what has been called, in a misleading fashion, 'The Seven Souls of Man, according to the Egyptians.' Several lists of these 'souls' have been recorded and discussed by archaeologists without much result, but if attention had been paid to the similar divisions of the principles of man recorded in other philosophies, the meaning would have been clear, for the comparative method is the key to many mysteries. The separate symbols in the diagram represent the components of man's nature, the permanent, reincarnating part, and the temporary emanation. The Egyptians fully believed in the reincarnation of the immortal spirit of man in successive lives on earth, with intervals of rest in Devachan or 'paradise.' But there have been misinterpretations of the real teachings. For instance, as Lambert says: "A passage in Herodotus undoubtedly speaks of migration of souls in the sense that the soul of the deceased undertakes a journey through animal forms, entering anew into the human form at the end of 3000 years. But this certainly contains a misunderstanding. [Herodotus was occasionally misled by his native guides and sometimes deliberately concealed what he was told by higher authorities, as he himself says.] Thus it is related in Stobaeus that the Egyptian doctrine was that the soul accomplishes this evolution through animal forms before entering the human body for the first time; and in the book of Hermes Trismegistos the contrary is also stated and repeated, i.e., that the human soul cannot enter the body of an unreasoning animal, and that a divine law protects the human soul from such an outrage. In the same way the Twelve Metamorphoses into animals and plants must not be taken literally, but in their symbolic relation to the twelve hours of the day and of the night, as has been shown by Dr. Brugsch.... "Let death touch a being dear to some educated man quite modern and scientifically full-grown; he believes that a chemical process has begun to destroy the body and that all the physical manifestations that belong to the body are for ever annihilated. An intimate conviction may perhaps arise in him that there is another meeting; an unknown feeling may actually begin to speak softly to him like some antique legend, half-faded, of a survival after death; but he must dismiss that consolation in the spirit of resignation because it is not 'scientifically demonstrated' up to date; and as for the innate conviction, that is easily explained by a nervous relaxation or a reflex action from the grief that has been aroused. "Quite different was the intuition that the peoples who lived at the edge of prehistoric times formed of death, races which had not been innoculated with teachings like ours. At that time a simple faith spoke, which observed, and from these observations drew conclusions whose correctness was directed by the natural healthy intuition." According to the ancient Egyptian Theosophy, death is not the destruction of man, nor is it even the flight of the individual soul from a corruptible body straight to eternal salvation in Osiris, or to eternal punishment. It is the more or less temporary separation or dispersion of the elements, some of which will reunite in the Beyond and will return to earth to take up another body. As H.P. Blavatsky says: "Every time the immortal Ego reincarnates it becomes, as a total, a compound unit of matter and spirit which together act in seven planes of being and consciousness." The hieroglyph to the right is divided into two parts. The four lower consist of Khat, the two human figures: the Body; Bas, the nondescript fish-like objects: the Life-principle; Ka, the two arms: the organizing or formative principle; and Ab, the crescent: the middle principle. The upper part has two visible subdivisions: Ba, the four birds inverted: the Higher Manas of Theosophical terminology; and Khaibit, the four swarms inverted, the Buddhi

principle of Theosophy. These two principles belong to the Higher Spiritual Triad; in this diagram the third and highest member of the upper group is not shown: its place is left suggestively blank. In another figure it is shown a plain circle, Khu, the supreme illumination. These seven constitute the so-called 'seven souls,' a misnomer. In some texts two other principles are mentioned. One stands for the name of the person; the other is obscure. The ingenious device of the inversion of the two upper hieroglyphs reveals the great principle of the Emanation or Evolution downwards of the higher into the lower manifestation in the case of Man. The Circle of the Overshadowing Divinity cannot, of course, be inverted, nor is it necessary that it should, for it permeates everything. The central object, Ab, the crescent, is very important; it is the link between the higher and the lower, and belongs, in a measure, to each. The word Ab means 'heart,' and in the Judgment Scene from the Book of the Dead it is seen as a heart or heart-shaped vase being weighed in the presence of Osiris. It seems to represent the personal intelligence, the feeling and emotions of man and to stand in close relationship with the divine. It may be more than this. Of the four lower principles, the Ka, symbolized by the arms and hands (i.e., the constructive members), is that which the Egyptians tried to preserve by taking care of the mummified corpse, and by providing artificial bodies in the form of statues and paintings. It is the formative astral mold or model around which the material body is built, and it is not immediately destroyed with the death of the body. It is probably analogous to the manes of the Romans. One of the reasons for the great endeavor the Egyptians made to preserve it safely within the tomb was to prevent the undesirable consequences to the living of having it around loose. In common with other antique peoples they understood that the lower principles, unpurified, did not enter the 'Fields of Aalu (Aanru)' - the Elysian Fields - and the semi-conscious Ka, left behind when the freed soul disentangled itself, was a danger to the living unless restrained. The 'manes' or astral remains which haunted the neighborhood of abandoned tombs, were, as Professor Maspero says: "Excellent tools in the hands of the sorcerers, especially the souls of suicides, of murdered persons and criminals, of all who died a violent death before their time, and who had to live near their bodies till the period destined for their earthly life was accomplished." Mr. Weigall, late Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt to the Egyptian Government, in the Treasury of Ancient Egypt, writes of many extraordinary stories brought to his notice by Egyptian gentlemen of the highest position and modern education (in our sense of the word) which support the claim that traces of the ancient knowledge of Egypt which was called magic are still to be found by those who know where to search, and that there are still living men in Egypt possessing unusual powers. He gives accounts of recent occurrences closely resembling certain strange incidents spoken of by H.P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled. Upon the subject of the Ka-soul of executed criminals and the annoyance they can give, Mr. Weigall says: "At Luxor lately, the ghost of a well-known robber persecuted his widow to such an extent that she finally went mad. A remarkable parallel to this, dating from Pharaonic days, may be mentioned here. It is the letter of a haunted widower to his dead wife, in which he asks why she persecutes him, since he was always kind to her during her life, nursed her during illnesses and never grieved her heart." Modern materialistic psychology has fallen into the error of thinking that suicides and executed criminals are annihilated by death, and have no further influence for evil upon the minds of the weak and impressionable. The Egyptians knew better, and took what they believed to be adequate means of precaution. An interesting survival of the Egyptian form of the doctrine of the complex nature of

man has been found among the intelligent African Ekoi tribe; even the word 'Ka' can be recognized in the Ekoi word Kra, which signifies the same thing.* (* In the Shadow of the Bush, by Amaury Talbot.) Some modern schools of psychology, from observation of the weird phenomena of socalled 'multiple personality,' during which rapid changes of character occur - loss of memory and loss of identity - have almost gone to the extreme of doubting a central co-ordinating Ego in man; but the Egyptians never lost sight of the permanent, immortal Ego, nor confused it with the superficial manifestations of the lower nature. A frequent Egyptian symbol of the Higher Self - the Osiris or Christos principle - was a bird, the 'Phoenix' or Bennu, which when old was reputed to rejuvenate itself by passing through fire. In one picture we see it sitting in the Tree of Lives, the branches of which stand for separate incarnations. At the side is the Tomb of Osiris, the whole undeniably referring to the descent of the divine spirit into the sepulcher of material life. The inscription above reads "Soul of Osiris."* (* Life in Ancient Egypt, Erman.) Lambert writes: "The separate personalities into which the ultimate essence incarnates have been likened to a necklace of pearls, through which the Higher Self passes as the string which unites them. More beautiful is the Egyptian comparison of a tree whose trunk is rooted in the earth and which lifts itself towards the Divine Sun and produces branches, leaves and fruits. This emblem of the Tree of Life finds many representations among the Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians." The Bird, as an emblem of the Divine Spirit, is found in many regions, even in ancient America, where the Quetzal bird is seen surmounting the Cross in the altar tablets at Palenque. The Morning Star, Venus or Lucifer, is the planet of the Osiris-Bennu. Our last illustration, taken from the mummy-case of Aroeris-Ao, priest of Amen, shows the dual nature of man in the most elementary form. The standing figure, colored blue, aspires toward the goddess of the heavens, Nut; another form of Nu, the Primeval Waters of Space. This design is almost identical with others which show the sky-goddess being held away from or above the earth-god (the recumbent Seb) by Shu, the intermediate link in the Triad, but in this figure the characteristic attributes of the gods are absent. In the two papers, of which this is the second, an effort has been made to present a few points, selected from a rich field, to support the assertion that the civilization of ancient Egypt was a mighty development of human intelligence. As H.P. Blavatsky says in Isis Unveiled: "Let us honestly confess, at once, that we really know little about these ancient nations, and that so far as purely hypothetical speculations go, unless we study in the same direction as the ancient priests did, we have as little chance in the future." The School of Antiquity has been founded, in part, for such study, the first step in which is the abandonment of the limited conceptions of the knowledge and wisdom of the ancients and the recognition that the Egyptians and their contemporaries did not live in the 'childhood of the race,' but were the heirs to ancestral wisdom that came to them from periods compared with which that of the Pharaohs is but yesterday, and from lands that are submerged beneath the ocean waves. (Vol. 12, pp. 255-78, 365-94)

-----------------Notes on Peruvian Antiquities - Prof. Fred. J. Dick (From a School of Antiquity Lecture) [abreviated] The purpose of the present notes on Peruvian antiquities is to outline the general nature of some of the problems - suggested by the ruins, known history, and traditions of Peru - that still await solution. These problems may be found to bear an important relation, not only to American history, but also to still broader questions connected with the past history of humanity. The center of ancient Inca civilization appears to have lain in the neighborhood of Cuzco, between the middle and eastern chains of the Cordilleras, amid scenery of unsurpassed grandeur; while the extent of the empire latterly under Inca rule was in length nearly three times that of California. In the valleys of the Cuzco region the climate and products are like those of Italy and Spain, while crops like those of northern Europe are found in the more elevated plains and ravines. Above that level are Alpine pasture lands, and then bleak regions, rocky peaks and everlasting snow. At Quito, once under the Incas, there is a mountain just on the equator, whose summit is snow-capped throughout the year; Cuzco is about 11,500 feet above the sea. Lake Titicaca, 250 miles south of Cuzco, is 12,500 feet above sea level. Corn will not ripen in the basin of this lake, which is about 300 miles by 100 in extent. The lake itself is now 120 miles by 40. Around its watershed the Cordilleras attain their greatest heights. According to Sir Clements Markham the most ancient human remains discovered in Peru is the mummy exhumed at Tarapac in 1874. It lay beneath a volcanic formation called chuco of vast antiquity. With the body were cotton twine, a woven bag, and some cobs of maize. The perfection to which the cultivation of maize and potatoes had been brought by the Peruvians, and their domestication of the llama and alpaca are, Markham says, convincing proofs of the remote antiquity of this civilization. The maize at Cuzco has stalks fifteen feet high, and grain four or five times the size of ordinary maize grain. The extent of ancient ruins throughout the Andean regions and Central America was very fully treated of by Dr. Heath in 1878, and an account thereof, with comments by H.P. Blavatsky, will be found in our Spanish magazine, El Sendero Teosofico, from September to December, 1912. It would take too long to describe a tithe of these wonders. There are three main types of pre-Inca construction: the polygonal Cyclopean, the Tiahuanaco styles, and the pre-Inca roads and aqueducts. One of these roads wound along the Andean heights all the way from Cuzco to Quito, a distance of fifteen hundred miles. It was macadamized, had many huge retaining walls, was often cut for leagues through rock, sometimes to a depth of sixty feet, and was evenly graded, necessitating the use in ravines of great masses of solid masonry, or occasionally, suspension bridges. Another proceeded from Cuzco to the Pacific coast and then on to Quito. The wild route of the former made the work a more difficult one than can be found in our transcontinental railroads. A suggestion may be hazarded that the Cyclopean builders were not wholly unfamiliar with the art of tunneling. As to this, time will doubtless show. One aqueduct alone was four hundred and fifty miles in length. The main roads referred to were of unknown antiquity in the time of the Incas. When Huayna Capac went to Quito with his army, he found it necessary to repair them at some points. As to the

extent of walled terraces, often Cyclopean, in the Andean ravines, Dr. Heath estimated their length sufficient to encircle the globe ten times, and he considered his estimate below the mark. That there are also innumerable buried cities is something admitting of little doubt. Professor Bingham, while pursuing his investigations in connection with his discovery of the remarkable Inca city of Machu Picchu, perched on top of a mountain in one of the most inaccessible regions of the Andes, traveled over about ten thousand miles of country, and reported that they had but scratched the surface of Peruvian antiquities. First let us glance at the nature of the problem presented by Peruvian polygonal Cyclopean construction. The fort of Sacsahuaman, near Cuzco, may serve for an object lesson. It will be seen that the Incas imitated in the upper walls the megalithic work beneath of their unknown predecessors. But what are we to think of the immense stones, many of them weighing from two hundred to three hundred tons, to be seen today in these lower ancient walls. The human figures standing beside some of them afford a better idea of their prodigious size than any merely arithmetical statement. But it is not only their size, but the extraordinary manner in which, despite their polygonal and varied shapes, they were accurately cut and closely fitted, that excites astonishment. Some of them are known to possess as many as twelve faces. Surely it is self-evident that the people who handled and cut such blocks in the way they did, must have been of considerable stature, and have owned excellent tools. Were it but a case of handling one or two such blocks, the quarrying, cutting, and transportation would tax the resources of our day. But when we find thousands of examples of this extraordinary style, in America, Etruria, and other parts, there can surely be but one conclusion. One writer says that the platforms on which the great stone images are, on Easter Island, are "very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the ruins at Tiahuanaco in Peru," and that they are in this identical Cyclopean style. "Callao was submerged in 1746, and entirely destroyed. Lima was ruined in 1678; in 1746 only 20 houses out of 3000 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 engineering, at least, the present may learn from the past, as we hope to show it may in most things else," wrote H.P. Blavatsky in 1880. Here we shall be obliged to take a short excursion into anthropology. According to the law of atavism, if in our own day we occasionally find men and women from seven feet to even nine feet and eleven feet high, it only proves that there was a time when nine feet and ten feet was the average height of humanity, even in our latest Indo-European race. But as science is in the habit nowadays of thinking in millions of years, we may as well follow the fashion, and take a glance into Miocene times. The Commentary to one of the Stanzas of an archaic record, to which H.P. Blavatsky had access, and which is in safe keeping, says that after the Great Flood of the Third RootRace (the Lemurians): "Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives was diminished. Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal races, and intermarried among giants and pigmies (the dwarfed races of the Poles).... Many acquired divine, more unlawful knowledge." Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. Who can tell how many geological periods it took to accomplish this fourth destruction? But the Stanza goes on

to say, and this brings us to Miocene times, about four million years ago: "They (the Atlanteans) built great images, nine yatis high (27 feet) - the size of their bodies. Lunar fires had destroyed the land of their fathers (the Lemurians). Water threatened the fourth (race)." The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured, almost all, twenty-seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders. As to how the records just referred to have been preserved, there is no time tonight to go into that question. The two volumes of The Secret Doctrine have been published for nearly thirty years, and they are packed from cover to cover with clues for devotees of Archaeology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology, Electricity, Magnetism, Anthropology, Ethnology, Philology, and other sciences, and it is one of the miracles of the times we live in, that its teachings are not better known, or at least more openly acknowledged. In Numbers, c. xviii, 11, we read of the giants Anakim. In Deuteronomy, c. 11, we read of Og, a king who was nine cubits high (15 feet 4 inches), and four wide. Goliath was six cubits and a span in height (10 feet 7 inches). India had her Danavas and Daityas; Ceylon her Rakshasas; Greece her Titans. The only difference between the Jewish Scriptures and the evidence furnished to us by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, etc., is this: While the pagans mention only the skeletons of giants, dead untold ages before, relics that some of them had personally seen, the Bible interpreters unblushingly demand that Geology and Archaeology should believe, that several countries were inhabited by such giants in the days of Moses! The two sculptured torsos now shown, which stand in front of the church at Tiahuanaco village, and which are evidently portraits, like those on Easter Island, belong to human forms about 12 feet in height. Inasmuch as the height of the megalithic gateway to Sacsahuaman fort is 12 feet, and width 6 feet, the conclusion is natural that these two torsos at Tiahuanaco are nothing but veritable life-size portraits of two of the megalithic builders of Peru, of date nearly coeval with the cataclysm of 850,000 years ago, which submerged the island continents of Ruta and Daitya, and which survives in the Race-memory as "The Flood." These torsos probably lay buried for long ages, and were thus fairly well preserved.... three widely different epochs are indicated by the ruins at Tiahuanaco. This, of course, is one of the problems requiring further investigation. In Markham's latest book, The Incas of Peru, published in 1910 - and Markham is one who has devoted the study of a long lifetime to Peru and its antiquities - he says of Tiahuanaco: "Such a region is only capable of sustaining a scanty population of hardy mountaineers and laborers. The mystery consists in the existence of ruins of a great city on the southern side of the lake, the builders being entirely unknown. "The city covered a large area, built by highly skilled masons, and with the use of enormous stones. One 36 ft. by 7 ft. weighs 170 tons, another is 26 ft. by 16 by 6. [Another.... weighs 108 tons.] Apart from the monoliths of ancient Egypt, there is nothing to equal this in any other part of the world. The moving and placing of such monoliths point to a dense population, to an organized government, and consequently to a large area under cultivation, with arrangements for the conveyance of supplies from various directions. There must have been an organization combining skill and intelligence with power and administrative ability.

"The point next in interest to the enormous size of the stones is the excellence of the workmanship. The lines are accurately straight, the angles correctly drawn, the surfaces true planes. The upright monoliths have mortices and projecting ledges to retain the horizontal slabs in their places, which completed the walls. The carvings are complicated, and at the same time well arranged, and the ornamentation [symbolism, he means] is accurately designed and executed. Not less striking are the statues with heads adorned with curiously shaped head-dresses. Flights of stone steps have recently been discovered, for the ancient city, now several miles from the lake, was once upon its borders. Remarkable skill on the part of the masons is shown by every fragment lying about. Such are the angle-joints of a stone conduit; a window-frame of careful workmanship with nine apertures, all in one piece; and numerous niches and moldings. There is ample proof of the very advanced stage reached by the builders in architectural art." .... It appears that at the end of the sixteenth century Bartolome Cervantes, a canon of Chuquisaca, gave to Oliva, who wrote a history of the Jesuits in Peru, a manuscript dictated by Catari, a quipumayoc, or keeper of the records, in which manuscript the statement is made that no judgment can be formed of the size of the ruined city, because nearly all was built underground. And Markham adds that Professor Nestler of Prague has proceeded to Tiahuanaco with the object of making researches by the light of the account of Catari. In The Theosophical Path of July last will be found a reference to some of Professor Nestler's work there, but he appears to have been unable to prosecute his investigations, for some reason. The remarkable statement of Catari only serves to heighten our interest in what Tiahuanaco may conceal. Geologically, the Andes are comparatively modern. The bones of a mastodon have been discovered at Ulloma, in Bolivia, which is now 13,000 feet above the sea. In the deserts of Tarapaca are numerous skeletons of gigantic ant-eaters, whose habitat is a dense forest. When the Andes were lower, the trade wind could carry its moisture over them to the strip of coast land which is now an arid desert. When mastodons lived at Ulloma, and anteaters in Tarapaca, the Andes, slowly rising, were some two or three thousands of feet lower than they are now. "If the megalithic builders were living under these conditions,'' says Markham, "the problem is solved, for maize would then ripen in the basin of Lake Titicaca, and the site of the ruins of Tiahuanaco could support the necessary population." But if the megalithic Cyclopean belongs to an epoch hundreds of thousands of years back, it is certain that the monolithic doorways at Tiahuanaco belong to a far later period. The height of the doorways is sufficient evidence, it appears to me, that these belong to some time anywhere between say 10,000 and 80,000 years ago; and if it could be shown that the Andes were say 3000 feet lower within about these time limits, we should have the approximate date, at least, of these doorways. The people in the elevated province of Huarochiri had an actual tradition that in remote times it possessed a climate similar to that of the coast valleys. Tradition throws another peculiar light, which one cannot ignore, on conditions once prevailing in that region. Markham suggests that the Pima and Amauta dynasties may possibly represent the sovereigns of the megalithic empire, whose decline and fall was followed by long centuries of barbarism, so that the people had almost forgotten its existence, while the tribes of the Collao were probably of another race. This at least suggests a continuous link through which ancient traditions might descend. The tradition now to be referred to was, so to say, dramatized by the lady Siuyaco, when she caused her son to appear, clad in shining gold, before the Incas on Sacsahuaman hill, who hailed him, Inca Rocco, as ruler thenceforth. Now this is the tradition. In Cieza's Cronica del Peru, c. 103, we read:

"Certain Indians relate that it was of a surety affirmed by their ancestors that there was no light for many days, and that all being in darkness and obscurity, the Sun appeared resplendent on the island of Titicaca." Again, in vol. ii, c. 5, the Indians are reported as saying that, "....far preceding the time of the Incas, there was once a long period without seeing the Sun, and enduring great labor by reason of this deprivation, the people made great offerings and supplications to those they held as gods, begging the light they needed; and that being in this condition, there appeared on the island of Titicaca, in the midst of the great lake of Collao, the Sun most resplendent, at which all rejoiced." This points to a time when the Earth's axis more or less coincided with the plane of the ecliptic, more than 400,000 years ago, when there must have been darkness for a good while each year at the place. Here we have Inca tradition corroborating what was taught in the temples of ancient Egypt. Thus Tiahuanaco suggests another problem: Do we moderns understand the forces which control, or do we know all about, the movements of the Earth? The next problem is in regard to the symbolism at Tiahuanaco. Was it related in any way to the religious belief, as it is called, of the Incas, or can any connection be traced? If fundamental belief is best shown by character and deeds, what was it that mainly characterized their civilization? Says Markham: "Their name for the Supreme meant - 'The Splendor, the Foundation, the Creator, the Infinite God,' which shows the sublimity of thought attained by the ancient Peruvians in their conception of a Supreme Being - the infinite cause, the fundamental principle, the light of the world, the great teacher. "Under the Inca system all who could work were obliged to work, all lived in comfort, and there was ample provision for the aged, for young children, and for the sick. No money was necessary, for every family had a right to everything needed for the nourishment and well-being of its members, from the market, without payment. In case of disaster to any community, caused by weather, accident, or an enemy, the neighboring villagers repaired all damages, and gave all needful help. So perfect was the Inca organization that it continued to work efficiently, and almost mechanically, for some time after the guiding heads had been struck down, by the Spaniards. Under such a system there could be no want, for thought was taken for the nourishment and comfort of every creature. There was hard work, while provision was made not only for rest, but also for recreation. "Not only did they greatly prefer the arts of peace to those of war, but among them the injunction of all the Great Teachers of Antiquity, to love and serve one another, was raised to the rank of an everyday practical precept." The Incas had many things we associate with the idea of culture. They used no money, but some of their buildings were surrounded by gardens of flowers with numbers of llamas and shepherds, life-size, all made out of pure, solid gold. The walls and floors of some of their palaces and temples were lined with solid gold. Their art work in gold and silver was something amazing. One would have to go back to the cities Plato tells of, that belonged to later Atlantean times, to find a parallel to conditions actually existing in Peru within what we call the historic period. The Incas had their sacrificers, speakers, hermits, performers of family ceremonies, soothsayers, diviners, bards, reciters of history, musical composers for

string and wind instruments, dramatic authors, dancers, recorders, accountants, designers of art work, architects, workers in metal, and so on. In fact their activities were endless. They had their festivals at the same time as the peoples of the Far East, that is, at the equinoxes and solstices, and for excellent reasons, too. Possibly this picture of an Inca, surviving at the present day, may help us to realize what must have been the character of this noble race before it was finally stupefied into apathy through the horrors perpetrated by the gold-worshiping Europeans. ....The monolithic door at Tiahuanaco is famous among all archaeologists. On the interior side is the remarkable and most carefully executed symbolic design, which has long been one of the interesting puzzles of archaeology. The monolith, which weighed nine tons in its finished state, was broken across, probably during a severe earthquake. It was in fact completely overturned, and to this, fortunately, is due the very perfect preservation of detail, during what must have been an immense period of time. The eastern face.... lay uppermost, and has plain traces of its lengthy exposure to the elements.... H.P. Blavatsky pointed out in The Secret Doctrine that there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a multiform and even multi-genetic evolution, and unless I am greatly mistaken we have here a fragment which proves this fairly conclusively, provided we admit that it represents neither a human king, nor an idol, nor an anthropomorphic deity, but that it stands simply - a symbol of the divine-human race. ....The Chavin stone of diorite, now at Lima, ....is twenty-five feet long, and weighs forty-five tons. It was found in the Maranon Valley. Belonging to megalithic times, its date is of course at present unknown. The symbolism is totally different in treatment, and clearly betokens a different race. But the subject matter is identical, and in some respects grander, than at Tiahuanaco, if that be possible. There appears to be a reference, too to the forces controlling rotation and axial changes, as was also found by Cambyses in an Egyptian temple.... (Vol. 9, pp. 441-51) ------------------Archaeology: A Resume of the Theosophical Position - H. Travers Archaeology studies the records of the past, as preserved in ruins and inscriptions. These records, however, do not confirm the current ideas as to human origins and past history; the records, on the contrary, mostly run counter to the theories. But the teachings of Theosophy as to human origins and history are largely confirmed by the findings of archaeologists. That, in a nutshell, is the position. We find huge buildings, containing in their walls stones of such enormous size that it is difficult to see a way by which these stones could be quarried, transported, and raised into position, even by all the skill and strength of modern machinery. Yet the thing has actually been done, not in one place only but in many, and that at very remote epochs in the past. What is the conclusion? (1) That the builders were giants; or (2) that they possessed engineering facilities greater than those we have now; or (3) that they had scientific secrets that have since been lost, such as the power to neutralize gravitation and render these colossal stones light and portable. To one or other of these conclusions we are absolutely driven. *

----------* At the ancient Temple of the Sun in Baalbek, Syria, three of the stones in a wall are each over 60 feet long and 13 feet high, and have been raised to a height of 20 feet. Amid the ruins lies an even larger stone; it is 71 feet long, and 13 feet by 14 feet in its other dimensions. Thus it is as long as the frontage of three houses in one of our modern city streets and the height of its side would reach part way up the second story. The Temple of Borobudur, in Java, is as large as a hill, and was indeed taken for such by the natives until disentombed. It is built in seven square stages, of which the lowest is about 500 feet square. This mountain of stone is covered all over with intricate sculpture executed in hard trachyte. There are over three miles of bas-reliefs, which originally comprised 2141 pictures. With regard to the Cyclopean ruins in Peru, it is estimated that, allowing 500 ravines in the 1200 miles of Peru, and 10 miles of terraces of 50 tiers to each ravine, we have 250,000 miles of stone wall averaging from three to four feet high - enough to encircle the globe ten times. The masonry composing the walls, temples, towers, etc., of many buildings in Peru, is uncemented, yet the blocks are irregular, varying in size from half a cubic foot to 1500 cubic feet, and it would be the merest chance if one stone out of the countless numbers could be found to fit the place of another. The fitting is so accurate that the blade of a small penknife cannot be inserted into the seams, whether outside or in the hidden interior. ----------Yet archaeologists have as a rule such strong preconceived opinions as to humanity's past that they resist the evidence, a procedure which leaves the subject in a very unsatisfactory state. These preconceived opinions are founded partly on traditional habits of thought handed down from bygone centuries of recent European history, and affected with a theological bias, and partly on scientific theories connected with former evolutionary hypotheses. Their effect is to make people reluctant to believe that man in remote ages had such powers as the relics indicate. But the archaeological evidence is overwhelming, and becomes more so as the years pass. We know that there were human races in very remote times which possessed not only this marvelous engineering ability but also great skill in artistic conception and execution, and that they had great astronomical, chronological, and mathematical knowledge. Moreover, the archaeologists every year are forced to concede a greater antiquity to human civilization. There is nothing fixed about modern theories, but all is in a state of flux and change, and hence there is no adequate basis for assuming a dogmatic attitude. But the teachings of Theosophy are in harmony with the facts discovered by science; the teachings interpret the facts, and the facts exemplify the teachings. Once admit the antiquity of civilization, and the problem of archaeology becomes clear; but there seems to be a great prejudice against such an admission; it is the inertia of mental habitude, added to a reluctance to make admissions that would entail a considerable modification of comfortably settled opinions in other matters besides archaeology. We actually find people rejecting the antiquity of civilization because "there is not sufficient evidence," and at the same time trying to get away with the evidence because they do not believe that which it proves. The desire for truth is often confused with the desire to believe. If we look at history impartially, we find there is as much evidence for processes of decline as for processes of ascent; and this is what the general analogy of nature would lead us to expect, for alternating periods of ebb and flow are universal in nature. Evolution is necessarily a double process; it means a bringing forth into manifestation

of that which was latent. The whole tree pre-existed in complete form in or around the seed; and as the seed sprouted and the tree grew, the form gradually manifested from one plane, reappearing on another. If the visible forms of life have really been evolved from simpler forms to more complex, then it follows that some potent agency was at work producing this evolution, and that this agency preceded the whole process. In the same way, whatever may have been the case as to the evolution of man's physical form, man's mind must have existed beforehand. The evolution of a human race, from a low state to a higher, can only be accomplished by the action on it of other men in a higher state of evolution; otherwise that low race will not evolve but will only decline, as observation shows to be the case. The "aboriginal" races (with a very few exceptions) now on the earth are not (as races) on the upward track but on the downward; and their greatness lies in the past and is dimly preserved in their memories. The individual members of such races may often, through contact with higher races, and through tuition by them, advance. The path which man treads in his upward evolution lies stretched before him, but the theorists often speak as though that path did not so exist, but unrolled itself before man as he advanced. The ladder of evolution, according to them, is a ladder with its head in the empty air, man always on the topmost rung, reaching out with his feet, and finding new rungs develop themselves under him as he reaches. The notion of mind and knowledge thus developing themselves in entirely novel directions out of nothing at all is revolting to the imagination that tries to grasp it. Reason tells us that knowledge, in order to be attained, must have pre-existed, and that man is merely fufilling a destiny already marked out for him. The history of races is analogous to the history of individuals. A child follows a path similar to that of other men that have preceded him, and the whole mass of humanity is thus continually passing along the cycle of childhood, maturity, and decline. But some evolutionists want to make out that there is only one such great period in human history - all ascent and no decline. These theorists are obliged to admit enormous periods of time for geology, astronomy, and the evolution of the lower kingdoms of life; but seem singularly reluctant to imagine a human history on a comparable scale of immensity. Yet humanity is by far the most important concern on the globe. The history of evolution as taught in Theosophy implies that every race, whether a large or comparatively small division of the whole of humanity, shall pass through seven stages, like seven points around the circumference of a circle; and the passage around this circle involves a descent and a subsequent reascent. The race is at first spiritual in its character, and gradually descends into materiality, afterwards to reascend towards a greater spirituality. The fourth of these seven stages is the lowest in the circular arc, and is the most materialistic stage which the race reaches. This is symbolized by the allegory of the Golden Age, and the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages; and by the various supreme deities, such as Uranus, Chronos, and Zeus, who are said to have ruled successively over these ages. There are also many other allegories and sacred legends which depict the descent of humanity from a state of innocent bliss to a state of wilfulness and trouble; and these are always accompanied with the promise of his regaining of the paradise he has lost. This is the method of evolution, as applied to man, who is said to be a Divine Pilgrim, ever seeking a return to the Promised Land from which he set out. This evolutionary process implies that man has many times made the circular progress, as race after race has appeared and run its course on the earth; but we must bear in mind that the progress, though alternately upward and downward, is always onward, so that humanity learns more each time; also that the same Egos reincarnate, and thus the experience acquired is stored up in the Soul's memory and carried on. Little has been said, yet it is enough to show that an acceptance of the truth about

man's evolution involves the acceptance also of many ideas new and perhaps unwelcome to those who do not wish to disarrange their philosophy. Theosophy is not content with vagaries and words that have no meaning, but searches for realities. It is not enough to say that evolution is caused by some unknown power, and to let it go at that, as so many theorists do. Theosophy inquires into the nature of that power which lies behind evolution. And, in the case of man, that power is simply and mostly (though not entirely) Man himself. For Man, in his entirety, is a self-conscious Soul, engaged in a definite work, following out a purpose, fulfilling a destiny. Wills and Intelligences, therefore, are the powers behind evolution. If we desire knowledge concerning the nature of man's mind and its probable source, we can only obtain it by studying that mind - as manifested (1) in ourself, (2) in other people. Archaeology, if studied faithfully, can but reveal the truth concerning man; and as the science is yet in its infancy, we may anticipate revelations so striking that it will not be possible to shirk their significance. Traditions of a "Golden Age" in the past cannot be killed; there is oftentimes more solid truth in traditions than in history, and this tradition is universal, wherever man is found. The well-known Eden story, a version of which is to be found at the beginning of the Hebraic Scriptures, represents the cyclic progress of humanity from its Divine origin through subsequent stages of materiality represented by a fall. The last gift bestowed upon man is that of the free will, and with this came the power of choice which led to his exile from the paradise of innocent bliss. The human mind is something that has been handed down, and its origin is Divine. If it be asked why we know so little about man's mighty past, the answer is ready at hand. It is because we have paid so little attention to the matter. Instead, our attention has been directed towards material comforts and inventions; and instead of welcoming information, we have put it away from us. Let but the minds of many intelligent people be directed towards this object of attainment, and the desired knowledge will soon come. (Vol. 9, pp. 176-80) -------------------Maori Lore - Rev. S. J. Neill The natives of New Zealand had no written language before the arrival of Europeans. But we have not to go back very far in the history of any people before we come upon pictorial representation. It does not follow from this that our ancestors, whether in the East or in the West, were without those things which we are accustomed to associate with writing or printing. If they had no books they had good memories. It is wonderful how the memory can be cultivated. In olden times, by training, by frequent repetitions, and the like, the pupil committed to memory a vast amount of learning. Even those who were not specially trained to be living books, to be walking encyclopedias, could repeat a great deal in the form of stories. Some of these stories were simply records of persons and events. Others were more in the nature of what we call 'legendary.' Still others were not historical at all, but were merely mental pictures of things in nature, or an attempted explanation of phenomena. The need for writing in some form was felt to be necessary when it was desired to express information to a person at a distance. Perhaps the most primitive form of this was that of the Australian savage cutting marks on a stick with an oyster shell, and sending it to a distant

friend: the messenger in this case having to explain what the cuts meant. The lack of books and of writing was in some measure compensated for by good memories. It is said that even in our own day some have committed to memory the whole of the New Testament, or the whole of the Iliad. In India much of what we now learn from the printed page was engraven on the tablets or the memory. Max Muller tells us of an Indian student who was able from memory to correct a mistake in a book containing some old Indian teaching. The ancients were gifted with the power of expressing their thoughts in noble language, though they could not read nor write. Indeed they were born orators very often, and some fragments of their oratory have come down to us, lacking much of their original fire, no doubt, from our not hearing them uttered. The writer can remember well, over forty years ago, seeing Maori orators address native gatherings. Before the Whare-puni there would be various groups of natives squatted on their haunches: suddenly an orator would spring to his feet, clothed in a native mat, and perhaps waving a greenstone mere in his right hand. With hasty steps he would walk to a given spot and, taking his stand, he would pour forth a number of impassioned sentences. Then he would pause, and walk with great dignity to another spot, take his stand, and again pour forth another torrent of eloquence. Then pause, and return to the original spot, and again address the assembled crowd, gesticulating with his mere. This would be repeated for fifteen minutes, or less, and then the orator would sit down as suddenly as he had first risen. Whereupon another orator would take his place. There was, and is still, one thing with the Maori speakers which many white men could imitate with advantage - the Maori did not rise unless he had something to say, and having said it he sat down. So polite were they that they never inflicted words on their audience when they had no more ideas to which to give expression. Few of the old Maori orators now remain, but yet the spirit that inspired them is not dead. Some time ago the Hon. Wiremu Kerei Nikora, member of Legislative Council, or the Upper House in the New Zealand Parliament, died; and the Hon. Dr. Pomare, member of the Executive Council, and representing the Native Race, told the House of Representatives of the death in these words: "The stars in the heavens are getting scarce: the giant tree of the forest is laid low; the mid-post of the tribal house is fallen; the ridge pole is snapped asunder, the house leaks, the shivering orphans of Tu are left disconsolate. The Canoe of fate, Karamu-raviki, fashioned in mythologic Hawa-iki from the tree of tears and sorrow, has visited the house of my friend, as it will visit the house of every man, and it has borne him to those mysterious realms which we call night, whose gates are open but the one way, which canoe returns ever empty." It would he difficult to excel this. The vivid forceful imagery, the comprehensiveness; the swift changing of metaphors, so terse, clear and strong, are all full of pathos. The great ones of the race, the stars, are becoming few. The late Chief is as a giant tree that has fallen in the forest. He will be missed in so many ways. Then there is a swift glance at the results of the war: Tu was the war-god, but he was sometimes regarded as the representative of man. The concluding words are like a picture which cannot be touched without spoiling it. The sample given may serve to indicate a little of the character of Maori eloquence, and it serves to show that the ancient spirit is still alive, though not so frequently manifested as in former days, perhaps. From some of the ancient lore which has been preserved we may catch glimpses of what Maori thought and its expression were long ago. A few specimens may be given which will serve to show something of the thought-life of the ancient

inhabitants of Hawaiki, and also of their descendants in Aotearoa, New Zealand. There are two lines of thought visible in a survey of Maori lore, one which relates to the origin of all things, and the other describing more especially this earth and its heaven. How much of this teaching was handed down from an ancient time, and how much was of comparatively recent growth it is difficult to say. That much was handed down seems evident from the long course of instruction in the whare-kura or sacred college, which was sometimes five years. This course may be described as both theoretical or metaphysical, and practical. In the practical form it was what is called magic, and the pupils were tested in their attainments to 'kill or cure' in the presence of the assembled tribe. It would appear that the Maoris understood that whatever power they exercised was by the help of elementals. The universe, to them, was neither a mere machine, nor a void, but had its denizens on various planes. The Maoris had fairies, too, and though we do not find very much about them, what we do find is very interesting, as we shall see presently. The priesthood of the ancient whare-kura formed ten distinct colleges. Over all a master (Kahuna-nui) presided. The first three colleges were devoted to the teaching of magic, sorcery and incantations. In the fifth there was taught divination, and the power to transfer a spirit just leaving the body to another body. In the sixth, medicine and surgery were taught - called lapaou-maoti. In the tenth were educated the future prophets of the people. The name of the god invoked in these ancient colleges was Uli, the Great Supreme, the Eternal God, in New Zealand called Io. There were various versions or statements of the ancient Maori mythology, and in most of these the number ten appears to have prevailed. We have seen that ten was the number of colleges for the priests. Ten was also the number of the heavens. Ten was the number of the voids. Ten was the number of the divisions of time. In the heavens, counting upwards, the second, Waka-marie, was the heaven of rain and sunhsine, the sixth, Nga-atua, was that of the inferior gods. The seventh was Autoia, and it is here that the soul was created. The tenth, Naherangi, was the abode of the great gods. The word Kore means negation, nothingness, or void. As stated above, there were two conceptions of this, or of evolution springing out of it; for the void, Kore, contained the elements of all. One of these had relation to the aspect of space, the other to that of time. In some of the aspects of evolution Po, which means Night, or the Unseen, is made to precede the Void. The third genealogy says that "God began his chant of the order of Creation at Te Po and sang: "Te Po begat Te Ao (Light), who begat Ao-Marama or Daylight, who again begat Kori-whiwhia," etc. All these different forms of the ancient Maori lore may be classed as metaphysical ideas of creation, in contrast with others that have to do directly with this earth and its heaven - things of which the senses make us cognizant. One of the best known and most concise statements of the Maori mythology about the origin of the world and of man is that given by a celebrated chief to Sir George Grey, who has laid the world under an obligation by his exact rendering of Maori teaching in his Polynesian Mythology. It is in part as follows: "Man had but one pair of ancestors. They sprang from the vast heaven that exists above us, and from the earth which lies beneath us. According to the traditions of our race, Rangi and Papa, or heaven and earth, were the source from which, in the beginning, all things originated. "Darkness then rested upon the heavens and upon the earth, and they still clave together, for they had not yet been rent apart; and the children they had begotten were ever thinking among themselves what might be the difference between darkness and light; they

knew that beings had multiplied and increased, and yet light had never broken upon them, but it ever continued dark. Hence these sayings are found in our ancient religious services: 'there was darkness from the first division of time unto the tenth, to the hundredth, to the thousandth,' that is, for a vast space of time; and these divisions of time were considered as beings, and were each termed a Po; and on their account there was as yet no world with its bright light, but darkness only for the beings which existed." After this follows an account of how the sons of Rangi and Papa, Heaven and Earth, attempted to raise the Heaven from the Earth; all failed except Pane, who, with great effort, raised up the Heaven to its present position. It will be interesting to read another version from the lips of one of the last of the old chiefs, given a few years ago to Mr. Dittmer, an English artist, who spent some time among the natives, and came into close friendship with them. "These are the my words to you, my wanderer, words of old Matapo, the oldest of his people, and his eyes are closed that he cannot see you; but they are opened again towards his heart, and what they see your eyes cannot perceive, for upon those who dwell in the womb of night rest his eyes. Listen. "The beginning was J-O, the great atua, the god-power, and the world was filled by Tepo-nui, the Great Darkness - ah! - Te-po-nui filled all the space, from the first space to the hundredth, the thousandth space. "Ha, my listener, then was it that the Atua commenced his great song of creation, and out of the Darkness sprang forth Life! "And out of the Darkness sprang forth Hine-Nui-te po, "And out of the Darkness sprang forth To Ao, the Light! "Ha, my listener, Te-Ao - ha! - Te-Ao gave birth to Rangi! Rangi-nui, the great Heaven. "And again sang the atua his great song of creation, and out of Te-po-nui sprang forth Tanga-roa, the God of the Oceans! "And out of Te-Po-nui sprang forth Papa-tu-a-nuku, the far-stretching Earth. "Ha, the Earth was created! The Earth, and Rangi, the heaven. Ah! Rangi-nui, the great Heaven! "Rangi took Hine-nui-te-po for his wife, and their son was Ha-nui-o-rangi, the Great Breath of heaven. And Ha-nui-o-rangi commenced his great movement, and forth sprang Tawhiri-ma-tea, the father of the winds. And again Ha-nui-o-rangi commenced his great movement, and Te-ata-tuhi sprang forth - the first Glimmer of Light. "Te-ata-tuhi was a woman, and Rangi took her to wife. - Her daughter was Te-marama, the Moon, and Rangi spoke full of Joy: "'O woman, Te-ara-tuhi, look upon the beauty of Rangi's daughter; ha, she is his daughter for which he was longing'; and he made her his eye, his Eye of Night. "Lightening his path he went in search of his son. He found the woman Te wera-wera, the heat, and his heart went out to her so that he took her to wife, and Te-Ra was born. TeRa, the Sun! Then cried Rangi, full of joy: 'O woman, Wera-wera, look upon the beauty of Rangi's son - ha, he is his great son for which he was longing,' and he made him his other eye, his Eye of the Day." The idea of singing the universe into manifestation is worthy of thought. It harmonizes with what we know of the power of vibrations. It is clearly associated with the idea of numbers being at the foundation of all things. But the above is given not only to illustrate the old philosophy; it serves also as a

specimen of the vivid, terse, and expressive form taken by the thought of this ancient race: and it will compare favorably with other creation accounts, such as that in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Before passing from this part of the subject, it may be interesting to note that nearly all the stories of magic among the Maoris, and they are many, give great emphasis to the power of vibration. Their mantrams or incantations were represented as possessing great power, when a great will-force accompanied them. It must he confessed, however, that the tendency seems to have been towards a selfish use of this power. On this account, as well as for other reasons, the lore of the whare-kura has almost died out. Knowledge or Power is a blessing to any people only when there is wisdom to use it for good. Another feature of Maori thought, that relating to fairies, is full of great interest. We know that for long ages the Maoris were shut off from other peoples, whether in Hawaiki, or in New Zealand; yet we find them in possession of a fairy-lore which agrees wonderfully with that in the distant lands of the West. There is one fairy-story which tells of a mortal mingling with the fairies in the dark, and learning from them the art of net-making. It is too long to give. There is another which is more interesting and shorter, which we insert. It is a good illustration of the Maori style. The locality, Puke-more, is a hill in the Waikato, near which the writer lived for over two years. The story was told to Sir George Grey, by an old chief named Te Wherowhero, known as the first 'Maori King.' The last Maori king, Mahuta Tawhiao Potatau Te Wherowhero, has as part of his name that of the old chief who told the story. It was this Mahuta who met Katherine Tingley in Auckland in 1896. "Te Kanawa, a chief of Waikato, was the man who fell in with a troop of fairies upon the top of Puke-more, a high hill in the Waikato district. "This chief happened one day to go out to catch kiwis with his dogs, and when night came on found himself right at the top of Puke-more. So his party made a fire to give them light, for it was very dark. They had chosen a tree to sleep under - a very large tree, the only one fit for their purpose that they could find; in fact, it was a very convenient sleeping-place, for the tree had immense roots, sticking high above the ground: they slept between the roots, and made the fire beyond them. "As soon as it was dark they heard loud voices, like the voices of people coming that way; there were the voices of men, of women, and of children, as if a very large party of people were coming along. They looked for a long time but could see nothing; till at last Ranawa knew that the noise must proceed from fairies. His people were all dreadfully frightened, and would have run away if they could; but where could they run to? for they were in the midst of a forest, on the top of a lonely mountain, and it was dark night. "For a long time the voices grew louder, and more distinct as the fairies drew nearer and nearer, until they came quite close to the fire; Te Kanawa and his party were half dead with fright. At last the fairies approached to look at Te Kanawa, who was a very handsome fellow. To do this they kept peeping slyly over the large roots of the tree under which the hunters were lying, and kept constantly looking at Te Kanawa, whilst his companions were quite insensible from fear. Whenever the fire blazed up brightly, off went the fairies and hid themselves, peeping out from behind stumps and trees; and when it burned low back they came close to it, merrily singing as they moved: 'Here you come climbing over Mount Tirangi To visit the handsome chief of Ngapuhi, Whom we have done with. *

"A sudden thought struck Te Kanawa that he might induce them to go away if he gave them all the jewels he had about him; so he took off a beautiful little figure, carved in green jasper, which he wore as a neck ornament, and a precious carved jasper ear-drop from his ear. Ah, Te Kanawa was only trying to amuse them to save his life, but all the time he was nearly frightened to death. However, the fairies did not rush on the men to attack them, but only came quite close to look at them. As soon as Te Kanawa had taken off his neck ornament, and pulled out his jasper earring, and his other earring, made of a tooth of the tiger-shark, he spread them out before the fairies, and offered them to the multitude who were sitting all around about the place; and thinking it better the fairies should not touch him, he took a stick, and fixing it into the ground hung his neck ornaments and ear-rings upon it. "As soon as the fairies had ended their song, they took the shadows of the ear-rings, and handed them about from one to the other until they had passed through the whole party, which then suddenly disappeared, and nothing more was seen of them. "The fairies carried off with them the shadows of all the jewels of Te Kanawa, but they left behind them his jasper neck ornament and his earrings, so that he took them back again, the hearts of the fairies being quite satisfied at getting the shadows alone; they saw also that Te Kanawa was an honest, well-dispositioned fellow. However, the next morning, as soon as it was light, he got down the mountain as fast as he could without stopping to hunt longer for kiwis. "The fairies are a very numerous people; merry, cheerful, and always singing, like the cricket. Their appearance is that of human beings, nearly resembling a European's; their hair being very fair, and so is their skin. They are very different from the Maoris, and do not resemble them at all. Te Kanawa had died before any Europeans arrived in New Zealand." ----------* Te Wherowhero did not remember the whole song; but that this was the concluding verse; it was probably in allusion to their coming to peep at Te Kanawa. ----------The above will serve as an illustration, not only of Maori lore, but of the simple, strong, graphic style in which the Maoris expressed their thoughts. There are very few stories of fairies, and these few appear to he native to the country, but they nevertheless contain certain elements of marked likeness to the accounts of fairies in the northern hemisphere, in Ireland, for instance. It would be difficult to trace fairy-tales from the northern to the southern hemisphere. But if some basis of fact underlays the stories current in both hemispheres, the explanation would be easy and natural. One of the Maori legends, that of the magic head, which had the power of destroying everything that came near it, is not unlike the account recorded by H.P. Blavatsky in the second volume of The Secret Doctrine: of a 'magic form' in Atlantis. In both cases the magic form is under the control of 'Black Magicians,' and in both cases was animated or used by 'spirits' or 'elementals.' In both cases the magic form or head was overcome; in the case of the Maori, it was overcome by the use of powerful mantrams or incantations mainly: in the case of the magic form of which H.P. Blavatsky speaks, the blood, or 'life-water,' of a 'pure man' could alone destroy him. It is noteworthy how all accounts agree that Black Adepts come to a bad end, whether in ancient Atlantis, or in Aotearoa, or elsewhere.

(Vol. 12, pp. 183-93) -------------------Woman's Mysteries of a Primitive People - H. Travers Our knowledge of those ancient races which we call "primitive" is very defective. One reason is that they do not want to tell; another is that we do not want to know. Even when an informant is badly anxious to tell, he finds it quite impossible to do so if the other party does not want to know. Travelers have visited these races with minds already made up and solidly fixed on all questions, and not willing even to begin to listen to any information which would in the least unsettle any of these adamantine opinions. And as the kind of information to be gleaned from the ancient races consists exclusively of what would disturb those settled opinions, it is no wonder that contented ignorance continues to prevail. Nowadays however there are a few who have so far freed their minds from theory as to be able to discern fact; and realizing, what is obvious, that the said races are ancient and not primitive, and that the opinions of civilized humanity are not necessarily final, they have unsealed their ears and heard, and turning down their eyes they have seen what lies before them. -----------* D. Amaury Talbot, Cassell and Co. -----------Mrs. Talbot appears to have conceived the idea that humanity is much older than any particular phase of "civilization," and that neither knowledge nor culture is necessarily a matter of airing sheets and eating with a fork; and thus she has been able to arrive at some interesting and instructive facts concerning the peoples she has studied. She did not sit at home and evolve a theory of "animism," and then go out to find facts in support of it; nor has she sought to interpret native customs in the light of modern motives. We do not find her taking allegories literally and then calling the people babies for believing in them; but we find that she tries to understand their way of expressing themselves. But her particular sphere is that of the native women. Mr. P. Amaury Talbot's book on the Ekoi was reviewed in this magazine a year or two ago and showed the same spirit; his wife, who was his amanuensis, subsequently undertook this special study on her own account with the assistance of another lady. The study of women by women is of course an essential point in the program. It has been hard enough for men to probe the mysteries of male cults, while the female cults were quite a sealed book to them; and it is needless to point out the advantage possessed by a woman student in this matter. The people studied here are the Ibibios of Southern Nigeria, the idea not having occurred to the authoress at the time her husband was on duty among the Ekoi. They occupy a low rung on the ladder of culture, but are indisputably relics of a higher condition. It is forbidden for any man to be allowed even a glimmering into the woman's mysteries, which are concerned largely with the part played by a wife and a mother, the importance of prenatal conditions being fully recognized. The authoress rightly says that here is a vast untrodden field of work among primitive peoples all over the world, and a work specially for women to undertake. Here let us note that the writer speaks casually of an Ibibio infant as "so fair as to seem almost white"; and we are at once reminded of that principle

recognized in biology, and emphasized by H.P. Blavatsky in writing on the subject of man and the apes, whereby the development of the creature from infancy to age is regarded as being in the same direction as the development of his race. On this theory we should infer that the Ibibios had once been nearly fair. The Mother-Goddess naturally plays a very important part here. Eka Abassi is their designation for this divinity, who is at once the mother and wife of Obumo the thunder-god. We shall be reminded of Isis, and some may try to trace a connection between these people and the Egyptians, which is quite likely, but not necessarily so, these theogonic ideas being part of an ancient knowledge that was much more widely diffused. Nor shall we expect to find among so lowly a people the more lofty philosophic ideal of Isis. The authoress speaks of the priority of Eka Abassi over Obumo as "a secret which has come down from times when woman, not man, was the predominant sex"; and recounts the tradition that Eka Abassi was able to produce Obumo by her unaided power; but in dealing with these matters one has to be careful not to anthropomorphize too much. The descent of the Manasaputras, or perhaps the formation of a new race from the seed of an older one, finds its analogy in the following: "Long ago a big play was being given. All the people were dancing and singing, when suddenly they noticed a stranger going up and down among them. He was very tall and splendid, but answered no word when questioned as to whence he came. All night long the festival lasted, and at dawn a strange woman was seen to have joined the guests. She too was finely made and beautiful, but sad looking, and when asked her town and parentage, kept silence for a time, but at length after much questioning said: 'This play sounded too sweet in my ears in the place where I dwelt on high; so I climbed down to hear it more clearly. Half-way, the rope broke and I fell. Now I can never go home any more, since there is no other way by which to climb thither - and I fear! I fear!'" Then she found the other stranger, who also had come down and could not get back, and they built a home together, and their children were the ancestors of the present race. Juju means the totality of the mysterious forces in Nature, and in connection with this word we find what might be called a whole system of science or philosophy, having (like our own) its peculiar jargon, and interesting to an open mind as affording an escape from inbred ideas into a world viewed in a novel aspect. That water, earth, and stone are the three great mothers; that all natural objects enshrine mystic potencies that can be utilized; that all children are born with an affinity for some one or other animal or plant or stone; these and many other particulars, whose bare mention suffices to seal forever the ears of the selfsatisfied, awaken our curiosity and interested desire to know more of this system of interpreting nature. Our system did not begin until people had reduced their lands to a state of prim order where philosophers could sit in their studies and go to bed after a comfortable supper, and it might not be adapted to the needs of a people dwelling so much in contact with Nature. Again, it is conceivable that natural objects might have potencies among the Ibibios which they have lost amid our smoky chimneys, and that whole races of nature-spirits may have fled uncongenial climes to take refuge where men despise them not nor seek to despoil. Death is spoken of as "the time when my mother shall take me"; which surely is a fine way of speaking of that sublime mystery when all our aching faculties are wrapped in supernal rest. And speaking of this reminds us of reincarnation, which, among such a people, is found in a simple form, concerned with the rebirth of children in the same race and even in the same family. It is natural to put together the two facts of death and birth in such a way. There is also the belief that various influences, benign or malefic, may enter the infant at the

time of birth; and this belief has given rise to the idea about metempsychosis, which people often confound with reincarnation. Many of the women's mysteries are concerned with the provision of due means to safeguard the processes of both death and birth. It may be interesting to try and trace the Ibibios to the Egyptians, but in that case it would seem but logical to trace a similar connection for the peasants of Argyllshire and those of Transylvania - which might be more difficult. Because, while the Ibibios say that there must be no tied knot or locked box in a room where a child is being born, the latter peasants say the very same thing, so the authoress tells us. So too in India, and among the women who took part in the rites of Juno Lucina. Only two secret women's societies could be traced as now existing among the Ibibios, but formerly the case was different. Egbo was originally a woman's secret society, until the men wrested from them its secrets, learned the rites, and then drove out the women. We infer the society had somehow lost its integrity - shall we suggest by disunion among the members? But in the old, old days, we are informed, women were more powerful than men, for to them alone the mysteries of the gods and of secret things were made known. By this knowledge they were able to make man's muscular strength subserve the needs of hard toil. But by degrees the women lost their numerical superiority. The men proposed that men should be taught the mysteries so as to participate in them with the women. The old women were against the scheme, but the young women prevailed; the men were taken in and then proceeded to oust the women. Yet the older women perpetuated secret rites as before. We are aware that this review is altogether inadequate; but with such a mine of information as this book one can only give a few samples and leave the rest to the reader. Many interesting things we have been obliged to pass over. In speaking on the woman question it is of course difficult to concede what is just without seeming to uphold what is absurd; and there is more than one extant opinion as to what constitutes the true "rights" of woman. Probably, however, few will demur from the opinion that woman's real strength lies in being herself, and that she loses by striving to be something else. Evidently the younger women in the above tradition erred sentimentally and thus ruined the integrity of their society. And if to woman are indeed revealed the divine mysteries, this can only be established by fact and not by mere claims. By rising to a plane whereon she is able to help and to inspire, rather than by descending to a plane where she is manifestly weaker, woman can win the freedom she claims and escape the restriction she deplores. Is not this the legitimate conclusion? (Vol. 10, pp. 563-66) --------------The Unconquered Race of America - J. O. Kinnaman, Ph.D. [1917] The darkest blot upon the pages of American history is the one placed there by unjust treatment accorded to the American Indian. The injustice done to the Red Man has no parallel in the history of the world, so far as we know; even the much and over-pitied black, who, from time immemorial, has been a "hewer of wood and a drawer of water," has been treated with undue consideration, in comparison. Six hundred thousand men died to rend asunder the shackles of slavery, two armies numbering more than two millions of men

contended for more than four years over four millions of slaves; countless wealth was destroyed and wasted in an effort to bring the black to the status of a white man, and, finally, the ballot was placed in his hands, though he was more ignorant of government than his savage brother in the wilds of Africa; yet the work was pronounced completed. The injustice done to the Indian cries to Heaven for redress, cries in a voice that will not be silenced, will not be stilled, until justice is rendered, however tardy that may be. The covetous greed and unprincipled acts of the white man stand out immense, colossal, dwarfing, as it were into insignificance, all other acts of injustice ever perpetrated by him. Because of this covetousness, greed and dishonesty, thousands died, not to render secure the Red Man in the possession of his heritage, but to dispossess him of it; not to render impossible the breaking-up of happy homes, not to render him secure in the pursuit of happiness and in the possession of property, but to tear asunder those homes, to make helpless women widows, and innocent children orphans, who, creeping away like some wounded animal of the forest, hid in solitude to die. No ballot was ever placed in his hands, nor was he ever considered a citizen of the land which he possessed as its original owner. He was not considered a citizen of the country or thought fit to be one, yet he was subject to trial for crime in the white man's court, by the white man's standard, and if found guilty, suffered the white man's penalty; all this for the sole purpose of dispossessing him of his lands. Our children in the schoolroom have been taught that the Indian was a savage, who delighted chiefly in murder, in scalping and burning at the stake, in tortures of devilish ingenuity, in war and destruction in general. These same children, at their mothers' knees, were taught to fear and loathe the Indian, even to tremble with fear at the mere mention of the name. The writers of our history textbooks have ever promulgated this notion of an 'inhuman devil,' who would rather take a white man's scalp than anything else in the world. These same texts would convey the impression, and intentionally so, that the Indian never did anything since the day the first European set foot upon American soil but to go on the warpath against the white man. I know for an actual fact that this statement is correct, for I have questioned hundreds of school children on the subject. This sentiment was created and propagated for one purpose only, viz., as an excuse, on the part of the whites, for annihilating the Indian and possessing themselves of his land. This was formerly true; it is true at the present time, as I shall later show. We must all acknowledge that some of the worst human elements of our civilization: the restless, the ne'er-do-well, the melancholy, the criminal, always formed the vanguard of our frontier. I do not say that all men on the frontier were of questionable character, for we know better; but the majority, for some cause, would not or could not abide in their first or home settlements. They were driven forth either by hard necessity, because they could not compete with the prevailing economic conditions, being forced to the wall as it were, or some other social cause operated to drive them forth to do unto the Indian as they had been done by. Again, when later the Government began to make treaties with the people of the forest and plain, individual greed or aggression was not the motive force: the force was that of corporate powers. Of course that spells 'politics', and politics in the last analysis assays corruption. We need only refer the reader to the great land companies that were formed at the close of the Revolutionary War, to substantiate our statement. The Northwest Territory is a fair example of corporate manipulation of lands belonging justly to the indigenous people. After these corporations (or companies, as they were called) had secured their grants, then they called upon the Government to remove the rightful owners, peacefully if they could, otherwise if necessary, but remove them at all cost. Soldiers were sent into this territory to

compel the Indians to move westward. Lives were sacrificed on both sides; to satisfy greed upon the one hand; on the other, in an attempt to ward off injustice, to protect home, wife, children and property. But the cause of the Indian was hopeless; he was fighting a losing battle and he knew it; still, the ever stalwart manhood in him demanded that he fight. Such is the story to the very last on western plain and mountain, in southern glades and swamps. In this contest which lasted from 1622 even to the end of the century just closed, innocent lives were lost on the side of the whites, much property destroyed, suffering inflicted and endured with Spartan fortitude; yet if the sufferings of the two races were to be weighed in the balance, that of the white race would be found almost infinitesimal, while that of the Indian would stand out in relief like the Pyramids. When the Indian was victor in a fight with the whites, it was called a massacre, but when the whites won, it was denominated 'a glorious victory,' and the commanders were honored, petted, feted and bemedaled while the Red Man was hunted down like a wild beast through forest and dale, over plain and mountain, until brought to a stand where, with his back to the wall, he died fighting. Let us take under consideration one or two instances. First, that of the great chief Logan. Note his last speech, a speech which neither Cicero nor Demosthenes could have equaled. This great chief was bereft of all his family by unprovoked murder on the part of an American officer, Col. Cresap, a little more than a hundred years ago. "I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry, and I gave him not meat; if ever he came cold or naked, and I gave him not clothing. "During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained in his tent, an advocate of peace. Nay, such was my love for the whites, that those of my country pointed at me as they passed and said, 'Logan is the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived among you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, cut off all the relations of Logan, not sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any human creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. Yet, do not harbor the thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one." Listen to Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief, speaking to Wells, in 1807: "These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners. The great Spirit gave this great land to his red children. He placed the whites on the other side of the big water. They were not content with their own, but came to take ours from us. They have driven us from the sea to the lakes - we can go no farther." Again: "Father, listen! The Americans are taking our lands from us every day. They have no hearts, Father; they have no pity for us; they want to drive us beyond the setting sun." Enemathla, chief of the Tallahassees, in an interview with Governor Duval, had the following to say: "Do you think that I am like a bat, that hangs by its claws in a dark cave, and that I can

see nothing of what is going on around me? Ever since I was a boy I have seen the white people steadily encroaching upon the Indians, and driving them from their homes and hunting-grounds. When I was a boy, the Indians still roamed undisputed over all the vast country lying between the Tennessee River and the great sea of the South, and now when there is nothing left them but their hunting-grounds in Florida, the white men covet that. I tell you plainly, if I had the power, I would tonight cut the throat of every white man, woman and child in Florida." Listen to that grand old chief Coacoochee, in chains, and with a threat hanging over his head of being hung from the yard of the vessel upon which he was held prisoner, as he replies to General Worth, July 4th, 1842: "When I was a boy, I saw the white man afar off, and was told that he was my enemy. I could not shoot him as I would a wolf or bear, yet like those he came upon me. Horses, cattle, fields he took from me. He said he was my friend. He gave us his hand in friendship; we took it. He had a snake in the other; his tongue was forked; he lied and stung us. I asked for just a small piece of these lands, enough to plant and live upon far South - a spot where I could place the ashes of my kindred - a place where my wife and child could live. This was not granted me. Florida was my home; I love it, and to leave it is like burying my wife and child. I have thrown away the rifle and have now taken the hand of the white man, and now say, 'Take care of me.'" I opine that after the defeat of March, 1622, the Indians realized that they could no more turn back the tide of whites than sweep back the ocean with a canoe paddle, yet they fought to the bitter end. The Spanish explorers came to Florida with one avowed purpose, that is, the getting of gold by fair means or foul, by robbery, by conquest, but not by mining. When the English settlers came, the Indian must be dispossessed, that the white man might have the best. "Might made right." When an Indian burned a settler's cabin, or took a white scalp, he was just giving vent to a righteous indignation, trying to redress his countless wrongs, his innumerable humiliations, his numberless sufferings. He was striving with all the power at his command to restrain the whites from taking all his possessions, all his means of livelihood. The picture drawn by most of our textbooks, also by most other writers, is not only wrong, but utterly false, and deliberately so. The Indian side of the story has never been written by himself, but by his arch-enemy, the white man. Thus was it in the case of Carthage: we get her story only from the viewpoint of Rome, her deadly enemy and destroyer. No Carthaginian ever penned his side of the story. Thus with the Indian: he is arraigned at the bar of the white man, whose interest it was to annihilate the original American. One chief attempted to write the Indian's view of the injustice done to him by the paleface. So strong was his arraignment of the whites that his book was nicknamed 'The Red Man's Book of Lamentation.' This chief was Pokagon, head of the Ojibwa confederation. It seems that the humiliation of the Red Man will never cease so long as there remains one lone Indian. The Exposition at Chicago was held to commemorate the discovery of America. On Columbus Day, Pokagon, as the rightful owner of the site of Chicago, was invited to be present. He left his humble Michigan home to attend, and then was utterly ignored and forgotten by the officials in charge. The slight broke the old man's heart. He returned home

to die and go to rest with his fathers. The writer knows the Indian as he really is, and he has fundamentally Not changed during the last four hundred years. During that time the Indian has learned several things concerning the white man, which have been 'driven home' by the rifle, among them being the fact that the paleface has a 'forked tongue,' that he cannot be trusted to abide by his word, that the consuming fire of the white man's soul is greed. In character the Red Man is noble, honest, always fulfilling his promise; if he is your friend, he is so to the death; while, on the other hand, if he is your enemy, you know exactly what to expect. His native intelligence and comprehension are equal to, and in some respects superior to, that of the Caucasian; he possesses the stoicism of his Mongol ancestors, while, at the same time, he has a 'twist' of intellect that is beyond the comprehension of his white brother. The white man in his selfsupposed or arrogant superiority, because he cannot comprehend some depths of the other's intellect, relegates it to the realms of stupidity, or something worse. By nature the Indian is reticent and uncommunicative; but he is neither ignorant nor stupid. He feels that he never knows what purpose the white man may have in mind; therefore, he adopts a policy that does not encourage intimacy. But if his confidence can be won, the fountains of his heart open and freely flow. The writer is not speaking from legend or hearsay, but from personal experience, for he has lived with the despised Indian, eaten at his campfire, at his table, shared the hospitality of his blanket, treated his children for measles and scarlet fever, taught him hygiene, preached in his missions, helped bury his dead, lived on his reservations with the express purpose of studying him from each and every angle. So these conclusions are based upon observation and experience, not upon sentiment. Four years before the outbreak of the French and Indian War, a dissension arose among the Creeks. The contention divided the tribe into two factions. One faction led by Secoffee, migrated to Florida, taking up their abode in the Alachua district. Here they remained at peace with their Indian and white neighbors until 1812. They took the name 'Seminoles' or 'Wanderers,' which they still proudly retain. In 1812, their chiefs, King Payne and Billy Bowlegs, the sons of Secoffee, through the eloquence of Tecumseh, were enlisted against the Americans. It was rumored that the Seminoles were planning a raid into Georgia. Col. Newman, an American officer, led an expedition against King Payne's town, but the Indians were not taken by surprise; they attacked the American line of march either near or on the shores of the lake now known as Newman's lake: or on the shores of what is now a prairie, but at that time was a lake more than twenty-five miles long by ten wide. Though the Indians fought valiantly under the leadership of King Payne, yet owing to his wounds they withdrew from the first attack. The Americans hastily threw up fortifications and awaited the renewal of the attack, which came at sunset, but the Indians were driven off by the superior marksmanship of the Americans. Bowlegs, taking command, kept the Americans penned within their fortifications for eight days, then allowed them to depart. This was the first conflict between Seminoles and Americans. Immediately after this the President ordered all American troops from Spanish soil. At 4 P.M., July 10th, 1821, Florida passed from the dominion of Spain to that of the United States. The Indians, in general, were not pleased with this change of government. The leading chiefs went to Pensacola to have a 'big talk' with the new governor, General Jackson. It was at this conference that the first spark was set to the fuse that was destined to cause years of war and suffering. Jackson informed them that the Creeks, who did not belong in Florida, must return to Georgia; runaway slaves must be returned to their owners; the Indians of Florida must gather on a reservation that the Government would set aside for them.

Now, gentle reader, just note that in the above the wishes of the Indians were not consulted, nor even taken into consideration; they were offered no remuneration for the lands they were to give up; they were simply told to move to that part of the Territory which, at that time, the white man did not covet. Of course the chiefs were in no gentle frame of mind, yet they promised to carry the 'talk' to their people. The first steps towards putting the Indians upon a reservation were taken in 1823, when a few of the Indians met Governor Duval below St. Augustine. Two days later an agreement was reached by which the Government received all the lands of the Tallahassees and Miccasukees for $6000. Later, these two tribes, accompanied by the Seminoles, took up their abode in the central part of the state, in the Alachua district, thirty-eight miles south of Gainesville. Here they remained in suppressed discontent until 1832, when again the whites wanted the lands assigned to them by the Federal Government, and plans were made to remove the Indians west of the Mississippi River. Indian representatives were sent west to view the lands and report. This report was favorable, but the mass of Indians refused to move. Thus matters stood until October 1835, though Emathla, one of the old chiefs, continued making preparations to obey the commands of the Government. This chief was considered by the Indians themselves as their enemy and a friend of the whites. About this time General Thompson had a meeting with the Indians to consider further their removal to the west; Miccanopy was the leading chief, and with him was Osceola. Osceola, although not at that time a chief, yet controlled the trend of the argument. Finally, Osceola, drawing his knife, stuck it into the table, exclaiming, "This is the only treaty I will ever make with the whites!" He kept his word. Osceola was the son of William Powell, an Englishman, and a Creek woman. While very young he and his mother joined the Seminoles in Florida. He was born about 1804, and therefore was thirty-one or thirty-two years of age when the Seminole War began. He was very dignified in his bearing, pleasing of countenance, frank in manner, above superstition, affectionate with wife and children, and always playing the part of a real man. After Osceola consummated his revenge upon General Thompson, he removed Emathla, the chief friendly to the whites, by a bullet, and the seven years' struggle was launched in earnest. In this hopeless contest about two thousand warriors were engaged, while at one time there were more than nine thousand troops in the field against them. When the Indians won a fight it was called a massacre; when the soldiers won it was called a glorious victory and heralded to the world as such. On October 31st, 1837, Osceola went to St. Augustine under a flag of truce guaranteed by General Hernandez, who sent a white plume to Osceola, which meant, on the part of the whites, a desire for peace. When he arrived at the headquarters of Hernandez, Osceola was taken prisoner in defiance of all accepted codes of warfare, and was finally sent to Ft. Moultrie, S.C., where he died of a broken heart. From that day to this no Florida Seminole has ever trusted a white man, and never will do so. In the spring of 1842 a determined band of about three hundred men, women and children, escaped into the inaccessible fastness of the Everglades, where no white man could follow; the rest were deported, led by Coacochee. The band in the Everglades have never been conquered, have never signed a treaty or agreement of any kind with the United States, nor has any land ever been assigned to them. Neither has this band ever elected a chief to succeed Osceola, as they do not consider any one worthy the honor. The tribe is divided, for part of the year, for the purpose of hunting, into two or three bands; these bands camp in the different parts of the Everglades. They convene about twice a year, at the time of the 'big hunt,' when the raid for otter takes place in the Big Cypress, and

at the festival of the Green Corn Dance. It is said that there are members of the tribe who have never beheld a white person, but this statement is doubtful; yet, the daughter of Tallahassee had not been beyond the limits of the Everglades for forty years, until March, 1915. She is over ninety years of age, and claims to have been the wife of Osceola. In spite of her advanced age she is hale, hearty and sprightly. The tribe will not intermarry with the whites. Since they retired to their great swamp, they record only one such attempt. When they found one of their women consorting with a white man, the braves tied him to a tree, exposed naked to the mosquitos and insects of the region, and left him to die. The squaws took their seduced sister to a hummock from whence she never returned, nor would they ever reveal the manner in which they put her to death. No man or woman has since transgressed the unwritten law of the tribe. Their daily life is simple, well ordered, and well adapted to the environment under which they live. Their houses are not now the open sheds depicted by the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, but their permanent dwellings are built from such material as is used by the native 'cracker' in the flat woods and hummocks. They have many of the modern cooking utensils and household necessities, among them the sewing machine. The women learn to use these, and cut and fit their dresses after a fashion, though this fashion would scarcely pass for Parisian. The men hunt, fish and prepare roots and herbs for food, while the women attend to the household duties, sew, raise a few vegetables, chickens, a 'razor-back' or two, and so forth. Neither sex is lazy, and each does his or her share towards the support of the family group, and that of the tribe as a whole. They are entirely self-supporting and are dependent upon the white man for only a few things, and in most cases they could, with advantage, do without these articles. There are no schools for the education of the children, and no one, child or adult, can read or write the English language. In fact, very few can even speak English. They have no desire to learn, for they deeply mistrust the white man and his purposes. There is no mission or church among them. The Episcopalian church maintained Dr. Goddard among them for years. He labored faithfully but so far as I am able to learn, he never, in all the long years of his service, made so much as one convert. They are not carried away by disease contracted from the white man, as some other tribes are. They are not subject to tuberculosis or syphilis. They are fine types of physical manhood and womanhood. They are, however, subject to hookworm, and almost every member of the tribe was a victim, until Dr. Goddard persuaded the majority to take the treatment. For the time being, at least, the disease was eradicated. Dr. Goddard is dead, and the Seminoles are left without a white friend resident among them. They represent the last of the original owners of the American soil who have not been conquered by the white race. What does the future hold for this sturdy remnant of a once powerful people? Just what it held for the Pequots, and other tribes that have gone on before? (Vol. 12, pp. 609-20) ------------------Discoveries on the Janiculum Hill, Rome - C. J. Ryan

The Syriac Temple on the Janiculum Hill, Rome, which was excavated in 1908-9, consists today of little more than the foundations, but many interesting carved figures have been found buried under the ruins which bring vividly before us a very curious phase of Roman religious experience. These figures, as may be seen from some of the illustrations published herewith, are Egyptian or semi-Egyptian in type. Towards the beginning of the Christian era, when the peace and unity of the ancient Mediterranean world was fairly assured by the foundation of the Roman Empire, a great religious movement began to develop, destined largely to orientalize the Roman classic or Olympian form of religion. The gods of the older nations of the East gradually imposed themselves upon the West. Cybele, the Great Mother, and Attis were transported from Phrygia; Atargatis from the Syrian Heliopolis; Isis and Osiris-Serapis came from Alexandria; the Baals of Syria, and Mithras from Persia, followed. The warmth with which these deities and the cults they represented were received by the common people is a measure of the failure of the orthodox system, and a proof of the demand for something less frigid and formal than was found in the chill sacrifices to Jupiter and the other national divinities. The Romans were ready for anything that would bring them some stronger assurance of the existence of a spiritual world and of a life after death, and they looked to the immemorial East for something to come. The mystery associated with the Asiatic and Egyptian religions had its attraction. The cult of Isis and Osiris, even in its declining stage, was far more truly religious than anything to be found in the native Roman ones. In the oriental systems there was at least the opportunity to gain peace through purification, to practice asceticism, and to be inspired by a mystic ceremonial. At first the authorities tried to suppress the introduction of any foreign beliefs, probably for fear of political complications. As early as B.C. 220 the Senate ordered a temple of Isis and Serapis (Osiris) to be destroyed, and in A.D. 181 an attempt was made to establish the mystic religion by what is believed by some to be a pious fraud. Livy relates the following story: "Some laborers on the farm of Lucius Petilius, a notary, at the foot of the Janiculum, digging the ground deeper than usual, discovered two stone chests, about eight feet long by four feet broad. Both had inscriptions in Greek and Latin letters, one signifying that therein was buried Numa Pompilius, the other that therein were contained his books.... In the latter were found two bundles, each containing seven books; seven were in Latin and seven in Greek, containing philosophy.... The praetor, on reading the contents [of the Latin books] perceived that most of them had a tendency to undermine the established system of religion.... and declared that he was ready to make oath that these books ought not to be read or preserved: and the Senate decreed that they should without delay to be burned in the Comitium." (xl, 29) We should greatly like to know what these philosophic books contained, even though they were not as old as they claimed to be. Macrobius has preserved the striking reply of an oracle of Serapis: "Who am I? I will tell you what I am. The vault of heaven is my head; the sea my breast; the region of the sky my ears; and my eyes, the brilliant torch which sees and knows!" (Saturn. I, xx, 17) Serapis-Osiris, then, represented the One life in which all others were united; combined with Isis he was the great force of production in all nature.

A change came about in the treatment of the Syriac and Isiac cults immediately after the assassination of Caesar. Duruy, in his History of Rome, says: "The last measure of the Triumvirs [Octavian, Anthony and Lepidus] in this terrible year [41 B.C.] was an act of devotion - a decree for the erection of a temple to Serapis and Isis. This was a far from costly concession to the popular element, and a continuation on other grounds of the war against the nobles. The lower people sought after new gods, and they had reason; for more than a century the old gods had been deaf to their prayers. But the Senate disliked these foreign superstitions which they could not direct in furtherance of their policy; they had attempted in [B.C.] 58 to expel Isis from the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and the populace had opposed them. In 53, at the time of the oligarchical reaction, another decree ordered the destruction of all the chapels of the Egyptian Goddess, and forbade her worship, even in the interior of houses, a prohibition which Caesar renewed six years later. To maintain the purity of the Roman faith was the least of the triumvirs' cares; Isis was pleasing to the populace, and they restored her to them." Gradually, however, as Caesarism became more and more transformed into absolute power, it looked more favorably upon the oriental priesthoods, for they supported doctrines which tended to elevate sovereigns above the general mass of mankind, or at least which could be twisted that way. After their deaths, and in some cases before, the Caesars were deified and received divine honors and sacrifices. This was, of course, a gross perversion of the great truth of the duality of man - the divine and the animal - skilfully used for political purposes. It was nothing strange or new. The eastern cults attained the zenith of their power with the advent of Severus to the throne at the end of the second century, but the Mystic Voice which sadly cried aloud across the sea "Great Pan is dead," as Plutarch relates, was right. The old cycle was closing, and a new form of belief was coming from the East, the source of religions, to hold sway for its appointed time. The Janiculum Hill lies on the right bank of the Tiber near St. Peter's, and opposite the main part of the city of Rome. It rises to a commanding height of 275 feet above the river, which in the time of the Empire was bordered with handsome villas in this neighborhood. The Janiculum was a favorite district with foreigners; this may explain the existence of the Syriac Temple lately found there, though there were also temples to the Egyptian and Asiatic cults in other parts of Rome. Statues of Jupiter Serapis (Osiris), Isis, the Hathors, Cybele, etc., have been frequently found in Rome, and splendid carvings, such as the great lions of the Pharaoh Nektaneb, brought from Egypt, show that the buildings must have been very magnificent. (Vol. 11, pp. 263-74) -----------------Archaeology: Egypt and the Stone Age - H. Travers The state of affairs in Europe [1915] has contributed notably to the encouragement of archaeological research in ancient America, by putting obstacles in the way of expeditions from American to the Old World; but it has also had a contrary effect - in the following case at least. The discoveries dealt with below were facilitated by the fact that the government in Egypt has withdrawn its concessions to the archaeologists of certain nations, thus leaving a large number of expert excavators available for the American expedition.

Thus American archaeologists have made another epoch-making discovery in the history of those mighty civilizations that flourished in Egypt. The Museum of the University of Pennsylvania last fall sent the Eckley R. Coxe, Jr. expedition, under Mr. Clarence S. Fisher, to Egypt, where he obtained a concession to work at Memphis. After some work in the burial grounds of the old kings near the Pyramids of Gizeh, he decided to search for the palace of the kings of Memphis. Working on the trenches left by Professor Flinders Petrie, he came across a wall so large that he considered it might he part of the palace he was seeking; and also two projecting columns which looked as if they might be parts of a colossal building. Setting a large body of workmen to excavating here (he eventually employed 180), he found, not the palace, but a temple, which has been attributed to either Seti I, or Meneptah the son of Rameses II. It may be wondered why a find so remarkable on such a familiar site was not discovered before, but the engineering difficulties readily explain the matter. Nile inundations and drifted sand had buried the remains deep in a very impracticable material; and the explorer was obliged to build a railroad to carry away the excavated soil, while this again had to be supplemented by a pumping station to carry off the seepage. The work has had to be discontinued during the summer heat, to be resumed this fall, but so far it has resulted in the discovery of four thousand articles - scarabs, amulets, stone jars, etc., and a number of sandstone statues. There was also a manufacturing plant for the making of amulets and the like; but still more interesting was the discovery of one hundred heads, mostly in terra-cotta. These indicated that Memphis was inhabited by people of numerous races, ranging in type from Ethiopian to Egyptian. The pillars and walls are carved as usual with inscriptions which have yet to be deciphered; and when, after patient labor, this has been done, we may expect a notable chapter to be added to our knowledge of ancient Egyptian history, as well as to that of other prominent nations contemporary with these times. The walls of the temple are twelve feet thick, and several rooms and some pavements have been uncovered, but further details must be awaited until the work is resumed. With regard to the dates assigned, it is noteworthy that archaeologists are more generous in the matter of time than they used to be, and are continually pushing the dates further and further back; though they have still much to do in this way ere they reach figures commensurate with probability. The desire to dwarf ancient history still lingers, as an instinct, but it has had to give way considerably under the pressure of facts. The usual historical narrative gives the date of Rameses II as in the 14th century B.C.; and Memphis was founded, according to the latest estimates of Petrie, about 5600 B.C. But when Menes, "the first king of Egypt," made it his capital, it was already a large and flourishing city; and, as the account of Fisher's discoveries which is before us says, "possibly it had been in existence thousands of years before the dawn of recorded history, because the subjects of Menes were far from barbarians. Races of which no traces remain may have founded it." From which remark we infer the curious idea that the city must have been founded by barbarians (!); for the argument runs - the subjects of Menes were not barbarians (major premiss), but cities are founded by barbarians (suppressed minor premiss), therefore the city was not founded by the subjects of Menes (conclusion); therefore it must have been founded by other people of an earlier date who were barbarians (corollary). Thus we see that the evolutionary hypothesis, which requires that civilized man shall have progressed by gradual stages from barbarism, necessitates the lengthening out of history to figures more accordant with those demanded by Theosophy. Many other notable admissions are found in the account from which we are quoting; which, whether they represent the orthodox views or not, at least represent the kind of views which the public is likely to indorse, and so mark a great advance on what was given the

public in former years. The Egyptians are credited with having been historians; and this surely is a more respectful attitude towards them than was formerly the wont. Their priests were also doctors, astronomers, lawgivers, and men of science; and they were the historians, whose records are known to have been in the libraries of Memphis. But here we come upon another piece of mere conjecture on the part of the writer. It is important to discriminate between what is matter of fact and what is mere conjecture. It would be better if writers could always be content with stating what the ancients did, and would refrain from imputing motives until better qualified to do so. These historical records, we are told, were known as "the mysteries." And on what authority? one may well ask. Undoubtedly the Mysteries included historical records, especially those pertaining to cyclic evolution and the chronology of the Races and sub-races; but it is a mistake to make out that the Mysteries were nothing but history in the sense in which we understand the word "history." The Mysteries were the knowledge, not only of history, but of life's mysteries in general, imparted only to duly qualified candidates for initiation. They were common to the ancient world, but gradually departed from view as the world plunged deeper into its cycle of materialism. As to the imputing of motives, why not rest content with stating the fact that later kings engraved their own names over the names of their predecessors on the monuments inscribed with pictures of great deeds, without adding the insinuation that the motive of these later kings in so doing was to steal for themselves the glory of those deeds? Let us at least think, until we have good reason for thinking otherwise, that the people of those days - kings and commoners alike were as far from pettiness in spirit as they were in their buildings. It is consoling to hear, from large-type caption and from text, that Herodotus, the "father of history," has been graciously proved truthful; though doubtless his shade, could it be conceived of as haunting these regions, would be sublimely indifferent to this tardy vindication. Herodotus has often been accused of lying, or, when his innocent lineaments cry shame to the accusation, of having been imposed upon by the Egyptian priests - whereby the sneer has been transferred from the shoulders of poor Herodotus to those of the priests, as though we were compelled to belittle somebody or other. Perhaps the word "priest" itself is somewhat to blame, and its use (in place of a better word from our modern vocabulary) may have transferred to the ancient teachers a smack of that insincerity which (as we must infer) has somehow managed to attach itself to the word in its modern applications. But now it seems that Herodotus was neither lying nor lied to, so that both he and the teachers are exculpated; which, though it makes no imaginable difference to them, is a credit to us who have acknowledged it. One fears, however, that the customary procedure will require that, as regards other of his statements, he shall continue to be held mendacious until he is proven true. The chronology of Egypt will have to be greatly extended if it is to come into accordance with probabilities and fit into the general scheme of history; multiplication, rather than addition, is the rule to compute the ages of men, as it is with the ages of fossils and strata. The Egyptians should rather be called a whole humanity than a nation; and there may be in a remote future some archaeologists who will speak of the European nation as we now speak of the Egyptian nations, disregarding the fact that the nations were many and the successive ebbs and flows of civilization many. It has often been pointed out that Egyptian history shows no trace of youth, but is mature when first we catch sight of it. It was derived; but from whence, archaeologists can only conjecture. It must be remembered, too, that a hypothesis which disposes conveniently of the Egyptian problem does not necessarily explain the problem of ancient America; and it would be well if archaeologists, pooling their results, should seek the common source of both these ancient cultures.

From another newspaper article we gather that the hypothesis as to the primitiveness of the Stone Age has been exploded, and, by what must surely be a verbal association on the part of the reporter, the Rosetta Stone of archaeology has been found. To some people there will not seem much connection between the Stone Age and the Rosetta Stone. However, all this turmoil has been brought about by certain discoveries made by Dr. Hector Aliot, curator of the Southwest Museum, on San Nicolas Island off the California coast; and by some remarks with which he is credited in his address before the Archaeological Institute of America in San Francisco. As far as we can gather, the trouble seems to be that the discoveries do not agree with certain theories which had been discovered first; for there is nothing wonderful in the discoveries themselves, however much there may be in the said theories. Graves with steatite beads, carved ornaments representing animals, exquisitely wrought, and other such things, are not wonderful; but what is wonderful is that they should have been made by a people who, by all theories, were incompetent to make them. These people lived in the Stone Age, says the account, and the lecturer is quoted as saying: "We have thought of the man of the Stone Age as always a savage. We have thought that cultural advancement was accompanied by the use of instruments other than stone. In other words we have thought of a gradual and arbitrary gradient down through the age of copper and bronze to the age of steel - that in which we now live. Now this idea has been exploded." And he argues that this race must have had culture, even though they lived in the "Stone Age." We infer from what is said that the Stone Age is not a particular chronological era, but a phase which different races are supposed to go through at different times. Thus the Stone Age in Egypt ended about the 6th century B.C., whereas the Tasmanians were living in the Stone Age at the time when they were "discovered." The Bushmen of Africa and the Australians are living in the Neolithic Age, which means a higher grade of the Stone Age. One wonders how long it will take the Tasmanians to get through the other ages up to the steel, and why it was that the people of San Nicolas came to an end without going through the other ages at all. Still it is just possible that there may not be any such ages after all, and that the archaeologists are mistaken. Who built the Pyramids and carved the diorite hieroglyphics in Egypt? Was it people with only stone implements, or was there another race in Egypt whose Stone Age ended before the 6th century B.C.? H.P. Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine says that these Stone and other Ages are quite fanciful; for races rise and fall, and there are always civilized and uncivilized peoples living together on the earth. At one time in England, for instance, certain primitive people were living in parts of the island and have left their stone instruments behind. But this does not mean that there were not, before these primitive people came, other people who were much more advanced and who used metals. It is more than likely that England will at some future date be again inhabited by stone-using people. And finally, since stone is the one thing that lasts, when all metals and wood have crumbled, it is likely that stone implements will be discovered where metal and wooden ones are not. If an archaeologist were to dig up our American soil next year, he would find plenty to show that we are in the steel age; a century later, if he dug, he might have his doubts; while the archaeologist of a thousand years hence, if he roots up our kitchen middens, will surely conclude that we were a Stone-Age people. Of course one recognizes the utility of provisional hypotheses; but provisional hypotheses were made with a view to their being knocked down - they are scaffoldings. Now when a scaffolding obstructs the building, or keeps itself up by leaning against the building, it is time to remove it and build us more stately scaffolds. And this scaffolding of the "Ages" is

of that character. It obstructs us in the interpretation of plain facts. Here is evidence that there lived on San Nicolas a people who worked in stone and had great artistic taste and skill. Whether they used metals are not, we do not know. Why not accept the simple fact, instead of trying to force these people into an artificial category which we have invented? Why, again, make too much out of our idea that steel and culture go together? Here one sympathizes with the lecturer's remarks that these people had taste and sentiment; but still he represents them (according to the report) as being not much above the brute. "The man that carved that figure had given patient study to the habits of the dolphin.... And study means that he had begun to think; he was now considerably higher than the brute." Now where on earth have we any example of a race gradually emerging from a brutish state in this way? The races which do this kind of work at present are races that have a long past behind them, and they seem on the down grade rather than the up. Why may not these San Nicolas people have been the remnants of a race as great as the Egyptians, whose original arts had been mostly lost? This idea at least is more in accordance with observed facts. Yet even so we do not have to consider a race as degraded just because it does not use steel. Looking abroad on the earth today, we may well ask ourselves over again what culture really is, what the life of man is, and whether people actually are in a higher phase when they are blowing each other to pieces with steel than when they are carving dolphins on steatite. (Vol. 9, pp. 283-88) -------------------Homogeneous Civilization - J. O. Kinnaman, Ph. D. (Editor of The American Antiquarian) [Dr. Kinnaman, who is a member of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, and whose interesting article Whence? Whither? Interrogation Points in Anthropology, appeared in the October, 1914, issue of Theosophical Path, contributes in the article which follows this note a series of questions which need more complete answers than have yet been given by specialists in the different fields of research mentioned. The author himself also suggests possible answers to some of them.] Archaeologists take one ruin and construct an entire civilization. Anthropologists take one footprint, or one femur, or one jawbone, and reconstruct a whole race. We speak of Rider Haggard as a man of rare genius as regards imagination, but he is as a child in comparison with some of our accredited scientists. There is still too much imagination, too much of the romantic among some of our writers; not all, but some give way to vivid flights. To illustrate: When, years ago, the subject of man's first appearance in America was rife, the Calaveras skull was put into our textbooks as the oldest skeletal remains ever found in America. It was supposed to have been found beneath Table Mountain in situ. About two years ago Felix J. Koch, of Cincinnati, Ohio, proved the skull a fraud in that it is the skull of a modern Indian placed at the bottom of the mining shaft by men still living, having been intended for a practical joke. Whole libraries have been written about it by learned men. The point is this: some scientists are prone to form conclusions too quickly. They have some pet theory that they wish to prove, and they proceed to bend each evidence to the support of the theory, being absolutely blind to the facts pointed out by the artifacts.

The unbiased, unprejudiced scientist must first marshal his facts, investigate the phenomena, and then when he has everything available before him, his next step is to arrange and classify; after this has been accomplished, he is at liberty to formulate his hypothesis. But the truth is that our archaeologists and anthropologists have been working independently, professionally jealous each of the other, to the detriment of the science to which they profess to have dedicated their lives, thus retarding the proper advancement of the two sciences. Of course, we understand perfectly that these sciences, together with geology, have had a hard and bitter fight with so-called orthodox theology; not with the Bible as many suppose, but with man-made theology that has its root in medieval theology. It has been a bitter fight, and the end is not yet; but science has gained, or partially gained, at least, one concession from orthodox theology, viz.: that true science is just as much the revelation of the o Qeoz as the Bible itself. With this concession granted, the twin sciences, archaeology and anthropology, have a chance for untrammeled development. Anthropology has builded a wall around itself by dividing humanity into three races; this wall is an isosceles triangle, each leg of which is a race, separate and distinct from the two others; yet who can tell where one leaves off and the other begins? In central Africa we have the negro who is not like his brother of the north coast; the Hottentot is different from all; the Indian of India differs from the Englishman, yet he is Caucasian; we have the blonde Eskimo; the blonde Indian of the west coast of Mexico. Where is the line of demarcation to be drawn? It is drawn upon certain physiological characteristics; but where is the absolute line to be made? When we come to a standstill on the above, we are compelled to ask this question: "What is Man?" Did the Psalmist formulate this as a scientific question? I believe that he so formulated it. The so-called races do not functionally differ, for they readily interbreed. So this brings us face to face with the question: Are there three races or one? If one only, how account for existing differentiation? The writer sees that again he is asking questions, a thing he is ever prone to do. But let us turn to archaeology and put the race question to it and see the answer. Roughly, civilization is usually divided into the following degrees: (a) Rough Stone Age; (b) Polished Stone Age; (c) Bronze Age; (d) Iron Age. This classification is based upon the notion of utensils or artifacts. Do these divisions mean evolution ascending or descending? Are so-called barbarism and savagery a reversion or a development? If savagery is development, it is a development from what? Or does civilization rise and fall like a great tidal wave? Let us, for a moment, examine known history and see what conclusion may tentatively be drawn. Go with me to the Tigris-Euphrates valley. Today we find there wind-swept plains, sand-choked canals, countless unnamed Tels, and a few scattered, ragged, beggarly Arabs. Some few thousands of years ago this great valley presented an altogether different aspect. It was studded with great cities, such as Ur, Nineveh, Babylon, and many others whose names are not now even known. The plains were blooming, smiling gardens, the canals flowing with water that was the life of the country; the great river swarming with commerce, the sea flecked with white-winged vessels; the libraries contained countless volumes; the mathematician solved his problems, and the astronomer more than laid the foundation of the science as we know it today; the historian chronicled events that challenge our credulity; the cities were so beautiful that they stand in our modern literature as the symbols of luxury and magnificence. We still read the military exploits of its kings with astonishment; we study its epics, literature and language with ever-increasing amazement. Yet where are those

magnificent cities, those wonderful libraries, those conquering kings, those expert mathematicians, those studious astronomers, those smiling gardens, those life-giving canals, that great and flourishing commerce? The cities are Tels, their magnificence vanished forever; the libraries broken and buried; the canals filled with sand; the gardens gone; the kings, armies, scholars, vanished; nothing is left but the river and the sea and the Tels. That civilization, that luxury and magnificence, is represented today by what? Nothing. Not even by the wandering Arab who pitches his tent upon a Tel and stakes his horses at its foot. Where are the Sumerian, the Akkadian, the Mede, the Persian? Where are the Hittite and the Hyksos? Persia's conquering, you say, is responsible; Greece is responsible. Responsible for what? Why were men so forgetful of the benefits of the high civilization of that era as to raze the magnificent cities, destroy invaluable libraries, render a desert what was once a flourishing garden? When the curtain of history goes up in the valley, we find it civilized as we understand civilization today, and to such a degree civilized that it had reached the stage of crystalization. In other words, it was on the crest of the wave, and from that date to the Hellenization of that vast area under Alexander the Great and its final breakup, it was slowly but gradually sliding down into the trough of oblivion. If we study the history of nations, history as it is written, we are forced to this conclusion: (a) a period of growth and development; (b) the zenith and crystalization; (c) degeneracy and fall. If this be true, then is savagery so-called, a development, or is it a degeneracy and fall? In other words, do we travel in a straight line of constant development, or do we move in cycles? If man has moved forward in a straight line in his development, then all mankind should be equally advanced, all other things being equal. But this is not the condition as the student finds it. Theoretically the human race should have advanced at equal pace through the stages above mentioned; all should have been in the Rough Stone Age at the same time, and today all should be on a par with the European peoples. There is a wide gulf between theory and the facts. Some branches of the race are in each of the stages above enumerated, and contemporaneously. We have the Australian, the lowest type of existing man, along with the "savage" of Africa who is higher in the scale than the Australian. Thus the varying degrees up to the most "refined" and "cultured" European. How account for this wide divergence, this great variation? Are all existing conditions continuations or resultants from former conditions? Is each branch of the race passing through a stage of evolution? if so, is the evolution ascending or descending? Or does it vary with the branch? These are a few of the questions that confront the student who would solve the problem of man's civilization. In the attempt to answer these questions, there have arisen several schools. The reader may choose the one that appeals to his reason or his fancy. The writings and traditions of the Semitic people do not lend us one ray of light, for their entire body of literature is not original, but borrowed from the Tigris-Euphrates valley. If we follow closely the Semitic tradition, we find its central idea to be the fall of man. What is meant by the phrase? It is the hope of the writer to throw a little light upon the subject as a whole. It seems to be the prevailing notion that man evolved from the simian, and by some means became the anthropos erectus, but just how no one ventures to state. If man evolved from the simian, what sort of object was the first simian-man? How

could he battle with his environments and survive? If he had to learn his environments through his five senses, and had no knowledge excepting that which he acquired through his contact with the physical world, how was it possible for him to survive sufficiently long to reproduce his kind? A certain school would have the first man exceeding low in mentality, so low, in fact, that he had no conception of the simplest tools; that man's first attempt to manufacture tools took the form of Eoliths. Just the use to which these Eoliths were put, the school does not attempt to state. Whether the Eoliths were man-made or pressure-made through natural agencies is a much debated question, one which the writer will not attempt to answer. Likewise we will pass over the different degrees of stone culture. The Egyptian, as we know, was an alien, not an aboriginal, of the Nile valley, for we find that the aboriginal inhabitant differed widely from the historic Egyptian, and his burial was interment in the sands of the desert, wrapped, perhaps, in reed matting. The first great object that attracts the attention of the student-traveler in the Nile country is the Great Pyramid. This piece of architecture has been the cause of the writing of whole libraries in an attempt to solve its mystery. Every conceivable use has been assigned to it, but today its problem remains unsolved. There is positively not a thing in se to give a clue as to the date of its building nor by whom it was built, nor why, nor how. Problems of engineering enter the discussion. No modern machinery, no modern system of engineering, could lift the capstone into place. How was it placed there? I have never seen a satisfactory answer, but I offer the suggestion of S.S. Gray, a noted engineer, who has spent about eighteen years in Egypt studying ancient and modern problems. On board the steamship Canopic, bound from Naples to Boston, Mr. Gray, in discussing the question with the writer, suggested that the great cap-stone was cast in situ. Whatever the purpose of the pyramid, its form is found not only in the Nile valley, but practically over the entire world. How account for similarity of architecture all over the known surface of the earth? In the first steps towards the solution of the problem, we must recognize the fact that the human race is far older than the wildest dreams of the romanticist. The second necessary step must lie in the hypothesis that man came into being as man and not as a so-called higher anthropoid. Third, that there is no such condition as savagery, and that civilization is of degree only. The geologist attempts to convey to us some notion of the immense age of this planet, but does not attempt to set it forth in those terms we are pleased to designate as years, for measured time is degree only. A year of our time would scarcely constitute a month on Saturn, that far-distant member of our system. When we speak of time we mean and say absolutely nothing. If we do mean anything at all, we simply set forth a measured portion of eternity. Then, again, what do we mean by the term eternity? We can keep up this series of questions until we reach a reductio ad absurdum. When we have reached that point we can see how futile our discussion as to the age in years of the human race. We are in the same attitude as the philosophers who were wont to discuss the query: "How many angels can dance upon the point of a needle?" As a result, our attempt to measure human existence upon this planet by years is entirely futile and of no avail. Years really count for naught; geological epochs are all that can be used scientifically. If the earth's surface had remained practically the same through the ages, if there had been no subsidence and no elevation, if there had been no great cataclysms in which whole continents sank beneath the waves, the problems before us would not be so difficult of solution. On the now existing continents, and those remnants of continents we call islands,

scattered in all the seas, there are monuments that speak with tongues eloquent of man's past history. Let us trace the similarity of prehistoric monuments, and reason without bias or preconceived premise to a logical conclusion. Perhaps the oldest form of earth-monument is the tumulus. The tumulus is found upon every existing continent, in fact, wherever man has set his foot sufficiently long to establish even a temporary residence. Tradition designates these tumuli as the tombs of chieftains, leaders of their fellow-men. What they really are is still a question. We of America pride ourselves upon possessing the finest serpent-mound still extant. That may be true, but it is not the only one extant. This type of mound is found everywhere, typical of a civilization and a people long extinct. Perhaps the pyramid is a special development of the tumulus; however, it is a typical form of monument found in different places over the entire world, regardless of what use it may have been put to. Architecture is typical. The temple-caves of India; the cliff-dwellings of America; the temples of Egypt and Mexico; the palaces of the Tigris-Euphrates valley and of South America. In language we find the similarity continued. The hieroglyphics of Egypt and Mexico (those of Egypt can be read, while those of Mexico can be partly guessed at from analogy); scattered over North America are found other hieroglyphs, also on the isles of the sea, in the midst of the African forest and on the veldt. When these can be read, what a wealth of information! Again, closely similar burial customs seem to have been universal. The oldest form of burial appears to be that of the sitting posture, with the limbs flexed. Thus it is in the oldest graves in the Nile valley, in America, in Africa, and still common with the Bantu tribes of Africa. With this small but powerful array of facts before us, for space denies us further enumeration, at what conclusions may we arrive. In our consideration we have universally: (a) the tumulus; (b) the pyramid; (c) the serpent-mound; (d) architecture; (e) hieroglyphs; (f) burial customs. This array of facts, to the thoughtful student, suggests: (1) universal religion; (2) universal language; combining 1 and 2 we have a homogeneous race; if a homogeneous race, then a like civilization. If there was a homogeneous race, a universal language and religion, where did it have its origin and development? There has persisted through the ages the legend of a continent at present beneath the waves, which continent was the home of a far-advanced civilization. Plato calls it Atlantis; the American Indian names it Tula. In the land of Tula a great cataclysm occurred that caused the inhabitants to flee, and the continent sank beneath the sea. Atlantis had a like history. Investigators cannot agree that Tula and Atlantis are identical. Atlantis is placed in the midst of the Atlantic ocean, of which continent the Azores are a remnant. On the other hand, Tula is conceived as being partly sub-Antarctic, the site of which, certain islands and volcanic peaks of the Pacific, mark. The reader is at liberty to take his choice of theories; the writer does not take sides, he merely states them. If Tula existed, then at the time of the great cataclysm that destroyed it, the race, or the individuals who escaped, fled eastward and landed upon what are now the American continents; in the case of Atlantis, the people could have fled either eastward and arrived at the European or African continents, or westward to the Americas. Dr. Curry finds monuments of the Tulans as far north as Washington; he finds their hieroglyphs from Canada to southern Mexico. Whether Civilization had its origin in Atlantis or Tula, one thing seems to stand forth

prominently, viz.: a homogeneous civilization spread over the now existing continents, leaving behind it monuments that testify to the high degree of its culture. The curious reader may ask: To what race did these people belong? The answer must be, To that which is now called Caucasian.* If this is not true, how account for the inherent genius of the white race? Otherwise how account for the blonde Indian on the west coast of Mexico; the blonde Eskimo; and countless other hows? ---------* Not a Theosophical teaching, which is that different races reach prominence. - dig. ed. ---------If we acknowledge a homogeneous race and civilization, how account for its degeneracy or fall? Let us study by analogy. Athens, a small Deme of Greece, through her superior intellectual genius stands today as the symbol of intellectual greatness and attainment, the height to which the efforts of man can climb. For centuries she held the destiny of the civilized world in her hands. She reached her zenith. What followed? The cause of her degeneracy was internal. She forgot the hardy characteristics, the ruggedness that is necessary to buffet environment. She fell a prey and slave to the hardier Roman. Rome struggled for existence, fought for her very life with Carthage, conquered, grew, expanded, rose higher and higher in the sphere of physical civilization until she stood without a peer, the mistress of the entire Western civilized world; but she had sown within herself, during her period of growth, development, and expansion, the seeds of her fall. The structure became so heavy that it crumbled through its own weight. Rome became effeminate, luxuryloving, thus being no longer able to grapple with the tasks with which she found herself confronted. The transformation was from within and not from external sources as once taught; the barbarian was within her body politic and social, and not from the woods of Germany. The transformation was so gradual that she herself did not realize her downward march. When she reached the nadir of her career, the more robust Germanic stock was ready to take her torch and carry forward the work of culture. But what a muddle! The torch almost went out, and civilization was lost in the midst of barbarism for centuries, during the epoch designated as medieval. Individuals forget their training and degenerate. Thus likewise do nations and civilizations. Rome's history ends in August, 608 A.D., with the erection in the Forum Romanum of the column of Phocas; from that time until 1453 Europe is shrouded in barbarism, so-called; then came the awakening and the ever-rapid advance to the present day. Such, in a nutshell, is history as it is written from 490 B.C. to 1915 A.D. Suppose that we had not the history of Greece and Rome, but had the history of medieval Europe, what would be the conclusion in re medieval man? If history teaches us anything at all, it certainly teaches that each nation has its epochs of origin, of development, of zenith, of degeneracy, and of fall. This seems to be an inexorable law; it is a law of nature: birth (origin), development, decay (degeneracy), death (fall). If it is a law of nature applicable to individual and nation, why should it not be applicable to the race as a whole? Individuals thrive, then utterly cease to exist; nations likewise. What is there to exclude races from so doing? Within historic times we know of at least one "race" becoming extinct, the Tasmanian, whom anthropologists are prone to classify as a distinct race, perhaps far older than the

Australian. Then may we conclude that individuals, nations, and races, become extinct in accordance with a universal, fixed law? What does it mean when a race has run the gamut of its career? Are the best attainments of that race perpetuated? Do these attainments serve as basic principles for the succeeding race? Whether the Atlantis race or the Tulan race serves as a root-race in our cycle of civilization, matters very little, though exact knowledge would be gratifying; yet the fact seems to remain that monuments so nearly identical had their origin in a homogeneous civilization developed by a homogeneous race that ramified from a common center to almost every known part of the globe. Whether representatives of that race are still extant or entirely extinct, the writer will not now attempt to say; neither will he attempt to answer several other questions that he has raised, among them whether so-called savagery is an ascending or descending aspect of evolution. These we leave for future consideration. In conclusion, allow me to say, stating my position concisely and laconically, that the evidence of homogeneous monuments points to a homogeneous civilization and race, the original cradle of which is still a matter of dispute. Homogeneous civilization and race, if proven, settles nothing, absolutely nothing in re the origin of man, for, back of this world-wide civilization must lie origin, development, etc., etc., indefinitely, until we are still driven to the when, where and how idea. In other words, the wings of our intellect beat in vain against the wall of the Unknown. We are lost in the deep mists of an unfathomed past. There must necessarily be a limit to our knowledge, for there must be a limit to the remains of the human race and of its activities. Only by merest chance do the skeletal remains of man survive through the geological ages; likewise only a miserable few of his monuments survive the cataclysms and the destructive hand of man himself. Speaking geologically, that which is the bottom of a sea today may be a mountain top tomorrow, and vice versa; in the meantime the frail artifacts of man crumble to dust in the twinkling of an eye. Then let us not flatter ourselves that we can ever reconstruct the full history of the human race by means of the monuments left behind. It is proper for us to search for every possible atom of truth and evidence, and read our history as far as we may, but question upon question will cry for answer and will not be stilled, because the answer comes not. (Vol. 8, pp. 319-28) -----------------------The Mesa Verde "Sun-Temple" - H. Travers The papers have recently chronicled the report by Dr. J.W. Fewkes, of the Smithsonian Institution, of the discovery of a new style of ancient building in the Mesa Verde, which he has designated "Sun-Temple." The Department of the Interior issued a press bulletin containing the gist of this report under date January 16th. [1916] The Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, is famed for its ancient community houses, built against the canyon-side, and known as Cliff Palace, Spruce-Tree House, Balcony House, and Oak-Tree (Willow) House. Spruce-Tree House has one hundred and fourteen rooms and eight kivas or ceremonial chambers. Last summer Dr. Fewkes opened a mound on a point of the Mesa directly across Cliff Canyon, and opposite Cliff Palace. It is of a type hitherto unknown in the Park and was

not made for habitation; the rooms have no windows, and the walls have been incised and so were not meant to be plastered; there is no evidence of fireplaces or fires, no household utensils or refuse-heaps. But there are two large circular chambers and a number of smaller ones, and what looks like the base of a tower. Hence its purpose is believed to have been ceremonial. Erected in a commanding situation, its shape is that of the letter D, and inside this is a smaller D, about two-thirds the size; so that the inner D forms a main building, and the space between it and the outer D is a sort of annex. The south wall is 122 feet long and the ruin is 64 feet wide. There are about 1000 feet of walls, averaging four feet in thickness; they are double and filled with adobe and rubble. The rooms vary in form, some being rectangular and others circular. Besides the two large kivas there are twenty-three rooms, of which fourteen are in the main building. There is no sign of plastering, but the joints have been pointed with adobe, and the stones are incised with figures usually geometrical, but including also the figure of a ladder leaning against a wall, turkey tracks, and the conventional sign for flowing water. As to the age of this building, there seems to be little certainty in the speculation. The discoverer is inclined to regard it as the common temple of a considerable number of communities of the people who dwelt in the pueblo houses, and he speaks in this connection of "sun worship." He seems to think the builders were ignorant people, and bestows mild praise upon them for the improvement which they have shown over the builders of the community houses. Some of the remarks are rather naive. "The corners were practically perpendicular, implying the use of a plumb bob." The plumb bob must surely have been invented on the spot by the first man who ever piled one stone on the top of another. "The principle of the arch was unknown," says the excavator, but he does not tell us how he knows this. The emblems on the walls he regards as the first steps in mural sculpture, though he suggests they may have been intended to indicate the purposes of the rooms - which seems very likely. In one of the outer walls there is a fossil Cretaceous palm-leaf, which, says the report, resembles the sun. "A natural object resembling the sun would powerfully affect a primitive mind." Future archaeologists will perhaps think the present-day Americans worshiped an eagle, and the British a lion; and they will puzzle their brains as to what terrestrial or celestial object the cross is intended to represent. Perhaps the figure of the sun, and its various emblems, were to these older Americans what the cross has been to Americans who succeeded them - that is, a sacred emblem; and there is no more reason to suppose the ancients worshiped the sun or the six-pointed star than that we worship a cross or an eagle. Those three symbols, the Circle, Crescent, and Cross; or the Sun, Moon, and Earth; are world-wide and very ancient signs for the creative Trinity of Father-Mother-Son, represented by Osiris-Isis-Horus, and many analogous triads. While the full doctrine recognizes equally all three, we find that different peoples have at different times emphasized one member of the Trinity above the others. Ancient Persia is associated with the sun symbol. Islam has a crescent and star, the star being a variant of the sun. Christendom has the cross alone. Ancient Egypt had the circle and the cross conjoined. There is also a serpent, often combined with the cross (or with a tree or a rod); and this we also find among the ancient Americans, and it has led some moderns to imagine that they worshiped snakes. If we would understand the mysteries of ancient cults, we must study symbolism on an adequate scale. And we must pigeon-hole the fancy that all previous races were primitive until we have better evidence for it. It is much more likely that the builders of this temple inherited their "sun worship" from an older and more cultured people, than that they devised it for themselves out of their awe for natural phenomena. It is much more likely that, in those kivas, they laid aside the world and their personalities and strove by their union to evoke the

spiritual power which they represented by the emblem of a sun. Simplicity of habits does not imply lack of culture; nor is there a necessary ratio between ice-water and spirituality, or telephones and self-control; these ancients may have been happy without picric acid and intellectual without newspapers. (Vol. 10, pp. 541-43) ------------------Greek Philosophy The Myth of Prometheus - H. T. Edge This well-known allegory, so familiar to us in its Greek form, especially as dramatized by Aeschylus in his Prometheus Bound, was evidently regarded with supreme reverence as one of the greatest and most momentous of all the sacred myths. As will be seen later, this was the case with many other nations besides the Greeks. It will be our purpose to show that this universal esteem of the myth of the Fire-Bringer betokens something far more serious and weighty than the ridiculous meanings assigned to it by some scholars; and thus we shall acquire a view of the matter at once more consistent and more worthy of the dignity of ancient mankind as well as of our own self-respect. It will be well to begin by briefly recapitulating the story. Jupiter, the king of the Gods, had taken away fire from the earth as a punishment for an offense committed by Prometheus. Prometheus resolves to bring back fire to earth for the benefit of mortals. He climbs the heavens by the assistance of Minerva, steals fire from the chariot of the Sun-God, and brings it to earth in the end of a hollow stick having an inflammable pith. For this, Jupiter orders Vulcan to chain Prometheus to Mt. Caucasus, where, fastened to a rock, he is doomed to spend 30,000 years, while a vulture continually feeds on his liver, which is as continually restored. But about thirty years afterwards he is delivered by Hercules. Such is the story in broad outline and in its most familiar form. Variations and minor details can be filled in subsequently, should occasion require. This myth has been classified as belonging to the family of 'Myths of Fire-Stealing,' a fact sufficient to prove that it is widespread among mankind. In the mythology of ancient Hindustan, the Mahasura, or Great Spirit, is said to have become envious of the Creator's resplendent light; and, at the head of inferior Asuras, to have rebelled against Brahma; for which, Siva hurled him down to Patala, the nether regions (Secret Doctrine, II, 237, footnote). In the Scandinavian mythology we find the analogy of Prometheus in the god Loki, who is a fire-god. As to Loki, the author of Secret Doctrine says: "It may be said that even in the Norse legends, in the Sacred Scrolls of the goddess Saga, we find Loki, the brother by blood of Odin.... becoming evil only later, when he had mixed too long with humanity. Like all other fire or light gods - fire burning and destroying as well as warming and giving life - he ended by being accepted in the destructive sense of 'fire.' The name Loki.... has been derived from the old word 'liechan' to enlighten. It has therefore the same origin as the Latin lux, 'light.' Hence Loki is identical with Lucifer (light-bringer).... But Loki is still more closely related to Prometheus, as he is shown chained to a sharp rock.... Loki is a beneficent, generous and powerful god in the beginning of times, and the principle of

good, not of evil, in early Scandinavian theogony." In the above quotation the reference to Lucifer supplies another of the analogies to Prometheus. Lucifer means 'light-bringer,' and in the legend there is the same idea of his rebellion against the deity that we find in the case of Prometheus. It may be well to remark in passing, though we cannot spare time to consider the point now, that Lucifer has been wrongly identified with the Prince of Darkness, his name and office having thus been traduced; and that H.P. Blavatsky devotes considerable space to disentangling this confusion and reinstating the Light-Bringer in his due position as a benefactor and not as a devil. The Scandinavian Loki has been similarly traduced, as shown in the above quotation. Turning to Hebrew symbology, we find that the Zohar says that the Ishin, the beautiful B'nai-aleim, or 'Sons of God,' were not guilty, but mixed themselves with mortal men because they were sent on earth to do so. And also that Azazel and his host are simply the Hebrew Prometheus. The Zohar shows the Ishin chained on the mountain in the desert, allegorically. (Secret Doctrine, II, 376) Azazel or Azaziel is one of the chiefs of the 'transgressing' angels, in the Book of Enoch. It is said that Azaziel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors, to make one see what is behind him. Among the Murri of Gippsland, Australia, the Fire-Stealer was a man, but he became a bird. Towera, or fire, was in the possession of two women, who hated the blacks. A man who loved men cajoled the women, stole fire when their backs were turned, and was metamorphosed into a little bird with a red mark on his tail. The fire-bringer in Brittanny is the golden or fire-crested wren. In another Australian legend, fire was stolen by the hawk from the bandicoot and given to men. In yet another a man held his spear to the sun and so got a light. A bird is fire-bringer in an Andaman Island tale, and a ghost in another myth of the same island. In New Zealand, Maui stole fire from Maueka, the lord of fire. Among the Ahts in North America, fire was stolen by animals from the cuttle-fish. Among the Cahrocs, the coyote steals fire from two old women. (Lang, Enc. Britt., art. Prometheus) These few instances, selected from a large number, the looking-up of which is merely a matter of detail, will suffice for the present purpose of illustrating the world-wide diffusion of this mythos of the bringing of spiritual fire to men. That word, spiritual fire, is here emphasized specially, because we find in the attempted interpretations of the myth of Prometheus that the allegory has been materialized as usual, and that it is supposed to refer to physical fire. One favorite theory, on these lines, is that the mythos represents merely the great supposed event of the discovery of fire by primitive man. To support this theory, another ingenious theory, of the derivation of the word 'Prometheus,' has been devised. It has been suggested that it comes from the Sanskrit word pramantha, meaning one of the pieces of wood used in making fire by friction. But the Greeks themselves derived the word from promanQanein, its meaning thus being 'he who looks before him,' 'the foreseeing man.' This derivation is much more agreeable to the evident meaning of the story; and by accepting it we avoid the presumption of claiming to know better than the Greeks themselves about the derivation of their own word. Furthermore, primitive man is supposed to have discovered that the fire produced by friction or by flints is the same as the fire which comes from heaven in the lightning. Hence we find lightning, heaven, fire-sticks and flints all connected together in the mind of primitive man; and this is quite enough for the theorists. The legend according to them, was invented to commemorate a great event which must have strongly impressed itself upon the imagination. A new life is supposed to have begun for man on the day when he first saw the first spark produced by the friction of two pieces of wood, or from the veins of a flint. How could man help feeling gratitude to that

mysterious and marvelous being which they were henceforth enabled to create at their will? (Secret Doctrine, II, 521) Was not this terrestrial flame the same as that which came in the thunderbolt? And, as Decharme says in his Mythologie de la Grece Antique: "Was it not derived from the same source? And if its origin was in heaven, it must have been brought down some way on earth. If so, who was the powerful being, the beneficent being, god or man, who had conquered it? Such are the questions which the curiosity of the Aryans offered in the early days of their existence, and which found their answer in the myth of Prometheus." But, talking of the power of imagination, what can be more fanciful than this picture of primitive humanity? As H.P. Blavatsky says: "Fire was never discovered, but existed on earth since its beginning. It existed in the seismic activity of the early ages, volcanic eruptions being as frequent and constant in those periods as fog is in England now. And if we are told that men appeared so late on earth that nearly all the volcanoes, with the exception of a few, were already extinct, and that geological disturbances had made room for a more settled state of things, we answer: Let a new race of men - whether evolved from angel or gorilla - appear now on any uninhabited spot of the globe, with the exception perhaps of the Sahara, and a thousand to one it would not be a year or two old before discovering fire, through the fall of lightning setting in flames grass or something else. This assumption, that primitive man lived ages on earth before he was made acquainted with fire, is one of the most painfully illogical of all." (p. 522) Yes, indeed, it is necessary to do a good deal of imagining in order to sustain such fanciful theories. If an example were wanted of a real myth, in the sense of an absolute fable, nothing better could be selected than this myth of the theorists, that primitive man lived for ages without knowing of fire, or being able to use it; that he then discovered it; and that he has ever since celebrated the fact by devising elaborate myths in every quarter of the globe. The story of Prometheus, and all the kindred mythoi, celebrated far more weighty matters than the use of physical fire. It was spiritual fire that was meant - fire being a wellknown and universal emblem of the divine afflatus and inspiration which characterizes man as such, and marks him as being vastly higher than the beasts. The legend celebrates that stage in the evolution of man when the brute part of him received the divine spark and the man became a god, knowing good and evil. Those who are at all acquainted with the Hebrew of the Old Testament will recognise the same teaching in the account of how the elohim, the divine beings, said: "Let us create man in our own image." In that narrative, man is thus endowed with a divine prerogative and henceforth knows good and evil. If we are to maintain any sort of historical perspective in our inquiries, we should remember that this is a materialistic age, wherein the word 'fire' means simply a body of incandescent gas; and we must not seek to transfer our materialism to other races not thus imbued. To the ancients, and to their modern representatives among many tribesmen, fire has been sacred. Was it not with the Romans the symbol of domestic life, ever kept burning on the home hearth, which was a veritable altar, and carefully and reverently carried away to a new home with the migrating family, there to be re-established on a new domestic altar? Did they not believe that, in thus keeping alive the fire, they were truly keeping alive the spirit of their family? And was this mere superstition, or was it not rather a greater knowledge of natural laws than we possess now, with all our science? Nature is infinitely adaptive and compliant, and she yields to man whatever he asks for, and likewise withholds from him that

which he thanklessly spurns; so it is possible that Nature bestowed benefits in those days on her trusting children, which she withholds from us who have defaced her beauties with our slums and insulted her wisdom with our theories. We do not know how to tend the sacred hearth-fires and elicit those subtler protective forces of Nature which the worshipers of Vesta, with her chaste guardians, knew how to invoke. Fire was the physical counterpart of the Fire of life, and the Fire of spirit; and the word is used indifferently in all these senses by ancient writers. Even we use it in other senses, but then we call this metaphor and imagery. What a marvelous faculty the learned theorists have of looking at things the wrong side up! How fond they are of mistaking the symbol for the thing symbolized! Because the sun is a symbol of life eternal and universal, therefore it is supposed that those who revered the eternal life through its symbol the sun, were worshiping the sun himself. What would be thought by a pious archaeologist if some pagan were to accuse him of bowing the knee to a lamb or a dove or a cross or any other Christian symbol, or were to make fun of the Christian sacraments with their mystic symbolic elements? Yet surely the cases are parallel. And here we have a mythos which commemorates the eternal fact of the baptism of man by fire and the holy spirit - man's second birth - and, just because the analogies of nature furnish symbols and emblems from heaven, therefore the ancients are accused of worshiping and celebrating in myth these symbols, and the actual meaning symbolized is ignored. One strong feature in the story of Prometheus is the war between Zeus, the king of the gods, and Prometheus, wherein Zeus is made out to be a tyrant and oppressor of humanity, and Prometheus is represented as a benefactor in defeating this tyrant and thus benefiting humanity. But those familiar with the Greek mythology know that the Zeus in this story was not the All-Father to whom elsewhere the name of Zeus is given. Quoting H.P. Blavatsky on this point "Translators of the drama wonder how Aeschylus could become guilty of such 'discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the Prometheus Bound and that depicted in the remaining dramas.' (Mrs. A. Swanwick) This is just because Aeschylus, like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain the intellectual 'Sphinx ' of the ages. Between Zeus, the abstract deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter represented, during the mysteries, no higher a principle than the lower aspect of human physical intelligence - Manas wedded to Kama: Prometheus - its divine aspect merging into and aspiring to Buddhi - the divine Soul. Zeus was the human soul and nothing more, whenever shown yielding to his lower passions." (II, 419) Prometheus thus represents the immortal divine part of man who is said to sacrifice himself by a voluntary act of compassion, when he assumes incarnation. Then begins the struggle between the god and the animal in man, whereby Prometheus suffers at once exile and continual affliction, which can only terminate when man has been fully redeemed by the unremitting work of the divine power within him. Then Prometheus will have won, man will have been saved, and the chained Titan liberated. But this drama was not merely one that took place in the past; for, as H.P. Blavatsky says: "This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind; the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance." (II, 422) In the introductory lecture, reference was made to the seven meanings which each

myth has. That of Prometheus can be applied to the history of early human races, in which case it refers to the time when evolution had proceeded to the point of producing a race of divinely-informed mankind; and the allegory shows that this result had not been brought about solely by animal evolution and the gradual perfecting of the physical form; but that the higher intelligence, symbolized by fire, was brought to the previously uninformed human race, thus completing its nature and making man into a potential god. The ancient teachings say that the intelligence thus communicated was communicated by Teachers, who in the symbolical records are often spoken of as Gods and Heroes. This is the historical key, or at least one of them. Another key would be the physiological one, which would lead us into a study of the human organism with a view to showing wherein it is essentially different from any animal organism; and much light on this topic will be found in H.P. Blavatsky's Psychic and Noetic Action. Here, too, it may be observed that materialism has crept in in the attempt to degrade the myth by making it applicable to the process of generation. There are, of course, analogies between what is high and what is low; the physical repeats the spiritual. But to say that the story of Prometheus celebrates physical generation and that alone is to materialize and degrade the myth. Wherever, in these allegories, union is represented, it is the mystic union of the human soul with its divine counterpart, the spiritual soul, and has no sexual significance whatever. And it may perhaps be understood that, in ages when sex problems did not so engross the mind as they do now, it was possible to use such symbolism without fear of its being misapplied. The key we are most concerned with at present is the one just considered - wherein the story of Prometheus is applied to human nature as it exists today. As said in our last quotation, Prometheus represents the higher aspirations, and these are chained by the lower passions to the rock of matter, whereby is generated the gnawing vulture of regret and the innumerable dissatisfactions due to our compound nature. And what a truthful picture is this of human life - especially for the intenser and finer natures! How applicable to the case of genius, ever struggling between inspiration - the divine afflatus - and the bitter reactions of despair and of physical and moral breakdown! This, it may be said, is a return to Paganism; but let us give Paganism its due and learn from it what we may. The lesson is not Pagan, but Universal. And it is permissible to remind ourselves that, in the present day more liberal interpretations of the Christian faith, the sacrifice of the Christ is recognised as being, not only an event in past history, but also a sacrifice which goes on every day in the heart of mankind; surely it is not unchristian to say that, when we sin, we crucify Christ! We are unfaithful to the divine spirit, which, as the gospel says, he left with man at his departure. And what does the Redemption mean, if not that the Christ Spirit will one day triumph in us? In the myth it is Herakles (Hercules) who liberates the chained Titan; and Herakles is the Sun-God. We find him associated in symbology with Aesculapius, the Egyptian Ptah, Apollo, Baal, and Adonis - all Sun-Gods. The meaning is that the Manas, or mind, of man is saved by associating itself with the Buddhi or Spiritual Soul; for, according to the Theosophical teachings, the Manas or mind in man is dual, one half gravitating toward the carnal, sensual nature, and the other toward the Spiritual nature. Hence we find in Prometheus an allegory of man's pilgrimage, in which the mind is the hero, overcoming evil powers and eventually regaining its state of wisdom and emancipation. How important it is to insist on the immortal and spiritual nature of man in these days when so much stress is being laid on his animal nature! Biologists are never tired of studying the laws and reactions of the lower nature of man, and often seem to wish us to believe that man has no other nature, but is merely a more complex animal. But in the ancient story both sides of man's nature are represented; and man is in truth dual, even down to details of his physical structure, as a more intimate study of biology would reveal.

Prometheus, says H.P. Blavatsky, in interpreting the allegory, "steals the divine power so as to allow men to proceed consciously on the path of spiritual evolution, thus transforming the most perfect of animals on earth into a potential god, and making him free to 'take the kingdom of heaven by violence."' Hence he gave to mankind the power of thought - at once a curse and a blessing. For who can deny the afflictions that come with the power to think, and who has not sometimes wished to escape the burden and become irresponsible like the animals? What is this mysterious power of thought that is at the same time our tempter and our savior? Here is a sacred mystery indeed, and the key to a world of symbolism. Our whole life is a series of initiations, from the time when the child first gains self-consciousness, till the very day of his death. The power of thought within us is ever bringing us into contact with fresh revelations of the hidden powers within; ever disclosing new faculties in our own being. Prometheus' fire still burns in our breast, torturing us and inspiring us. We cannot abrogate it and rebecome the unthinking animal; we must understand it and strive to bring harmony between the higher and lower nature, which means the subjection of the animal will to the higher will. The animals can find satisfaction in the fulfilment of their animal nature. Man is driven to seek satisfaction which cannot be found in the realm of his personal desires. Man's fall and his redemption are accomplished by one and the same event. This event, the gift of Fire, throws him out of balance, tempts him, and renders him liable to sin, and on the other hand endows him with the power to save himself. This may help us to interpret the curse and the blessing of Eden. Man, says H.P. Blavatsky, in interpreting the myth, will rebecome the Titan of old, but not till evolution has re-established the broken harmony between his two natures. The divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man is moved by Selfishness and egoism. (II, 422) Contrasts have been drawn between the spirit of Christendom and that of ancient Greece, and it has been said that Christendom has made asceticism its ideal, despising the body and insisting on the wickedness and unworthiness of human nature; while the Greeks on the contrary reverenced human nature and upheld physical perfection. The Greeks, it is said, regarded physical perfection as a condition to mental and moral perfection; nor did they see a conflict between the bodily and the spiritual. An adequate understanding of such myths as that of Prometheus may enable us to see where lies the essential truth that is common to both civilizations and indeed to all times. The culture of art, beauty, perfection, has been strangely separated from religion, in such sort as to constitute a kind of second religion of its own, diametrically opposed in many points to the other. This separation has involved injury to both religion and art: to religion by clipping its wings and making it dull and gloomy; to art by its tendency to divorce art from ethics. Recognition of our dual nature is the key to the problem; and when man can realize the waywardness of his lower nature and the sublimity of his higher, balancing the two truths, he will have regained much past knowledge through the boon bestowed by Prometheus, the Bringer of Divine Fire. (Vol. 12, pp. 233-40) --------------------

The School of Pythagoras at Crotona *

- Dr. Arnaldo Cervesato (Rome, Italy) One of the greatest glories of ancient Italian thought was the School that Pythagoras, leaving the isle of Samos, his mother-country, founded at Crotona, about the year 530 B.C., after his lengthy sojourn in Egypt and at Babylon. Few ruins now remain of this famous city of Magna Graecia. Crotona was built at the western extremity of the Gulf of Taranto, near the Lacinian promontory, and facing the open sea. Together with Sybaris, Crotona was one of the two most flourishing cities of southern Italy, renowned for its temples, for its Doric constitution, for its athletes victorious in the Olympic Games, for its medical schools whose alumni rivaled the Asclepiads. The Sybarites owed their immortality to their reputation for luxury and effeminacy; but the Crotoniates, on the other hand, so rich in moral qualities, would perhaps have been forgotten, if it had not been for the asylum which they had the glory of having offered to the great school of esoteric philosophy known under the name of the Pythagoric Sodality. This School not only may be considered as the mother of the later Platonic School, but also as the archetype of all idealistic fraternities that followed it; yet, however illustrious these latter may have been, they never attained to the greatness of their Mother. ---------* This was the ancient city of Magna Graecia, Italy, and has no reference to modern places of that name. ---------The situation was magnificent: an undulating country; numerous groves of fruitful olives; luxuriant vegetation; and all around in an immense semi-circle, the palpitating waters of the Ionian Sea, across which passed the white-colored triremes. Pythagoras, upon his arrival at Crotona (perhaps accompanied by numerous disciples who followed him from Samos, as Professor Gianola suggests), began publicly to announce his teachings in discourses such as won for him the immediate sympathy of his hearers, who assembled in crowds to listen to his inspired words; for he taught truths that had never before been heard in that region. Received with marked deference by the people and by the aristocratic party as well, which latter at that time held in its hands the power of the government, his admirers, moved by the enthusiasm aroused by his teaching, erected an ample edifice in white marble - a homakoeion, or "common hall" - in which he would be able to set forth his doctrines with dignity, and in which they might assemble to live under his direction. The tradition (as we find it in Iamblichus and in Porphyry) adds other particulars: Pythagoras entering the gymnasium, is said to have so conversed with the young men there exercising as to have excited their profound admiration; and this fact coming to the notice of the magistrates and senators of the city, these latter also are said to have determined to hear him for themselves. Pythagoras, invited to speak before the Council of the Thousand, obtained such emphatic approbation that he was further invited to make his teaching public: upon which multitudes flocked to hear him, moved by the fame of the austerity of countenance, by the sweetness of discourse, and by the exceeding novelty of the reasoning of the foreigner. His authority, by rapid stages, so grew that finally he exercised in the city an actual moral dictatorship; then it extended its influence, spreading over the neighboring countries of Magna Graecia, as far as Paestum and Sicily; it was very strong in Sybaris, Tarentum, Rhegium, Catana, Himera, and at Agrigentum; disciples of the one and of the other sex came to him from the Greek colonies, as well as from the Italic tribes of the Lucani, the Peucetii, the Messapii, and even from the Romans; while the most celebrated legislators of that part of the world: Zaleucus, Charondas, Numa and others, are said to have had

Pythagoras for their preceptor. It may therefore be truly said that by his sole influence and merit there were everywhere established order, liberty, morals and laws. In this fashion, says Lenormant, "he was enabled to realize the ideal of a Magna Graecia welded into a national union, under the hegemony of Crotona, and notwithstanding the differences of race of the Italiot Hellenes" - but this is inexact, since, as we shall see, the design of Pythagoras was in his teaching and action neither political nor national, but purely human. Perhaps (another writer adds) another person was not stranger to the reception that the great philosopher met with, and to the successs obtained by him - another person whom Pythagoras must have met when he was at Samos: the celebrated physician Democedes. But without doubt, the approbation that Pythagoras met with in Crotona and the enthusiasm excited by him throughout all Magna Graecia, were rather the result, on the one hand, of the intrinsic qualities of his teachings and his doctrines; and on the other of the disposition of the peoples among whom he was, to understand and appreciate him - than of merely personal acquaintances. We know that mysticism and every idealistic impulse always found among them general and prompt recognition and large numbers of followers, and this, not only in ancient times, but also during the Middle Ages, and in modern times. It is in this attitude of the peoples of the Southlands that lies the reason for the rapid diffusion of the Pythagoric doctrines, which were accepted almost universally; so much so that many, seized with admiration for the profound science of the Master, allied themselves with him, and, desirous of penetrating further into the deeps of his philosophic system (of which they perceived and sensed the vastness and wide sweep), came few by few to live with him, drawn into his orbit of action and of thought by that spontaneous sympathy which the really great apostles of Humanity have always exercised over others. Thus was formed the Sodality, whose doors were opened to all of good repute - men and women; and to his philosophical followers the Master gave the same rule that he had seen in operation in the schools of the Orient and of Egypt, in which, as it has been hinted, he himself had received knowledge of the Mysteries. The institution founded by Pythagoras became in time an educational society, a scientific academy, and a model city in miniature, under the direction of a true initiate. It was through theory combined with practice, and through the sciences working with the arts, that the students slowly arrived at the comprehension of that Science of sciences, at that magical harmony of the soul and of the intellect with the universe which the Pythagorics considered as the arcanum of philosophy and religion. The Pythagoric School has great interest for us, because it was the most noteworthy attempt to establish a popular initiation: a synthesis by anticipation of Hellenism and of Christianity, it grafted the fruit of science on the tree of life, and thence drew knowledge of that interior and living operation of Truth which alone awakes a living faith. II. The situation of the Pythagoric School was a beautiful one. Shining in the sunlight at the summit of a hill, among the cypresses and the olives, as one coasted along the seashore its porticos, gardens and gymnasium caught and held the eye. The Temple of the Muses towered over the two wings of the edifice with its graceful colonnade, giving an impression of beauty and lightness that was almost aerial. From the terrace of its outer gardens, one looked down upon the Prytaneum, the harbor, and the forum of the city; in the distance the gulf melted away along the sharp coast-lines, as in a huge agate bowl, and the Ionian Sea swept the horizon with its line of blue. At times might be seen women clad in robes of shining color leaving the left wing of the edifice, and descending in long files to the sea, through the cypresses: they go to their rites in the Temple of Ceres. Frequently, too, from the right wing,

might be seen men clothed in pure white, ascending to Apollo's fane. And certainly, the charm of it all over the curious imagination of the youth was not diminished by the thought that the school of the initiates was placed under the protection of those two divinities, of whom one, the Great Goddess, enwrapped within herself the profound mysteries of Womanhood and of the Earth; and the other, the Sun God, revealed those of Man and of the Heaven. Thus it lay, mystically smiling in the sunlight, the little city of the Elect, outside of and above populous Crotona. Its tranquil serenity attracted the cultured classes of the youth; but nothing was seen of what went on within; it was alone known that it was difficult to enter therein for residence. A simple hedge of living plants was the only defense against intrusion into the gardens belonging to the institution of Pythagoras, and the entrance-gate remained open during the day. But close by the gate there stood a statue of Hermes, and on its plinth was engraved the following legend: Eschate bebeloi!: "Away, ye profane!" And all respected this solemn commandment of the Mysteries. Those of the youth who desired to enter into the Society were obliged to submit to a period of probation and trial. Presented by their parents or by one of their teachers, such were readily admitted into the gymnasium, where the novices were seen absorbed in games according to their respective ages. The newcomer would have noticed at the first glance that this gymnasium was much unlike the gymnasium of the city: there were no violent cries, no noisy groups, no horse-play, no vain show of strength on the part of the athletes on the ground challenging one another in turn, and closing, naked muscle against naked muscle; but groups of affable and courteous youths, who, two by two, were walking in the porticos or exercising in the arena. The newcomer was immediately invited to join in the conversation, as if he had been one of themselves, for there was none of that offensive eyeing of the latest comer, accompanied with suspicious or malicious smiles, that we know so well. Others in the arena were exercising themselves in the course, by throwing the javelin and the discus, or were arrayed in sham battles under the form of Doric dances, for Pythagoras had utterly banished from his Institution body-to-body wrestling, saying it was not only superfluous but dangerous to develop pride and hate together with strength and agility; that men destined to practice the virtues of friendship should not begin by falling to the ground together nor by rolling in the dust like ferocious beasts; that a true hero would always fight with courage, but without fury; and that hate renders us inferior to any adversary we may have. The newcomer heard these maxims of the Master repeated by the novices, who were more than glad to communicate to him their precocious wisdom. At the same time, the novices invited the stranger to contradict them freely, if he so desired, and as freely to express his own opinions. Encouraged by these invitations, the ingenuous aspirant very soon showed openly his real nature; happy at being listened to and, as he thought, admired, he perorated at his ease, and swelled with pride. But meanwhile the teachers were observing him from nearby without interrupting him; and Pythagoras himself, coming unobserved, studied his gestures and words, observing with particular attention his manner of walking and of laughing. The laugh, he used to say, manifested the character in indubitable fashion, and no dissimulation can render beautiful the smile of an evil man. III. What was the real inner working of the School? Two classes of pupils were known: the first consisting of those who were admitted to a grade of initiation (genuine or familiar disciples), the second consisting of the novices, or simple "hearers" or "Pythagorists"; to the former class, itself divided into various grades, perhaps in correspondence with the different degrees (Pythagorics, Pythagorei, Physici,

Sebastici), which class were the direct disciples of the Master, was given the esoteric or secret doctrine; the other class could attend only the exoteric or open lectures. These latter lectures were essentially moral in character. The second class were never admitted to the presence of Pythagoras, but, as says the tradition, they heard him only, speaking behind a screen which hid him from their eyes. Before obtaining admission, not merely to the grades of initiation but even to the ranks of the novices, the candidate had to undergo proofs and examinations of the most rigorous kind, for, as Pythagoras said, "Not every piece of wood was fit to become a statue of Hermes"; before everything, as Aulus Gellius relates, there took place a physiognomic study of the candidate which was supposed to give evidence of his moral disposition and intellectual aptitudes; if this examination was favorable and if the knowledge procured concerning his personal conduct and former life was satisfactory, he was admitted without more ado, and there was prescribed for him a determined period of silence (echemythia), which varied, according to the individuals, from two to five years. During this period of probation it was lawful for him only to listen to what was said by others, nor was he permitted to ask for explanations or to make observations of any sort. This was called the "novitiate" (paraskeue), which also comprised the long periods of meditation and the rigorous and severe discipline of the passions and desires, a discipline which was enforced by means of trials of no small difficulty. They who passed successfully through this period, learning in it the two most difficult things: to listen and to keep silence, were admitted among the number of the Mathematics (mathematici); and then only were they allowed to speak and to ask and even to write on what they had heard, freely expressing their thoughts. Learning to increase the power of their interior faculties, their understanding became step by step more elevated and more extended, even reaching communion with the absolute Being immanent in the universe and in man. He who reached this stage, which was the highest summit of the philosophical training, and which marked the end of all the esoteric teaching, obtained the title corresponding to this initiation, which is that of Perfect (teleios) and of Venerable (sebastikos); or, perhaps he called himself simply and pithily, Man. The first conditions that were demanded of the initiates were those of silence and secrecy in their association with all others, without exception of parents or friends. So rigidly was this principle adhered to, that if any one of the initiated had let drop from his mouth or hand anything whatsoever concerning the mystic secrets to one not an initiate, he was expelled as unworthy of belonging to the Society, and was considered as dead by the others, who raised to his memory a cenotaph in the grounds of the Institution. The unwavering firmness with which the Pythagorics guarded all that appertained to the secret things of the School was not only well known, but passed into a proverb. After the same rule was he also considered as dead, who, after having given good hopes of himself and his spiritual possibilities, ultimately showed himself as inferior to the conception of his capacity which he had at first aroused in others. Such cases as this last, however (and it is well to signify the fact) were very rare, since the length of time of probation which preceded the passage from one grade to another had as one of its main objects to render impossible, or to reduce to a minimum, all mistakes or delusion of the kind. Reception among the number of the novices, or even the passing the gates of initiation, in no wise obligated the individual to follow the cenobitic life. On the contrary, many, whether from their social condition or because they found themselves unable wholly to renounce the world, or yet from other reasons, continued their ordinary life, shaping this last, nevertheless, according to the principles of morals and the knowledge which they had acquired; thus actually diffusing around themselves, by practice and word, the good which it

was the object of the teaching to instil. The last were the active members, of whom we know something from literary matter that has come down to us; on the other hand, the others, the Speculators (observers, meditants, students) lived in the Institution, where, in perfect accord with all the other practices and laws of the Institution itself, which had for object to destroy all forms of selfishness and individual pride, there was observed full community of goods. And it is not at all wonderful, nor something to be denied as possible offhand, that men whose lives were given to meditation and study on philosophical and religious grounds, and to moral practices, and who lived together for a single purpose, should put into a common fund their goods in order to forward the teaching and the diffusion of their ideas. What reasonable cause would hinder the disciples within the Institution, no longer held by the chains of the world, from entering into this community of material goods? And as to those of the Society who were not the inner students, but the outer, is it not natural to think that springing from the principles of brotherhood and love they found in their common doctrines, motives of their own impelled them spontaneously to give not only their worldly substance, but indeed, themselves to the common end? And to their brothers? We know that the Pythagorics used particular signs of recognition, such as the pentagon and gnomon, cut on their tesserae (tickets, signs), or a characteristic form of salutation; all of which they employed as means of mutual recognition, or as calls for aid in the common pursuits, or to establish their identity as fellowmembers of the Sodality in places distant from Crotona; for there were schools, similar to the one we know of at Crotona, in many places both of Magna Graecia and of the East. The life led by the inner students, i.e. those permanently established in the Institution, is sufficiently known to us from the narratives of the Neo-Pythagorics, and from the notices scattered here and there in the works of the most ancient authors. All was governed by precise regulations that no one ever transgressed; and this is easily understood by reflecting that each one of these regulations had its justification in reason, and that, excepting a few which were rigorously prescribed, they were given more in the form of rules of conduct or as counsels than as actual commands. Early in the morning, after the rising of the sun, the inmates rose and spent some time walking up and down in tranquil and silent places, among temples and through groves, without speaking to anyone before they had well prepared the soul with meditation and selfrecollection. Then they united together in the temples or similar places, to learn and to teach - because every inmate was both teacher and learner - while they continually practiced especial inner exercises in order to acquire mastery of the passions and command over the senses, developing within themselves in special effort will-power, memory, and the higher and more recondite faculties of the spirit. But there was no vain effort to mortify the flesh, or forced and obligatory renunciation of the normal and innocent pleasures of life, nor other similar aberrations from good sense, of the monastic or conventual type: Pythagoras only desired that each one should endeavor to subject the body to the spirit, in order that this latter might be free in its operations and in its inner unfolding; yet the body should be kept healthy and strong and beautiful, because in it the spirit should possess, if possible, a perfect instrument. To this last end were also instituted the gymnastic exercises of all classes in the open air, and the minute prescriptions regarding hygiene, and more especially regarding food and drink. In general, the meals were very frugal, reduced to what was strictly necessary, and all that could becloud the spirit and prevent the serene workings of it, or that might overload the stomach, was eliminated. Bread and honey in the morning; vegetables cooked or raw, very little or no meat at all, and if taken, then only of specified parts and of certain animals; rarely fish, and no wine, or extremely little, in the evening, during the second meal. This meal must be ended before sunset, and it was preceded by walks, in this case not solitary, but taken by

students in groups of two or three; and by the bath. The supper finished, the companions reunited around the tables in groups of ten or less, and conversed quietly with each other, or read those works which the eldest of themselves might prescribe - poetry or prose; or listened to soft music, which disposed their souls to joy and tuned them to a sweet interior harmony. For "Music, by which all the parts of the body are composed into a ceaseless unity of vigor, is also a method of intellectual and moral hygiene, and therefore completes its work in the perfectly disciplined soul of each Pythagoric." Nor were there lacking, finally, during the day, a few simple ceremonies of a religious character, or, to speak more precisely, of a symbolical character, which served to maintain always living and present in each one the thought of and the reverence for that Essence from Which emanated and to Which must return - according to the mystical doctrine of the Master - the spiritual and substantial principle of every human being. Other records tell us of total abstention from the chase, and of the use of pure white garments; and that the hair was allowed to grow long. As regards the question of celibacy being obligatory, as Zeller says, not only is this not endorsed by any record, but it is also contrary to the many records which speak of Theano, the wife of Pythagoras, by whom he is said to have had sons, and also contrary to others wherein are set forth the rules regarding the best times for conjugal relations; it is contrary also - and this is more important to the spirit of the doctrine of the Philosopher, for whom the Family was sacred, and the duties belonging thereto were indicated with much precision and accuracy, extraordinarily so with regard to the teachings given to the women. But, on the other hand, celibacy was practised by a certain number of the most fervent disciples, who, entirely devoted to the philosophical doctrines of the Sage, probably thought that the chains and occupations of family life would form an obstacle hindering them from the exercise of completest liberty in their studies. IV. Such are, in brief, the notices that have come down to us of the external history of the Institution of Pythagoras and of its interior conduct. As regards more particularly the teaching, we have seen above that it was dual: and that to be admitted into the closed or secret portion of it, it was necessary to have demonstrated, through long years of trial, that the aspirant was worthy, and that he had all the required aptitudes for receiving it. He who gave, or rather who could give, no such guaranties, might enjoy only the exoteric or common teaching, without recondite symbolism, and within the reach of all, and withal of a character essentially ethical. We have also noted that the esoterics were initiated gradually into forms of knowledge theoretic and practical - growing by regular degrees more difficult and more abstruse, which were hidden under the veil of especial symbolic formulae, easy to remember and of a schematic type. This method had the advantage that even if these formulae became known to the profane, they revealed nothing of their secret and metaphorical sense. By this method it was hoped to avoid the peril that knowledge of a superior order might fall into the possession of minds incapable of understanding it, minds which, precisely for that reason, would divulge it with restrictions of sense, with limitations, and with imperfections derived from inadequate intelligence; a possible consequence of which would be that discredit and ridicule might be cast upon not only the fundamental doctrines, but also upon the entire teaching. The criterion used in imparting this knowledge was that " it is not permitted to tell all to everyone," and such a criterion - aristocratic in the larger and finer sense of the word - i.e., the imparting the knowledge in proportions proper for the individual's capacity, certainly cannot be called illogical, or considered as a sign of vain ostentation or of intellectual pride.

As a matter of fact, is it not true that doctrines intrinsically good have, through too great diffusion, lost little by little a large part of their primal perfection; and have ended either by becoming clothed in all sorts of disguises and defilements, or by losing entirely their real or substantial character, retaining only the outward signs or formal marks of this last? In the second place, the individual never being asked for more than what his natural faculties and his real instruction could bear, and the development of these faculties themselves proceeding according to that scale which Nature herself laid down for their unfoldment, and according to the different grades of their relative superiority in the ordered and harmonious inner economy of the human being, it never happened that the inner equilibrium was disturbed - that equilibrium in which we see duly balanced in perfect harmony the various aptitudes of everyone. Consequently, there was born for the individual and in himself a peace undisturbed, and a faith in himself which utterly closed all the avenues whereby discouragement or distress might have entered into his soul. All one's life was placed under the guidance of a systematic and continual education; and those who had passed further onwards than others, made a diligent, conscientious and unceasing study of the aptitudes of each individual in the Institution. Love was considered to be the supreme law and guide for the initiated as regards association among themselves; and this applied with equal force to their relations with all other men. Love, in fact, reigned sovereign in their souls, avid only of good, and desirous of bringing into actuality in this life that ideal of justice which is, in all ages, the undying aspiration of all upright men. The Institution had various trials to meet, even during the life of Pythagoras. New political factions, formed in Crotona, opposed him and his work, and the Master was obliged to endure not a few vicissitudes of this kind, and even persecutions. But his example lives on: Among the ruins of Crotona there still speaks to us from out of the dust and the wreck a mighty Word, which, from the earliest, taught men the true sense of these three grand things: Religion, Brotherhood, Theosophy. (Vol. 11, pp. 422-38) -----------------Ancient History Classical Authors and Atlantis - F. S. Darrow, Ph.D. The time will come, as lapsing ages flee, When every land shall yield its hidden treasure; When men no more shall unknown courses measure, For round the world no "farthest land" shall be. - Seneca, Medea, vv. 376-379 Atlantis, a submerged continent or archipelago of islands, which once existed in the mid-Atlantic, is first mentioned among the extant classical authors by Plato. Much further information in regard to this continent, which according to the Theosophical teachings was the home of the Fourth Root-Race of the human family, has been given by Madame H.P. Blavatsky in that treasury of knowledge, The Secret Doctrine. The name Atlantis signifies the

island of Atlas, the island of the giant who, according to Greek mythology, upholds the heavens on his shoulders. The inhabitants of Atlantis were called by the Greeks Atlantines, but, as common English usage has established the ethnical name Atlantean, the ordinary Anglicized form will be adopted throughout this paper. Plato refers to Atlantis in the Timaeus, and what he there recounts is amplified by him in the Critias, although the Critias is itself fragmentary because the dialog apparently was never completed by its author. First, the reference to Atlantis in the Timaeus will be given in full. The speaker is the younger Critias, a relative of Plato's, and he is represented as retelling an ancient tradition which he had heard in childhood from his paternal grandfather, after whom he had been named. "Critias: Listen, Socrates, to a strange tale which is, however, certainly true, as Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages, declared. He was a relative and a great friend of my great-grandfather, Dropidas, as he himself says in several of his poems; and Dropidas told Critias, my grandfather, who remembered and told us: That there were of old great and marvelous actions of the Athenians, which have passed into oblivion through time and the destruction of the human race, and one in particular, which was the greatest of them all, the recital of which will be a suitable testimony of our gratitude to you, and also a hymn of praise true and worthy of the goddess, which may be sung by us at the festival in her honor. "Socrates: Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of which Critias spoke not as a mere legend but as a veritable action of the Athenian State, which Solon recounted? "Critias: I will tell you an old-world story which I heard from an aged man; for Critias was, as he said, at that time nearly ninety years of age, and I was about ten years of age. Now the day was the day of Apaturia, which is called the registration of youth, at which, according to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, and the poems of several poets were recited by us boys and many of us sang the poems of Solon, which were new at the time. One of our tribe, either because this was his real opinion, or because he thought that he would please Critias, said that in his judgment Solon was not only the wisest of men but also the noblest of poets. The old man, as I very well remember, brightened up at this and said, smiling: Yes, Amynander, if Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry the business of his life and had completed the tale which he brought with him from Egypt and had not been compelled, by reason of the factions and troubles which he found stirring in this country when he came home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion he would have been as famous as Homer or Hesiod or any poet. "And what was the poem about, Critias? said the person who addressed him. "About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which ought to have been the most famous, but which, through the lapse of time and the destruction of the actors, has not come down to us. "Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from whom Solon heard this veritable tradition. 'He replied: At the head of the Egyptian Delta, where the river Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the district of Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais, and is the city from which Amasis the king was sprung. And the citizens have a deity who is their foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith, and is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athene. Now the citizens of this city are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some way related to them. Thither came Solon, who was received by them with great honor; and he asked the priests, who were the most skillful in such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. On one occasion, when he was

drawing them on to speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in our part of the world - about Phoroneus, who is called 'the first,' and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, to tell of the lives of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, and attempted to reckon how many years old were the events of which he was speaking and to give the dates. Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children and there is never an old man who is an Hellene. Solon, hearing this, said, What do you mean? I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition; nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you the reason of this. There have been and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many cases; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story which even you have preserved: that once upon a time Phaethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds to his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burned up all that was upon the earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long intervals of time; when this happens, those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore. And from this calamity the Nile, which is our never-failing savior, saves and delivers us. When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, among you, herdsmen and shepherds on the mountains, are the survivors; whereas those of you who live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea. But in this country, neither at that time nor at any other, does the water come from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below, for which reason the things preserved here are said to be the oldest. The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer sun does not prevent, the human race is always increasing at times, at other times diminishing in numbers. And whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed - if any action which is noble or great or in any other way remarkable has taken place, all that has been written down of old and is preserved in our temples; whereas you and other nations are just being provided with letters and the other things which states require; and then, at the usual period, the stream from heaven descends like a pestilence and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and thus you have to begin all over again as children and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves. As for these genealogies of yours which you have recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children; for in the first place you remember one deluge only, whereas there have been many of them; and in the next place, you do not know that there dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, of whom you and your whole city are but a seed and a remnant. And this was unknown to you, because for many generations the survivors of that destruction died and made no sign. For there was a time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens, was first in war and was pre-eminent for the excellence of her laws, and is said to have performed the noblest deeds and to have had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells under the face of heaven. Solon marveled at this and earnestly requested the priest to inform him exactly and in order about these former citizens. You are welcome to hear about them, Solon, said the priest, both for your own sake and for that of the city, and above all for the sake of the goddess who is the common patron and protector and educator of both our cities. She founded your city a thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of your race, and then she founded ours, the constitution of which is set down in our sacred registers as 8000 years old. As touching the

citizens of 9000 years ago, I will briefly inform you of their laws and of the noblest of their actions, and the exact particulars of the whole we will hereafter go through at our leisure in the sacred registers themselves. If you compare these very laws with your own you will find that many of ours are the counterpart of yours as they were in the olden time. In the first place, there is the caste of priests, which is separated from all the others; next there are the artificers, who exercise their several crafts by themselves and without admixture of any other; and also there is the class of shepherds and that of hunters, as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe, too, that the warriors in Egypt are separated from all the other classes and are commanded by the law only to engage in war; moreover, the weapons with which they are equipped are shields and spears, and this the goddess taught first among you, and then in Asiatic countries and we among the Asiatics first adopted it. Then as to wisdom, do you observe what care the law took from the very first, searching out and comprehending the whole order of things down to prophecy and medicine (the latter with a view to health); and out of these divine elements drawing what was needful for human life and adding every sort of knowledge which was connected with them. All this order and arrangement the goddess first imparted to you when establishing your city; and she chose the spot of earth in which you were born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons in that land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess who was a lover both of war and of wisdom, selected and first of all settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men like herself. And there you dwelt, having such laws as these and still better ones, and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children and disciples of the gods. "Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valor. For these histories tell of a mighty power which was aggressing wantonly against the whole of Europe and Asia, a power to which your city put an end. This came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which you call the Pillars of Hercules [that is, the Straits of Gibraltar]; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from the island you might pass through the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbor, having a narrow entrance, but the other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, as well as over parts of the continent, and, besides these, they subjected the parts of Libya within the Pillars of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. The vast power thus gathered into one endeavored to subdue at one blow our country and yours and the whole of the land which is within the Straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth in the excellence of her virtue and strength among all mankind; for she was the first in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjected, and freely liberated all the others who dwell within the limits of Heracles. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of rain all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared and was sunk beneath the sea. And that is the reason why the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is such a quantity of shallow mud in the way, and this was caused by the subsidence of the island." (Plato, Timaeus, 20d-25, Jowett's translation). H.P. Blavatsky makes the following comments on these statements of Plato:

"Aiming more to instruct as a moralist than as a geographer and ethnologist or historian, the Greek philosopher merged the history of Atlantis, which covered several million years, into one event which he located on one comparatively small island 3000 stadia long by 2000 wide (or about 350 miles by 200, which is about the size of Ireland), whereas the priests spoke of Atlantis as a continent vast as 'all Asia and Libya' put together. But, however altered in its general aspect, Plato's narrative bears the impress of truth upon it." (Secret Doctrine, II, pp. 760-761) "'First of all,' we read in the Critias that 'one must remember that 9000 years have elapsed since the war of the nations which lived above and outside the Pillars of Heracles and those which peopled the lands on this side.' "In the Timaeus Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Aryans were 200,000 years old when the first great 'island' or continent was submerged, there hardly seems any reconciliation possible between the figures. "But there is, in truth.... Thus, when saying 9000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, during which space of time - i.e., from the first appearance of the Aryan race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking (the main continent perished in the Miocene times, as already stated) and other continents to appear on the surface, down to the final disappearance of Plato's small island of Atlantis, the Aryan races have never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant races.... Such blending of the events and epochs and the bringing down of hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the numbers of years that had elapsed, according to the statement made by the Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of Atlantis. The 9000 years were the correct figures. The latter event has never been kept a secret and had only faded out of the memory of the Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because isolated; for being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left untrammeled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our era." (Secret Doctrine, II, pp. 394-395) "The great nation mentioned by the Egyptian priests, from which descended the forefathers of the Greeks of the age of Troy, and which, as averred, had been destroyed by the Atlantic race, was then, as we see, assuredly no race of Palaeolithic savages. Nevertheless, already in the days of Plato, with the exception of priests and initiates, no one seems to have preserved any distinct recollection of the preceding races. The earliest Egyptians had been separated from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages; they were themselves descended from an alien race and had settled in Egypt some 400,000 years before, but their Initiates had preserved all the records." (Secret Doctrine, II, 749-750) In regard to the early, prehistoric inhabitants of Greek lands the attention of those who are interested is directed to the study of "The Prehistoric Aegean Civilization," published as No. 4 of the Papers of the School of Antiquity, International Theosophical Headquarters, Point Loma, California. Although some modern scholars have maintained that Atlantis was merely a fabrication of Plato's imagination, despite that philosopher's declaration that his account, however strange, is nevertheless certainly true, even these sceptics have been unable to deny such noteworthy corroboration of Plato's words as the fact that the ancients believed before and after his time that the Atlantic Ocean was "a muddy, shallow, dark and misty sea, a Mare tenebrosum." (Cosmos, Vol. II, page 15) Thus also, Aristotle says that "the sea outside the Pillars of Heracles is shallow, muddy and windless." (Meteorologica, II, i, 354a-22) And

Scylax, in his Circumnavigation (1), speaks of "many trading stations of the Carthaginians and much mud and high tides and open seas, outside the Pillars of Heracles." (cf. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, I, pages 385-386) Likewise, further particulars in regard to Solon's visit to Egypt, and the names of the principal Egyptian priests by whom he was instructed while residing in Egypt, are given in several classical authors other than Plato, and surely Plato - since he was a descendant of Solon - would have known many details of family history unknown to others. We read the following in Plutarch: "Solon's first voyage was for Egypt, and he lived as he himself says: 'Near the Nile's mouth by the shore of fair Canopus.' "And he spent some time in study with Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Sais, the most learned of all the priests; from whom, as Plato says, getting knowledge of the story of Atlantis, he put it in a poem and proposed to bring it to the knowledge of the Greeks.... (Chap. 26) "Solon began in verse an extensive description or rather a legendary account of the Atlantic Island, which he learned from the wise men of Sais, and which particularly concerned the Athenians. But by reason of his age, not want of leisure (as Plato says) he was discouraged by the greatness of the task. These verses prove that business cares were not the cause of Solon's failure to complete the work, which he had begun: 'I grow in learning as I grow in age.' "And again: "'Wine, wit, beauty still their charms bestow, Light all the shades of life and cheer us as we go.' "Plato, ambitious to cultivate and adorn the subject of the Atlantic Island, as a delightful spot in some fair unoccupied field, to which also he had some claims by reason of his relationship to Solon, laid out magnificent courts and enclosures and erected a grand entrance to it, such as no other story, fable or poem ever had. But as he began it late, he ended his life before completing his work (namely, the Critias), so that the more the reader is delighted with that part which he has written, the greater his regret at finding it unfinished." (Life of Solon, Chap. 31) Plutarch also repeats the statement that Solon was taught by Sonchis of Sais in his Treatise on Isis and Osiris (Chapter 10). Plato's last words in regard to Atlantis in the Timaeus, spoken by Critias, are as follows: "I have told you shortly, Socrates, the traditions which the aged Critias heard from Solon.... I listened to the old man telling them, when a child, with great interest at the time; he was very ready to teach me, and I asked him about them a great many times, so that they were branded into my mind in ineffaceable letters.... And now, Socrates, I am ready to tell you the whole tale of which this is the introduction. I will give you not only the general heads but the details exactly as I heard them." (Timaeus, 25-26) These details are not given by Plato in the Timaeus, but are to be found in the dialog named after the younger Critias. Unfortunately, as stated in the quotation from Plutarch, this dialog apparently was never completed by its author and has reached us only in a

fragmentary condition. Such of it as deals with Atlantis is quoted below. The speaker is the younger Critias. "Let me begin by observing first of all that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place between all those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and those who dwelt within them; this war I am now to describe. Of the combatants on the one side, the city of Athens was reported to have been the ruler and to have directed the contest; the combatants on the other side were led by the kings of the islands of Atlantis, which as I was saying, once had an extent greater than that of Libya and Asia; and when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing hence to the ocean. The progress of the history will unfold the various tribes of barbarians and Hellenes which then existed, as they successively appear on the scene; but I must begin by describing first of all the Athenians, as they were in that day, and their enemies who fought with them, and I shall have to tell of the power and form of government of both of them. Let us give the precedence to Athens: [The account of the prehistoric Athenians given by Plato is here omitted and Critias continues:].... Yet, before proceeding further in the narrative I ought to warn you that you must not be surprised if you should hear Hellenic names given to foreigners. I will tell you the reason for this: Solon, who was intending to use the tale for his poem, made an investigation into the meaning of the names and found that the early Egyptians in writing them down had translated them into their own language, and he recovered the meaning of several names and re-translated them and copied them out again in our own language. My great-grandfather, Dropidas, had the original writing, which is still in my possession, and this was carefully studied by me when I was a child. Therefore, if you hear names such as are used in this country, you must not be surprised, for I have told you the reason of them. The tale, which was of great length, began as follows: "I have before remarked in speaking of the allotments of the gods that they distributed the whole earth into portions differing in extent, and made themselves temples and sacrifices. And Poseidon, receiving for his lot the island of Atlantis, begat children by a mortal woman and settled them in a part of the island which I will proceed to describe. On the side towards the sea and in the center of the whole island there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile. Near the plain again, and also in the center of the island at a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth-born primeval men of that country whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife named Leucippe and they had an only daughter who was named Cleito. The maiden was growing up to womanhood when her father and mother died; Poseidon fell in love with her and had intercourse with her, and breaking the ground, enclosed the hill in which she dwelt all around, making alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a lathe out of the center of the island, for ships and voyages were not as yet heard of. He himself, as he was a god, found no difficulty in making special arrangements for the center island, bringing two streams of water under the earth, which he caused to ascend as springs, one of warm water and the other of cold, and making every variety of food to spring up abundantly in the earth. He also begat and brought up five pairs of male children, dividing the island of Atlantis into ten portions; he gave to the first-born of the eldest pair his mother's dwelling and the surrounding allotment, which was the largest and best, and made him king over the rest; the others he made princes and gave them rule over many men and a large territory. And he named them all; the eldest, who was king, he named Atlas, and from him the name Atlantic was applied to the whole island and the neighboring ocean. To his twin

brother, who was born after him and who obtained as his lot the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles as far as the country which is still called the region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is named after him, Gadeirus. Of the second pair of twins, he named one Ampheres and the other Evaemon. To the third pair of twins he gave the name Mneseus to the elder and Autochthon to the one who followed him. Of the fourth pair of twins he called the elder Elasippus and the younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair he gave to the leader the name of Azaes, and to the younger that of Diaprepes. All these and their descendants were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea; and also, as has been already said, they held sway in the other direction over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. Now Atlas had a numerous and honorable family, and his eldest branch always retained the kingdom, which the eldest son handed on to his eldest for many generations; and they had such an amount of wealth as was never before possessed by kings and potentates, and is not likely ever to be again, and they were furnished with everything they could have both in city and in country. For because of the greatness of their empire many things were brought to them from foreign countries, and the island itself provided much of what was required by them for the uses of life. In the first place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there, mineral as well as metal, and that which is now only a name and was then something more than a name, orichalcum, was dug out of the earth in many parts of the island, and with the exception of gold was esteemed the most precious of metals among the men of those days. There was an abundance of wood for carpenter's work and sufficient maintenance for tame and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island, and there was provision for animals of every kind, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains, and therefore for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of them. Also whatever fragrant things there are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or distilling drops of flowers or fruits, grew and thrived in that land; and again, the cultivated fruit of the earth, both the dry edible fruit and other species of food, which we call by the general name of legumes, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments [does this refer to the cocoanut?] and many chestnuts and the like, which may be used to play with and are fruits which spoil with keeping, and the pleasant kinds of dessert, which console us after dinner, when we are full and tired of eating - all these that sacred island lying beneath the sun brought forth fair and wondrous in infinite abundance. All these things they received from the earth, and they employed themselves in constructing their temples and palaces and harbors and docks; and they arranged the whole country in the following manner: "First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis and made a passage into and out of the royal palace; and they began to build the palace in the habitation of the god and of their ancestors. This they continued to ornament in successive generations, every king surpassing the one who came before him to the utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and for beauty. And beginning from the sea they dug a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbor, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress. Moreover, they divided the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, constructing bridges of such a width as would leave a passage for a single trireme to pass out of one into another and roofed them over; and there was a way underneath for the ships; for the banks of the zones were raised considerably above the water.

"Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth and the zone of land which came next was of equal breadth; but the next two, as well the zone of water as of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. This and the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall, on either side placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the center island, and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One kind of stone was white, another black, and a third red, and as they quarried, they at the same time hollowed out docks, double within, having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of the buildings were simple, but in others they put together different stones which they intermingled for the sake of ornament, to be a natural source of delight. The entire circuit of the wall which went around the outermost one they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum. "The palaces in the interior of the citadel were constructed in this wise: In the center was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by an enclosure of gold; this was the spot in which they originally begat the race of ten princes, and thither the people annually brought the fruits of the earth in their season from all the ten portions, and performed sacrifices to each of them. Here, too, was Poseidon's own temple of a stadium in length and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having a sort of barbaric splendor. All the outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, adorned everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; all the other parts of the walls and pillars and floor they lined with orichalcum. In the temple they placed statues of gold; there was the god himself standing in a chariot - the charioteer of six winged horses - and of such size that he touched the roof of the buildings with his head; around him there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number of them in that day. There were also in the interior of the temple other images which had been dedicated by private individuals. And around the temple on the outside were placed statues of gold of all the ten kings and of their wives, and there were many other great offerings both of kings and of private individuals, coming both from the city itself and the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an altar, too, which in size and workmanship corresponded to the rest of the work, and there were palaces, in like manner, which answered to the greatness of the kingdom and the glory of the temple. "In the next place, they used fountains both of cold and hot springs; these were very abundant and both kinds wonderfully adapted to use by reason of the sweetness and excellence of their waters. They constructed buildings about them and planted suitable trees; also cisterns, some open to the heaven, others which they roofed over, to be used in winter as warm baths; there were the king's baths and the baths of private persons, which were kept apart; also separate baths for women, and others again for horses and cattle, and to each of them they gave as much adornment as was suitable for them. The water which ran off they carried, some to the grove of Poseidon, where were growing all manner of trees of wonderful height and beauty, owing to the excellence of the soil; the remainder was conveyed by aqueducts which passed over the bridges to the outer circles; and there were many temples built and dedicated to many gods; also gardens and places of exercise, some for men, and some set apart for horses, in both of the two islands formed by the zones; and in the center of the larger of the two there was a race-course of a stadium in width, and in length allowed to extend all round the island, for the horses to race in. Also there were

guardhouses at intervals for the bodyguard, the more trusted of whom had their duties appointed to them in the lesser zone, which was nearer the Acropolis; whilst the most trusted of all had houses given them within the citadel about the persons of the kings. "The docks were full of triremes and naval stores, and all things were quite ready for use. "Enough of the plan of the royal palace. Crossing the outer harbors, which were three in number, you would come to a wall which began at the sea and went all around; this was everywhere distant fifty stadia from the largest zone and harbor and inclosed the whole, meeting at the mouth of the channel towards the sea. The entire area was densely crowded with habitations, and the canal and the largest of the harbors were full of vessels and merchants coming from all parts, who, from their numbers, kept up a multitudinous sound of human voices and din of all sorts, night and day. "I have repeated the descriptions of the city and the parts about the ancient palace nearly as he gave them, and now I must endeavor to describe the nature and arrangement of the rest of the country. The whole country was described as being very lofty and precipitous on the side towards the sea.... it was smooth and even, but of an oblong shape, extending in one direction three thousand stadia, and going up the country from the sea, through the center of the island, two thousand stadia; the whole region of the island lay towards the south and was sheltered from the north. The surrounding mountains were celebrated for their number and size and beauty, in which they exceeded all that are now to be seen anywhere; having in them also many wealthy inhabited villages, and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild or tame, and wood of various sorts, abundant for every kind of work. "I will now describe the plain, which had been cultivated during many ages by many generations of kings. It was rectangular and for the most part straight and oblong; and what it wanted of the straight line followed the line of the circular ditch. The depth and width and length of this ditch were incredible, and gave the impression that such a work, in addition to so many other works, could hardly have been wrought by the hand of man. But I must say what I have heard. It was excavated to the depth of one hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain and was ten thousand stadia in length. It received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain and touching the city at various points, was there let off into the sea. From above, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut in the plain and again let off into the ditch towards the sea: these canals were at intervals of an hundred stadia and by them they brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth - in winter having the benefits of the rains, in summer introducing the water of the canals. "As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had an appointed chief of men who were fit for military service, and the size of the lot was to be a square of ten stadia each way, and the total number of all the lots was sixty thousand. And of the inhabitants of the mountains and of the rest of the country there was also a vast multitude having leaders, to whom they were assigned according to their dwellings and villages. The leader was required to furnish for the war the sixth portion of a war-chariot, so as to make up a total of ten thousand chariots; also two horses and riders upon them and a light chariot without a seat, accompanied by a fighting man on foot carrying a small shield, and having a charioteer mounted to guide the horses; also, he was bound to furnish two heavy-armed soldiers, two archers, two slingers, three stone-shooters, and three javelin-men, who were skirmishers, and four sailors to make up a complement of twelve hundred ships. Such was the order of war in the royal city - that of the other nine governments was different in each of them, and would be

wearisome to narrate. "As to offices and honors, the following was the arrangement from the first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in his own city had the absolute control of the citizens, and in many cases, of the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. Now the relations of their governments to one another were regulated by the injunctions of Poseidon.... in the middle of the island.... the people were gathered together every fifth and sixth years alternately, thus giving equal honor to the odd and to the even number. And when they were gathered together they consulted about public affairs and inquired if anyone had transgressed in anything, and passed judgment on him accordingly, and before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another in this wise. There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon; and the ten who were left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the gods that they might take the sacrifices which were acceptable to them, hunted the bulls, without weapons, but with staves and nooses; and the bull which they caught they led up to the column. The victim was then struck on the head by them and slain over the sacred inscription. "Now on the column, besides the law, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When therefore, after offering sacrifice according to their customs, they had burnt the limbs of the bull, they mingled a cup and cast in a clot of blood for each of them; the rest of the victim they took to the fire, after having made a purification of the column all around. Then they drew from the cup in golden vessels, and pouring a libation on the fire, they swore that they would judge according to the laws on the column and would punish anyone who had previously transgressed, and that for the future they would not if they could help, transgress any of the inscriptions, and would not command, or obey any ruler who commanded them, to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon. This was the prayer which each of them offered up for himself and for his family, at the same time drinking and dedicating the vessel in the temple of the god, and after spending some necessary time at supper, when darkness came on and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of them put on the must beautiful azure robes, and sitting on the ground at night near the embers of the sacrifices on which they had sworn, and extinguishing all the fire about the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any of them had any accusation to bring against anyone; and when they had given judgment at daybreak they wrote down their sentences on a golden tablet and deposited the tablets as memorials with their robes. "There were many special laws which the several kings had inscribed about the temples, but the most important was the following: That they were not to take up arms against one another, and they were all to come to the rescue if anyone in any city attempted to overthrow the royal house; like their ancestors they were to deliberate in common about war and other matters, giving the supremacy to the family of Atlas. And the king was not to have the power of life and death over any of his kinsmen unless he had the assent of the majority of the ten kings. "Such was the vast power which the god settled in the lost island of Atlantis; and this he afterwards directed against our land on the following pretext, as traditions tell: For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well-affectioned towards the gods, who were their kinsmen; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, practicing gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of life and in their intercourse with one another. They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased by virtuous friendship with one another, and that by excessive zeal for them,

and honor of them, the good of them is lost and friendship perishes with them. "By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, all that which we have described waxed and increased in them; but when this divine portion began to fade away in them and became diluted too often and with too much of the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, then they, being unable to bear their fortune, became unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see, they began to appear base, and had lost the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they still appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were filled with unrighteous avarice and power. Zeus, the god of the gods, who rules with law and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honorable race was in a most wretched state and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improved, collected all the gods into his most holy habitation, which being placed in the center of the world, sees all things that partake of generation. "And when he had called them together, he spoke as follows." (Critias, 108, 113-120; Jowett's translation.) With this sentence the Critias ends, so far as it has been transmitted to us. Proclus, in his Commentary on the Timaeus, makes the following remarks about Plato's description of Atlantis and the Atlanteans: "Some say that the whole of Plato's account of the Atlanteans is purely historical. This was the opinion of Crantor, the first interpreter of Plato, who says that Plato was ridiculed by his contemporaries, not because he had invented his Republic but because he had transcribed what the Egyptians had written on the subject. Crantor so far agrees with these critics in reference to the account of the Athenians and the Atlanteans as to believe that the Athenians once lived in accordance with the scheme of government as outlined by Plato in the Republic. Crantor adds that this is proved by priests of the Egyptians, who declare that the particulars (narrated by Plato) are written on pillars of stone, which are still preserved. Others again say that Plato's account is fabulous and fictitious, but in doing so they disregard Plato's own statement, which is as follows: "'Listen, Socrates, to a strange tale, which is, however, certainly true.'" (Commentary to "Timaeus," p. 20) In another note Proclus adds: "That such a large island once existed is evident from what is said by some historians in regard to the external sea (that is, the Atlantic Ocean). For according to them, there were in their time seven islands in that sea, which were sacred to Persephone, and also there were others of an immense extent, one of which was sacred to Pluto, another to Ammon, and the central one, which was one thousand stadia in extent, to Poseidon. They also add that the inhabitants preserved the memory of their ancestors, who dwelt on the Atlantis which once existed there and was truly prodigiously great, and for many ages held sway over all the islands in the Atlantic Ocean, and was itself likewise sacred to Poseidon. These things, therefore, Marcellus writes in his Ethiopian History." (Commentary to "Timaeus," p. 25) Brief references to Plato's statements about Atlantis are also made by Arnobius (adversus Gentes, I, 5), Pliny the Elder (VI, 31s. 36) and Strabo (II, page 102). The Scholiast to Plato's Republic (page 327) says that the victory of the Athenians over the Atlanteans was represented on one of the pepli dedicated at the Panathenaea. His exact statement is:

"The Lesser Panathenaea are celebrated at the Piraeus. In these a second peplus was dedicated to the goddess, on which was represented the Athenians, as her foster children, conquering in the war against the Atlanteans." It has been suggested that this note arose from a misunderstanding of a passage in the commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus, in which Callias is said to have woven a myth worthy of Athena, but thus to explain away the explicit statement of the Scholiast seems unjustifiable, since the suggested "explanation" is itself purely conjectural. Donnelly has pointed out that: "Plato tells us that Atlantis abounded in both cold and hot springs. It is a singular confirmation of the story that hot springs abound in the Azores, which are the surviving fragments of Atlantis, and hot springs are a common feature of regions subject to volcanic convulsions. "Plato says: 'The whole country was very lofty and precipitous on the side towards the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains which descended toward the sea.' One has but to look at the profile of the 'Dolphin's Ridge' as revealed by the deep-sea soundings of the Challenger.... to see that this is a faithful description of that precipitous elevation. 'The surrounding mountains' which sheltered the plain from the north are represented in the present towering peaks of the Azores." (Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis, page 123) In explanation of Plato's statement about the first earth-born inhabitants of Atlantis, Evenor and his wife, Leucippe, H.P. Blavatsky says that the philosopher "....describes the first couple, from whom the whole island was peopled, as being formed of the Earth. In saying so, he means neither Adam and Eve, nor yet his own Hellenic forefathers. His language is simply allegorical, and by alluding to 'Earth' he means 'matter,' as the Atlanteans were really the first purely human and terrestrial race - those that preceded it being more divine and ethereal than human and solid." (Secret Doctrine, II, 266) Attention is also called to Madame Blavatsky's declaration that: "Many a time Atlantis is spoken of under another name, one unknown to our commentators. The power of names is great, and was known since the first men were instructed by the divine masters. And as Solon had studied it, he translated the 'Atlantean' names into names devised by himself. In connection with the continent of Atlantis, it is desirable to bear in mind that the accounts which have come down to us from the old Greek writers contain a confusion of statements, some referring to the great continent and others to the last small island." Plutarch in his treatise "On the Face appearing in the Orb of the Moon," has the following interesting passage: "'An island Ogygia lies in Ocean's arms' [Odyssey, VII, 244], distant about five days' sail westward from Britain, and before it there are three others, of an equal distance from one another and also from that, bearing northwest, where the sun sets in summer. In one of these the barbarians feign that Cronus is detained prisoner by Zeus, who, as his son, having the

guard or keeping of those islands and the adjacent sea, named the Cronian, has his seat a little below; and that the continent by which the great sea is circularly environed is distant from Ogygia about five thousand stadia, but from the others not so far, men rowing thither in galleys, the sea being there low and ebb and difficult to be passed through by great vessels because of the mud brought thither by a multitude of rivers, which, coming from the mainland, discharge thmselves into it and raise there great bars and shelves which choke up the river and render it hardly navigable; whence anciently there arose an opinion of its being frozen. "Moreover, the coasts of this continent lying on the sea are inhabited by Greeks about a bay not much smaller than the Maeotic, the mouth of which lies in a direct line over against that of the Caspian Sea. These name and esteem themselves the inhabitants of the firm land, calling all us others islanders, as dwelling in a land encompassed round about and washed by the sea. And they think that those who heretofore came thither with Heracles and were left there by him, mixing themselves with the people of Cronus, raised up again the Greek nation, which was well near extinguished, brought under and supplanted by the language, laws and manners of the barbarians, and made it again flourish and recover its pristine vigor. And therefore in that place they give the first honor to Heracles and the second to Cronus. "Now when the star of Cronus, by us called Phaenon and by them Nycturus, comes to the sign of Taurus, as it does once in the time of thirty years, they, having been a long time preparing what is necessary for a solemn sacrifice and a long voyage or navigation, send forth those on whom the lots fall to row in that vast sea and make their abode for a great while in foreign countries. These men then, being embarked and departed, meet with different adventures, some in one manner, others in another. Now such as have in safety passed the danger of the sea go first ashore in those opposite islands, which are inhabited by the Greeks, where they see that the sun is scarce hidden one full hour during the space of thirty days and that this is their night, of which the darkness is but small, as having twilight from the going down of the sun not unlike the dawning of the day; that having continued there ninety days, during which they are highly caressed and honored, as being reputed and termed holy men, they are afterwards conducted by the winds and transported into the isle of Cronus, where there are no other inhabitants but themselves and such as have been sent thither before them. "For though it is lawful for them, after they have served Cronus for thirty years, to return home to their own countries and houses, yet most of them choose rather to remain quietly there; some, because they are already accustomed to the place; others, because without any labor and trouble they have abundance of all things, as well for the offering of sacrifices and holding festival solemnities, as to support the ordinary expenses of those who are perpetually conversant in the study of learning and philosophy. For they affirm the nature of the island and the mildness of the air which environs it to be admirable; and that there have been some persons who, intending to depart thence, have been hindered by the Divinity or Genius of the place showing himself to them, as to his familiar friends and acquaintances, not only in dreams and exterior signs, but also visibly appearing to them by the means of familiar spirits discoursing and conversing with them. For they say that Cronus himself is personally there, lying asleep in the deep cave of a hollow rock, shining like fine gold, Zeus having prepared sleep instead of fetters and shackles to keep him from stirring; but that there are on the top of this rock certain birds, which fly down and carry to him ambrosia; that the whole island is filled with an admirable fragrancy and perfume, which is spread all over it, arising from this cave, as from an odoriferous fountain; and that these Daemons serve and minister to Cronus, having been his courtiers and nearest attendants when he held the empire and exercised regal authority over men and gods; and that having the science of divining

future occurrences, they of themselves foretell many things; but the greatest and of the highest importance, when they return from assisting Cronus and reveal his dreams; for whatever Zeus premeditates, Cronus dreams, but his awakenings are Titanical passions or perturbations of the soul in him, which sleep altogether controls in order that the royal and divine nature may be pure and uncontaminate in itself." In Homer Ogygia is described as "....a sea-girt island, the navel of the sea. Woody the island is and there Calypso, a goddess, dwells, daughter of wizard Atlas, who knows the depth of every sea and through his power holds the tall pillars which keep earth and sky asunder." (Odyssey, I, 50-54) Since Calypso was the daughter of Atlas it would seem natural to connect Ogygia, in some ways at least, with Atlantis, although some scholars have identified Ogygia with Ireland and others with Iceland, because, according to Plutarch, it lies directly west of Britain. The statement that the barbarians claimed that Cronus was confined on one of the three islands lying near Ogygia is noteworthy because ordinarily the realm of Cronus was identified with the Islands of the Blessed, although originally, according to H.P. Blavatsky, the kingdom of Cronus (or Saturn) was Lemuria, the Third Continent. This, however (she adds) was confused even several thousand years before our era with Atlantis, the Fourth Continent. (Secret Doctrine, II, 768) She also calls attention to the following distinction in regard to the use of the term "Atlantis": "To make a difference between Lemuria and Atlantis, the ancient writers referred to the latter as the northern or Hyperborean Atlantis and to the former as the southern. Thus Apollodorus says (Mythology, Book II): 'The golden apples carried away by Heracles are not, as some think, in Libya; they are in the Hyperborean Atlantis.'" (Secret Doctrine, II, 770) Also in this connection the following quotation from Baldwin's Prehistoric Nations is of interest: "Cronus, or Saturn, Dionysus, Hyperion, Atlas, Heracles, were all connected with a 'great Saturnian continent': they were kings that ruled over countries on the western shores of the Mediterranean, Africa and Spain. One account says: 'Hyperion, Atlas and Saturn, or Cronus, were sons of Uranus, who reigned over a great kingdom composed of countries around the western part of the Mediterranean, with certain islands in the Atlantic. Hyperion succeeded his father and was killed by the Titans. The kingdom was then divided between Atlas and Saturn - Atlas taking Northern Africa with the Atlantic islands and Saturn the countries on the opposite shore of the Mediterranean to Italy and Sicily.'" (Page 357) Since Plutarch says that on the three islands near Ogygia the sun sets only for a single hour in the space of thirty days, they must be thought of as lying considerably nearer to the Pole than the Azores. Therefore, Bailly supposed that Ogygia and Atlantis were one and the same, namely, according to his belief, the island of Iceland, and believed that the three other islands nearby were Greenland, Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla - the last of which lies close to a large bay formed by the river Obi and situated directly opposite to the Caspian Sea, thus fitting with Plutarch's description. Against the identification of Ogygia with Atlantis is the fact that Poseidonis, the island described by Plato, was submerged 9000 years before the age of Solon, who was born about 638 B.C. and died about 558 B.C., but Plutarch speaks of Ogygia

as actually existing in his own days. Ogygia was a famous oracular island and was celebrated for the worship of Hyperborean Apollo. Faber writes: "I am persuaded that the tradition of the sinking of the Phlegyan Isle is the very same as that of the sinking of the island of Atlantis. They both appear to me to allude to the one great event, the sinking of the old world beneath the waters of the Deluge." (A Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri, 1803; II, page 283) This statement of Faber's seems doubtful, to say the least, for the people of Phlegyas were, according to Pausanias, Boeotian Greeks, who originally associated with the people of Orchomenus, but who later "....in their folly and audacity withdrew from the Orchomenians and attracted about themselves the neighboring peoples, and eventually led an army against Delphi to plunder the temple, but when Philammon with some picked Argives came against them, he and they were slain in the ensuing battle.... And the people of Phlegyas were entirely overthrown by frequent flashes of lightning and violent earthquakes and the survivors were destroyed by an epidemic, all except a few who escaped to Phocis." (IX, 36, 1) Faber was led to his belief in the identity of the Phlegyan isle with Atlantis by the similarity which exists between the names Phlegra and Phlegyas. Phlegra was the ancient name of Pallene, the most westerly of the three headlands of the Chalcidice, which, according to mythology, was the scene of the battle between the gods and the earth-born giants; and, in the words of H.P. Blavatsky, "the Atlanteans were the same as the Titans and the Giants." (Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, page 264) Also, it seems wrong to connect the mythical floating island upon which Apollo and Artemis were born, later identified with the island of Delos among the Cyclades, with Atlantis; apparently this tradition refers rather to the first continent or perhaps the second or Hyperborean continent, for H.P. Blavatsky says: "The island of Delos, the Asteria of Greek mythology, was never in Greece, a country which, in its day, was not yet in existence, not even in molecular form. Several writers have shown that it represented a country or an island, far larger than the small dot of land which became Greece. Both Pliny and Diodorus Siculus place it in the northern seas. One calls it Basilea or 'royal' (Vol. II, p. 25 of Diodorus): the other, Pliny, names it Osericta (Book XXXVII, c. 20), a word, according to Rudbeck (Vol. I, pp. 462-464) having had 'a significance in the northern languages, equivalent to the island of the divine Kings or God-Kings,' or again the 'royal island of the gods,' because the gods were born there, i.e., the divine dynasties of the kings of Atlantis proceeded from that place. Let geographers and geologists seek for it among the group of islands discovered by Nordenskiold on his Vega voyage in the Arctic regions." (Secret Doctrine, II, 773) Atlantean traditions are preserved not only in the legends which are recounted by various of the classical authors regarding a lost continent and islands in the mid-Atlantic, but also in the Greek myths concerning the Titans, and in particular in those dealing with Atlas and his family (Atlas is usually represented as the son of the Titan Tapetus), and in the story of the Battle of the Gods and Giants. In the words of H P. Blavatsky: "The myth of Atlas is an allegory easily understood. Atlas is the old continents of

Lemuria and Atlantis, combined and personified in one symbol. The poets attribute to Atlas, as to Proteus, a superior wisdom and a universal knowledge, and especially a thorough acquaintance with the depths of the ocean; because both continents bore races instructed by divine masters and because both were transferred to the bottom of the seas, where they now slumber until their next reappearance above the waters. Atlas is the son of an ocean nymph and his daughter is Calypso, 'the watery deep' (See Hesiod's Theogony, 507-509, and Odyssey, I, 51); Atlantis has been submerged beneath the waters of the ocean and its progeny is now sleeping its eternal sleep on the ocean floors. The Odyssey makes of him the guardian and 'sustainer' of huge pillars that separate the heavens from the earth (I, 52-53). He is their 'supporter.' And as both Lemuria, destroyed by submarine fires, and Atlantis, submerged by the waves, perished in the ocean deeps, Atlas is said to have been compelled to leave the surface of the earth and join his father Iapetos in the depths of Tartarus." (Secret Doctrine, II, 762) "The conception [of Atlas as the supporter of the heavens] was certainly due to the gigantic mountain chain running along the terrestrial border (or disc). These mountain peaks plunged their roots into the very bottom of the seas, while they raised their heads heavenward, their summits beings lost in the clouds. The ancient continents had more mountains than valleys on them. Atlas and the Teneriffe Peak, now two of the dwarfed relics of the two lost continents, were once thrice as lofty during the days of Lemuria, and twice as high in that of Atlantis. Thus, the Libyans called Mount Atlas 'the pillar of Heaven,' according to Herodotus (IV, 184) and Pindar qualified the later Aetna as 'the celestial pillar' (Pyth., I, 20; Decharme, 315). Atlas was an inaccessible island peak in the days of Lemuria, when the African continent had not yet been raised. It is the sole western relic which survives, independent, of the continent on which the Third Race was born, developed and fell, for Australia is now part of the Eastern Continent. Proud Atlas, according to esoteric tradition, having sunk one third of its size into the waters, its two parts remained as an heirloom of Atlantis. "This does not mean that Atlas is the locality where it fell, for this took place in Northern and Central Asia; but that Atlas formed part of the continent." (Secret Doctrine, II, 763) In regard to Mount Atlas, Proclus in his Commentary on Plato's Timaeus has the following note: "According to Heracleitus, he who passes through a region very difficult of access, will arrive at the Atlantic Mountain, the magnitude of which is said to be so great by the Ethiopian historians that it reaches the aether and sends forth a shadow as far as five thousand stadia. For the sun is concealed by it from the ninth hour of the day [that is, 3 o'clock in the afternoon] until it entirely sets.... And Marcellus, who wrote the Ethiopian History, not only relates that the Atlantic Mountain was of such a great height, but Ptolemy also says that the Lunar Mountains are immensely high." (Commentary on p. 25) The genealogy of Atlas differs, as given by various classical authors. According to Sanchoniathon, Atlas was one of the four sons of Uranus and Gaea - Heaven and Earth while the Scholiast upon Aratus represents him as the son of Uranus by Clymene, a daughter of Oceanus. Prometheus and Epimetheus are his brothers. Apollodorus, on the other hand, makes Atlas not a brother of the Titan Cronus but his nephew, and gives as the father of Atlas, Japetus, and as the mother, Asia, a daughter of Oceanus. Proclus describes Atlas and his two brothers as the children of Iapetus either by Asope or Clymene or Themis, the last of whom was one of the seven Titanides.

Sanchoniathon says that Atlas was thrown by his brother Cronus into a deep pit. He is said to have had at least three wives: namely, Pleione, a daughter of Oceanus and the mother of the Pleiades; Aethra, the mother of the Hyades; and Hesperis, the mother of the Hesperides. It should be noted that the parents of all three of these classes of nymphs are variously given, although in this article only the commoner forms of the myths are mentioned. The Pleiades, originally seven in number, are thus explained by H.P. Blavatsky: "The Greek allegories give to Atlas or Atlantis seven daughters (seven sub-races), whose respective names are Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Sterope, Merope, Alcyone and Celaeno. This ethnologically, as they are credited with having married gods and with having become the mothers of famous heroes, the founders of many nations and cities. Astronomically, the Atlantides have become the seven Pleiades (?) In occult science the two are connected with the destinies of nations, those destinies being shaped by the past events of their early lives according to Karmic law." (Secret Doctrine, II, 768) The Pleiades are said to have killed themselves because of grief at the death of their sisters, the Hyades, or because of grief at the fate of their father Atlas; or, according to another myth, they were nymphs in the train of Artemis, and when pursued by the hunter Orion they were metamorphosed into doves (peleiadez). Both stories agree that they were finally placed as stars at the back of Taurus, where they form a cluster resembling a bunch of grapes; but only six of them are now visible because either Sterope became invisible from shame at having loved a mortal man, or Electra, the mother of Dardanus, the first king of Troy, because of her grief at the fall of that city. The name of the Hyades is obviously connected with a Greek root indicating "to rain." Their number, individual names and descent are given variously by different authors, but commonly, like the Pleiades, the Hyades are said to have been seven and to have been transformed into a constellation, and their names are given as Ambrosia, Eudora, Pedile, Coronis, Polyxo, Phyto, and Thyene or Dione. Pherecydes, the logographer, mentions only six, and says that they were appointed by Zeus as nurses to the infant Dionysus. The story which declares that they were the daughters of Atlas relates that their number was twelve or fifteen, and that at first only five of them were placed among the stars as Hyades, and that the remaining seven or ten were later transformed into the constellation of the Pleiades as a reward for their sisterly love displayed at the death of their brother Hyas, who had been killed in Libya by a wild beast. The Hesperides, variously given as three, four or seven in number, were the famous guardians of the golden apples which Gaea or Earth had given to Hera at the time of her marriage with Zeus. Their names are usually given as Aegle, Erytheia, Hesperia and Arethusa. They are said to have possessed the power of sweet song and to have lived on the Ocean Stream in the extreme west. They were assisted in their watch over the golden apples by the dragon Ladon. Atlas, the son of Iapetus, like his father (because he had assisted Cronus against Zeus) was doomed to stand in the far west and bear the heavens upon his shoulders. He was first regarded as a divinity of the sea and later as a mountain. Heracles' eleventh labor was to fetch the golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. This the hero did by temporarily relieving Atlas of his burden of the heavens and sending the Titan to get the apples for him. Perseus also, after he had slain the Gorgon, reached the realm of Atlas by the help of his winged sandals, and when Atlas tried to drive him away, Perseus, by exposing Medusa's head, changed the giant into a mountain of stone . The Atreiclae, Theseus, and the kings of Troy were said to be descended from Atlas. The myth of Niobe is also explained by

H.P. Blavatsky as connected with Atlantis, for she says: "The quarrel of Latona with Niobe (the Atlantean race) - the mother of seven sons and seven daughters personifying the seven sub-races of the Fourth Race and their seven branches (see Apollodorus for this number) - allegorizes the history of the two continents [that is, Lemuria and Atlantis]." (Secret Doctrine, II, 771) Other myths also doubtless are connected with Atlantis, and Donnelly even goes so far as to declare that "the history of Atlantis is the key of Greek mythology." (page 285) He further believes that Atlantis is the original of which the Garden of Eden, the Garden of the Hesperides, the Elysian Fields, the Mesomphalus, the Gardens of Alcinous, Olympus and Asgard are only copies. And among the ancients, Diodorus Siculus records that the Atlanteans boasted of possessing the land in which all the gods had been born, as also of having Uranus, who taught them astronomy, for their first king. (III, 53; cf. 54ff and V, 19-20) Therefore, apparently basing his belief upon this statement of Diodorus Siculus, Donnelly further maintains that "The gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the Phoenicians and Hindus and the Scandinavians were simply the kings, queens and heroes of Atlantis, and the acts attributed to them in mythology are a confused recollection of real historical events." (p. 2) Although the sinking of Atlantis is not the only deluge that has occurred in the course of the ages, it seems reasonable to infer that the legends of world-floods, which are related with many points of striking similarity by practically all the peoples of the Old and New Worlds, refer in part at least to the destruction of Atlantis. Thus, H.P. Blavatsky declares: "It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth century A.D., should have always maintained that man was born and dwelt at first in a country beyond the Ocean, a proof of which had been given him in India by a learned Chaldaean (Cosmas Indicopleustes in Collect. nova patrum, T. II, p. 188; also see Journ. des Savants, Suppl. 1707, p. 20). He says: 'The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky; and it is in this land that man was created and lived in paradise. During the deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his posterity now inhabits.'" - Ibid. (Secret Doctrine, II, 399) "No occultist would ever think of dispossessing Noah of his prerogatives, if he claimed to be an Atlantean; for this would simply show that the Israelites repeated the story of Vaivasvata Manu, Xisuthrus, and so many others, and that they only changed the name, to do which they had the same right as any other nation or tribe. What we object to is the literal acceptation of Biblical chronology, as it is absurd, and in accord with neither geological data nor reason. Moreover, if Noah was an Atlantean, then he was a Titan, a giant, as Vaber shows; and if a giant, then why is he not shown as a giant in Genesis?" (II, 265) The common Greek account of the Flood runs thus: In the Age of Iron crime filled the world with its horrors, while modesty, truth and honor were forced to flee to the heavens. The gifts of the earth were misapplied to wicked uses, and slaughter reddened all the lands, until the gods, one by one, abandoned the world. The last to do so was Astraea, the goddess of innocence and purity. Therefore, Zeus summoned the gods in council and they traveled along the Milky Way to the Palace of Heaven, where Zeus announced to them the necessity

of destroying mankind and of starting to repopulate the world with a new race. To accomplish this he decided to flood the earth, fearing that fire might destroy even heaven itself. Not satisfied with his own waters, the rains of the sky, Zeus called also upon his brother Poseidon to aid him by placing the waters of the world at his disposal. Thus the race of men was quickly destroyed and Mount Parnassus alone of all the mountains of the earth overtopped the waves. There Deucalion, a son of Prometheus, and Deucalion's wife, Pyrrha, a daughter of Epimetheus, found refuge in a ship filled with provisions, or an ark or coffer, which Deucalion built upon the advice of Prometheus. Deucalion and Pyrrha were saved because the one was a just man and the other a faithful worshiper of the gods. After the waters subsided these two disembarked and entered a temple, where they prayed for help and guidance; whereupon an oracle bade them to depart with their heads veiled and their garments unbound, and to cast behind them the bones of their mother. At first they were in dismay and did not understand the meaning of the oracle's command, until finally Deucalion remembered that the earth is the common parent of all and that the stones are her bones. Therefore, he and his wife did as they were bidden, and the stones became soft and assumed the outlines of humanity; those thrown by Deucalion became men and those cast by Pyrrha women. Thus was born a new race: hardy and well adapted to labor. One form of the tradition says that Deucalion had lived at Athens, and that the sanctuary of the Olympian Zeus was there established by him, and within this sacred precinct in later times was shown a fissure in the ground through which tradition declared the water of the flood had been swallowed up, and every year on the third day of the spring festival of the Anthesteria - the day of mourning devoted to the dead, a day which occurred on the thirteenth of the month named Anthesterion, that is to say, about the beginning of March - water was poured into this fissure; and flour and honey was poured into the trench which was dug to the west of the nearby tomb of Deucalion. The author of the treatise, probably falsely attributed to Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess, gives the following account of this Greek tradition regarding the Flood: "The generality of people tell us that the founder of the temple was Deucalion Sisythes - that Deucalion in whose time the great inundation occurred. I have also heard the account given by the Greeks themselves of Deucalion; the myth runs thus: The actual race of men is not the first, for there was a previous one, all the members of which perished. We belong to a second race, descended from Deucalion and multiplied in the course of time. As to the former men, they are said to have been full of insolence and pride, committing many crimes, disregarding their oath, neglecting the rights of hospitality, unsparing to suppliants; accordingly, they were punished by an immense disaster. All on a sudden enormous volumes of water issued from the earth and rains of extraordinary abundance began to fall; the rivers left their beds and the sea overflowed its shores; the whole earth was covered with water and all men perished. Deucalion alone, because of his virtue and piety, was preserved to give birth to a new race. This is how he was saved: he placed himself, his children and his wife in a great coffer (or ark) that he had, in which pigs, horses, lions, serpents, and all other terrestrial animals came to seek refuge with him. He received them all and while they were in the ark Zeus inspired them with reciprocal amity, which prevented their devouring one another. In this manner, shut up within the ark, they floated as long as the waters remained in force. Such is the account given by the Greeks of Deucalion." A variant Greek legend represents the Greek Noah not as Deucalion but as Ogyges, who is sometimes said to be a mythical king of Boeotia and sometimes of Attica. Everywhere - among the Hebrews, the Aryans, the Phoenicians, the Cushites and the inhabitants of

America - are found traditions of a world-deluge. Therefore, after reviewing these legends comparatively, Francois Lenormant says: "The result authorizes us to affirm the story of the Deluge to be a universal tradition among all branches of the human race, with the one exception, however, of the black. Now, a recollection thus precise and concordant cannot be a myth voluntarily invented.... It must arise from the reminiscence of a real and terrible event, so powerfully impressing the imagination of the first ancestors of our race as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. This cataclysm must have occurred near the first cradle of mankind and before the dispersion of the families from which the principal races were to spring; for it would be at once improbable and uncritical to admit that, at as many different points of the globe as we should have to assume in order to explain the widespread character of these traditions, local phenomena so exactly alike should have occurred, their memory having assumed an identical form and presenting circumstances that need not necessarily have occurred to the mind in such cases.... (Therefore) we do not hesitate to declare that, far from being a myth, the Biblical Deluge is a real and historical fact, having, to say the least, left its impress on the ancestors of three races the Aryan or Indo-European, the Semitic or Syro-Arabian, the Chamitic or Cushite - that is to say, on the three great civilized races of the ancient world, those which constitute the higher humanity - before the ancestors of those races had as yet separated and in the part of Asia they together inhabited." (Contemporary Review, Nov. 1879) Three points of parallelism between the Biblical account of the Flood, as given in Genesis (Chapters six to eight, inclusive), and Plato's description of Atlantis, should be noted, namely, Firstly, that the land submerged was that in which the civilization of the human race is said to have begun; secondly, that the reason for the destruction of mankind is said to have been the wickedness of the antediluvians, who were originally noble, a divine race, "sons of God," but who intermarried with an inferior stock, "the daughters of men"; and, thirdly, in both accounts the destruction was brought about by means of a flood. Also, in connection with the ten kingdoms into which Atlantis was divided, according to Plato, the following remarks of Lenormant and Chevallier are of interest: "In the number given in the Bible for the antediluvian patriarchs we have the first instance of a striking agreement with the traditions of various nations. Ten are mentioned in the Book of Genesis. Other nations, to whatever epoch they carry back their ancestors, whether before or after the Deluge, whether the mythical or historical character prevail, they are constant to this sacred number ten, which some have vainly attempted to connect with the speculations of later religious philosophers on the mystical value of numbers. In Chaldaea, Berosus enumerates ten antediluvian kings whose fabulous reign extended to thousands of years. The legends of the Iranian race commence with the reign of ten Peisdadien (Poseidon?) kings, 'men of the ancient law, who lived on pure Homa (water of life) (nectar?), and who preserved their sanctity.' In India we meet with nine Brahmadikas, who with Brahma, their founder, make ten, and who are called the Ten Pitris or Fathers. The Chinese count ten emperors, partakers of the divine nature, before the dawn of historical times. The Germans believed in the ten ancestors of Odin, and the Arabs in the ten mythical kings of the Adites." (Lenormant and Chevallier, Ancient History of the East, I, 13) Professor Alexander Winchell writes: "The Gauls possessed traditions upon the subject of Atlantis which were collected by

the Roman historian Timagenes, who lived in the first century before Christ. He represents that three distinct people dwelt in Gaul: (1) The indigenous population, which I suppose to be Mongoloids, who had long dwelt in Europe; (2) The invaders from a distant island, which I understand to be Atlantis; (3) The Aryan Gauls." (Adamites and Pre-Adamites, Syracuse, 1878, page 380) As the subject of this paper is the classical authors and Atlantis, no attempt has been made to adduce all the known evidence proving Atlantis to have once existed. Such evidence falls chiefly under four heads, namely: (1) the testimony of deep-sea soundings; (2) the distribution of similar fauna and flora in Europe and America; (3) the similarity in religious beliefs in the native races both of Europe and America; and (4) the testimony of ancient writers, ancient traditions and flood-legends. Those desiring to study the evidence falling under the first three heads are referred to Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, especially to the second volume, pages 778, 781-782, 789-793, et passim. (Vol. 11, 488-512) ------------------The Prehistoric Aegean Civilization - F. S. Darrow, Ph.D. [abridged] The Nationality of the Aegeans The probability of the truth of the surmise that many of the prehistoric Aegean inscriptions may be written in Pelasgian rather than Greek will appear more clearly when we have completed our consideration of the vexed question as to the nationality of the prehistoric Aegeans. It also may well be that the syllabary used on the island of Cyprus until late Ptolemaic times represents the last remnants of the prehistoric Aegean pictographs. Apparently the prehistoric Aegean world, although dominated by a similar form of culture, was composed of many small states. For a time, at least, these were probably largely dominated by Crete, with Cnossus as its capital. Many considerations point to Crete as the queen of the Aegean and to Cretan merchants as the carriers of the prehistoric times. There was an extensive sea-trade - a sea-trade which reached not only to the Troad and to Egypt, but even to northern Europe; for Aegean influences traveled up the Hebrus and the Danube, while amber from the shores of the Baltic was imported in exchange for gold and bronze. Vases of Aegean manufacture have also been found in vaulted tombs of Syracuse, and on the island of Cyprus there were actually Aegean settlements. Since the epoch-making discoveries of Schliemann many scholars have exercised their ingenuity with widely different results in the attempt to identify the nationality of the men who originated and developed the prehistoric Aegean civilization. The Aegeans have been variously identified with the Phoenicians, the Leleges, the Carians, the Phrygians, the Pelasgians, the Hittites, and even the Goths and Byzantines, to mention only a few of the many guesses. The usual view today is that the makers of the civilization were a non-Greek and presumably non-Indo-European people, very probably of Hamitic stock, closely akin to the ancient Egyptians. The type of men represented in prehistoric Aegean art, the similarity

between some of the early remains found in the Aegean basin and finds made in Egypt have all led to the theory that the people who produced the Neolithic and Bronze Age culture of the Aegean basin were of the same stock as the ancient Egyptians. Even pyramids, although apparently rare, were not unknown in Aegean architecture, as is shown by the discovery of the Pyramid of Cenchreae, and of one or two other similar structures, extant in Greek lands. Also a large number of representations of men in prehistoric Aegean art are quite unHellenic in appearance. Among these must be classed the Fisherman of Phylakopi.... So, also, there is an un-Hellenic suggestion in the features of the so-called Divers found at Cnossus, one of which may be seen on Plate ---. This is one of two fragmentary statuettes about a foot high, found in a treasure-chest below the floor of a small chamber south of the Throne Room of the palace, and affords one of the best proofs of the skill attained by the Aegean artists in rendering the human figure in the round. Both figures seem to be youths poised for a dive, but it is thought more probable that they are leaping in the game of bull-catching, taurokathapsia, which was a favorite sport of the prehistoric Aegeans. The two statuettes, presumably, were mounted so as to form parts of a larger composition, but the way in which they were mounted is quite unknown; for there is no sign of attachment, although the figures are in a most unstable equilibrium. Their freedom and grace baffles description, and not only are the muscles faithfully rendered but even the veins in the back of the hand. The hair is represented by curly bronze wire, plaited with gold. Two more statuettes may be seen on Plate ---. These, however, are of glazed pottery or porcelain, not of ivory. They belong to the Third Middle Aegean period and are usually dated about 1800 B.C. Like the Fisherman and the "Diver" they also have a somewhat unHellenic appearance. They were found in the temple repository of the second palace at Cnossus and may represent the Snake Goddess and one of her votaries.... A few words ought to be noted here in regard to what is known about the religious ideas of the prehistoric Aegeans. The chief pre-Hellenic divinity was the goddess who nurtures all living creatures, not only on earth but also in the underworld. She is represented even in the earliest Neolithic times and many representations of her have been discovered on all the well-known sites on the mainland, as well as on the islands. With her are associated doves and snakes, symbolizing her connection both with the air and the earth. Usually she is conceived as kindly and pacific, but at times she appears in her more severe aspect as the Lady of Wild Life. The dove suggests Aphrodite and the snake Athena. The bull, the chief object of sacrifice, was offered in her honor, and bull's horns were set up on the altars, shrines, and palaces. Actual scenes of worship are often represented. In these, priestesses carrying the double-headed Aegean ax and dancing before a shrine of the Goddess, play a prominent part, and men seem to have performed only a subordinate role in the sacred rites. Sometimes priestesses present flowers, lilies and irises, to the seated Goddess, who herself not infrequently wears an iris in her hair. Probably, therefore, both the lily and the iris in the Aegean world, like the lotus of Egypt, had a symbolic and a religious meaning. The doubleheaded ax seems to have been used both as a symbol for divine power and as a royal device. Thus, we learn from Plutarch that this ax was the royal emblem of Lydia from prehistoric times clown to the seventh century B.C. Because of the birth stories of Zeus, his title of "Zeus of the Double Ax" and the fame of his connections with Crete, it seems at first sight strange that Aegean archaeology offers such slight evidence of such a god as Zeus. Therefore, it is now believed that Zeus was introduced into Crete by the Achaean Hellenes near the close of the Bronze Age; that these Greek invaders of Crete represented their god as the son of the earlier Earth Goddess, in whose cave they said he was born; and that they bestowed upon the newcomer the earlier symbol of sovereignty and power, namely, the double-headed ax. Characteristics of the

prehistoric Great Goddess reappear in the Greek myths of Rhea, Hera, Ge, Demeter, Athena, Aphrodite, and Artemis. Light in regard to the nationality of the prehistoric Aegeans can be gained by comparing the statements of Madame H.P. Blavatsky with those made in the writings of Plato and Herodotus. Thus, in the article published in The Theosophist for 1883, to which reference has already been made, it is said that the origin of "the old or pre-Hellenic Greeks" "....must be carried far into the mists of that prehistoric period, that mythical age, which inspires the modern historian with such a feeling of squeamishness that anything creeping out of its abysmal depths is sure to be instantly dismissed as a deceptive phantom, the mythos of an idle tale, or a later fable unworthy of serious notice." The article continues: "....the Greek tradition is possibly more truly historical than many a so-called historical event."* -----------* From "Some Enquiries Suggested by Esoteric Buddhism," in The Theosophist for October 1883, Vol. V, p. 3; republished in Five Years of Theosophy, 2d. ed., page 192. -----------Plato in the Timaeus says: "The citizens of Sais [in Egypt] are great lovers of the Athenians and say that they are in some way related to them." For, he adds, the same goddess was "....the common patron and protector and educator of both cities, but she founded Athens a thousand years before Sais, receiving from Earth and Hephaestus the seed of the Athenians, and then she founded Sais, the constitution of which is set down in its sacred registers as 8000 years old. "Thither [to Sais] came Solon [the lawgiver of Athens, born about 638 B.C.] who was received by the citizens with great honor; and he asked the priests who were the most skillful in such matters about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old." (Timaeus, 21-23) Said the priests to Solon: "You do not know that there dwelt in your land [of Greece] the fairest, and noblest race of men which ever lived, of whom you and your whole city are but a seed or remnant." (Timaeus, 23) Madame Blavatsky, in commenting on this last statement declares that "the Greeks were but a dwarfed and weak remnant of that once glorious nation." "What was this nation? The secret doctrine teaches that it was the latest, seventh subrace of the Atlanteans, already swallowed up in one of the early sub-races of the Aryan stock,

one that had been gradually spreading over the continent and islands of Europe, as soon as they had begun to emerge from the sea.* Descending from the high plateaux of Asia, where the two Races had sought refuge in the days of the agony of Atlantis, it had been slowly settling and colonizing the freshly-emerged lands. The emigrant sub-race had rapidly increased and multiplied on that virgin soil; had divided into many families, which in their turn divided into nations. Egypt and Greece, the Phoenicians, and the Northern stocks, had thus proceeded from that one sub-race. Thousands of years later, other races - the remnants of the Atlanteans, - "yellow and red, brown and black," began to invade the new continent. There were wars in which the newcomers were defeated, and they fled, some to Africa, others to remote countries. Some of these islands became in course of time - owing to new geological convulsions - islands. (Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, page 743) ----------* It should be noted that the term Aryan is here used in the technical Theosophical sense, which is not identical with the term Indo-European, as used in Comparative Philology. In the Theosophical terminology Aryan signifies the Fifth Root-Race. ----------The story of this invasion and of the defeat of the invaders is thus told in the Timaeus of Plato, where the Egyptian priests are described as recounting to Solon that: "Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your [that is, the Athenian] state in our [that is, the Egyptian] histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valor. For these histories tell of a mighty power, which was aggressing wantonly against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable: and there was an island situated in front of the Straits, which you call the Pillars of Heracles [that is, the Straits of Gibraltar]. This island was larger than Libya and Asia put together and was the way to other islands, and from these islands you might pass through the whole of the opposite continent, which surrounded the true ocean: for this sea [the Mediterranean], which is within the Straits of Heracles, is only a harbor, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea and the surrounding land may be most truly called a continent. Now on this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire, which ruled over the whole island and several others, as well as over parts of the continent, and besides these had subjugated the parts of Libya within the Pillars of Heracles as far as Egypt and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia [or Etruria]. The vast power thus gathered into one endeavored to subdue at one blow our country and yours and the whole land which was within the Straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind; for she was the first in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Greeks. And when the rest fell off from her, compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and freely liberated all the others who dwelt within the limits of Heracles. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of rain all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared and was sunk beneath the sea." (Timaeus, 24-25, cf. Critias, 108, Jowett's translation.) "Such were the ancient Athenians, and.... they righteously administered their own land and the rest of Greece. They were renowned all over Europe and Asia for the beauty of their persons and for the many virtues of their souls, and were more famous than any of their contemporaries." (Critias, 112)

In referring to these statements, Madame Blavatsky says that "the 9000 years were the correct figures" (Secret Doctrine, II, 395, cf. II, 749-750) and in the article already quoted, published in The Theosophist, are found the following significant words: "Now Atlantis.... sank over 9000 years before the Christian era. How, then, can one maintain that 'the old Greeks and Romans' were Atlanteans? How can this be, since both nations are Aryans [that is, members of the Fifth Root-Race]? Moreover, the western scholars know that the Greek and Latin languages were formed within historical periods, the Greeks and Latins themselves having no existence as nations 11,000 B.C. Surely, they who advance such a proposition do not realize how very unscientific is their statement! "Such [the article continues] are the criticisms passed, such the 'historical difficulty.' The culprits are fully alive to their perilous situation; nevertheless, they maintain the statement. The only thing which may perhaps be objected to, is that the names of the two nations are incorrectly used. It may be argued that to refer to the remote ancestors and their descendants equally as "Greeks and Romans" is an anachronism as marked as would be the calling of the ancient Keltic Gauls, or the Insubres, Frenchmen. As a matter of fact this is true.... but there may perhaps exist still weightier objections to calling the said people by any other name."* -----------* From "Some Enquiries Suggested by Esoteric Buddhism," in The Theosophist for October 1883, Vol. V, p. 3; republished in Five Years of Theosophy, 2d ed., pp. 196-197. -----------In regard to the nationality of these "old or pre-Hellenic Greeks," direct statements are made not only by H.P. Blavatsky but also by the ancients themselves. To quote first from Madame Blavatsky: "A people described as are the Pelasgi.... a highly intellectual, receptive, active people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary, though preferring peace; a people who built canals as no one else, subterranean waterworks, dams, walls, Cyclopean buildings of the most astonishing strength; who are even suspected of having been the inventors of the so-called Cadmean or Phoenician writing: characters from which all European alphabets are derived, who were they?" (Ibid., September 1883, Vol. IV, 302; republished, ibid., p. 170) "The Pelasgians were certainly one of the root-races of future Greece, and were a remnant of a sub-race of Atlantis. Plato hints as much in speaking of the latter, whose name it is averred came from pelagos, the great sea." (Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, page 774) Herodotus makes the following important remarks concerning the connection which existed between the prehistoric Athenians and the Pelasgians: "The Athenians, when the Pelasgians possessed that which is now called Hellas, were Pelasgians and went by the name of Cranai; under the reign of Cecrops they were surnamed Cecropidae, but when Erechtheus succeeded to the government, they changed their name for that of Athenians, and when Ion, son of Xuthus, became their leader, from him they were called Ionians." (VII,44)

"The Athenians were a Pelasgian nation, who had never emigrated, but the Spartans were a Hellenic nation and had very often changed their place of abode until at length, coming into the Peloponnesus, they were called Dorians." (I, 56) Furthermore, in discussing the question of the Pelasgian language, the same historian declares: "What language the Pelasgians spoke I cannot state with certainty, but if I may judge from those Pelasgians who still exist and who inhabit the city of Crestonia.... and who were formerly neighbors to those now called Dorians.... and if I may judge from those Pelasgians who settled at Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, and who once dwelt with the Athenians, and from such other cities which, although really Pelasgian, have changed their name - I say, if I may judge from these, the Pelasgians spoke a non-Hellenic tongue. And if all the Pelasgians did so, the Attic race, being Pelasgian, must, at the same time that it became Hellenic, have altered its language; for neither do the Crestonians use the same language with any of their neighbors, nor do the people of Placia, but both use the same language with each other; by which it appears they have taken care to preserve the character of the language which they brought with them into those places. The Hellenic race, however, I believe, from the time it became a people, have used the same language; although, when separated from the Pelasgians, they were at first insignificant, yet from a small beginning they have increased to a multitude of peoples." (I, 57-58) Combining these various statements, it appears that the earliest known inhabitants of the Greek lands in prehistoric times belonged to a non-Hellenic race which spoke a nonHellenic language, although this people, the Pelasgians, were racially related to the historic Hellenes, that is, to the Greeks of the Classical Age, and of the historic Greeks the Athenians were among those most purely descended from the old Pelasgian stock. Homer calls the Pelasgians "divine" and represents them with the Carians at the walls of Troy. Apparently, they included several nations and were extended throughout the Mediterranean Basin, for Niebuhr writes, in his History of Rome: "It is not as a mere hypothesis but with a full historical conviction that I assert there was a time when the Pelasgians, then perhaps more widely spread than any other people of Europe, extended from the Po and the Arno almost to the Bosphorus. The line of their possessions, however, was broken in Thrace; so that the chain between the Tyrrhenians of Asia and the Pelasgians of Argos was only kept up by the isles in.... the Aegean. "But in the days of the genealogists and of Hellanicus, all that was left of this immense race were solitary, detached, widely-scattered remnants, such as those of the Celtic tribes in Spain; like mountain-peaks that tower as islands, where floods have turned the plains into a sea. Like those Celts, they were conceived to be, not fragments of a great people but settlements formed by colonizing or emigration, in the same manner as those of the Greeks, which lay similarly dispersed." Tradition declares not only that the Athenians were descended from a Pelasgic stock but also that the Arcadians were sprung from the aboriginal Aegeans, that is, that they were of a non-Achaean or Pelasgic descent. Among the nations which were presumably Pelasgic may be named the Etruscans, who seem to have lived originally in Asia Minor, although at a relatively late date they sailed westward to Italy. They were called by the Greeks Tyrrhenians. Other nations presumably Pelasgic are the Leleges, the Carians, and the Pisidians.

The question of the racial affinity of the Eteocretans, that is, the "real Cretans," is at present unsolved. It has usually been assumed that they were the primitive inhabitants of the island, who were driven by successive immigrations of Achaean and Dorian tribes to the most western part of Crete, where they continued to exist even in historical times. On the basis of the inscribed stone slabs of Praesus in the interior of eastern Crete, Professors Burrows and Conway believe that the Eteocretans were an Indo-European people and consequently not Pelasgian. In this connection it is worth noting that in legends the Eteocretans are connected with the Lycians, and the Eteocretan hero Sarpedon, the brother of Minos, led a body of emigrants from Crete to Lycia. Professor Conway believes that he has found a special kinship between the Eteocretan language and the Venetic. Also, since Praesus, one of the most important of the Eteocretan settlements, does not seem to have been inhabited during the Early and Middle Aegean times, it has been inferred that the Eteocretans did not establish themselves in the interior of eastern Crete until probably as late as the third Late Aegean period. Strabo, however, believed that both the Cydonians and the Eteocretans were autochthonous on Crete. (p. 475) The many destructions and rebuildings of Troy point to invasions and migrations of several peoples. So the problem of the nationality of the prehistoric inhabitants of Troy may be even more complex than the usual problem which is presented by the other Aegean sites; but it seems probable to regard the Trojans of the Sixth City as Phrygians, that is, IndoEuropeans closely akin to the Hellenes and the Mysians, while the Trojans of the earlier cities may have been Pelasgians. H.P. Blavatsky, as has been already noted, in speaking of the Trojan War, states that: "The Trojan War is a historical event; and though even less than 1000 B.C. is the date assigned to it, yet in truth it is nearer 6000 than 5000 years B.C." (Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 437) May not this great discrepancy in dating be explained by the following circumstances? Greek legends tell of more than one Fall of Troy. Thus, Virgil refers to these legends in representing Anchises as saying when at first he refuses to flee with his son, Aeneas, after the murder of Priam: "It is enough and more than enough for me to have witnessed one sack of Troy, once to have outlived the capture of my city." (Aeneid, II, 642-643) The reference here is to the earlier capture of Troy by the renown hero Heracles. Also, it is recognized that frequently in legends, events which really extended over a long period of time have been grouped together and confused by being associated with other more or less related events of a much later age. Now the Second City of Troy, called by Schliemann the "Burnt City," is pre-eminently the city which was sacked and destroyed by invaders. May not, therefore, the Trojan War par excellence, which H.P. Blavatsky states occurred in the sixth millennium B.C., have been the war in the course of which the Second City was destroyed? The discovery, since Schliemann's death, that the Homeric City is not, as he believed, the Second City, but really the Sixth City, does not in itself tend to discredit this suggestion. May not the poet of the Iliad, like other bardic recorders of legends, have associated events actually belonging to widely separated eras? Greek legends, as already noted, refer to more than one sack of Troy, and Dr. Schliemann's spade on the Acropolis of Troy has unearthed at least nine superimposed cities, many of which were obviously destroyed by enemies. Although the Sixth or Mycenaean City may have been destroyed, as modern archaeologists

believe, about 1200 B.C., in this instance following the chronology handed down by the ancient Greeks themselves, the much earlier date given by Madame Blavatsky may well be that of the destruction of the Second or "Burnt" City, which had a very checkered career, for it was attacked and destroyed not only once but three times. Also, in prehistoric times Troy was closely connected with Crete. Thus, Anchises, "revolving in thought the tradition of men of old, cries" in the Aeneid: "Listen, lords of Troy, and learn where your hopes are. Crete lies in the midst of the deep, the island of mighty Jove. There is Mount Ida and there the cradle of our race. It has a hundred cities, a realm of richest plenty. Thence it was that our first father, Teucer, if I rightly recall what I have heard, came in the beginning to the Rhoetian coast and fixed on the site of empire: Ilion and the towers of Pergamus had not yet been reared: the people dwelt low in the valley. Hence came our mighty mother, the dweller on Mount Cybele, and the symbols of the Corybantes and the forest of Ida; hence the inviolate mystery of her worship and the lions harnessed to the car of their Queen." (Aeneid, III, 103-113, Conington's translation) The legendary accounts of the Hellenes speak of two invasions of the Aegean by Hellenic tribes: first, the invasion of the Achaeans; and secondly, the conquest of the Peloponnesus by the Dorians, an event which is known to mythology as the Return of the Heracleidae. In our study of the Cretan finds, attention has already been called to the circumstance that general catastrophes marked the ends of several of the Middle and Late Aegean periods, that is, the times contemporary with the XIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties of Egypt. The greatest catastrophe of all was the one which ended the second Late Aegean period, the Golden Age of Crete - the catastrophe which destroyed the later palace at Cnossus. This is contemporary with the rise of the mainland capitals of Mycenae and Tiryns and is usually dated about 1450 B.C. The catastrophes, of course, indicate conflicts, in some instances perhaps civil wars or struggles between neighbors, but for the most part probably invasions by a foreign people or peoples. It is usually thought that in the Late Aegean Age the Hellenic tribes known as the Achaeans invaded the Greek lands. Certainly the mainland capitals of Mycenae and Tiryns were Achaean cities, as is evident from the Homeric poems alone, to say nothing of other evidence. Therefore it would seem natural to regard the Achaeans as the destroyers of the later Cretan palaces at the end of the second Late Aegean period, were it not for the possibility that the archives of the Palace of Minos may prove to be written in Achaean Greek. Also, Professor Ridgeway has brought forward other evidence indicating that Minos was an Achaean, but Professor Ridgeway not only believes that Minos was an Achaean but he also identifies this most glorious of the kings of Cnossus with the principal barbarian leader who destroyed the prehistoric culture of Crete. To do this seems wantonly to disregard the traditions of mythology, and if it can be proved that the records of the Palace of Cnossus are written in Greek, Professor Ridgeway's suggested identification will almost necessarily prove to be untenable. The arguments which he has advanced will, presumably, be found to be only partly true, since Minos will probably be found to be an Achaean, the remodeler rather than the destroyer of the later Palace of Cnossus; and if, as seems probable, the Philistines were Achaeans, the first Hellenes may have invaded Crete not from the mainland of Greece, but from Asia Minor, and Minos may have been their leader. The Parian Chronicle states that there were two kings of Cnossus named Minos, and so also do Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch. The Chronicle dates Minos I as flourishing about 1406 B.C. This is considerably later than the end of the third Middle Aegean period, dated usually about 1700 B.C., which must have been the time of Minos I, if he is to be identified

with the remodeler of the later Palace of Cnossus. Minos I was the son of Zeus and Europa and was married to Ithonae; while Minos II lived somewhat later and was married to Pasiphae. Daedalus, the designer of the Labyrinth, is said to have worked for Minos II. Minos I was renowned for his justice, while Minos the grandfather of Idomeneus was wicked. Herodotus and Thucydides do not distinguish between two kings named Minos, but if there were two such kings, Thucydides is obviously writing of Minos I when he says: "Minos is the most ancient personage of whom we have knowledge, who acquired a navy. He made himself master of a very large part of what is now the Hellenic Sea [that is, the Aegean], and he both ruled over the Cyclades and became the founder of most of the settlements on the islands by driving out the Carians and by setting up in them his own sons as chieftains, and he cleared the sea of pirates in order that his revenues might reach him more freely." (I, 4) If Minos I was the remodeler of the Palace of Cnossus, Minos II was perhaps the last of the Cnossian kings, and the story of his death is thus given by Herodotus, although that historian does not distinguish between a Minos I and a Minos II. The "Father of History" thus writes: "lt is said that Minos, having come to Sicania, which is now called Sicily, in search of Daedalus, met with a violent death; that later the Cretans, urged on by some god, all except the Polichnitae and the Praesians, invaded Sicania with a large force and for five years besieged the city of Camicus, which in my time the Agrigentines possessed; and at last, not being able either to take it or to continue the siege, because they were checked by famine, abandoned the city and went away; and when they were sailing along the [Italian] coast of Iapygia, a violent storm overtook them and drove them ashore; and as their ships were broken to pieces and there seemed to be no means for them to return to Crete, they thereupon founded the city of Hyria and settled there, changing their name from Cretans to Mesapian Iapygians, becoming instead of islanders, inhabitants of the continent. From the city of Hyria they founded other cities, which a long time after the Tarentines endeavored to destroy but signally failed. "To Crete, then, destitute of inhabitants, as the Praesians say, other men, especially the Hellenes, went and settled there; and in the third generation after the death of Minos, the Trojan War [meaning the war which destroyed the Sixth or Mycenaean city at Troy, not the earlier "Burnt City"] took place, in which the Cretans proved themselves to be not the worst avengers of Menelaus. As a punishment for this, when they returned from Troy famine and pestilence fell both on themselves and their cattle; so that Crete for a second time was depopulated and the Cretans of today are descended from the third people to inhabit the island." (VII, 170-171) Therefore it appears that in the Third Late Aegean period, the age in which the mainland capitals of Mycenae and Tiryns rose in importance, Crete rapidly sunk from the pinnacle to which she had risen during her Golden Age, which directly preceded this last period of the prehistoric Aegean civilization, namely, the period to which the term "Mycenaean Age" may be properly applied. Virgil also refers to the calamities of Crete at the end of the prehistoric times, when he represents Aeneas as saying: "Fame flies abroad that King Idomeneus has been driven to quit his paternal realm; that the shores of Crete are abandoned, the houses cleared of our enemies." (Aeneid, III,

121-123) After weighing all the statements which have been quoted, as well as others of a similar import, the following tentative hypothesis seems most probably to be the true explanation. The catastrophe at the end of the third Middle Minoan period, dated usually about 1700 B.C., was caused by the invasion of the Achaeans into Crete. This is contemporary with the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. If this suggestion is true, then it was under an Achaean dynasty, of which the renowned Minos was the greatest king, that the later Palace of Cnossus was remodeled in the Golden Age of prehistoric Crete. But in a hymn discovered at Karnak in Egypt, the god Amen thus addresses Thotmes III, one of the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth Dynasty, who is usually dated about 1450 B.C., that is, contemporary with the second Late Aegean period: "I have come, I have given to thee to smite those who live in the midst of the Very Green [that is, the Aegean Sea] with thy roarings... The circuit of the Great Sea [the Mediterranean] is grasped in thy fist.... Keftiu [Crete?] and Asi [Cyprus?] are under thy power." (Inscription quoted in Hall, The Oldest Civilization of Greece, 1901, page 165) In connection with the interpretation of the Egyptian name Keftiu as Crete, it should be noted that Crete is presumably the Kaphtor of the Bible, while David's Philistine guard were called Kerethim, which is twice translated in the Septuagint as Cretans. (Zeph. ii, 5; Ez. xxv, 16) Although it has been said to be absurd "to deduce from the high-flown language of this Hymn of Amen an Egyptian hegemony over the Aegean islands and even over continental Greece itself in the days of Thotmes III," is it necessarily ridiculous to assume that there may have been an invasion of Crete from Egypt at the end of the second Late Aegean period, which is usually dated about 1450 B.C., which is the date assigned to Thotmes III? May not the Achaean conquerors of Crete have come into conflict with Egypt, which might very reasonably have been an ally of the conquered Pelasgians, who, as we have seen, were closely akin to the ancient Egyptians? And may not such an invading force have destroyed the Palace of Minos? Thus, the great official Tahuti, who lived at the time of Thotmes is entitled in Egyptian inscriptions "Governor of the Northern Countries, set over all the lands and states in the midst of the Very Green [the Egyptian name for the Aegean Sea]"; and it is generally admitted that soon after the reign of Thotmes III, the Achaeans were numbered among the invaders of Egypt; also, the frescos of the tombs of Sen-Mut and Rekhmara in Egyptian Thebes afford evidence pointing at least to a semi-tributary relationship of Crete toward Egypt in the age of Thotmes III. Sen-Mut was the architect of Queen Hatshepsut, daughter of Thotmes I, and Rekhmara was the prime minister of Thotmes III. On Plate --- is to be seen a prehistoric Aegean, called by the Egyptians a Keftiu (or Cretan), bringing gifts to Thotmes III. This is reproduced from a fresco in the tomb of Rekhmara and is one of the bits of evidence corroborating the statements made in the Hymn of Amen found at Karnak. There is distinctly an un-Hellenic impression produced by this figure, but whether this is merely due to the Egyptian artist or whether the man represented was a Pelasgian rather than a Hellene, must for the present at least be left in doubt. More Hellenic in appearance is the Dancing Girl, reproduced on Plate --- from one of the frescos which ornamented the north wall of the Queen's Megaron of the Palace at Cnossus. This is only one of several similar figures which have been discovered in a fragmentary condition. The girl's costume is gay and quaint; an open, light-sleeved bodice, worn over a diaphanous undergarment and a somewhat scant skirt. The figure is about half life-size and the jacket is yellow with a blue and red border.

What is perhaps the most admired of the Cnossian frescos, the famous "Cupbearer," is reproduced on Plate ---. It was found in one of the southeast corridors of the Palace, and is dated in the second Late Aegean period, about 1500 B.C., contemporary with the XVIIIth Dynasty of Egypt.... Perhaps the wavy line on the background suggests that the youth came as an envoy not from Crete itself but from another of "the Isles in the midst of the Great Green Sea." ....On the walls of Egyptian tombs of the XVIIIth Dynasty, on which are painted the prehistoric Aegeans, are also shown representations of metal vases and other objects, which greatly resemble finds discovered among prehistoric Aegean remains. These are displayed among the various gifts which are presented to the King of Egypt by the "great men of Keftiu [Krete] and of the Islands in the midst of the Very Green [the Aegean Sea]." Similar evidence of a still later date is furnished by the frescos of the tomb of Rameses III, one of the Pharaohs of the XXth Dynasty, and an inscription of the same king states that "isles were restless, disturbed among themselves at one and the same time." The date of Rameses III is contemporary with the third Late Aegean period, which, as appears from the quotations previously cited from Herodotus and Virgil, was an age of catastrophes for Crete. There are also other proofs of connection between the prehistoric Aegean world and Egypt, for in the war of Rameses II of the XIXth Dynasty against the Kheta, or Hittites, among the allies of the Kheta are mentioned the Luka (or Lycians), the Dardcnui (or Dardenians), the Masa (or Mysians), the Pidasa (or Pisidians) and the Kalalisha (or Cilicians): while in the reign of Merenptah we learn that the Akaivasha (or Achaeans) and the Thuirsha (or Tyrsenians or Tyrrhenians, later known as the Etruscans, who at that time probably lived in Lydia) invaded Egypt in company with the Libyans and others. Thus it appears that if the Egyptians in conflict with Achaeans under Thotmes III invaded Crete, as seems probable, about the end of the second Late Aegean period, that is, about 1450 B.C., a counter-invasion of Egypt by the Achaeans must have taken place about two hundred years later, that is, toward the end of the third Late Aegean period. In fact, several piratical, searoving invasions of Egypt by the first Hellenes, the Achaeans, must have been made; for in the reign of Rameses that is, during the XXth Dynasty, which is dated about the end of the third Late Aegean period, or 1200 B.C., in a third series of Mediterranean tribal names are recorded among the invaders of Egypt the Pulusatha (or Philistines), the Tchakarai (who are, perhaps, the prehistoric inhabitants of Crete), and the Daananna (or Danaans, one of the names of the first Hellenes). The Philistine invaders, who are sculptured on a relief dating from the reign of Rameses III, wear a plumed helmet, which suggests the helmeted-head pictograph of the Phaestus Disk. This circumstance, of course, corroborates the proposed identification of the Philistines with the Achaeans. Also the profiles of the Tchakarai, as represented on the same relief, are not unlike those of the Philistines.... The second invasion of the Hellenes into the Aegean basin, known in myths and legends as the Return of the Heracleidae, was the invasion of the Dorian Hellenes, of whom in historic times the Spartans were the typical representatives. While the Dorians were dispossessing their Achaean brothers of the territory which they, as first of the Hellenes, had not so many centuries before wrested from the possession of the Pelasgians, many Achaeans, to escape the fetters of slavery, crossed the Aegean from Europe into Asia Minor and settled near the Troad. The account of the conquest of the northwestern corner of Asia Minor by the Achaeans, which resulted in the destruction of the Sixth City at Troy, has doubtless been immortalized in the Homeric poems. Also it is noteworthy that the prehistoric Aegean culture is believed to have continued to exist in the Greek cities of Asia Minor even during the Hellenic Dark Ages, which extended from about 1000 to 650 B.C., for the dawn of the civilization of Classical Greece is about the middle of the seventh century before our era.

Thus it is evident that the Aegean Bronze Age civilization was brought to an end between 1200 and 1000 B.C. by the invasion of new tribes, who carried with them iron tools and iron weapons. This nation of warriors and barbarians, who were responsible for the Hellenic Dark Ages, seem to have traveled southward from the mountains of Macedonia and are most reasonably identified with the Dorian Hellenes. Out of these Dark Ages, some three or four centuries later, arose the civilization of Classical Greece, as a renascence, springing partially, at least, out of old Pelasgic soil, to shine in all its glory during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., destined, however, in its turn also to be overthrown by less artistic and more barbaric peoples.... The story of the prehistoric Aegean civilization, in so far as it is at present known, is of especial interest to those caring for the broader lines of thought, for the discoveries directly substantiate the statements made by Madame H.P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine and elsewhere as to the importance of old civilizations long since forgotten, and as to the great antiquity of the human race, an antiquity far older than has been currently admitted. We cannot do better than close this review of the recent discoveries relating to the Prehistoric Aegean Civilization with the following suggestive words of Madame Blavatsky: "We see in history a regular alternation of ebb and flow in the tide of human progress. The great kingdoms and empires of the world, after reaching the culmination of their greatness, descend again, in accordance with the same law by which they ascended; till, having reached the lowest point, humanity reasserts itself and mounts up once more, the height of its attainment being, by this law of ascending progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which it had before descended." (Isis Unveiled, I, 34) "Times have changed, are changing. Proofs of old civilizations and the archaic wisdom are accumulating.... That which is known.... only shows that could something more be known, a whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered." * (Vol. 11, 171-97) -------* From "Some Enquiries Suggested by Esoteric Buddhism," in The Theosophist for September 1883, Vol. IV, p. 302; republished in Five Years of Theosophy, 2d ed., pp. 169170. ---------------Cyclic Law in History - Kenneth Morris (A Paper of the School of Antiquity) Since the War broke out three years ago many have noticed a curious fact in connection with the years '13, '14, '15 and '16 in each of the centuries of English history. A hundred years ago, in 1815, Waterloo brought the Napoleonic wars to an end. In 1714 the treaty of Baden terminated the War of the Spanish Succession - Marlborough's war against Louis XIV. In 1614 James I's Second Parliament met, and began that long contest with absolutism that culminated twenty years later in the Civil War. In 1513, Henry VIII won the Battle of the Spurs against France, and Flodden Field against Scotland, ending a war with

each victory. In 1415 Henry V invaded France and won at Agincourt, which victory brought the war to an end. In 1314, Edward II invaded Scotland, and lost that kingdom at Bannockburn. In 1215, the victorious barons forced John to sign the Great Charter, thereby laying the foundation of English liberties. While we are on the subject of English history, let us glance at a series of facts more curious still. During the Middle Ages European literature was all of a pattern: writers in France, Italy, Germany or England said the same kind of things in the same kind of way. All was based on certain common conventions: none wrote what his heart felt or his eyes saw, but what it was the custom to write; hence its unvitality. In England, men were conscious of their race - Anglo-Saxon or Norman; or of their caste as serfs, freemen, merchants, clergy or noble; but the word nation had no meaning for them. Then, sometime in the thirteenth century, a change came, and the nation was born. Men arose who were not content to write the kind of stuff that everyone else was writing; they found that they had eyes of their own to see with, and feelings to tell; and that there was a spirit of their own country calling to be expressed in verse. This change shows itself in English literature in the twelve-seventies; when a period of literary creation set in, which presently produced its great poet in Chaucer. It ended when he died in 1400; and an age of sterility began, during which such poets as there were could only feebly re-echo what he had said. Then, somewhere about the fifteenthirties, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey ushered in a new fruitful period, which culminated in the Elizabethan Age and died with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. The age that followed was great in criticism, but barren in creative literary genius; it sought its inspiration in intellect and the rules of composition, not in the soul or nature. It lasted until the seventeen-nineties, when Wordsworth and Coleridge brought in a new creative period of literature. Now I look at these dates. The first creative age, or day, lasted from 1270 to 1400: one hundred and thirty years. The night that followed it lasted from 1400 till 1530: one hundred and thirty years . The second day lasted between 1530 and 1660: one hundred and thirty years. The second night - of Dryden and Pope - lasted from 1660 to 1790: one hundred and thirty years. It has been day since; though some of us think we see in the modern hunger after realism, signs of approaching darkness. Here I should state that all dates given for the beginnings or ends of cycles are to be taken as round numbers; as representing rather a decade than a definite year; if you will understand each of them qualified by 'about' or 'more or less,' it will save a good deal of unnecessary verbiage in the course of the paper. Thus Milton wrote Samson Agonistes and much of Paradise Lost after 1660; but he was then merely a survival of vanished days and orders. The fact is unshakable that the history of English literature has been that of a succession of days and nights, each of about the same length. Pretty little coincidences, you say; but without significance? To which one replies: There are two types of mind: and civilization grows as the one tends to eliminate the other. There is the savage mind, given over to superstition; and the civilized mind, which adheres to science. The savage mind is to be known, wherever you meet it, by its incapacity to conceive of Law; but the Civilized Mind postulates Law as the foundation of everything. To the savage all is coincidence; nothing happens but by chance or haphazard, or the caprice of some man or god or bogey. When it thunders, some big fellow aloft, angered or grown boisterous, is making a row. You don't die, but you are killed by sorcery; or Big Man Death takes you at his whim. Plague, pestilence and famine have nought to do with dirt and wrong-living; witchcraft has been at work, or the ire of Big Man God or Big Man Devil. Such views were held in Europe during the Dark Ages; until the infection of the Scientific Mind crept in from the Mohammedans, and civilization began to grow. Every advance that it made consisted in a

recognition of the Reign of Law. It combated disease in the name of the Laws of Health: banishing haphazard, it proclaimed a right and a wrong in ways of living. It was right to keep your body clean, and wrong to keep it filthy; right to have proper systems of sewerage, and wrong to use the public street; right to drink pure water, and wrong to quench your thirst with the first wet thing you happened on. There had been no right or wrong for the savage mind: my way was good enough for me; and if Jews and Turks liked to wash, let them - the more fools they! But the Scientific Mind, being in those days mainly a Jew or a Turk, set itself to combat this indifference. Unconcerned with dogma, it might turn its attention to the facts of life, and the farther it went with these, the farther it extended the empire of Law. Many were its champions, like Newton, Galileo, Kepler and Darwin, that rose to win new provinces for order and stability; each in his own sphere establishing the fact of Law. This one gazed at the heavens "At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno," and saw that which moved him to make pronouncement: "There at least Law is reigning; there is no haphazard there." That one watched an apple falling to the ground, and, guessing half its import, bade men no longer imagine chance or whim in that field of being. Between them all, they brought civilization to such a point, that now (officially) we recognise Law in all the physical universe; but they did not guess, or they did not announce, a truth that in reality their own discoveries had made, you would say, self-evident: that in every plane of being, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, Law reigns absolute, and there is and can be no chance at all. I put the name of the one who announced that Law above all the others. They conquered their little provinces; but she sublimely annexed the Universe. She made to Europe the first complete announcement of the position of the Scientific, as opposed to the Superstitious, Mind. Her name was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky; what has been said here of her achievement, is only what will be said everywhere, as soon as the Scientific Mind has fully conquered the superstitious, and we are truly civilized. She was the first to see and proclaim that, once you admit the Reign of Law in anything, you must postulate it in everything: that were the universe seventy times as large as it is, there would be no room in it for Law and Chance. State that proposition fairly, and one sees that it is axiomatic; it is, in any ultimate analysis, the distinction between the Scientific and the Superstitious. One may be allowed to call it H. P. Blavatsky's Law; and you must be clever indeed at logic-dodging, or very pachydermatous against the prick of reason, if you reject it; for "...... if this fail The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble;" but if it stand, there is such a science as Right Living, and we may become masters of it. If it is true, life is a purposeful and dignified thing, that has mighty ends in view, and sure means to attain them. If it is false, life and the universe are nothing but a phantasmagoria and disgraceful wobble - which is precisely the postulate of the Superstitious Mind. So then, if we are scientific, and not superstitious, we shall not reject facts as coincidence; we shall posit the reign of Law in human history as surely as in hydrostatics or dynamics. We shall see in these regularly alternating cycles in English literature, indications of universal law. We shall remember that, after all, the whole of life is made up of cycles. Inbreathing and out-breathing, systole and diastole, day and night, summer and winter, youth

and age, sleeping and waking, life and death - in what department of individual life does not the Law of Cycles reign? How then should it not reign in national and racial life - since law is universal? Why should there not be a plan, an order, behind the apparent jumbled tragedy of History? Is it not worth investigation? The trouble is, we have so small a field for our research. The memory of mankind is short; antiquity vanishes, before it has had time to become really antique. Of all the long ages of civilized man, we know nothing beyond the limits of some seventy little centuries, and little enough of them. Small wonder, then, that we have formed no true conception of the laws that govern history; it is much like conceiving a mammoth on the evidence of one knucklebone. Never before, we say, has there been a time like the present: with these quick communications established; the whole globe mapped and accessible; and even mid-air and the depths of the sea traversable by murderous man. It is an injudicious boast. Ten little thousand years ago there might have been such a time, or one still more marvelous; and we should know nothing of it, simply because ten thousand years ago is beyond the horizon of historic memory. - We point with pride to the spread of the English language, of European civilization; never we say, has one language been spoken so broadcast; nor one culture come so near to dominating the globe. And yet there remains, in the megalithic and cyclopean structures, evidence of the activities of a race whose empire was as vast and as far-thrown as any existing; and we know nothing about this people, except that they were able to build more mightily, and more enduringly, than we can; and that they, and all memory of them, had passed long before the dawn of the history we know. And yet, within these narrow limits of known history, there is room for investigation, food for thought, evidence enough of the Law of Cycles. Here are some facts that have largely escaped attention: There is a curious hiatus in the story of European civilization. For the last seven hundred years or thereabouts, the creative and cultural energies of the human race have been increasingly centering in Christendom. During the first half of the thirteenth century, civilization was introduced into Europe from the Mohammedan lands, and a strange quickening of the European mind took place. Its first manifestation, perhaps, was in the glories of French architecture. Dante, before the century had closed, lit the fires of poetry; and has been followed since in order by the splendors of Italian, English and Spanish, French, German and Russian literature; of Italian, Spanish, Flemish and French art; of Italian and German music and philosophy; - till in the nineteenth century came that general European culture which went hand in hand with an advancement in scientific invention unparalleled in historic times. But before that thirteenth century what do we find? A Christian Europe as backward, as inert, barbarous and unprogressive, as Afghanistan or Abyssinia is now. And before that again, the glory that was Greece, the splendor that was Rome: the creative cultural energies manifesting with as great vigor in Periclean Athens, as after in Elizabethan England or Renaissance Italy. In other words, European history shows us the ending of one day of civilization; the night of barbarism that followed it; and the day, not yet closed, that followed that. And this is what we take to be pretty much all that counts in the history of human civilization. But - and this is a point that is not well enough known - the creative and cultural energies did not pass from the race when they passed from the European fraction of it. There is always a highly civilized portion of humanity; though it is never the same portion for more than a certain length of time. Civilization is the normal condition; to which we return and return after lapses into savagery. The dark ages of Europe were very bright ages in Asia. While the Christian mind was submerged in superstition, the Moslem mind was awake and keenly scientific; while art was dead in Christendom, it was alive and wonderful in China.

And it was not merely that Asian civilization shone in comparison with European barbarism; but that the tides of cultural and creative energy were flowing as marvelously in the Far Eastern and Moslem worlds then, as they have flowed in Europe since. They rose in China while they were dying in Greece; they rose in Arabia while they were dying in Rome; they died in China while they were being reborn in thirteenth-century Italy and France. The reign of Alexander marked their last great manifestation in Greece. They had by that time passed almost wholly on to the physical plane; there burning up brightly for a moment before extinction, they carried the phalanxes eastward over Persia and the Punjab, to give out before the Macedonians could try conclusions with the powerful kingdoms of the Ganges Valley. Alexander turned back in 327 B.C., but the energies went on. From 317 to 226 they were burning splendidly in India under the Maurya Emperors of Magadha; the third of whom, Asoka, is to be called perhaps the greatest and most beneficent monarch in recorded history. They had not passed from India, when they arose in China. In the twoforties T'sin Che Hwangti came to the throne of T'sin, a strong semi-barbarian state in the modern province of Shensi. He found China a 'Middle Kingdom' in the Hoangho Valley, the decayed remnant of an ancient civilization, surrounded by several powers like his own, half Chinese and half barbarian, and with a strong predilection for war. One after another these fell before his armies, till he had welded the whole of China Proper into a single empire. Dying in the two-twenties, his dynasty ended a few years later; and was succeeded by a purely Chinese empire under the House of Han. Almost immediately a great age of culture began. Chinese armies marched conquering to the banks of the Caspian; literature flamed up into magnificence; science, art and invention flourished apace. A major cycle of civilization had begun in the Far East, which was not to close until the Mongol Conquest of China in the twelve-sixties A.D. Its first phase lasted about four centuries, and was followed by two of depression, during which we are probably to look for the energies in the buried empires of Central Asia. Then in 420 A. D. the star of culture rose again in Southern China; lasted there (like the literary cycles in England) for about thirteen decades; burnt up in Corea, then in Japan; returned to China in the six-twenties, when the most glorious of all Chinese ages began, that of the Tang Dynasty. Again the Chinese armies camped on the Caspian. Literature produced a galaxy of poets whose supreme value is only now becoming known to the West; in art it was an age at least as great as that of the Renaissance in Italy. This splendor endured unimpaired until the seven-fifties - again 130 years; and was followed by a period of depression which in turn gave place in the tenth century to the brilliant age of the Sung Dynasty, which ended at the Mongol Conquest. The life-time of a civilization is thus marked off for us: its seat was the Far East; it began in the two-forties B.C. with T'sin Che Hwangti, and ended in the twelve-sixties with the fall of the Sungs; having thus lasted about fifteen hundred years. Its first phase ended, you will note, in 220 A.D.; when, as if the energies of the WorldSpirit had been needed elsewhere, they were withdrawn from China, and the Han Empire, and all art and science with it, fell to pieces. A like phenomenon took place in 750, when the great Tang age came to an end; and these two dates at once suggest to my mind the history of another quarter of the globe and another life-period of civilization: the West Asiatic, in the main Mohammedan. The lands that lie between the Nile and the Tigris, so fertile of old in civilizations, had lain fallow since Alexander swept away the last remnants of the old Persian Empire; they again began, early in the third century A.D., to show signs of productivity. The Neoplatonists arose to light the fires of thought in Alexandria. In the two-twenties while the Hans were in act to fall in China, Artaxerxes the Persian, of the House of Sassan, rebelled against the barbarous Parthian power, overthrew it, and established the new Persian Empire of the Sassanidae. We know little of its civilization; but we know that it was not without

cultural or military strength. In 284 the Roman Empire, which had been falling to pieces for a century while its center was still at Rome, received a new lease of life when Diocletian moved his court to Bithynia in Asia Minor. Both these empires retained a measure of vitality until the beginning of the great Tang Age in China. Then, in the six-twenties, Mohammed fled from Mecca to Medina, there to sow among his wild Arabian countrymen the seeds of a mighty culture. Within twenty years the Sassanids had fallen forever before the Moslems; and though the Byzantine Empire lasted on for many centuries, the remainder of its life was but a living death. We habitually overlook the real import of Mohammed's mission, and the real work he did for civilization. Coming at a time when religious toleration had been forgotten in any country west of India,* and when both the creeds that held power in the world he knew used it for persecution, he laid down the law among his disciples that there should be, in his own words, "no compulsion in religion." Coming to a people among whom education was wholeheartedly despised, and being himself illiterate, he preached to them that the angels blithely hovered above the head of him who "went upon the Road of Learning"; and that the ink of the doctors was better, in God's sight, than the martyr's blood. In the course of a hundred and thirty years, these teachings had taken effect. His wild followers had founded an empire extending from the Pyrenees to the Pamir, in which all creeds were tolerated, freedom of thought was vigorously encouraged, and the path to the highest honors was emphatically the 'Road of Learning.' In the seven-fifties, when the Tang glory waned in China, the Caliph built Bagdad; and straight the whole cultural energy of the world came to center there. Thence on for five centuries, or precisely until the time China fell, ages of splendor in science, in philosophy, in literature and life, succeeded each other at Bagdad, Cordova, Calto, and the cities of Persia. The Moslem mind was alert, rational, vigorous and speculative; from it we derive all the foundations of our science. Attacked in its central regions during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, first by the barbarous hordes of Europe, then by the still worse barbarians of Genghis Khan and his successors, the intense progressive energies of Islam suffered some eclipse; shortly before the fall of Hang-chow, the Sung capital, Bagdad also fell to the Mongols - in 1258. But Islam had already - in that same half-century, passed on the light of culture to Europe, where a new day of civilization had just dawned. And its own day was not yet over by any means. Culture lived on in Andalusia, despite the efforts of Christian Spain to destroy it, until the fall of Granada in the fourteen-nineties. Persian literature showed no diminution of vigor until the death of Jami, its last great poet, in the same decade. ------------*More correctly China. The leaven of persecution had spread eastward to India: this was the age of the Brahmanical persecution of the Buddhists. ------------A great age of architecture lasted in Egypt until the Turkish conquest in the fifteentwenties. In the fourteen-fifties the Ottomans took Constantinople, and a great age began among them; in material power at first; then, after the conquest of Egypt, in literature and culture as well. The heyday of Ottoman power lasted until the death of Suleyman the Magnificent in 1566. The empire grew until it included Asia west of the Tigris, the whole Balkan peninsula with overlordship over Hungary, and North Africa as far as to the boundaries of Morocco. The Black Sea was a Turkish lake; their navies dominated the Mediterranean; there was no power that could compete with them in Europe - not even Charles V's empire, or Philip II's Spain. Nothing but the Turkish menace prevented Charles from devoting his

whole energy to stamping out the Reformation; and whatever else may be said of them, be it remembered that they alone, in the days of their greatness, practiced religious toleration. They followed Mohammed in this, while all Europe was busy burning its heretics. It was in Turkey only that the Jews might find refuge; and the highest offices of state were open to Jews, Christians and Moslems alike. In 1566 Suleyman died, and the Turkish power began to decline; although their literature maintained its vigor until 1720. In 1566 also, Akbar the Great came to the throne in India, and the great age of the Mogul Empire began. Twenty years later, and from 1586 to 1628, Persia was powerful under Abbas the Great, to whose court came envoys, petitioning favors, from all the greater powers of Europe; "the Persian," they said, "is our one protection against the Turk." The age of Abbas died with him; but India maintained its greatness under Akbar and his successors for about a hundred and fifty years. A great conqueror, Akbar was also a great reformer and law-giver, a wise humane ruler not unworthy to be named with Asoka of old. He united Hindus and Mohammedans; practising absolute toleration, he presently went still further, and rejected all creeds for that Theosophy which underlies them. The sacred Sanskrit books were translated into Persian; and from these translations they were first done into the languages of the West. It has been said that no greater boon had come to Europe than the discovery of the Upanishads: for this we are indebted primarily to the large wisdom and illuminated policies of Akbar. - Under his grandson, Shah Jehan, in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, the Mogul Empire reached its culmination; from 1658 to 1707 it increased in size but diminished in stability; after the death of Aurangzeb it rapidly declined. With the decay of Turkish literature in the seventeen-twenties, the last faint glimmerings of twilight had vanished from the Moslem lands. Now China, as we have seen, lasted as a fruitful center of civilization from 240 B. C. to 1260 A. D., a matter of 1500 years. Is it not rather suggestive that, following the sun's course from east to west, the next great cycle of civilization rose about five centuries after the rise of the Chinese and perished about five centuries after its fall - having also lasted about fifteen hundred years? And farther, that its epochal dates all correspond to epochal dates in the Chinese cycle: - the rise of the Sassanids with the fall of the Hans; the Mission of Mohammed with the rise of the Tangs; the founding of Bagdad with the Tang decay; the fall of Bagdad with the fall of China? - And both these last with the dawn of civilization in Europe? At this point one's eye seizes upon certain fresh facts to proceed upon. (1) The civilization whose rise immediately preceded that of the Chinese was European, Greek and Roman. (2) The civilization that rose next after the West Asiatic or Moslem, was (and is) also European - our own. (3) The civilization that immediately preceded the Greco-Roman was Western Asiatic, concerned with the Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Medish and Persian Empires. (4) Within our own memory, a new period seems to have begun in the Far East with the rise of Japan in the eighteen-seventies. In other words, periods or phases of civilization have followed each other, over-lapping, in regular order from east to west, thus: from Western Asia (Assyria and Egypt): to Europe (Greece and Rome); then back to China; then to Western Asia again (Sassanids and Moslems); then to Europe again; then (begging its pardon for not mentioning it before) to a new factor, America, with Columbus or the Pilgrim Fathers; then to the Far East again with the accession of the great Mutsuhito. It does seem as if we were coming on the rough outlines of a pattern, does it not? - as if there were some indications of a Law of History? Now, what facts have we to go upon for further investigation? Slender facts enough, but still something. We have found that the only two of these periods of which we possess exact records from start to finish - the Chinese and the Mohammedan, each lasted for about fifteen centuries. Perhaps, then, that may be the right average length for any period of cultural energy in any given quarter of the globe; in a

moment we will make trial of it. But if we are to speak of a regular cycle, there is need also to determine the length of the period elapsing between the death of one period, and the birth of the next in the same region - if there be indeed any such figure determinable. There is no question about the difficulty of determining it. In any case, the attempt to set dates for these things is very much like fixing the spot at which a wave begins to rise: at which the wave begins, and the trough ends. Still, we may tentatively try something. It sticks in my mind that Japan began to rise in the eighteen-seventies; the abolition of feudalism and the restoration of the Mikados to power marks that decade clearly enough. Let us say, then, that a new Far Eastern Period began in 1870; between which date, and the passing of the old one in 1260, 610 years had elapsed. Let us try this figure. If there is any correctness in it we should find that an age of activity in China ended 610 years before T'sin Che Hwangti in 240 B.C., and began 1500 years before that: lasted, that is to say, from 2350 to 850 B.C. Let us say right away that to anyone familiar with ancient Chinese history, these figures are startling; for these reasons: - Western scholars put no confidence in Chinese dates farther back than 850 B.C. or therea-bouts; but the Chinese themselves go back with complete assurance to 2356 B.C. We do know that a period of national decline began in 850, or at any rate between 900 and 800. From that time the Chow Empire was steadily losing prestige until it fell completely before T'sin Che Hwangti in 240. But Chinese records for the ages before 850 or so are meager and unilluminating: lists of Chow kings back to 1123; of kings of the Shang and Hia dynasties back to 2205; these given with a few details; encomiums or strictures; stories to point a moral, and so on; as if the Chinese had largely forgotten the import of their ancient history, and merely preserved its skeleton - for the West, with reservations, to reject. No one seems to suspect that China had ever been much greater, in point of size or culture, than she was at the time of Confucius (500 B.C.). But in fact there are some rather striking evidences that she was: among them, Confucius' own continual pointing to antiquity for models of excellence in every department of life. Others may be found in the article 'Golden Threads in the Tapestry of History,' in The Theosophical Path for December 1915. According to Confucian and all Chinese conceptions the Golden Age fell in the reigns of the Three Great Emperors that preceded the Hia Dynasty: Yao, Shun and Yu, the patriarchs and national saints and heroes of China. I said that a period of civilization should have extended back from 850 to 2350. Yao, the opener of the Golden Age, is said to have come to the throne in 2356; Chow China did decline from 850. These dates do rather curiously confirm our calculations - and the correctness of old Chinese chronology, I think. There was historically a decline from about the latter time; and traditionally a rise at about the former. Now to turn to Western Asia: if the last period of culture began in 220 A. D., we should expect, using these figures, to find another ending about 390 B.C., having begun about 1890 B.C. Turning to our history books, we find that Assyria, originally a colony from Babylon, achieved its independence somewhere between 2000 and 1700 B. C., and presently entered on a course of empire building which ended in disaster, in 608. The New Egyptian Empire, so-called, is said to have been founded in 1620; it lasted until 525. In the five-fifties, Cyrus founded the Persian Empire, which showed at least no outward signs of decay until the Retreat of the Ten Thousand under Xenophon in 400; it finally fell before Alexander in the three-thirties. Ploetz gives 1900 as an approximate date for the beginnings of Assyria; from that to 400 is 1500 years; our calculated dates were 1890 and 390; which correspond nearly enough, seeing that the actual figures are unknown. But we should also expect here another earlier period, from 4000 to 2500 B.C. We find that the Old Babylonian or Chaldean Empire did actually rise, according to the accepted chronology, in 4000 B.C., and fell before the Elamites somewhere about 2300. If that date is

correct, we may suppose it, without too much stretching of the point, to have been declining for some time before its final fall. In Egypt, too, there was high imperial activity during this period. The date of Menes,* the traditional founder of the Old Egyptian Empire, is given by Lepsius as 3892; Brugsch puts it back into the five thousands; others put it much later; our 4000 would be a good average figure. Unquestionably there were previous great ages in Egypt; equally unquestionably a great age did begin somewhere about this time. It ended with the Hyksos conquest, which Lepsius puts at 2100; others earlier. So we find that our computation by cycles, using figures drawn from later Chinese history, answers very well for the three known periods of Western Asia. Now for Europe I have been tempted to reverse my methods, and to begin with a date in remote antiquity calculated by Professor Dick of the Raja-Yoga College from data given by Madame Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine. This date is 7200 B.C.; and according to Professor Dick's calculations, it should represent the time of the beginnings of the European Family Race, one of the branches of our Fifth Root-Race of Humanity. In claiming such great antiquity for civilization in Europe, it may be well to remind you that recent discoveries in Crete and elsewhere make the figures by no means extravagant; we know that there was high cultural activity in that continent in most remote ages; Stonehenge itself was not erected in the last few thousand years, nor by 'primitive' man. According to our figures, then, there should have been periods of activity between 7200 and 5700 B.C.; between 5090 and 3590; and between 2980 and 1480: of these, of course, we know nothing. But the next begins in 870 B.C. and ends in 630 A.D.; and here we are on historical ground. Rome was founded, according to tradition, in 753, a hundred and odd years after our date for the opening of the cycle; we may allow that much perhaps for the Etruscan culture that preceded Rome. In Greece, too, the historical phase of civilization would have begun about this time; though chronology is rather vague before the first Olympiad in 776. For the end of the age we have the year 630 A. D., when Heraclius, the last strong emperor of the East, was reigning at Constantinople; after whom all was descent and fall till the final extinction of the empire. Remember what an epochal time this was in the world's history: how some ten years before, the great Tangs had risen in China; and Mohammed had started things among the Arabs, by whom, or by whose successors, the Eastern Empire was finally to be wiped away. And it was in this very decade - the six-thirties, that the Arab armies first attacked the soldiers of Heraclius, driving all before them, and ruining forever his and his legions' prestige. -----------*The date of Menes actually was many centuries earlier - as H. P. Blavatsky shows in The Secret Doctrine. But this is without prejudice to the fact that the inception of a phase of cultural and imperial greatness occurred about this time which may have been the hundredth to have taken place on the Nile banks. ------------And finally we arrive at the date 1240 A. D. for that of the inception of modern Europe. It certainly did happen in the first half of the thirteenth century, during which culture was flowing into Christendom for the first time, from Moorish Spain and Sicily. Its protagonist was the Emperor Frederick II, King of Sicily; it was he who forcibly brought civilization into Italy from his native island-kingdom, which was still Mohammedan. His great opponent was the Pope; whom he fought and conquered with Moslem armies. In 1239, Frederick was excommunicated for his Moslem and civilizing tendencies, and went to war about it. In '41, his son Enzio won a naval victory at Elba which in its results was of more importance perhaps than any of Creasy's 'Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World'; just as Frederick himself is to be

counted, though so little is generally known of him, as the greatest figure in western history since Mohammed - greater even than Napoleon. In '43 the Pope fled to France, and the southern gates of Europe were open for civilization to enter. From Frederick's universities at Naples and Salerno, where his Mohammedan professors taught the sciences and philosophy, the light passed up through Italy. Italian first became a language of culture at his court; ready when Dante came, a few decades later, for him to voice in it the first grand chapter of European literature. In the twelve-forties, too, the Papacy exterminated the Albigenses in France; but the blood of those martyrs became the seed of the church, and it is to their example we owe the spiritual daring of Huss, Wiclyff and Luther. So we may say that the European Cycle of Civilization did begin in the twelve-forties. And we may say also, I think, that the whole scope of history, so far as it is known to us, does fall into a regular scheme of successive cycles. Does it not seem as if Law reigned in this sphere too? (Vol . 13, pp. 88-99) ---------------------Science Ancient Astronomy in Egypt, and Its Significance - Prof. F. J. Dick (School of Antiquity) "Could we go back into the prehistoric times we should note that with successive ages came a gradual decline in spiritual knowledge as civilization succeeded civilization. But a turning point has been reached; men and women are again awakening to a knowledge of themselves and their possibilities, and are gradually moving on to a time when the ancient knowledge will be revived and become once more the possession of humanity." -Katherine Tingley The truthfulness of Herodotus having been so often vindicated within the last few decades, our respect for the accessible literature of antiquity ought surely in consequence to have been augmented. Meanwhile, the attempted generalizations of science regarding the antiquity of human culture and scientific knowledge are too often based upon disproportionate acquaintance with facts. Now the subject of ancient astronomy brings us at once face to face with the enormous antiquity of at least one branch of highly specialized and scientific knowledge possessed by our archaic progenitors, thus enforcing the suggestion that a wide acquaintance with ancient sources of information ought to form a prerequisite to the inditing of treatises on the antiquity of highly civilized man. Remote vistas of aeons of civilization might thus escape being ignored. For example, we find Iamblichus writing: "The Assyrians have not only preserved the memorials of seven and twenty myriads

(27,000) of years, as Hipparchus says they have, but likewise of the whole planetary sidereal periods and periods of the seven rulers of the world." 1 Well, 270,000 [sic] years is a fairly long time for astronomical records to have been kept, even though not entirely those of Assyrian astronomers. Might we not inquire: How long ought it to take the Bushmen of Australia (the degenerate remnants of a pre-Atlantean age) to "evolve" to a point enabling them not only to make, but also to preserve, exact astronomical observations for 270,000 years - including, mind you, the sidereal periods of the planets? Thousands, or millions of years? The Hindus are said, on pretty good authority, to have had the complete records of thirty-three precessional circuits, this amounting to over 850,000 years. What kind of arboreal beings were they who could even begin such a record, to say nothing of maintaining it? The French astronomer Bailly proved that by applying their ancient methods to an interval of over 4383 years subsequent to a recorded eclipse 5018 years ago, the resulting place of the Moon differed by less than one minute of arc from that found by the modern tables of Cassini. 2 If we must seek for untutored savages, need we look back for thousands of years? When Pythagoras spent twenty-two years of his life among the temple-teachers of Egypt, who taught the heliocentric system and perhaps more about astronomy than modern astronomy dreams of, could he have anticipated that, two thousand years later, human beings were to be imprisoned, tortured, burned or put to death in the name of religion, for merely believing the Earth turned on its axis and revolved around the Sun? Atlantis, so-called, was the whole - and yet a very different -Earth, in the days of the Fourth Root-Race, whose great final teacher of astronomy was known as Asura-Maya. It is stated in The Secret Doctrine that: "The chronology and computations of the ancient initiates are based upon the Zodiacal records of India, and the works of Asura-Maya. The Atlantean Zodiacal records cannot err, as they were compiled under the guidance of those who first taught astronomy, among other things, to mankind." 3 In the Puranas, Romakapura (in Atlantis) is given as the birthplace of Asura-Maya, fragments of whose works are said to be still extant. The Surya-Siddhanta represents a more or less correct fragment of ancient knowledge. One notes, however, that among various other Siddhantas, the Romaka-Siddhanta is supposed to be lost, like countless thousands of other priceless archaic treatises. 4 Taking only the surface meaning of some of the numerous figures given in the SuryaSiddhanta, the number of sidereal lunar months per sidereal year would be 13.3688, the same as modern astronomy teaches, to the fourth decimal place; while as for Mars, its sidereal year would be 1.8808 times that of the Earth, again as with the moderns. When examined more carefully, with reference to the movement of a star called Revati, many results of great interest follow, which have not, so far as known, been investigated by modern astronomers. For instance, the vernal equinox, with a mean regression of fifty seconds of arc in longitude annually, took 24,000 years to return to Revati, with its four seconds of direct annual motion - which is deduced from widely separated data, covering a period of about 25,000 years. Thus there would be eighteen such circuits in 432,000 years (four apsidal revolutions of the Earth5), which is a particular measure of time considered by some to have had a newly commencing epoch at the time of the departure of Krishna, 5018 years ago, when the Bhagavad-Gita was written. By the way, that book contains eighteen chapters. Strange to

say, the star Revati seems to have disappeared, although Revati was also the name of the twenty-seventh lunar mansion. The prior source of ancient Egypt's knowledge of astronomy was undoubtedly India. In Kulluka-Bhatta's History of India, it is stated that: "Under the reign of Visvamitra, first king of the dynasty of Soma-Vanga, in consequence of a battle which lasted five days, Manu-Vina, heir of the ancient kings, being abandoned by the Brahmans, emigrated with all his companions, passing through Arya, and the countries of Barria, till he came to the shores of Masra." H.P. Blavatsky adds: "Unquestionably this Manu-Vina and Mena, the first Egyptian king, are identical. "Arya, is Eran (Persia); Barria, is Arabia; and Masra, was the name of Cairo, which to this day is called Masr, Musr and Misro. Phoenician history names Maser as one of the ancestors of Hermes." 6 The Ethiopians - old as were the Egyptians in arts and sciences - claimed priority of antiquity and learning. We can understand, then, how the Egyptian priests came to possess the Zodiacs of Asura-Maya, and how it came to pass that the original Dendera zodiac was painted on a ceiling of the former temple there, over 75,000 years ago; while, as Volney points out, in his Ruins of Empires, the Hellenic zodiac could not have been more than 15,000 years old. Pomponius Mela wrote that the Egyptians preserved in written records the memory of the fact that the stars had completed four revolutions, or more than 100,000 years, during their history.7 Pliny wrote that Epigenes assigned 720,000 years to the astronomical observations of the Chaldaeans.8 Again, the word "king" sometimes meant a whole race. Thus Polyhistor said that Berosus (whose works are believed to have dealt with a period of 200,000 years) referred to a certain historic period consisting of 120 sari, one saros being 1600 years; and Abydenus wrote of a first "king" who reigned for ten sari, equivalent to 36,000 years.9 One of the most successful attempts to unravel the mystery and meaning of the Great Pyramid was the couple of volumes written by Marsham Adams, published a few years ago, entitled The Book of the Master, and The House of the Hidden Places. These have been admitted to be a solution along important lines, tracing, as they do, a connection between the ritual of the ancient Egyptian work entitled The Coming Forth by Day (generally now known as The Book of the Dead), and the interior design of the colossal edifice. Thirty years, however, before these two volumes saw the light, H.P. Blavatsky wrote: "Herodotus did not tell all, although he knew that the real purpose of the pyramid was very different from that which he assigns to it. Were it not for his religious scruples, he might have added that, externally [that is, physically] it symbolized the creative principle of nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics, astrology and astronomy. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose somber recesses were performed the Mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation-scenes of members of the royal family." 10 H.P. Blavatsky said it is impossible to fix the date of the pyramids by any of the rules of modern science. Consequently, the attempt is perhaps natural to endeavor to fix the date of the Great Pyramid, to begin with, by discarding some of the hitherto accepted rules of modern science,

including even the theory of the law - or the law of the theory - of gravitation; which, however, is already being questioned by many of the keenest scientific minds. There would not be time to give even the briefest resume of recent theories of matter, electrons, magnetons, ether and gravitation, or of the investigations regarding the latter of Professors Lodge, Jaumann, Crookes, Lorentz, Maxwell, Naumann, See, Seeliger, Le Sage, Kelvin, Foppl, Bjerknes, Larmor, Schuster, Schott, Messers. Emile Belot, Bachelet, Singer, Berens, and others. One or two points, however, must be noted, as introductory to what follows. Professor Young, in A Textbook of General Astronomy, says, "The agreement," (with Newton's famous calculation regarding the Moon) "does not establish the theory.... because the forces might really differ as much in their nature as an electrical attraction and a magnetic." 11 What is, or rather let us ask, what was the theory of the law of gravitation? That every particle in the whole universe attracts every other particle with a force varying directly as the masses, and inversely as the square of the distance. In The Secret Doctrine, H.P. Blavatsky turned her salvos of good-humored raillery on this, pointing out that even Newton himself, in his famous letter to Bentley, showed that he believed in nothing of the kind. And as Science now freely confesses that it neither knows what a "particle" is, nor even what "mass" is except that the latter seems to be an implicit function of velocity - perhaps the raillery was justified. Meantime, the prevailing phenomenon in the laboratories is one of emanation, or repulsion; and when attraction is observed, cohesive, electric, etc., it simply defies gravitational theory. Sir Oliver Lodge, after telling us that we do not know what an electron is, goes on to say that the attraction or repulsion between two of them is One Thousand Millions of Millions times what the "gravitational force" ought to be! 12 Does not a platinum crucible weigh less when warm, than when cold? Does not the newly invented theory of Isostasy suggest a serious defect in gravitational theory? Do not the phenomena of the occasional levitation of physical objects and even human beings, attested by some well-known scientists, point to the same conclusion? Sir William Crookes, after repeating the famous Cavendish experiment, under crucial conditions, reported: "I have not been able to get distinct evidence of an independent force (not being in the nature of light or heat) urging the ball and mass together." A key to the whole subject was suggested by H.P. Blavatsky nearly forty years ago, and a little attentive study shows it to be a more thoroughly scientific presentation of the question than can be discovered in anything since written, especially when read in relation to much else on the same and closely connected topics from her pen. Her words were: "The Earth is a magnet, charged with one form of electricity, say positive, which it evolves continually by spontaneous action in the interior, or center of motion. Organic or inorganic bodies, if left to themselves, will constantly and involuntarily charge themselves with and evolve the form of electricity opposite to the Earth's. Hence attraction." 13 Here the words "magnet" and "form of electricity" obviously connote meanings as yet unfamiliar. But many gaps in the phenomena of radiation, etc., remain uninvestigated. Magnetism, as known through effects in steel, etc., may be found to be merely a specialized

effect - like polarized light in a crystal, and other potent forms of real magnetism may be discovered - that is, isolated - including terrestrial attraction coming from the interior, and not from surface rocks. Evidently this attraction (which we call weight) may be found capable of increase or diminution, the "quantity of matter" remaining unaffected. Putting interplanetary influences aside for the moment, the bearing of all this upon Ancient Astronomy is, that that the historic movements of the Earth, including certain peculiar graduated, and yet at times variable, inversions of the celestial poles, which by no means conform to current theory, can be better represented to our minds, and in the more or less empirical expressions of what we term celestial mechanics, as the result of an interplay between invisible solar emanations of a particular order, and what we may call the Earth's "electro-magnetic" emanations, always combined with the effects of gyroscopic action. The mystery of rotation itself is involved. But one cannot go into further detail at present, except to observe that one difficulty, which must sooner or later be recognized, is the actual ontological character of the invisible forces in operation. This reminds us of what M. Belot wrote, not long ago, in the Revue Scientifique,14 as follows: "The universe had once [and why not now?] like every living organism, its arteries carrying material and movement to all the stars in formation, like the blood in living organisms; these arteries were the whirlwinds of cosmic materials, analogous to the filamentary nebulae of the Pleiades, binding between them the stars, the nuclei of the planets to those of their suns, etc., etc." In 1889, H.P. Blavatsky said: "The Sun has but one distinct function: it gives the impulse of life to all that lives and breathes under its light. The Sun is the throbbing heart of the system; each throb being an impulse. But this heart is invisible; no astronomer will ever see it. That which is concealed in this heart and that which we feel and see, its apparent flame and fire, to use a simile, are the nerves governing the muscles of the solar system, and nerves, moreover, outside of the body. The impulse is not mechanical, but a purely spiritual, nervous impulse." 15 Movements, however complex, which when mentally isolated from noumenal causes, seem at first to obey merely mechanical laws, like an automobile round a race-track, nevertheless require Mechanicians to control them. Current theory, in essence rather kinematic than truly dynamic, serves well enough for the preparation of the Nautical Almanac, when corrected as it is every year or two from actual observation, in order to find out where things really are. Density may be modified in meaning, seeing that in truth we know little about it. Similarly regarding the constants called "mass," as applied to planets, etc. Astronomical mathematics must have same tools to work with, even if they be what Huxley, and probably the author of Science and Hypothesis, Henri Poincare, would have called "representative fictions." According to current theory, tidal friction ought to result in an increase of obliquity to the ecliptic, whereas the facts are precisely opposite. Tidal friction, as a retarding force, has in consequence been sometimes denied; but this appears unreasonable. May not the forces actually at work be more potent than tidal friction? Again, perturbations are facts, and so Neptune was in our time rediscovered. But theory failed to discover its distance from the Sun, which turned out to be very different from that which Adams and Leverrier had imagined. Now what are the facts, regarding the gradual inversion of the Poles? Primarily, that it is attested by the whole of antiquity. Thus the Egyptians informed Herodotus that the Poles of

the Earth and of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and that even since their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles had been three times within the plane of the Ecliptic, as the initiates taught.16 The Book of Enoch, a resume of the history of the third, fourth and part of the fifth rootraces, was held by Origen and Clement of Alexandria in the highest esteem. It is quoted copiously in the Pistis Sophia, a Gnostic fragment preserved in Coptic; it is also quoted in the Zohar and its most ancient Midrashim. And it makes reference to the Earth's axis having become greatly inclined at one time. And so on, in Sanskrit, Greek and Latin literature. The textbooks give an observation of the obliquity of the ecliptic made in China 3000 years ago. It was 23o 54'. If we use the formula published in the Nautical Almanac, it should only have been 23o 41'. But according to the general law indicated by the esoteric philosophy, namely, a change of four degrees per great precessional circuit, it should have been 23 o 54', exactly as observed. The meaning is, that the celestial pole, instead of describing a uniform circle in 26,000 years around the pole of the Earth's orbital plane at a mean distance of about 23 degrees from it, actually describes a spiral, ending, after one complete revolution, four degrees nearer the ecliptic pole than at the start of the circuit. This simple and unrecognized phenomena of the gradual inversion of the poles was well known to the ancients, as has already been indicated. It throws a vivid light on some of the methods adopted by the ancients for recording world-history. Although much in their zodiacs and symbolism still awaits our unraveling, a great deal in this direction has already been outlined by H.P. Blavatsky. It happened, too, that in the early years of the last century a man who, like Jakob Bohme, was a self-taught shoemaker, and who lived in Norwich, England, gained an insight into this law in a way perhaps difficult for us to understand - or it would be, were Reincarnation not another of the mysterious facts in nature. He may also have been a conscious or unconscious pupil of some teachers who were in Europe a century ago or more. And notwithstanding a number of errors, which a study of The Secret Doctrine tends to correct, Mackey's Key of Urania, published in 1820, is a most interesting little work on ancient astronomy, and a number of important passages are repeated with approval by H.P. Blavatsky. A simple calculation shows that the equinoctial must have been perpendicular to the ecliptic somewhat over 430,000 years ago. For a considerable period before and after that epoch the climatic conditions in all parts not reasonably near the equator must have been violent in their severity. Many racial changes of habitat must have been going on for a long time. A solitary instance may serve to illustrate the possibility that exists of interpreting certain ancient symbols and mythologies, when we have succeeded in freeing our minds from the preconception that "prehistoric" humanity knew little of importance. In the sixth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, it says that Lycia had the Chimaera there, when the violent sun scorched the country. In the Iliad and elsewhere we read that Bellerophon, on Pegasus, conquered the Chimaera at the command of Iobates, king of Lycia. Now the Chimaera, modeled in bronze by the Etruscans,17 consists of a lion with a dragon's tail, and with a goat's head growing out of the lion's back. The dragon's tail, in such a combination, means the south pole's position among the stars; which, as it here belongs to the lion, means that the constellation Leo was at that time at the south pole. The vomiting of fire by the monster alludes to the scorching heat of the summer sun in Capricorn, the goat. The winged Pegasus may be poetically emblematic of a ship; and Bellerophon, according to Pluche, is wholesome food. Under the then prevailing conditions the winter sun was invisible in Lycia for two months or more, and this marshy and mountain-encircled country must have

been inundated with melted snow in spring, after which the sun shone without break in summer for a like interval. Lycia, which had no river, is in about 40 o north latitude. The inhabitants of Lycia, then, at a remote period, were in their distress succored by a ruler of the time. Thus we have disguised history embodying a means for approximately determining the date. This instance was selected because the Etruscan figure happened to be convenient at the moment. The interpretation is Mackey's. But The Secret Doctrine is a mine of information upon sidereal and cosmic glyphs. Moreover the wanderings of Latona, with which the foregoing episode is connected, are shown therein to symbolize events in early race migrations and history.18 Following the keys afforded us by Marsham Adams, we find that what is commonly entitled "the grand gallery" of the Great Pyramid was in ancient times known to some as the Hall of the Orbit. That it actually represented the Earth's orbital plane should be evident to the most casual observer, with the orbits of the seven planets indicated on the walls, the thirty-six decans of the Zodiac indicated on the roof, and the twenty-seven lunar mansions indicated on the ramps. Therefore, having due regard to the real purpose of the structure, and keeping in view the knowledge of the Earth's movements in the possession of some Egyptians, they would certainly lay this Hall of the Orbit in the actual orbital plane at mid-summer midnight; or, which amounts to the same thing, at mid-winter noon; for these solstitial positions are identical in altitude. The ascending passage to the Hall of the Orbit is inclined to the horizon at 26 o 7', while the Hall of the Orbit is at 26 o 21'. It is probable, for reasons which cannot now be entered upon, that the latitude of the axis of the Great Pyramid was then precisely 30 o, which is one and a third minutes of arc only, more than is now the case. It would follow that at the date when the Great Pyramid was originally projected or commenced, the obliquity of the ecliptic was 33o 53', while at about the time of the completion of the work, the obliquity had diminished to 33o 39', corresponding to an interval of about 1500 years. The granite blocks for the upper chamber were probably dressed long before being put in place. W. M. Flinders Petrie, in The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, notes that the construction-work of the descending and ascending passages was fully on a par with the wonderful accuracy of the masons who cut the granite blocks, including those for the upper chamber; and that the subsequent builders' work at the higher levels, even allowing for the effects of earthquakes, was of inferior quality, and in marked contrast to the prior lay-out of the main features, such as the level platform, base lengths, ascending and descending passages, etc. Carrying the steady rate of change of mean obliquity, previously mentioned, of four degrees per great precessional circuit, back for 67,600 years prior to 1898, when the vernal equinox was about three degrees east of the star l Virgo, the mean obliquity should then have been 33o 53'. Before proceeding to some further results of investigation regarding this date and that of the first of the earlier pyramids, we must talk a little about the stars in general. At 31,115 years prior to 1898, the mean vernal equinox southed less than a minute before Aldebaran reached the meridian, as nearly as can perhaps be estimated. And 5018 years ago it was about five minutes. For this and other reasons, probably 25,920 years is a fairly good approximation to the mean length of the great precessional circuit, during the periods we are considering. Let us now glance at some ancient customs involving the Pleiades. In Japan, when

the Pleiades culminate at midnight, they commemorate some great calamity which befell the world. The Talmud connects the Pleiades with a great destructive flood. They culminate at midnight on the 17th of November, a date observed, with the same significance, alike by the Aztecs, Hindus, Japanese, Egyptians, Ceylonese, Persians and Peruvians. On the 17th of November, no petition was presented in vain to the kings of Persia. Prescott, in his Conquest of Mexico, speaks of a great festival held by the Mexicans in November, at the time of the midnight culmination of the Pleiades, and the Spanish conquerors found in Mexico a tradition that the world was once destroyed when the Pleiades culminated at midnight. At the end of every fifty-two years, and at that identical midnight moment of the year, the Aztecs still seemed to imagine the world might end, the entire population passing the remainder of the night on their knees, awaiting their doom - perhaps the most remarkable instance of race-memory on record. Equally extraordinary, however, is the fact that the Australian aborigines, at the midnight culmination of the Pleiades in November, hold a festival connected with the dead. Some masonic bodies of the present day hold memorial services to the dead in the middle of November. The Druids, at the beginning of November, had a similar festival, which seems to have included the three consecutive days now called "All Hallow Eve," "All Saints' Day" and "All Souls'," clearly indicating a festival of the dead, and doubtless originally regulated, like all the others, by the Pleiades. Ethnologically, the fact that this festival is also celebrated at the same time and for the same reason in the Tonga Islands of the Fiji group, has especial significance. For the Tongas, as well as the Samoans and Tahitians, belong to the very earliest of the surviving Atlantean sub-races, and are of a higher stature than the rest of mankind. Attention is drawn to the Pleiades, partly because of these historic associations, and partly because this small group, which begins the constellation Taurus or Apis, the Bull, happens to have held a supreme place in ancient astronomy and symbolism. In the temples of ancient Egypt, to know the age of Apis, signified to possess a clue to many a life-cycle. Probably, then, we shall not be far wrong in placing the beginning of Taurus on the great circle through the pole of the ecliptic and the principal star in the Pleiades, Alcyone. In his valuable work, The Gods of the Egyptians, Dr. Budge is correct, as already suggested, in stating that the Dendera Zodiacs show in their details Greek influence. But these are not the original Zodiac of the ancient former temple at Dendera. The facts are that, in the earlier days of Egypt, only ten signs were known to the public, and Scorpio was joined to Virgo. But in the temples there were always two additional signs, and those among the Greeks who knew the facts made a change of name, though conveying symbolically the same ideas, making the former public Virgo-Scorpio into two, and adding Libra. The latter stands between the macrocosmic symbolism of the first six, and the microcosmic of the last five. But H.P. Blavatsky pointed out long ago that the key to the Zodiac has to be turned seven times.19 Astronomically, the thirty-six decans seen in the rectangular Dendera zodiac were always distributed equally around the circle. Therefore, starting from Alcyone at 0' Taurus, we find Regulus at 0' Leo, Antares at 10 o Scorpio, and Fomalhaut at 4o Aquarius. In what follows, this Zodiac is made the standard of reference. At the time suggested for the commencement of the Great Pyramid, 67,600 years ago, we find the tenth degree of Libra at the vernal equinox, the summer solstice occurring in the tenth degree of Capricorn, which is found at the head of the rectangular Dendera Zodiac. Now the first pyramids, according to an ancient commentary, were built at the beginning of a great precessional cycle, under a Polaris, when it was at lowest culmination with reference to the actual pole, and on the same meridian both with that and Alcyone, which latter was higher than the pole.20 The meaning is a little obscure, as giants are also

mentioned, and it may be suspected that we have here a reference to Atlantean times. Nevertheless it is not improbable, having regard to Egyptian procedure in these matters, that something corresponding was done there, and at a corresponding time. Now we find the latest prior time at which Alcyone and a Polaris were on the same meridian, the celestial pole being at the same time at nearly its furthest from a Polaris, was when the summer solstice occurred in the eighth degree of Libra, 86,860 years prior to 1898. The pole would then be near to the spearhead of Bootes, Alcyone being higher in the south, at Gizeh, than the pole in the north. Again, we find that, 9100 years prior to 1898, the summer solstice was in the eighth degree of Libra, thus concluding three great precessional cycles, which agrees with other data.21 The figures thus ascertained also show close correspondence with the statement that "the Egyptians have on their zodiacs irrefutable proofs of records having embraced about 87,000 years." 22 Reverting to the Great Pyramid, Petrie found the pavement around the base so accurately leveled as to entail skill in the use of the best modern instruments to cope with the accuracy; while as to the long descending passage, where he used offset staffs from the theodolite line measuring to twentieths of an inch, he confessed he had not got within the limits of accuracy of the builders, adding that he would have to repeat the measurements with offsets measuring to hundredths of an inch. This is in reference, be it remembered, not to a small piece of mechanism one could lay upon a table, but to parts of a solid building of the heaviest kind of masonry covering thirteen acres of ground, and rising to a height, from lowest chamber to summit, of nearly six hundred feet. The height from the pavement level to the intersection of the original casing surfaces is 5773.4 inches, as found, within minute limits of probable error, by Petrie. The base length being 9068.8 inches, it follows that the circuit of the base at pavement level is precisely the circumference of a circle of radius equal to the height. The long descending passage is inclined at the angle whose tangent is two, to the vertical axis - an angle which should be regarded as the fundamental one of solid geometry, inasmuch as six sphere diameters inclined at this mutual angle give rise at once to all the regular solids of Pythagoras, which are at the root, in a sense, of crystalline and flower structure. The upper granite chamber, whose length is precisely double the width, repeats this angle: and the height being half the floor diagonal, the cubic diagonal is exactly five times the half-width. It has been said of these primitive savages, the Egyptians, that their knowledge of geometry began where that of Euclid, seven myriads of years later, ended. Would it not be curious, if the same could be said of their astronomical and geodetic knowledge, as compared with ours? Let us look for a moment into this. Had it not been for the enthusiasm of Piazzi Smyth, a former Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, we should probably not be in possession of Petrie's most careful survey, with every detail of instruments and methods described, and the probable limits of error calculated minutely in every instance. His measurements, though destroying some of Piazzi Smyth's theories, have established, much of import. It was Petrie himself who drew attention to the close agreement between the double circuit of the Great Pyramid, at the pavement level as well as at the different levels of the four corner-sockets, and the length of a minute of arc - that is, a geographical mile - as estimated in various ways. Since then, the figure of the Earth has been the subject of laborious investigation, and the Hayford spheroid of 1909 is now adopted. On this basis we find the present length of one minute of latitude at the equator to be 72,555.8 inches. The double circuit of the Pyramid at pavement level, adopting Petrie's final results, is 72,550.4 inches, which is slightly less. This and other results, including the present latitude of the building, suggest clues to a proximate

cause of earthquakes, if the equatorial radius has for long been gradually diminishing, and the polar increasing. Similar things have happened in the far remote past, 23 and as the planet, like all else in the universe, is alive, and not dead, it may be happening still. Powerful stresses would arise, accompanying changes in length of meridians and some circles of latitude. Puget Sound, the Grand Canyon and some results of the San Francisco earthquakes,24 point to a similar conclusion. How was it that the Egyptians always represented the Sun as blue? Nowadays it needs our Rayleighs to find this out. Why was granite employed in certain parts of the Pyramid? Only a few months have elapsed since peculiar radioactive qualities of granite were discovered. At the time suggested for the foundation of the Great Pyramid, Sirius, or Sothis, had disappeared. It was then on the other side of the Milky Way, but invisible at Gizeh, owing to the position of the celestial pole among the stars. Some fifteen or twenty centuries later, Sothis reappeared, after the pyramid was finished. A few weeks ago, Professor Pupin25 announced that we are stone-blind and stone-deaf to vast ranges of phenomena. Perhaps he might have added: and to certain stellar and planetary emanations also. However that may be, one reads that: "Sirius has a direct influence over the whole living heaven. It is found in connection with every religion of antiquity, and with initiations in the Great Pyramid." While on this point it may be worth noticing that a writer in The English Mechanic26 has found, from a lengthy series of observations, that what we call magnetic storms are more prevalent when the Moon is near certain longitudes. And these longitudes are practically those of Alcyone, Regulus, Antares and Fomalhaut - the "royal stars" of the Persians. The accompanying Egyptian figure shows the cortege of the Sun floating through space, with regions approaching from the northeast.27 So they knew of the solar motion through space! At the time suggested for the foundation of the Great Pyramid, the pole would be near to the neck of Cygnus, the Swan. Should it be found that the Egyptians, among other reasons for the structure, wished to commemorate the fact that the Earth's axis was then pointing to the apex of the Sun's way (now estimated as nearer to Vega), we should be in possession of an element of the solar orbit. Only one hundred and fifty years of something like exact observation, with new sources of error often appearing, is hardly enough for correct cosmic theory. Had it not been for the destructive spirit of vandals and fanatics we might now have a better knowledge of ancient astronomy. But what we do have should be enough to spur us on to more intelligent conceptions of cosmogony. When we have deeper respect for the knowledge, character and achievements of our ancestors and their divine Teachers, and learn how to live in harmony - then help in scientific directions as well as in more important ways, may again come from those - "who first Taught astronomy, among other things, to mankind." (Vol. 10, March, 1916, pp. 287-303) ----------Notes 1. Proclus, on Plato's Timaeus, Bk. I. 2. Traite de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale, Paris, 1787. Nevertheless, Bailly,

Dupuis and others, relying on the purposely mutilated accounts of Hindu chronology, brought from India by certain too zealous and as unscrupulous missionaries, built up fantastic theories upon ancient chronology. 3. Vol. II, 49. 4. Surya-Siddhanta, Burgess, 277, New Haven, 1860. 5. General Astronomy, Young, 138, New York, 1904. 6. Isis Unveiled, H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. I, 627. 7. Ancient Fragments, Cory, London, 1832. 8. Hist. Nat., lib. vii, c. 56. 9. Anc. Frag., Cory. 10. Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, 519. 11. page 279. 12. Harper's Magazine, April, 1913. 13. Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, 23. 14. March 21, 1914. 15. Transactions Blavatsky Lodge, Vol. II, 24-5. 16. The Secret Doctrine, II, 368. 17. see Theosophical Path, Nov., 1915, for illustration 18. no note listed 19. Isis Unveiled, II, 461. 20. Secret Doctrine, H.P. Blavatsky, Vol. I, 435. 21. Ibid., II, 330-1, 768. The word Minor, line 7 from foot of page 768, is a misprint for Major. As to "the further end of Ursa Major's tail," in the original sentence of The Key of Urania the words are, "the tip of Ursa Major's tail." Mackey here made a slip of 180o. 22. Ibid., II, 332. 23. Cf. Secret Doctrine, II, 325. 24. Cf. Bulletin Seism. Soc. Amer., Vol. I, 34. 25. Science, December 10, 1915 26. December 17, 1915. 27. From The Gods of Egypt, Dr. Wallis Budge, London, 1904. ------------Evolution and Involution: A Study in Biology - Herbert Coryn, M.D. (A School of Antiquity Paper) [1918] A great poet promised for his poem that it should "justify the ways of God to man." It was a large promise, now generally regarded as unfulfilled and even unfulfillable. Science has taken many great steps since that time, but on the whole has decided to disregard the question of such ways altogether. She studies the whole field of nature, but does not claim to find any indications of a presence there consciously working out a plan. She tries all sorts of hypotheses to explain and map her facts, but with this hypothesis will usually have nothing to do. But whilst dropping all the theological connotations of the word God, she might find

immense service in her attempts to explain things from the hypothesis that there is a conscious and intelligent working presence behind nature, a presence inserting or involving itself into nature and then as it were extricating or evolving itself from nature with its intelligence and self-knowledge infinitely enriched. It is a thoroughly intelligible hypothesis, capable of the greatest service and with nothing against it; but she won't have it. Consequently there is much darkness where there might be much light; and all because she is still in a state of reaction from church dogma, feeling that if she accepts the conscious working presence she will find it to be the theological God again. Let us inquire into this idea of a working presence and see what help it will give us as students of Biology. Consider the case of a man with much music in his soul but no instrument to render it to himself on. He takes materials and makes some sort of a violin, a very bad one. It gives sounds but not at all those he wants. It is, however, good enough for his children to begin upon, whilst he makes another. That, and the next, and the next, are also unsatisfactory; but at last he reaches what he wanted. Now he can play; now he can render to himself the music that is in him. Why should he render it? With his inner ear he can hear it in all its perfection. But yet he gains something by rendering it to his outer ear. He clears it up to himself; his creative power grows by playing it; as a musician he evolves to a greater height, a height he could never have reached by simply following the music interiorly. He has expressed himself to himself, become more self-conscious, more conscious of his own containments. Out of his earlier and imperfect violins he got something; out of this last one he gets all. If you had listened to the squawks of the first instrument you might have had no idea of what the man was after or what was in him. Hearing the last instrument, you know now what he was then after. Now, as students of Biology, with this as an image, let us turn to nature. A conscious presence in nature, let us say, wants to work out its own possibilities, to make its own creative possibilities manifest to itself, to reach self-conscious working knowledge of its own highest latent containments. It begins to make instruments, the lower kingdoms of nature, the lower animals and plants. It passes to higher forms of life, presses on in every direction, tries every possible experiment, fails often, drops its failures, and at last reaches man. Here it has come to itself; now it has an instrument through which it will express itself with more and more perfection. Each of us is it. Each of us, whilst conscious of imperfections in every department of his form and mind, is also conscious of an attainable ideal within him towards which he can advance and is slowly advancing. Each of us is his present self and also much more than his present self. Each knows that he has not yet rendered himself to himself. From this point there are of course inviting roads into ethics, philosophy, and religion. But we are going to stay now mostly on the field of Biology. What will this hypothesis do for us as biologists? Since the time of Darwin, at any rate, the question of questions in Biology has been the origin of species. If we could understand how one species of frog came to differ from another, we could imagine how, by extension of the same process, the frogs as a whole came to differ from the fish, and the snakes from the frogs, and the birds from the snakes. A multitude of small differences would sum up into a great difference, many little ascents into a big step of ascent. The working method of evolution, resulting in the scale from the bacteria to man, would be clear. Everything depends on the small differences, the small variations. How do they come

about? Here is a creature that has varied a little from its parent and its fellows in general. If the variation is a useful one, say a shade of fur a trifle closer to the color of the ground, it will have a shade more chance than its fellows to escape the notice of an enemy, a shade more chance to grow up safely and have offspring, a shade more likelihood to live longer and have more broods of offspring than its fellows. Its offspring will tend to resemble it in that favorable shade. Some of them will go one better in resembling the ground, with still better chances of surviving and multiplying. The process continuing, there will presently arise a species whose color is exactly that of the ground and whose chances are best. In the meantime some of the original species, remaining of the original color, have achieved increased safety against their enemies by slight additions to the length of leg and therefore speed of running. At last has arisen a species with a leg markedly longer than that of the original. The old species, with unfavorable color and short legs, now fails to hold its own and disappears. There are two new ones, one quite ground-colored with short legs, the other with long legs but of the original color. The question is the origin of the small variations of which the large variations were said to be the sum. How did they happen? The Darwinian answer is that they happened by chance; but having happened they were preserved because they gave increased power to get food and escape enemies. The unfortunate creatures whom chance had not favored were killed out or starved out in favor of the ones better furnished. This is all charmingly simple, you see, and makes Chance the presiding deity of evolution. But pretty soon marked difficulties to the theory began to manifest. Whilst it is true that the small variations do constantly occur, they are at their first appearance useless, not functioning, and too small to afford any advantage in the struggle for life. They have to be multiplied through a series of generations. And they would not get the multiplying. For the few individuals who happened to have them would mate among the great crowd that had not and the variations would be diluted into nothing at once, whilst it might be a thousand years before they happened to appear again - that is, if it is by a happening that the process comes about. There are other formidable objections to the theory. One of these is that so far not a single indubitable case of species-making by this process has ever yet been observed to occur in nature. At least somewhere in nature we should be able to point to some single pair of coexisting distinct species along with the links between. But we cannot. It does not explain the gradual perfecting of organs such as the eye, in which many changes have to go on together in order to make something useful. Try to imagine the formation of eyes according to this method of minute chance changes. By pure chance the brain begins to push forward two minute stalks towards the skin, two, just side by side. Generation after generation, always by chance, these chance two stalks happen to get nearer the skin. At the two spots where they are by chance equally approaching the skin, the skin by chance begins to dimple in - exactly at those two spots. At the same time the stalk of brain happens to be becoming more sensitive to light and the bottom of the dimple more transparent. Finally the dimple happens to fit down exactly upon the stalk and an eye results. The brain stalk becomes the retina and the bottom of the dimple the cornea and lens. Remember that at any point in all this process, up to the generation when seeing began, the development would be just as likely by chance to stop and undo itself as to go forward. For till the moment of seeing, the new-forming organ would confer no advantage of any kind. These and other difficulties have caused the theory of minute, fluctuating, by-chance-

appearing variations to be pretty well given up. Some of the same difficulties apply to another theory - the other theory, one might say: that the bridge between one species and another is made by relatively large, quite definite, come-to-stay steps, called mutations. The first difficulty here is to account for their appearing. Another is this troublesome eye again, and the like. You could imagine the sudden appearance somewhere on the skin of a spot extra transparent to light. You could imagine the brain suddenly sending forward a protrusion or stalk towards the skin. But two spots symmetrical with each other; two protrusions symmetrical with each other; and the concurrence of the two spots with the two protrusions - a series of accidents most fortunately resulting in an organ of sight - surely this is too much to accept! Surely the chance hypothesis must go. The variations, whether minute and fluctuating or larger and definite, must be under guidance or time would be lost in eternity before the ladder of evolution, staged from the bacterium to man, could have formed itself by a set of unplanned, anyhowoccurring accidents. And I think that the guidance, manifest even in the occasional mistakes it makes, would have been generally accepted as a luminously explanatory hypothesis were it not that the biologists instinctively feared it would mean the return of theological dogma. For they have plan, plan, plan, visible everywhere. It would be the first idea, the first explanation to himself of what he saw, if you could suddenly show to a man of intellect, who had never thought of it before, the whole scale of life, germs, plants, molluscs, fish, reptiles, birds, vertebrates, man. An obvious plan working out, he would say. "H.H. Lane, of the University of Oklahoma, has made a series of investigations of the embryonic development of the sense organs in the rat and some other mammals. He found that the association centers, the afferent and efferent nerve trunks, and the effective motor apparatus, are all in working order before the special sense organ concerned is capable of functioning. i.e., the organ of special sense is in each case the last link to be perfected, and the function - sight - is only established when this point is reached. This embryonic development must be an epitome of the evolutionary development of the sense organs, in accordance with well-known rule. And it follows that the long consecutive series of variations or mutations finally leading to a functioning eye were not serviceable till they were complete, and had resulted in an eye, and therefore that they were not conserved by natural selection, did not come at all under its notice. Which means, of course, that all the time there was a vis a tergo pushing in a determined direction to a predetermined result." - From a recent review of Prof. Lane's work. Suppose you saw a man building a house. It is not finished, but it is so far along as to enable you to see that it is of a very definite pattern. The man has no idea, you might say; the pattern is just chance. When he is away you knock it all down, brick by brick. You pass again in a few days and find that the man has built it up again and in exactly the same shape. Surely he has an idea. But to test the matter you not only knock it down again but take away all the bricks except one and all the mortar but a tablespoonful. Well, next time you are that way you find that he has sawn that one brick into an immense multitude of minute bricks and with them and his tablespoonful of mortar has built a minute toy house of exactly the same pattern as the original full-sized one. Now you know for certain that he had a plan. He wanted a house of a determined shape. You sow a begonia seed and a begonia plant results: not any other plant; never a geranium; always a begonia from a begonia seed. Is there a plan? Cut off a leaf and plant

and water that. It puts out roots and shoots and in due time a begonia plant results from that. Is there a plan, an idea, of the whole plant diffused all through it? Cut off a minute bit of a leaf, as small as you can see, and plant that. If you know how to look after it, it too will become the whole plant, just like one grown from the seed. At a certain stage in the development of the starfish it has as yet no rays; it is bilaterally symmetrical and has a fore and a hind end. Cut it in two longwise and each half will complete itself into a whole animal. Cut it in two crosswise and the front end will develop a hind end and the hind end will complete itself with a front end. Was there not a plan of the whole persistently realizing itself again and again in the face of your mutilations? What other explanation can there be? You probably know that at an early stage in the development of any organism it consists of one cell or speck of living matter, usually microscopic in size. This one divides into two, the two into four, the four into eight, and so on until there are a thousand or more, all alike. Finally they begin to become unlike, some acquiring the characteristics of muscle cells, some of nerve, some of liver and so on, till at last the whole complex body is formed. Suppose you throw the cells into confusion. Take such an organism as the little seaurchin at the stage when it is a little globular cluster of many cells still all alike. Throw them into confusion. Press them between two slips of glass till their original relationship to each other is destroyed. Then leave them to themselves and you will find that a perfect sea-urchin will still be formed. Does it not look as if they knew exactly what they wanted? Suppose you take them at the stage when there is a little cluster of sixteen and put it into sea water from which the lime has been removed. They fall apart into sixteen separate units. Surely no perfect organism is now possible. But put back the lime and now each of the sixteen will start to form a perfect organism on its own account so that sixteen little creatures result. Each of them had the plan of the whole in its private possession, just as each cell of the begonia leaf. They were willing to co-operate in its realization, or to do it each separately. If the flatworm Planaria is cut into small pieces and the pieces placed so that they can absorb nourishment, each of them will grow into a whole worm. But if no nourishment is given they behave differently. They cannot grow; so each of the pieces rearranges its material and becomes a perfect but very minute worm. If one of the pieces happens to contain the pharynx and this piece, when fed, grows into a worm that is smaller than the original, the pharynx will be too large for it. It will then dissolve that pharynx and make a new one that fits its new size. But in most animals the idea of the whole is not finally present in every part as it is in the begonia or in the flat-worm. Some worms, when cut in two in the middle, will grow a new head end on to the tail and a new tail end on to the head. About the middle, it would seem, the idea of the whole worm exists. But towards each end there comes to be the idea of that end only. Cut the worm in two near the head, and the predominant strength of the head plan, the head idea, will cause another head to be grown, and you have a two-headed worm with no tail for that half. The other half will, of course, grow a head also and will consequently be all right. A cut near the other end will give you a worm with two tails and no head. Tubularia is a sort of sea anemone growing on a stalk with two rows of tentacles surrounding the head and mouth. If the head is cut off with the tentacles, the first sign of regeneration consists in two rings of lines, one above another, running down the sides of the stem from the cut. These gradually strip themselves off so as to become the new tentacles, keeping one end attached. Then the head forms in their midst. But if, before this, you cut off a new bit of the stem, so as to leave only one of the two rows of lines, the creature, as if in disgust, sometimes erases the other row too and starts afresh; sometimes it lengthens each line of the one row left and divides it in the middle so as to get two again; sometimes it

divides it at once into two very small lines, detaches one end of each so as to get two very small tentacles, and then grows these to the proper length. Whichever way it selects it finally gets the proper result. Now does it not seem obvious that in all these cases there is a plan at work? And should we be going too far if we suggest that the plan involves consciousness and intention? Is it not a reasonable hypothesis, the only hypothesis that can and does explain what we see? May we not reasonably advance the same hypothesis to explain the otherwise unexplained appearance of variations? May we not reasonably suggest that there too there is a plan, conscious, purposeful, at work? There is nothing against it and it brings at once a flood of light upon some immense difficulties. It has difficulties of its own, of course; but nothing like those it removes. It means that just as there is an obvious plan at work in the development of the individual creature, so that from one cell it becomes a thousand and finally the perfect organism, so there is a plan actively at work all up the scale of evolution producing the variations which are necessary for advance. Some of the variations are tried and found not to work, just as our violin-making man might try a new pattern and find it a mistake. But he has learned something from the experiment. And in the same way, may we not suppose that this all-diffused, intelligent, planning nature-presence, learns from its mistakes, tries again, and then succeeds? There is nothing against this hypothesis, and it does explain what we see. Let us try and see some more. One of the characteristics of human mind is its power to plan and foresee, to create some desired condition of things in imagination and then to work forward voluntarily towards its realization. It looks as if the whole of the animal and vegetable kingdoms had the same power. All living beings do things which do bring about a desirable and necessary result. Why should we assume that it is only we humans that are capable of having that result in mind when we do the things? It is sometimes argued that birds build their nests without any idea of the why of their work or what will at last come of it. Could that be argued of those ants which in constructing their nests use their own grubs as needles to sew the leaves together with? Just as these grubs are about to enter the pupa stage they secrete silk to make the chrysalis with from a silk gland near the head. It is at this stage that the worker ants take them carefully in their mouths and treat them as needles threaded with silk. If there is quite obvious planned result there, why should we deny equally conscious plan so much higher up as the birds? Now go down still lower to those sixteen cells which will presently multiply and multiply and differentiate among themselves to make the complete organism we call the sea-urchin. As we noted, the plan is so definite that if we disappoint them, break up their connection with each other, separate them, each one will thereupon take up on its own account the whole line of development which they would otherwise have taken up collectively. It may be argued that the two cases are not parallel. One is a doing; the other a becoming. We can understand that any creature may do things according to its intention and knowledge of results: but that it should alter its interior structure according to intention - ? We can plan our action and so far understand the same thing wherever we see it. But we cannot plan our own structure and carry out the plan. If we may read ourselves into nature we must read our inabilities as well, as our powers. But in certain abnormal states of consciousness the body does alter its structure in accordance with a picture in the imagination. What are called 'mother's marks' are cases in point. Ecstasized saints, dwelling in imagination upon the wounds of Christ, have often been found to develop inflamed and bleeding lesions in the same situations. Suggestions administered in the hypnotic state have caused the appearance of burns and hemorrhages, hemorrhages sometimes so exactly willed and controlled that the oozing points of blood traced the outlines of the patient's name upon the agreed place on the arm. All the cures

wrought by faith-healing, mind-healing and the like, are other examples of this power of imagination upon the body. How the body follows the imagination we do not know. We do not know how we stretch forth our arm. We will and imagine it and it is done. The intimate microscopic muscular processes are outside our ken. The point is that there is a connection, a chain of links along which guidance runs, between imagination and the cells of the body; though some of the links are not present in our mental consciousness. Now carry the idea down the animal scale to those sixteen cells that will become the sea-urchin, either collectively or singly according as we interfere or not. We argue that it is the best explanation of what we see that there is a consciously made fore-plan of the future animal present and at work among those cells, and that it is strong enough to refuse to be thwarted by our experimental manipulations. But we do not argue that that consciousness is the same as or one with the lowly consciousness of the animal. In there, is perhaps some vague urge which is satisfied by the growth that goes on. The fully conscious intent is in the nature-consciousness at work there. In other words the consciousness is there dual: the lowly consciousness of the animal, just sufficient for its life-purposes, food-getting and so on; and the clear natureconsciousness which holds the animal in guidance and through it works out a bit of its grand plan. These two consciousnesses, then, according to our view, are together all the way up, the lesser and the greater, the derived and the source, one behind and guiding the other and passing more and more of itself into the other. An imagining and willing of what shall be, is the work of the one; the other just lives out its little life, not knowing and not needing to know the why of its life. Deeds, doings, the organisms one above another learn more and more perfectly and complexly to imagine, will, and carry out. But of the becoming, the advance, all the way up, they know nothing; that is out of their grasp, beyond their imaginations, not willed by them. It is imagined and willed for them by the nature mind which has them in its hand and of which they are but small and partial expressions. But at the top of the scale, so far the top, in man, we should expect something more. There the will and power to do should to some extent be supplemented by the will and power to become, to imagine a step in advance and take it. And in some measure we do see this, do see that this power of the nature mind or soul is becoming his, that in him the nature soul has begun to take this great step in selfexpression. Man can form ideals of himself of every kind, on every plane of his being, which are in advance of his actuality. Ideals of perfected health, of keener sense-faculty, of keener mind, of nobler character, held and dwelt on, will of their own power, and in addition to the effects of action taken to secure these ends, tend to realize themselves. All the schools of thought- and faith-healing use this principle of imagination, the imagining of health and of bettered faculty. And no one doubts that an ideal of ennobled character is the first and greatest step to the attainment of ennobled character. But in that consideration we have gained much insight into the quality of this nature soul. If it had a plan all the way up, and if at the top of the way, as the crown of its work, we find the development of lofty human characters, of creative genius of every sort, of universal philanthropy, we must reckon those as its aims and as modes of its self-expression. The creative arts, religion, and science, are rooted in it. For they have grown out of its travail, its experiments, its failures, its successes. And now it is time to recognise how much more of its work has been done by combination than by conflict. The great keynote has been combination. The individual monads of life, small beyond imagination, arising we do not yet know how, combined in their myriads to make the bacterium, the amoeba, the single cells of which the microscope will

show you so many in a drop of dirty water. These in their turn combined to make the lowliest organisms, still microscopic, in which they took up diverse functions and so made possible the richer life of the whole. Organisms themselves combined into more and more complex organisms with richer and complexer systems or organs and parts. At last we have the bodies of the higher plants, insects and animals. The cells of man's brain are but the same cells, elaborated and combined, that we find swimming singly or crawling as amoebas in our drop of dirty water from the pond. And the next order of combination, that of elaborated individuals, exemplified in the bees and ants and in some degree in humanity, is now in progress. This principle of combination, of co-operation, of self-surrender in the interests of the whole, of self-sacrifice, appears in the minds of the highest men as an instinct and an ideal. We call it one of the virtues. All the virtues are really rooted in it. It is the continuation into human life of nature's work from the very earliest. She is evidently trying to make an organism of all humanity with the same enormous gain to each individual from the combination as comes to the individual cell from its position as part of a complex animal body. It shares the richer life thus rendered possible. So we have a right, as students of Biology, to say that brotherhood is rooted in nature. Conflict too? Conflict was a temporary means. It is no longer - for humanity - the way of progress. Co-operation, always, as we have seen, in the nature-mind, is now consciously present in man's mind, man, the highest of nature's creatures. We have nearly finished. It remains to develop a little a point we touched on at the beginning. Biology is a science hitherto almost wholly confined to the ways of nature. Biologists would not speak of the ends, the plan, of nature, because that makes nature a conscious presence. And they have shied at that, because, I think, they feared (perhaps unconsciously) that the conscious presence might lead in a direction they most wish to avoid. We have decided to go ahead regardless of that fear. Here, in November, is a bird sitting on a tree pouring all his energy into song. It is a lot of energy; might have been put into food-getting. There is nothing to show as result. It is not mating season and no courting is going on. How are you going to account, on utilitarian principles, on biological principles, for the evolution of such a habit of waste (of energy) as that. Surely birds that devoted themselves strictly to business should have survived all the time as against birds that wasted energy in superfluous song, and these spendthrifts should have disappeared. What's up? What's the game? Here is paleolithic man, 100,000 years or more ago, little but a savage, spending his time drawing bisons and other animals on the walls of his cave, and doing it extremely well. But there seems to have been nothing whatever to gain by it. How, on biological principles: how, on the principle that useless variations of habit or structure do not persist and will disappear: how, on the principle that injurious variations, such as wasting time when there is scarce food to be got: - how came paleolithic man to have acquired the habit of doing something so useless? He probably beat out music of a kind with clubs on hollow trees and the like. Gorillas also do that and meet together in groups in the forests for that special purpose. How came into being these supremely useless habits? And how, having come into being, have they persisted and increased to this minute, culminating in the art and music which we so much enjoy? There are men whose whole time and consciousness is given over to these inexplicable practices. We call them artists and musicians. We regard this work as about the highest in which man can engage, the very flower of conscious life. I cannot understand any but one explanation: the conscious nature-soul, attempting fuller and fuller self-realization and to that end evolving the whole series of living beings, plant

and animal, the living beings living their lives in unconsciousness of the aim behind them, has at last into man transferred so much of her consciousness that he knowingly and intentionally takes up the plan for himself and finds his highest pleasure in this highest sort of selfrealization, this making of his deepest depths and highest heights visible and audible to himself, so that that part of his consciousness which in the lower animals is only concerned with common life, in him begins to know the hitherto unmanifest splendors of the part that lies behind common life. And then the religious instinct, the instinct to seek communion with the power behind nature: how came that about? Materially useless, a waste of time, a variation that natural selection could never have conserved and could not survive if that were the only conserving power: how did it arise and grow to this day? Is it not a conscious attempt in man of the power behind man to realize its own highest and fullest? Very much more might be said and we could wander very far afield. We have pressed far enough on to the ground that is common to biology and philosophy. It is enough now if we have found reason to suspect that this hypothesis of a soul in nature, striving to selfrealization, to make its own inwardness a working manifest outwardness, throws light on some of the obscurest and most difficult places in Biology and is in tune with every existing known fact and principle. We have found a God, if you will allow the word, that is doing something that is fully intelligible to us, whose motives we share in our highest forms of creative work, and whose consciousness is more and more fully our consciousness. (Vol. 14, pp. 148-58) ---------------------The Trend of Invention - Philip A. Malpas As though in fulfilment of the fancy of a 'best-seller' of its season, an intelligent couple of Pitcairn Islanders visited London not long ago. They were vastly struck by the display of ingenious inventions the city has to offer. "We didn't see any poor," says one of the visitors, "but that was perhaps because we were not looking for them. All the people did not seem happy with all these wonderful inventions around them. In Pitcairn everyone is happy and contented. There are no quarrels to speak of - perhaps a word or two; the next minute it is all over and forgotten. . ." Invention is a fascinating occupation described by Edison, it is said, as one part inspiration and ten parts perspiration, but as the Pitcairn Islander observed, many inventions do not bring happiness. Perhaps in this lies the answer to the puzzle: "If advanced students of the hidden mysteries of nature and of science exist, as they are said to do by some, why do they not make their knowledge public at once and have done with it?" As it seems that they do not, we punish them by believing them to be a myth. When occasionally they do, we want to burn them like Galileo, and he only said what could be found in many a volume extant in his time. What would have happened if he had told something quite new to the world it is hard to guess. Motive is the key to it all. If inventors had in mind only the advancement of the happiness of the human race, many inventions would never have been published, and without a doubt, many more, and more important ones, would be known to the world at large. "For the sake of the soul alone the Universe exists," says a scripture. It is a medium for the soul to obtain experience. As training and experience, invention is an excellent thing; as a means of

making money, the opposite, though perhaps not worse than a hundred other things necessary for our civilization, if no injustice is done through its means, and no dangerous secrets of nature are revealed. Unhappily for the vanity of those of us who, rushing to the Patent Office with the latest creation of our originality, think we have done something to make the world revolve, well, just a little faster, for the greatness of our 'something new under the sun,' it hurts us to be told that Solomon was right after all and that we are only now raking up the rubbish heap of old memories and there is never a new thing among them all. For this is the memory we used to deny when discussing reincarnation and say that we ought to remember our past deeds for which we suffer now or enjoy effects. We thought that memory must be always mere brain memory, and supposed that we ought to expect some wonderful process to give us back without effort into one brain what we recorded on another, something after the fashion of a man who would record one song on a phonograph cylinder and expect to hear it from a totally different cylinder. To quote from Theosophical Manual, No. XI, p. 74: "We find that our boasted inventions are old and are largely derived from the astral store-house of Atlantean or Lemurian antiquity where the principles that our inventors look for are preserved in germ. When the time is ripe, or in other words when the cycle has come round again, the principle breaks through into the seeking minds, and the last link desired for success comes in a flash, or by what is called 'a happy accident.' In America the rush of invention has been especially active, one reason being that the people are more receptive to the pressure of the stored thought of the past than Europeans. Then, again, sometimes men originate brilliant ideas but have not enough education or opportunities to push them to perfection; in such cases a receptive and well-qualified mind will pick them subconsciously out of the astral light by a kind of thought-transference and utilize them for the benefit of mankind." Put in other language, the statement about America may in part be described as an assertion that the American memory of past lives is better than the European. There is a very real connection between the success of an inventor and his morality. Between the fashionable woman who would like to catch an angel so as to have new and rare feathers in her hat, and the humble inventor who would give his life if haply some invention of his could make the world, the children and the poor, happier, there is a vast difference. She may have her little social triumphs; he may have his little failures, in silence and unknown. But in the great world-memory, which never forgets, there are seeds sown for future opportunities and future increase of ignorance; time adjusts all things. The inventor who uses his whole power to make money or for selfish triumph is not necessarily fortunate when he is successful. Even in England, in 1916, "all the people did not seem happy with all those wonderful inventions around them," as our puzzled friend the Pitcairn Islander observed. In the west it is difficult to enter fully into the oriental attitude that the knowledge of something not commonly known is no justification for its immediate publication and exploitation, but rather the reverse. It is even more difficult to realize that of the many inventions of olden time, now forgotten or imperfectly restored, a large number have been of set purpose concealed or encouraged to die out of memory, by those who have rather the moral progress of the world in mind than its financial or physical interests. Our memories are so short, physically, that we forget how wonderful our most common exploits of today would have seemed to our imaginations of even twenty or thirty years ago, and we are liable to underestimate their importance. A tale by Mr. Judge of aeroplanes and airships fighting in the great war of which Plato and all the oldest writers speak, who dare,

was about twenty years ago so childishly fanciful that, apart from the pleasant style in which it was written, it was, from the everyday point of view, hardly worth reading; it was too absurd and far-fetched. Yet he knew. And now we begin to know. H. P. Blavatsky within the last thirty years indicated, foreshadowed, almost detailed, many inventions and discoveries, some of which are today the wonders of modern scientific achievement. But somehow one misses the acclamation by the world of her priceless work during her lifetime, and even today we find men with famous names in all departments of knowledge using, whether consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, her inexhaustible store of information, and her name is conspicuously absent from their acknowledgments, if they ever make any. If an inventor or leader of thought will read through her books Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, he cannot fail to find material and ideas and even direct statements of coming discoveries and inventions which are daily crystallizing into everyday shape, and for a hundred years to come it will be so. Seeking similar indications in other writers of the past of similar class, we can find many indications which are only now being realized. To continue the case of the airship, we find old Roger Bacon the physicist, seven centuries ago, telling us of many inventions he had seen, and among those which he knew of but had not seen, was an airship or aeroplane. I suspect that he claimed little originality in ideas, for he boasts of his researches into the Arabic wisdom, and doubtless through them he received much from the Greeks and Chinese, and they in their turn received much from old Atlantis, over 11,000 years ago at the least some relics of whose scientific attainments we cannot equal today even with our fine instruments. Doubtless there were others throughout the ages who knew of the science of aviation as one of the oldest sciences in the known world, and their dim hints encouraged the search for millenniums, until we in our glorious twentieth-century progress have at last reattained some beginning for the grand and glorious purpose of - war!! Were they right to conceal or are we right to publish? Of the minor inventions, toys if you like (since to speak of the really important ones is not yet the fashion among the intuitional scientists, it would seem), we find traces throughout our very imperfect history of the lens - microscopes and telescopes. Bacon shows how the lens may be made to do harm to an enemy by burning, seven hundred years ago. In the early centuries of the Christian era we find Synesius with what appears to be a telescope pure and simple, for looking over the sea, hence called a 'waterscope.' In the gems of the ancient world we find microscopic engraving. In the world of untold antiquity we find temples dedicated to planets and stars, as symbols of their gods, and those planets and stars are some of them telescopic. Doubtless as far as the imperfections of so-called history can reach we shall find indications of the use of the lens, even in the, or rather our, night of time, when the three old Hyperborean ladies had only one monocle among them and had to pass it round when they wished to see a visitor from that promising little new country called Greece in after days, - the story is in all the mythological dictionaries. But really and truly to the intuitional scientists the lens is a child's toy. What need had a really clear scientific insight for such relatively crude instruments as microscopes and telescopes? They came in with the degeneration of the human development, perhaps that which is indicated in some of the old writings as the result of the awful 'flood' which destroyed Atlantis. The intellects of the best men became as 'those of half-grown babes.' Plato speaks of it in either the Timaeus or the Critias, where he says that for ages the struggle for life was too keen to allow of the luxuries of intellectual study, such as history. Marvelous as are such discoveries and inventions, they are apparently despised by many of the brightest ornaments of human wisdom, towering minds which shine out through the lapse of ages and the worst fogs of dogmatism. Putting two and two together, may we not suspect that some of these, like the best of the alchemists, had got beyond such trivialities,

and were really on the track of the 'one only thing' that mattered,' as they joyously hint? Really it does seem as if some such state of affairs did and does exist. Their humor bursts out irrepressibly in rare cases, as if to laugh at the mole-like efforts of the societies and academies, as in that huge joke of the eighteenth century where the modem cinematograph, in color, and so lifelike as to deceive the sight, is described in detail in 1760, in a fantastic sketch evidently intended to be a playful skit on the Parisians, (the first foreshadowings of photography were not 'discovered' for forty years afterwards). That sketch in some of its most absurd and fanciful parts contains scientific truths to which our scientists have not yet come, tho speculative writers have. This so-called 'happy anticipation' of photography by Tiphaigne de la Roche has always been the stumbling-block of photographers who dare to think. He evidently knew something, and not being able to keep it to himself according to the laws of his society, which was probably searching for more important discoveries and could not afford to have its members sidetracked by such minor matters and the absorption of public exploitation and adulation, put it forward as a joke, a dream. It is only a strong position that enables discoverers to ignore fame and the 'great men' of the day in this manner, and that society must have had something worth while in prospect to be able to afford to do it. Though perhaps this apparent neglect of official science was not really so severe as it seems, and quietly, unostentatiously, its members may have placed some of their minor, though to the world extremely important and epoch-making discoveries, at the disposal of that world. There seems to be strong indications of this in the medicines and chemical discoveries given to science by Paracelsus, Glauber, St. Germain, and others. They were not ungenerous, but they apparently saw no use in giving more than could be utilized at the time. Judging by the revenge the world took for what they did give, this view is not surprising. More often, perhaps, such discoveries, or the seeds of them, like those so lavishly sown by H. P. Blavatsky, were given to the world when the time came, so indirectly as to demand no acknowledgment from those who were so worldly (and therefore imperfect as scientists) as to seek honor for themselves for what they in their turn put forward. Another type of such a discoverer, or rather inventor, is found in Jules Verne, the delight of our boyhood days. Without traveling far from home, he wrote volume after volume of fanciful stories for boys, full of the most wonderful inventions. Of course, we all knew such things were impossible - submarine voyages in the ocean, crossing Africa, finding the North Pole, airships mechanically propelled, the circuit of the earth in less than three months. The very boldness of the ideas made them unthinkable in real life, and he was not persecuted as a pioneer scientist or thinker would have been, had he dared to put these things forward as serious forecasts. There is room for suspicion that, directly or indirectly, he knew more than he cared to say, unless it were as a fantastic story of mechanical invention. Whether this is so or not, it is a definite method followed by such thinkers as Plato. What he knew otherwise, say, of Atlantis, he puts forward as a tale told by Critias who says it was related to his greatgrandfather by Solon and by the old gentleman to him when he was a boy. Even then the wily narrator mixes up and confuses both the story and the tellers and his 'memory' in such a way that it is hard to realize that he is in deadly earnest in what he says, unless one studies his method. Critias is said to have been very unpopular in Greece and a modern European University professor cannot understand why Plato treats him as a friend. May it not be that he does this precisely to avert from himself the unpopularity which Critias assumes, for any reason but the real one, that he had said more than was liked in describing the history of Atlantis, even in so obscure and confused and guarded a way as he did? About thirty years ago much was made of the wonderful inventions and discoveries of a Philadelphia man, John Worrell Keely. They were really wonderful, but somehow there was a difficulty in getting them to work under the guidance of any but Keely himself or of one in

touch with Keely. They indicated some such thing as wireless power generated in an engine that might be held in the hand - a power of almost inexhaustible duration. He tried to commercialize the force and instruments, and it was for that very reason he was told by H.P. Blavatsky that he would never proceed beyond a certain point, and would never succeed commercially. He went on with his work, and the next thing that was heard was that he was reduced to using wires for the conduction of his force. Even then there was no commercial success, and when he died, there was of course the usual howl of 'fraud' because the wires were found in the house and were supposed to have been used by him to cover alleged frauds as to the power being derived from his instruments alone. The whole affair is now almost forgotten, and, to the public, John Worrell Keely is not a man whose name bears any particular honor, rather the reverse. He seems to have been one of those who would have been more honored if he had maintained secrecy, as so many other originators have done when they were dealing with matters ahead of the age. Coupled with her statement that the Keely motor would never be a commercial success, was the condition of success, namely, that it would have to wait, perhaps thousands of years, for the poor to need it more than the rich, before such a power could be trusted to the public, could be trusted to civilization: - the taint of money-making was its death warrant. Or what is almost the same thing, it could not be used for selfish purposes. On the rare occasions when such retiring researchers as those whose efforts are directed to humanitarian ends and not individual profit are seen encouraging inventive effort, a careful consideration of their actions will usually show that the invention is a secondary purpose altogether, a mere tool for the formation of character in most cases. In the wonderful history of Count Saint Germain we find him as an inventor on various occasions, but though apparently in command of unlimited wealth when he so desired, his personal wants seemed few. At times he appeared almost poor, and yet he often treated valuable diamonds as things of no value. Helping others to invent, he seems to have made little money by his greatest inventions or discoveries, if any. He could enhance the price of diamonds to an enormous extent, and yet he did not appear to avail himself of this power to his own enrichment, while we do find him inventing or helping to invent simple industrial processes, and even giving employment to many workers in a factory, but always there seems to shine through all that he did the one motive of helping others. He is hugely delighted when some royal pupil finds out something for himself in one of their investigations, and yet, with what he knows on other lines, it seems absurd that he should need to trouble about such matters, so trivial they are. It is as though a great captain of industry were to busy himself as an operative workman in one of his own factories. All through history we read of alchemists who can make gold, and yet the evidence all seems to point to this power never being used for personal ends, even where it was sometimes convenient to allow the public to suppose that it was so made and used. Surely such a process in nature is not to be allowed to run to waste? Supposing that such a power represents, however, a mere material symbol of a moral attainment of immensely greater value, which seems to be the case, then there is no waste. If we assume for the sake of example that the color of a flower attracts the pollen-carrying insect and so insures the propagation of the plant through ages, the color, though beautiful, is no waste effort of nature, though to the little child it may be immensely desirable, like gold to the man, while the preservation and increase of the species may be far beyond the brain's conception. Gold is useful in many ways, and it is quite possible to conceive of a distant future where it will be no longer a symbol of selfishness or undue power or greed or anything evil, as it is now, only too often. In such a civilization there might be no natural bar to an almost unlimited power to transmute other metals to gold, just as a gardener is now granted

the power to transmute seeds into gorgeous blossoms even though they fulfil many purposes unsuspected by him, in addition to the obvious ones. There seems to be a strong connection between the Universal Law of Compensation, or Karma, and invention. If an inventor chooses to use his mechanical powers, by study and practice to invent some useful article, it seems a worthy occupation from which he is as much entitled to derive fair returns as he would be in any other occupation involving work. And if he can combine with his work a desire to be of benefit to the community at large, so much the better. If he learns mental, intellectual, and moral discipline from his work, he is fortunate. But on the other hand, a gnawing desire for a wholly disproportionate profit, an unfair expenditure of energy on a selfish object, a dragging down into the market-place of faculties which have no place there, an intellectual stealing and sale of natural secrets that cannot be guaranteed to produce only good, must surely produce an awful burden or responsibility and worse. The knowledge of such a basic law would seem to account for Roger Bacon's secrecy when he wrote in a secret anagram the formula for gunpowder, which he probably derived from the Chinese through the Arabs, even though he sought no monetary profit from the article. All the philosophers and scientists who have advanced far in their investigations seem to realize that everything they take must be paid for or justified as a human benefaction. If all inventors worked on these lines is it too much to suppose that in a hundred ways, accidental or purposeful, direct or indirect, the world would be trusted with inventions of the greatest value to humanity which have been taken away until we show at least a glimmering of moral purpose, as a basis for scientific investigation? In regard especially to explosives and the horrors of hypnotism, the words of a great Teacher written a quarter of a century ago are significant: "It is nigh time then that the psychologists and believers, at least, should cease advocating the beauties of publicity and claiming knowledge of the secrets nature for all. It is not in our age of 'suggestion' and 'explosives' that Occultism can open wide the doors of its laboratories except to those who do live the life." All the alchemists have arrived at the last at the point where they realize that 'the one only thing' is the only thing that matters. And to attain that 'one only thing' the life appears the only road, the life of morality in harmony with nature's law, morality as a real mode of living, not its pale counterparts of the sects. As the real inventor throws off brilliant inventions like sparks in his search for the great work of his life and cares little for them, so in the search for the soul (or sole, or sol, of the old philosophers, not the sentimental affair of - well, sentimental people) the true inventor is brilliant, though his real object be hidden, and until he finds himself, as the old Greek philosophers bid him do, he is unsatisfied. The greatness he seeks is that which shall make him appear as nothing in the eyes of men. The greatness they give him he thinks of little worth. He is the Inventor par excellence. (Vol. 13, pp. 437-44) ---------------------Latent Life and the Continuity of Existence - T. Henry

The study of latent life is much neglected, says Paul Becquerel, but it is a universal occurrence and is met wherever germs exist; and there is no portion of earth or air free from germs. The spores of fungi, bacteria, mosses, algae and ferns; pollen grains from flowers, the seeds of phanerogams, the cysts of infusoria, the eggs of certain insects; animal tissues and even some perfectly developed forms of life called revivescents, such as certain species of algae, mosses, lichens, rotifers, arctisca and nematodes - all can pass into a state of latent life. Thus they escape the injuries of cold and draught for years until an opportunity comes for their development. Baker succeeded in bringing nematodes to life twenty-eight years after their dessication; and the life-cycle of these beings does not exceed ten months. Spallanzani dried and preserved rotifers for three years, and found that they revived in water. Before a committee called by the Societe de Biologie it was established that (1) there is no appreciable life in the inert body of revivescent animals, (2) that the revivifying power survives conditions fatal to all functioning life, e.g., eighty-two days in a dry vacuum or thirty minutes at 100 C. Claude Bernard, on the latent life of seeds, says that it is potential and exists ready to manifest itself; but that it is wrong to say that the seed possesses a life whose manifestations are reduced to a degree so low as to escape observation. For, theoretically, there can be no manifested life without the interaction between the internal force and the external conditions, and the latter factor was absent in the experiments; and actually, the life of the germ is in no wise exhausted, as it would be if even a small degree of functioning life existed during the quiescent state. No functioning life could exist when the seeds are in chlorine or mercury. Some biologists, however, have maintained the contrary view - that the "latent" life is merely relaxed and not suspended, and claim experiments in their support. Moreover, if the life were suspended, would not the period of latency be indefinitely extensible? Paul Becquerel has germinated seeds eighty-seven years old, from a museum with accurate date records; they had a thick husk, impermeable to gaseous exchange. But he avers that the germination power diminishes with time, and Ewart states that macrobiotic seeds do not keep it much beyond a century. As to the theory that there can be no functioning life without interaction between the seed and its environment, it is argued that there can be an interaction between the protoplasm and the gases and water within the seed. These remarks are abstracted from a paper by Paul Becquerel in the Revue Generale des Sciences pures et appliquees. He cites much experimental evidence to show that dessication and other privatory means reduce the protoplasm to a virtually inert state, but without killing it. The word "dead," as applied here to protoplasm, evidently means nonexistent; the protoplasm has decomposed. A distinction should perhaps be drawn between "has died" and "is dead." In the case of suspended animation we could then say that the protoplasm still is, but is dead - exists in a dead condition but has not died. In the same way our own existence might be divided into periods when we are alive and periods when we are dead, but we exist all the time. To make it still more exact, we could suppose that some of our functions are in the live condition and others in the dead condition at the same time, so that we are largely dead now, and may be more alive when our physical and physico-mental activities are in the dead state. These facts about latent vitality illustrate a general principle, namely, that of the contrast between two poles, at one of which the powers are potential, while at the other they are active and manifested. When we sleep, our powers sink into the potential condition, and there are analogies that suggest a similar opinion as regards the state of death. This helps us to form an idea of the continuity of existence. Instead of regarding death as merely the absence of life, and thus viewing successive lives as a series of detached units, we may

consider life to be continuous and to alternate between the two poles of activity and latency. And how does this affect the question of Reincarnation? We can stretch our recollections and our sense of identity over the alternating periods of waking and sleeping, but not as yet over the successive phases of life and death. It is perhaps then, a question of our degree of development. As to what has been called "spontaneous generation," the burden rests on those who believe in it to show that living organisms can be produced in mineral matter after all germs have been excluded - no easy matter in view of what has been said about the latent condition of germs. H.P. Blavatsky states repeatedly in The Secret Doctrine that occult science teaches spontaneous generation, through the incarnation of monads, which are germs not yet materialized. This leads to the idea that even should the protoplasm die, the monad would survive and be ready to coalesce once more with matter. The visible organisms are the successive manifestations of a life that is unbroken. A scientific writer, commenting on the expression "organic life," asks, "Is there such a thing as inorganic life?" To many the distinction between organic and inorganic seems arbitrary. Perhaps it is based on the fact that the organization of the kingdoms below the vegetable is less obvious and less understood than that of the higher kingdoms; in which case the word "inorganic" is the measure of our ignorance, and we apply the word "simple" to things which we have not fathomed, on the same principle as the blank spaces on the map of an unexplored country. A man was shown the anatomy of a slug under the microscope, and said: "Why, I always thought a slug was nothing but skin and squash!" And so the inorganic world has seemed to us to be so much dirt. This makes the universe to consist in an overwhelming proportion of dirt, the rest being the things that live on the dirt. Yet the more we study the so-called dead matter, the more organization we find in it. The movements and properties which are observed by the chemist and the physicist have as much right to be included under the abstract designation "life" as have those studied by the biologist. These phenomena are impelled from an unseen source and obey orderly laws, just like the others; the only difference seems to be that the conduct of animals and vegetables is more like our own than is that of the minerals. We give animals a mind because they behave like man who has a mind; we are not so sure that the plants have a mind, but we give them life because they grow and do other things which we and the animals do. Does the mineral kingdom respond to environment? Surely it does, if we are to take into account chemical action. So, if this is a test of life, the minerals have life; but this we are accustomed to call chemical action. In the physical laboratory we study two main characteristics of matter, and to these have been given the names Mass and Energy, representing respectively the static and dynamic aspects of natural phenomena. Yet these two - mass and energy - after having been shown logically to be abstractions, prove to be verily so when we try to run them to earth. For what has the new research in atomic physics givens us but mass reduced to the vanishingpoint? And are we not told that mass varies with velocity, thus upsetting the old equations connecting quantitative values of energy, mass and velocity? There is a vis viva or living force throughout nature, whether in man, animal, plant or stone; but we cannot bring it into the focus of our physical perceptions, even aided by instruments; nor yet can we adapt it to that conceptual power whereby we project the properties of the physical world into the sphere of the imagination. And of course nature cannot stop short at the limits of our powers of observation or of imagination. Therefore it is both logical and inevitable to seek the source of nature's energies and qualities in a realm that lies beyond those manifestations. Beyond the phenomenon stands the noumenon - in philosophical parlance. A phenomenon is that which appears; a noumenon is that which is thought. Thus, back of qualities and energies in the world of physical objects lie ideas and

intentions in the world of thoughts. The existence of such ideas and intentions of course implies a mind or minds capable of entertaining them. And back of nature there is mind, much individualized in man, and successively less so in the lower kingdoms. It is stated also in philosophy that, before a noumenon can be manifested as a phenomenon, there must be an appropriate vehicle for that manifestation, just as the potter requires his clay and the artist his medium. Hence there must be a basis of physical matter, and this basis must be devoid of the properties which are imposed upon it by the noumena that are manifested in it. Drugs are mineral matter, and when we eat them we get a glimpse into their character; for all kinds of effects are produced on the mind by taking drugs. Properties of another kind are attributed to gems, but the knowledge of this has somewhat lapsed in our times. The mineral atom contains that vital spark which ultimately will give rise to all the higher forms of evolution; but in the mineral that spark is in the latent condition so far as most of its powers are concerned. The vehicle through which the vital spark manifests itself is not capable of manifesting greater powers than those which pertain to the mineral kingdom. In the next higher kingdom, the vegetable, the vehicle for manifestation is of a higher order and therefore more of the powers latent in the vital spark can be manifested. This is a very rough outline of a part of the great cosmic process of evolution. It brings out the fact that the whole world is animate, and that every activity is a manifestation of the universal life, the universal life being the result of interaction between spirit and matter, each of which can exist in varying degrees or "planes." But the "matter" meant here is the property-less substratum spoken of just above - the substratum, that is, of physical matter or of any of the other kinds of matter. Theosophical philosophy, recognizing the objective existence of planes other than the physical plane, is naturally more competent to explain evolution than is any science which takes into account the physical plane alone. Physical objects are conditioned by spatial extension, which is modified quantitatively by size and qualitatively by shape. Whether spatial extension is subjective, objective, or a phenomenon resulting from the interaction of subject and object, is a question that need not be considered here. We have a physical sense apparatus, corresponding to the physical plane of nature, and the phenomenon of spatial extension arises somehow in connection with our physical perceptions. Moreover we project into our imagination ideal forms derived from our physical perceptions, as, for instance, when we visualize any physical shape. But this particular kind of spatial extension does not necessarily, or even probably, apply to other forms of objective existence. The monads just spoken of, for example, are not on the physical plane, and cannot be conceived as having any size, shape, and other physical properties. This, however, does not prevent them from being real and from being perceptible by other faculties than the physical sense organs. It is evident, therefore, that we cannot progress very far along this line of inquiry without trenching upon a domain that is not open to the general inquirer. And this undoubtedly is the reason why, in writings on the subject, one finds suggestive hints but not the satisfaction one might be disposed to wish for. However, H.P. Blavatsky has not failed to indicate to those desirous of knowledge the conditions under which knowledge is obtainable. These may be summed up in the word "trustworthiness"; which means that the aspirant must not only have a pure and unselfish motive, but that he must possess a far greater command over his own faculties than is usually the case. We cannot study the forces outside us unless we study the forces within us; and the key to the understanding of the mysteries that lie beyond physical science is the study of oneself. Wisdom errs not, in that it puts important information in places where it can only be reached by those tall enough; and the present state of the world is proof enough that the keys to the problems of life, creation, etc., cannot be put within the reach of the people in general.

(Vol. 11, pp. 277-81) ------------------The Poplar Tree that Smelt Water - H. T. Edge Of the five senses attributed to animals, plants certainly possess three - feeling, taste, and smell - lacking only sight and hearing, says a writer in the Scotsman, quoting an eminent naturalist; they smell water from a distance, and never rest till they have sent and fetched it. And the writer gives the following instance. A man living in a picturesque old mansion with a sunken story found the waste-pipe repeatedly choked. Lifting the slabs of the basement, he found that poplar roots had pierced through a cement joining and worked their way in a long tapering length inside the pipe for a considerable distance beyond the house. On excavating backwards he traced these roots to a poplar growing some thirty yards from the opposite side of the house. Thus they had moved steadily towards the house, penetrating below the foundation and across the basement until their goal the waste-pipe was reached some one hundred and fifty feet off. "Such unerring instinct and skill in surmounting obstacles," comments the writer, "are not essentially different from human effort and foresight in the affairs and enterprises of ordinary life." And so say we - having regard to the word "essentially." A consistent philosophy of Nature must certainly be laid on an animate basis; mind, not matter, must be our startingpoint. To attempt to start with matter, or try and derive mind from matter, is a nightmare of the reasoning faculties, especially in view of the fact that all theories, however materialistic, must start in a mind. Materialism postulates a universal and primitive matter as the origin and basis of the universe; and then (necessarily) endows this matter with properties that really make it equivalent to a God. How much simpler to give the prime substance its proper name and call it "cosmic mind." It is as great a mistake to imagine that any organism can be unconscious as it is to imagine that all consciousness is of the same kind: both views are extreme. Animals are conscious, but not as we are; and plants are conscious, though not in the same way as animals. Even to minerals, which likewise are organized and perform definite functions of growth and change, we must assign a grade of consciousness - widely different from anything we define as such. If some prefer to call this "unconsciousness" or "blind instinctive action," little more than a question of names is involved. We have innumerable organs in our own body which are alive and functioning; they are conscious, but their consciousness is not always in touch with the higher and inclusive consciousness which we know as our ego or self, so we call them automatic or sub-conscious. The true way to knowledge of Nature lies not in only regarding its outer aspect or merely dissecting its gross material, but in bringing our mind into touch with the minds of Nature's creatures, and thus knowing the tree or animal as it is. This is the scientific aspect of the great moral virtue of "sympathy," which means a "feeling with" something. To cultivate such powers of knowing - such in-wits - entails that we should study our own nature, with the object of removing the obstacles in it. The path of duty and the path of knowledge are one. We stand to learn more by a sympathetic attitude to Nature than by one of indifferent curiosity; and how little can we learn by a ruthless attitude!

Man, with more presumption than pride, arrogates to himself powers and privileges, but neglects those which he really has. He is really Nature's elder brother, protector, and creator; but how he ignores his responsibilities and privileges! Nature is responsive, and yearns to reveal her precious secrets to him who has the key - sympathy. But, surely the archetype of all that is womanly, a jealous chastity protects her from the clumsy hand and the insolent eye. It has been said that when a man approaches, the animals run away; and if we are to rely on human testimony at all, we must admit that there are nature-spirits that are even more shy of the haunts of tree-felling, rock-blasting man, and the microscope and the scalpel. The idea that the tree smelt the water is curious; but whether it smelt it or saw it or felt it, it knew the water was there; and if it did not know, it had a faculty which was equivalent to knowledge (!) It would be possible to follow the various lines of thought suggested by these remarks, and we hope the student will do so. For instance there is the study of consciousness and its various kinds and degrees; and there is the Theosophical cosmic metaphysics or WeltAnschauung, with its definitions of Mind, Matter, Life, Substance, etc. And again there is the ample subject of evolution, spiritual, mental, astral, physical, etc., and of the different kingdoms of Nature, visible and invisible. And while it may be as far from the Scotsman's garden to the mysteries of the universe. (Vol. 9, pp. 193-4) --------------------The Turn of the Tide - H. Coryn, M.D. Are we, as physical beings, alive? Does the word alive mean anything special? Or is aliveness merely some particularly complicated play of the forces at work in the matter we call 'dead', the stone, the solution of salts in a test-tube? Is the actual kitten a mere mechanism, differing only in complexity from the one the child buys at the toy store and winds with a key? No one really believes that. No one really thinks that life is anything but life, not to be resolved into anything else. But the modem physiologist thinks he believes it, and when he writes a textbook that is what he explicitly or implicitly teaches, dwelling wholly on mechanical reflexes and reactions, making it appear to the student that they will cover the whole ground, and keeping out of the student's sight (and even his own sight) the central piece of ground they will not cover. That is the fashion of the day. But the tide is turning. A physiologist and biologist here and there is refusing to disregard the live key that starts the mechanisms agoing and superintends their moving. One of the foremost English physiologists, Dr. Haldane of Oxford, in his recent address before the Harvey Society in New York, began with a little historical sketch of successive opinions about this question. "The last great turning-point in physiology was about the middle of last century. Up till then it was generally held that in a living organism a specific influence, the so-called 'vital force,' controls the more intimate and important physiological processes. Inspired by the rapid advances of physics and chemistry, the younger physiologists of that time broke away from vitalism, and maintained that all physiological change is subject to the same physical

and chemical laws as in the inorganic world, so that in ultimate analysis biology is only a branch of physics and chemistry. "The subsequent progress of physiology has shown that all, without exception, of the physical and chemical hypotheses then advanced in explanation of intimate physiological processes were far too simple to explain the facts; but the general conclusion that biology is only a special application of ordinary physics and chemistry became firmly established, and is still what may be called the orthodox creed of physiologists. It may be truly said that most physiologists look upon this creed as something which has been established for all time, and they would be inclined to regard any deviation from it as harmful scientific heresy. Nevertheless I think that we have again reached a turning-point, and that a new physiology is arising in place of the physico-chemical physiology which has held sway for so many years." And, speaking of the physiologists who last century led the revolt against vitalism, he says: "To them it seemed that there were probably simple physical and chemical explanations of the various physical and chemical changes associated with life. The progress of experimental physiology since that time has effectually shown that this was only a dream, and physiologists are now awakening from the dream." Vitalism is the doctrine that there is some special force at work in living organisms, distinct in kind from and controlling the ordinary physico-chemical forces at work as well in inorganic as organic matter. Professor Haldane's paper was a study of this activity, a study of what life does. Whether anything can be said as to what it is he did not then discuss. Perhaps he did not wish to scandalize physiologists by talking metaphysics. But to metaphysics they will have to come. For to make anything of the doctrine life must be regarded as intelligent and purposive and therefore conscious. And so, of course, a metaphysical force; for if not metaphysical it is physical; which, by the definition it is not, nor measurable in mechanical ways. It occupies the position of the superintendent of works, who, not in this aspect a physical force himself, supplies the directing ideation for men who are. The directing hand or will, as Professor Haldane shows, (these are not his terms), manifests throughout every living organism and every organ and cell of it by the persistent maintenance of a normal, both of function and composition, in the face of ever changing conditions. In the inorganic world there is a different normal for each different set of external conditions. The thing is passively and mechanically played upon by the conditions. But in the organic, living, physiological world, the normal is maintained for life purposes (or the steady attempt is made to maintain it) against the change of conditions. In the failure of the attempt disease, and then death occur. As one of his selected types of a 'normal' Professor Haldane takes the composition of the blood. Blood bathes all the cells of the body and there is an intimate and ceaseless giveand-take between these and itself. It is by the close and moment-to-moment regulation of this give-and-take that the "almost incredibly constant" composition of the blood is maintained. Its deficiencies are instantly met, its superfluities instantly removed. The normal is constantly preserved in the face of constantly changing conditions of food, temperature, quality of air, work of each organ and activity of the organism as a whole. "If we regard this condition as simply a physical and chemical state of dynamic balance, it is evident that the balance must be inconceivably complicated and at the same time totally unstable. If at any one point in the system the balance is disturbed it will break

down and everything go from bad to worse. A living organism does not behave in this way: for its balance is active, elastic, and therefore very stable. When a disturbance affects its structure or internal environment it tends to 'adapt' itself to the disturbance. That is to say. its reactions become modified in such a manner that the normal is in all essential points maintained." Where necessary, however, the blood will alter its composition so that that of the cells which it bathes and feeds may be maintained. "That Anglo-American expedition of which I was a member studied, on the summit of Pike's Peak, Colorado, adaptation to the want of oxygen which causes, in unadapted persons, all the formidable symptoms known as 'mountain sickness.' As adaptation proceeded the blueness of the lips, nausea, and headache completely disappeared, and then it was found that the lung epithelium [the lining membrane of the lungs composed of flat cells fitting closely together] had begun to secrete oxygen inwards, that is, into the blood, so that, in spite of the rarefied air, enough oxygen should still be supplied. The oxygen-carrying ingredient in the blood (hemoglobin) was also increasing in quantity; the liver and kidneys were effecting the necessary changes in the alkalinity of the blood so that it might liberate its waste carbonic acid better, and the depth and frequency of respiration were augmented. "The organism had so adapted itself as nearly to compensate for the deficiency in oxygen supply, just as a heart gradually compensates for a permanent valvular defect." Another example of this persistent recurrence to a normal is found in every acute disease. Micro-organisms, sometimes of a sort to which the blood is entirely unaccustomed, multiplying rapidly in it, poison it by their excretions, the substances known as toxins. As if working in a chemical laboratory the blood cells as rapidly as possible analyze the nature of these products and prepare the chemical antidotes, anti-toxins, in quantities gradually increasing to sufficiency, whilst also producing other materials of various kinds for the direct destruction of the germs. The whole process ends in the re-establishment of the normal. All such doings, necessitating the balanced cooperation of the various bodily tissues, (Professor Haldane enumerates a number of others), cannot be understood or explained as mechanism. "One cannot get round the fact that the mechanistic theory has not been a success in the past and shows no signs of being a success in the future." They mean life. "The idea of life is just the idea of life. One cannot define it in terms of anything simpler, just as one cannot define mass or energy in terms of anything simpler.... Physiology is therefore a biological science [bios: life] and the only possible physiology is biological physiology." So we are therefore permitted, and by a foremost physiologist, to live, not required any longer to regard ourselves as mechanisms. "The new physiology is biological physiology - not bio-physics or bio-chemistry. The attempt to analyse living organisms into physical and chemical mechanism is probably the most colossal failure in the whole history of modern science. It is a failure, not, as its present defenders suggest, because the facts we know are so few, but because the facts we already know are inconsistent with the mechanistic theory." How the directive energy, in its preservation of the normals against conditions tending

to change them, does its directing: that is, how it gets the necessary controlling touch upon the physical and chemical agencies, is of course not yet within our physiological knowledge. "We have not as yet the data required in order to connect physical and chemical with biological interpretations of our observations; but perhaps the time is not far off when biological interpretations will be extended into what we at present look upon as the inorganic world. Progress seems possible in this direction, but not in the direction of extending to life our present everyday causal conceptions of the inorganic world." In other words everything may be living; but in the inorganic world - at so slow a rate that we do not perceive those processes which in the organic are so immeasurably swifter as to be capable of our study. The motion of planets we can see. The stars were till recently thought unmoving. The stone is 'dead'; the ant crawling over it, alive. But if we looked at the stone seeingly enough, and with a look that was maintained for time enough, there likewise would be life. (Vol 13, pp. 201-4) ------------

Science and Misc. Notes - Moonlight - Altruism in Nature - The Sequoia - Egyptian Mummy Wheat - Arabian Arithmeticians - Perpetual Motion Clock - Curious Astronomical Instruments - "Shell-Shock" - Discovery of Zorastrian Literature --------Moonlight A startling suggestion in support of the belief in the injurious effects of strong moonlight has lately been offered. In tropical and semi-tropical countries, where moonlight is far more intense than in northern climes, it is widely believed that among other uncomfortable properties, the direct rays of the moon have the power of rapidly decomposing meat and fish. This has been derided and ridiculed on prima facie grounds (as usual!) by some who have not examined the evidence. A correspondent to the Chemical News, writing about certain experiments recently made in South Africa, offers a probable explanation in the fact that the light of the Moon being reflected light is polarized to some extent and that possibly polarized light exerts some hitherto unknown chemical action. The London Lancet, in commenting upon this, admits that the experiments were very striking. In one case, slices of fish were hung in ordinary light and others from the same fish in polarized light; the latter decomposed first, though the polarized beam was not so warm as the other. According to the teachings of Theosophy there are many influences due to the Moon which are not yet suspected by

modern science, yet which are of great importance for our welfare. (Vol. 8, pp. 117-18) --------------Altruism in Nature Herbert Spencer says: "If we define altruism as being all action which, in the normal course of things, benefits others instead of benefiting self, then from the dawn of life altruism has been no less essential than egoism." So much for the "Nature, red in tooth and claw" theory of the universe. And all who have watched animals must agree. Man's attempts to justify his own weaknesses by trying to find them in nature do not seem very successful. Then there is the old saying of Dr. Watts, the hymnologist of a bygone age, to the effect that what may be right and proper in a dog may be extremely wrong and improper in a human being, for the simple reason that a dog is a dog and a human being is not; or, as he phrased it: "Let dogs For 'tis their nature to." delight to bark and bite,

And though the rest escapes our memory, it was to the effect that children's hands were not made "to tear each other's eyes." But Herbert Spencer goes further and says that not even dogs always bark and bite. Pure selfishness is really unthinkable; and the question is greatly complicated by the difficulty there is in defining the word "self." A man who acts in the interest of another, usually does so quite naturally and because he feels that his own self extends a little further than the limits of his own body and includes a portion of that other person. Altruism is acting in the interests of a larger self. Birds in an aviary may be seen to feed birds at liberty by pushing food through the wires. It is not to be supposed that these birds go through any sort of moral self-examination. They are probably rather hazy in their ideas of "mine and thine," and are mostly concerned with putting good food where it belongs that is, into empty craws. The lesson of the above would seem to be that we can be altruistic because it is natural, and that we are not obliged to be selfish! (Vol. 9, p. 200) ---------------The Sequoia Among the antiquities of America must certainly be reckoned the sequoia trees, if an age of 3200 years is to be considered old. Moreover, they are modern as well as ancient, for they are not yet dead. The Sequoia National Park in California contains 1,166,000 of them, of which the following are the largest: the General Sherman, height 280 feet, diameter 36.5; Abraham Lincoln, 270 feet and 31; William McKinley, 291 feet and 28. From one of these giants 3000 fence posts and 650,000 shingles were cut, leaving hundreds of cords of firewood unused. The age is estimated by counting the growth-rings, and Ellsworth Huntington counted the rings in seventy-nine that were over 2000 years, three that were over 3000, and one that was 3150. We have only to recount the events of history to realize with awe that this tree was a sapling in 1200 B.C., and was standing through all we know of ancient Grecian and Roman history. These growth-rings afford a fine illustration of the way in which time records itself; on some of them may be seen the records of ancient forest fires, and who knows what other events might also be deciphered if earnest attention were given to the subject? It becomes easier to understand how time may be an eternal present, rolled up somewhere in the immensities of space, and ready to be unrolled and read by the properly equipped historian. - E. (Vol. 10, p. 54)

--------------Egyptian Mummy Wheat In the spring of 1908 the Liverpool Weekly Mercury published the following: The accompanying sketch [wheat plant] is a correct representation of the produce of one grain of Egyptian wheat obtained from a mummy. The seed was brought into this country from Thebes by the family of Sir W. Symonds, of Hampshire; and by them presented to Chamberlayne Chamberlayne, Esq., of Maughersbury House, Gloucestershire, and grown by Mr. R. Enock, of Stow-on-the-Wold. What is most remarkable is the length of time that has elapsed since the corn from which the plant was produced grew; for, at the most reasonable computation, no less a time than 571 years B.C., or 2400 years have passed away since any record can be obtained of entombing mummies within the pits of Thebes. There were, at a very moderate computation, upwards of 1600 grains of corn in the fifteen stems produced. The publication of this in the New Century Path at that time brought forth the following communication from a correspondent in Australia: "In relation to the question touched upon in a recent number of the New Century Path, as to whether Egyptian mummy wheat will germinate, my mother has often told us of some being given to her father which grew and matured. "Grandfather had two ears of the wheat which he planted in the garden, and from the seed next year planted more, and had finally five or six three-bushel bags of it. Giving up wheat sowing, the wheat was sold to a farmer in the vicinity. This happened forty years ago. Last year when my mother tried to get some for me which I wanted to send to Point Loma, it was discovered that there was none of it left at the old homestead. Mother has often described the wheat to us, saying it was not like our wheat but more like barley, with long whiskers between the grains, and that the grains were very closely packed in the ears, more so than in our usual wheat. The wheat was grown in the Western District of New South Wales at a well-known cattle station homestead." - E.I.W., Sydney, Australia. (Vol. 10, pp. 237-8) --------------Arabian Arithmeticians With regard to the factorizing of numbers expressed by a row of 1's, we note the following, contributed to the English Mechanic (Feb. 26, 1909), by Henry E. Dudeney, a wellknown writer on puzzles. "The earliest known record is an arithmetical treatise called the 'Talkhys,' by Ibn Albanna, an Arabian mathematician and astronomer who flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century. In the Paris National Library there are several manuscripts dealing with the Talkhys, and a commentary by Alkalacadi, who died in 1846. For this information I am indebted to the late E. Lucas's L'Arithmetique Amusante.... The amazing thing is that in the Talkhys we are given all the factors for numbers of this form up to that containing seventeen 1's. How these Arabians decomposed such a number as 11,111,111, 111,111,111 into its factors 2,071,723 and 5,363,222,357 it is not possible even to conjecture." Another mathematician, commenting on this, opines that the problem might be solved by the application of certain principles, which he names, and by the exercise of considerable patience. But the theory of numbers is always open to new discoveries; and we find no difficulty in imagining that these Arabians knew of properties which we do not know of. This latter writer says that in those days magical value was attached to numerical mysteries; and his meaning, in saying this, seems to us a trifle vague. It was this belief, he thinks, that induced them to spend much time in arithmetical research. But the mysteries of numbers,

and of their expression in the numerical scale of ten and in other scales, are fascinating enough of themselves to entice the most serious minds to labor. The writer perhaps regards magical properties as being alleged properties which the numbers do not possess, but which the Arabians thought the numbers did possess. We prefer to use the term magical to denote properties actually possessed by numbers, but known only to a few. What can be more fundamental than the properties of numbers? Rightly did the sages think that the mysteries of the universe were to be sought in number. (Vol. 10, p. 490) -----------Perpetual Motion Clock Perpetual motion is defined as that of a machine which will continue to run indefinitely without using up any energy either from an external or an internal supply. Hence, in practical mechanics, it means the construction of a frictionless machine, a thing which we have not yet found out how to achieve. And even should such a machine be made, it could not perform work because the work would stop the machine. Nevertheless the universe is full of perpetual motion, as for instance in the movements of the planets and all the countless activities of cosmic life. True, it is said that even these are gradually "running down" - that is, turning their energy into dormant and unavailable forms, and that the universe will therefore one day come to a dead stop. This is so far in accordance with the ancient teachings, which state that universal life consists of alternating periods of manifestation and latency, or, to use the Sanskrit terms, of Manvantaras and Pralayas. We said "so far," but here comes in a further point: just as the period of activity begets the period of repose, so does the latter in its turn beget the former. So that, after all, we have perpetual motion. The law would seem to be that, as soon as an organism is absolutely dead, it is then just in the condition for a return of life. The problem of perpetual motion in physical mechanics has received new light from the discovery of radioactive materials, substances which possess a very large store of latent energy and thus remind one of the perpetuum mobile of the alchemists and the eternal lamp of similar legend. The human organism contains a store of energy good for the best part of a century, and other organisms contain their allotted stores of the oil of life. Perhaps there is somewhere in the human make-up a store of energy good for many ages and capable of tiding the being over the waters of Lethe till he tread once more the upper air - and that many times. If so, it would remind us of the perpetual lamp, burning in a windless cave; a thing which alchemists tried to imitate by an actual material lamp - which perhaps could also be made, if the laws of analogy hold good. A radium lamp might solve the question. In the eighteenth century a jeweler named James Cox, of Shoe Lane, London, made a perpetual clock, which was capable of running as long as the seasons roll, provided occasional repairs to the machinery were executed. It was hitched on to a barometer. The mercury, whether rising or falling, moved a rachet and, cog mechanism, which kept the clock wound; and this supply of energy, so far from being insufficient, was found to be so much in excess of requirements that special mechanism had to be provided for throwing it automatically out of gear whenever there was danger of the clock being over-wound. Was this a perpetual motion machine? Shall we argue: Perpetual motion is impossible; but this clock was possible; therefore the clock was not perpetual motion? It is easy to see that machines might be hitched on to the tides and to other natural movements; and in this case they would, like the clock, of course draw checks upon cosmic energy, and thus bring the present Manvantara to a close a little earlier than otherwise - if any meaning can be attached to the word "earlier" in such a connection. (Vol. 11, pp. 257-8) ----------------

Curious Astronomical Instruments at Pekin The observatory at Pekin was built by Kublai Khan in 1296. The sundial, shown in the first illustration, may or may not belong to that period. In any case, it is a good example of the principles upon which a public sundial located in moderate latitudes should be made, although in this case the correct apparent time is directly indicated for only three hours on each side of apparent noon. This is found on the south side during the winter half and on the north side during the summer half of the year. All the other divisions on either side are nonradial and apparently vary in size, and their use can hardly be guessed from a photograph. A dial constructed upon this principle, with the XII-o'clock and the other five-minute divisions displaced to correspond with the distance from a standard meridian, these slightly curved on either face to the analemma, crossing the same concentric circles, seen on the southerly face of this Chinese sundial - which circles correspond to the four forty-five-day periods between the autumnal and vernal equinoxes - would show correct standard time without manipulation. Some years ago the English Royal Society was much exercised about a new sundial which would show railroad time, but in fact that dial always needed a double and very careful manipulation before anything could be learned about the time of day. The large quadrant shown in the third illustration was the gift of Louis XIV to the Emperor Kang Hi; and the remaining instruments, which underwent some vicissitudes during the Boxer rebellion, were made in China about the same period, under the instruction of some missionaries. In adjacent buildings are modern telescopic equipments. - F.J.D. (Vol. 13, p. 558) -------------------"Shell-Shock" ....psychological problems developed by this war [WWII], are no less puzzling than the steady increase in mental and nervous diseases which is so marked in all our modern civilized life. Take, for instance, the psychic and nervous disorder, known as 'shell-shock,' with its unclassified symptom complex, which is commanding an important place in military medicine. The symptoms are those of psychic trauma, and bespeak some dislocation in the man's inner constitution - at best, an ill-defined subject, which science frankly ignores. These conditions do not square with the analytical methods of popular psychology, which contends that human thought and feeling are but the product of the chemical and muscular activities of man's body, supplemented by stimuli from his environment. Viewed in the light of Theosophy's explanation of man's make-up, however, it is clearly seen wherein these cases of 'shell-shock,' with no organic lesion, evidence a maladjustment of the conscious, inner body, through which the life-principle acts upon the mere matter of flesh and blood. The delicately-adjusted relations of the man himself to his complex, seven-fold nature may be seriously disturbed, without material cause or organic symptoms. This consistent fact holds the clue to the cause and the treatment of these cases. Psychology, without Theosophical study, is terra incognita. - L.R. (Vol. 14, pp. 615-16) -------------Discovery of Zorastrian Literature .... One real hero in this interpretative work was Anquetil Duperron, who in 1754 happened to see an Oxford facsimile of four leaves of the actual Vendidad. Though only twenty years old, he at once determined to make the first European translation of the Zoroastrian books, and he enlisted as a private soldier under the French East India Company.

After three years of endless adventures and dangers throughout Hindustan, he arrived at Surat, where he lived among the Parsis for three years more. Here began another struggle, against mistrust on the part of the Parsis, which had disheartened another before him. He finally came out victorious, and won access to their books, and some of their knowledge. Ten years had elapsed, when he placed the Avesta in the Royal Library, Paris. Ten years in all were spent in studying the material he had collected, and the first European translation of the Avesta was published in 1771, in three volumes. Sharp controversies quickly arose, in which Duperron, as might have been anticipated, appeared not always in the best light, for, like Champollion, he was not crusted over with an invulnerable hide of musty scholaship. He found himself bitterly attacked - as pioneers usually are! - but discovered a champion in Keuker of Riga University. Meanwhile, Duperron had already partly proved that the data in the Avesta agreed with Plutarch's account of Magianism, in Isis and Osiris. Passing over the controversies of the early nineteenth century, we find Burnouf, Lassen, and Rawlinson, as a final result, decipering the inscriptions at Persepolis and Behistan, and the authenticity of the Zend books was finally established; for a language, close twin to the Zend, was found, speaking from the tomb of the first Achaemenian king. Thus the initiative of Duperron has evolved a literature of the greatest importance for the study of Comparative Religion, and yet it remains, even in this field of the Zend language, unfinished. The mysterious Honover, or Ahuna-Vairya, is in a language so obscure that no satisfactory rendering of it has yet been achieved. [1918] It is an adjuration of several clauses, ocurring frequently in the Yasnas. Much of importance regarding Zorastrian pilosophy, science and religion, can be discovered by students in the pages of H.P. Blavatsky's works, Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. - D. (Vol. 14, p. 617) ---------------Psychology The Etiology of Epilepsy - Lydia Ross, [M.D.] "They [the scientists] will be driven out of their position, not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous gaps and chasms that open daily, and will still be opening before them, as one discovery follows the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth wave of simple common sense." - H. P. Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine Since Madame Blavatsky wrote the above words, some thirty years ago, scientific materialism has reached the high-water mark of influence in the affairs of the day. Notwithstanding that it still floods the thought-world, there are evident signs that the tide has turned toward more humanistic and more complete conceptions of life. Even the medical press is sounding, if only between the lines, a less confident note in mechanistic methods of diagnosis and treatment. A saving minority of the writers frankly deny the kinetic god of the somatists who creates man offhand - a mere by-product of muscular action and organic chemistry. Apropos of this reaction is an interesting and significant article in a recent Medical

Record by Dr. L. Pierce Clark. This paper, read before the New York Neurological Society, suggests treatment based upon the "Newer Psychological Studies upon the Nature of Essential Epilepsy." Reviewing the current trend of psychiatric research and treatment, Dr. Clark logically supports his protest against diagnostic methods which regard physical conditions as the prime origin of psychic wrongs. The essential conditions, he justly claims, are obscured by many diagnosticians under elaborate reports of physical pathology "....and psychiatric cant phrases that are often meaningless. The patient's precise behavior, conduct and disordered train of thought are omitted.... It is not sufficient for us to recognize that structural or organic neurology is inadequate to handle the nature and treatment of the neuroses, but that even many organic disorders are incompletely understood until one gains a proper evaluation of the psychologic settings involved.... This nervous disorder has been commonly accepted as definitely organic in nature and origin, although not a few epileptic brains have been found entirely normal histologically.... "First there is a definite make-up or inherent defect of the instincts in epilepsy long before the seizure phenomena are added. Indeed it is demonstrable in earliest childhood, whereas the seizures may be added years after. These defects embrace all the emotional life and the major portion of the so-called character alterations in the frank epileptic in later life, and they are but the innate defects of the childhood writ large. The seizures are but the pronounced maximum expression of the inherent constitution in environmental conflict, and the latter are only made plainer as such individuals deteriorate. The nucleus of these defects is in the realm of egotistic tendencies and an extraordinary supersensitiveness. Upon this primary make-up the increasing demands for adjustments are made, and various kinds and degrees of epileptic reaction develop, such as moroseness, sullenness, lethargies, extra lability of mood, tantrums and rages, daydreams of an intense pathologic sort and frequency, mental abstractions with diminished consciousness, and finally, complete breaks with reality, as shown in loss of consciousness and convulsions.... Then there succeeds a temporary respite or riddance from the daily tension, the psyche regresses to that point or state where it gains peace or harmony.... The state sought or found is usually defined as one of complete physical and psychic freedom.... Pure physical or chemico-toxic states probably never solely generate an essential epilepsy. There must always be a preparedness in the defective makeup, and the psyche is finally involved in the last elaboration of the fit.... "The majority of all arrested or cured cases of epilepsy are recruited from the essential epilepsies. The organic epilepsies, once frankly established as such, with the possible exclusion of the depressed fracture and brain-tumor cases, are rarely ever arrested. The potential epileptic has character defects and bad mental habits which antedate the ordinary school-age by several years. It is therefore largely in the realm of the nursery that the training-out process must commence. This training largely concerns the proper development of the will, especially in the domain of the reflex, instinctive, ideational, imitative and deliberative responses of the child.... Disharmony in the development of the will is largely responsible for the moral and ethical cramps of these children as shown in the tantrums. Next the child becomes demanding and stubborn, and when its instinctive purposes are further blocked, the supersensitiveness is further increased." Students of Theosophy will read interesting meanings into Dr. Clark's excellent penpictures. Knowledge of man's inner nature and of human duality makes epilepsy markedly illustrate the common play of contending forces in embodied existence. The violent symptoms of convulsions and the unconsciousness are not only the innate defects of neurotic childhood writ large, but they graphically portray, like living cartoons, the almost universal lack

of inner peace and self-knowledge. The royal union of the physical, mental, and moral natures attained through the RajaYoga education, not only forestalls a convulsive maturity, but prevents other phases of related pathology. Katherine Tingley believes and proves that true education is not mere acquisition of knowledge but all-round development of character. Only by tracing symptoms back through the individual to the primeval make-up, can the tap-root of many-branched disease be reached, and treatment be found which makes for the wholeness of all-round development. The mechanistic treatment which regards man as merely the "cunningest of nature's clocks," lacks the clue by which rightly to repair even his physical disorders. Surgery records some brilliant hits in curing epilepsy due to pressure of fractured skull, or of cerebral tumors upon the motor centers of the brain. But the essential epilepsies - those not of mechanical origin - elude the subtleties of physical diagnosis and the resources of treatment as of yore. The classic makeshift treatment which reduces convulsions by a bromism that dulls the normal activity of both mind and muscles is merely juggling with symptoms. The potential epileptic, in spite of reaching a hyponormal maturity, often begins with certain congenital features of make-up which belong to a progressive evolutionary type. These neurotic cases have a more marked degree of the usually latent psychic senses, which function differently from the brain-mind. William Q. Judge pointed out years ago that, in this gain of psychic sense, the physical integrity would suffer more or less during the period of adjustment. The present time of racial transition, marked by rapid changes on all lines, affords many proofs of his statement. Nature intended that humanity should unfold its body, mind, and spirit in the proportions of balanced growth, so that the psychic senses would open, not in a sordid, sensuous atmosphere, but in conditions of pure thought and refined feeling. Instead of this, the rank growth of materialism and selfish mentality have sapped the vitality of the whole nature. The ultra-scientific physician stands in his own light, baffled by vague neurotic and neurasthenic types. The interpenetrating astral world, of which the psychic sensitives are becoming aware, is being crowded with animal entities, prematurely deprived of their bodies by vivisection, which intensifies rather than weakens the passion, venom, and despair of their instincts thus turned loose. Man's cruel mutilation and destruction of weak, dumb, innocent creatures, strengthens the tie of direct connection by which their liberated impulses react upon him and his. Add to this the human hatred, the despairing bitterness, the unsoundness, the lust of cruelty and revenge, and all the fostered passions freed to prey upon embodied humanity by capital punishment, murders, suicides, war and famine. Meantime, the unhappy heritage of classic half-truths entails a lack of self-knowledge and ignorance of the protecting power of the spiritual will, which is often narcotized by the sophistry of fad metaphysics or paralyzed by hypnotism. Madame Blavatsky's aim in founding the Theosophical Society and Universal Brotherhood in 1875 was to form a nucleus of unity upon the higher human levels, to offset consciously the disintegration brought about by rank selfishness and materialism. She wrote: "The development of the psychic powers and faculties, the premonitory symptoms of which are already visible in America, will proceed healthfully and normally. Mankind will be saved from the terrible dangers, both mental and bodily, which are inevitable when that unfolding takes place, as it threatens to do, in a hotbed of selfishness and all evil passions. Man's mental and psychic growth will proceed in harmony with his moral improvement, while his material surroundings will reflect the peace and fraternal goodwill which will reign in his mind, instead of the discord and strife which are everywhere apparent around us today."

Epilepsy is nothing new, but prevalent social conditions bear peculiar relations to the etiology of it and allied disorders. The artificial tone of life, its intensive individualism, the competitive stress and strain everywhere, the extended range and refinement of indulgence, the feverish unrest and unworthy aims, make for an unnatural atmosphere whose lethal effects penetrate even the prenatal realm. The antenatal quality of parental and social influence is stamped upon the living cells of the little body. With this congenital handicap of the newly-born and an environment of deep-seated egotism and restless longing, the sensitized modern generation does not naturally levitate to the higher levels of expression. The child who grows into epileptic attacks and mental and moral deficiency, shows a degenerative human evolution and reversion toward the animal type. The infantile nervous system is relatively less stable than the adult's. The onset of fevers, acute indigestion, etc., often are marked by convulsions in the young - a rare symptom in like disorders in adults. The average child outgrows this tendency, but the potential epileptic, as noted, grows into convulsions. Does not the problem of restless, precocious, undisciplined, sensitized young life everywhere challenge the most serious and searching attention? The convulsive climax is a consistent outcome of uncontrolled tendencies in the neurotic child's make-up, which is the Karmic heritage of his own past lives. The lower nature has the persistency, the boldness, the subtlety and the keen instinct of an animal linked with the power of mind, and literally fighting for life on its own level. Indulged, it grows aggressive and dominating: suspected, it changes its tactics; challenged tentatively, it storms and often wins by the power of disturbance; balked, it sulks or mopes or snarls, seeks to wear out opposition by whining, or to win sympathy by an injured air or pathetic self-pity; denied pungent experience, it diffuses energy into wilful mischief; controlled at one point, it plans equal license in other ways, even plausibly discussing the relinquished error or evil while providing for compensating indulgence. The appetite, often gluttonous in heavy types, may appear delicate in the mental temperaments, because it is exacting, fastidious, artificial, and irregular. The life-currents that ebb and flow upon the lower levels wear an open channel for the psychology of outside forces. As a result, the victim of his own lower nature may become the prey of dominating influences distinct from himself. Dr. Alexander Wilder, the late eminent scholar, said: "We are all of us surrounded by innumerable entities, bodied and unbodied, that transfuse thoughts and impulses into us. They are drawn to us by our peculiar temper of mind, and in a manner so interior as to be imperceptible, except as they bring into objective display whatever operation they may have induced." The epileptic, not being dead during the fit, is probably conscious on the lower astral plane of sensation and desire, the habitat of earthbound disembodied entities. The succeeding exhaustion and stupor are the reverse of the buoyant strength following an experience of conscious inspiration or the deep dreamless sleep which reaches the reality of higher planes of existence. What less than a convulsion would oust a man from his body for the vicarious experience of some foreign conscienceless entity? Truly there are more things in human pathology than the physical senses can discover or the evil magic of serums can control. -------------

II. "We begin with instinct, we end with omniscience." - Dr. Alexander Wilder "Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history." - Emerson "The whole issue of the quarrel between the Profane and Esoteric Sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an Astral Body within the physical, the former independent of the latter." - H.P. Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine "Everything in the universe follows analogy. 'As above, so below'; man is the microcosm of the Universe. That which takes place on the spiritual plane, repeats itself on the cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of abstraction: corresponding to the highest must be the lowest: the material to the spiritual." - Ibid. Attempts to present the conditions operating in cases of essential epilepsy, without considering the astral world of causes, is like staging Hamlet without assigning the part of the prince, or even giving the ghost a show. The modern medical researchers, in a passion of technical seeking, have explored the length, breadth and thickness of the realm of things tangible to the five senses. In this feverish activity of a delirious round of detailed research, discovery and rejection, there is evident failure to arrive at basic causes - vide the endless work and negative reports of cancer commissions. The next step onward in pathology leads outside the limiting wall of materialism into the realm of four-dimensional space - the interpenetrating world of thought and feeling. Upon the lower levels of the invisible realms of ideas and desires lie breedingplaces of mental and psychic miasms that are more basic factors in pathology than diseaseladen insects or the micro-organisms, which are but signatures of invisible agents. Modern microscopic knowledge needs to be balanced by the ancient teachings of the history of man's macrocosmic heredity. The primordial birthright of humanity was, and is, that of essential divinity; so that the cosmic history of a "case" goes back to the descent of spirit into matter - a field of investigation wide enough to satisfy and even to unite biologist and psychologist. This change from a subjective state of spiritual unity and non-being to the opposite pole of conditioned, objective, individual existence, calls for the sweep of great cosmic cycles of time and a progressive series of planes and gradations of experience. Only thus could the living energy of noumena be transmuted for conservation in the tangible forms and forces of phenomena. The connecting links between spirit and matter are found in the inner constitution of man, which is composed of seven principles whose classification corresponds with seven distinct states of "consciousness.... and indicates the mysterious circuit through which ideation passes. The seven principles are allied to seven states of matter and to seven forms of force. These principles are harmoniously arranged between two poles which define the limits of human consciousness." As abstract thought must be defined in concrete form before it can be expressed objectively in things, so the change of absolute consciousness into individualized form must first find its model. Accordingly the spiritual desire for, and idea of, earthly experience naturally graded its progress from higher planes by first taking on the form of the finest and most illumined type of atomic matter. Thus the racial history began in the model bodies of the astral plane, before the earth-matter was suitable for, or the Monads were ready to wear, the

dense "coats of skin" of embodied humanity. If the pathologist, suffering with disturbed vision from prolonged focusing on microscopic fields, begins to blink at the bald outlines of so sweeping a perspective, he will find the details which consistently complete the sketch in The Secret Doctrine and other Theosophical literature. The ancient teaching is that the primordial spirit, with its power of discernment, and of intellect, its vital essence and desire for earth-life, acquired first a model body and then a physical one. The septenary nature therefore unites these principles of a higher triad and a lower quaternary in the coordination of Man. MAN Triad 1. Atman - Spirit 2. Buddhi - Spiritual Soul 3. Manas - Mind or Human Soul Quartenary 1. The Passions and Desires, or Animal Soul 2. The Life Principle 3. Linga-sarira or Desire-Body 4. Physical Body "These four lower material constituents are transitory and subject to disintegration in themselves as well as separation from each other.... This quaternary or lower man is a product of cosmic or physical laws and substance. It has been evolved during a lapse of ages like any other physical thing, from cosmic substance, and is therefore subject to physical, physiological and psychical laws which govern the race of man as a whole.... The Real Man is the trinity of Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or Spirit and Mind, and he uses certain agents and instruments to get in touch with nature in order to know himself. These instruments or agents are found in the lower Four or the Quaternary - each principle in which category is of itself an instrument for the particular experience belonging to its own field, the body being the lowest, least important and most transitory of the whole series.... Sight, hearing, touch, taste and smelling do not pertain to the body but to the second unseen physical man; the real organs for the exercise of those powers being in the Astral Body, and those in the physical body being but the mechanical outer instruments for making the coordination between nature and the real organs inside." The primeval process of relating spirit to material forms is repeated each time the soul is embodied - or, in other words, is born. A model body is first formed of invisible, luminous, incorporeal matter. This, becoming the unseen, magnetic model which attracts the physical molecules of the developing body, serves as a vehicle of the life-principle, as the synthetic organ of the senses and sensations, remains as a medium between the higher and lower principles during life, and survives the physical for a limited time after death. "From its physical aspect it is, during life, man's vital double, and after death, only the gases given off from the decaying body. But as regards its origin and essence, it is something more." This adaptation of spiritual forces to material use is met by the upward trend of Nature's forces in preparing crude matter for human bodies. Embryology shows that, beginning with a speck of physical material, the foetal formation is a rapid rehearsal of the

natural cosmic experience by which "the stone becomes a plant, the plant an animal, the animal a man," and the man becomes a god, when with acquired self-consciousness he completes the long journey up the ascending arc of the great evolutionary Cycle of Necessity. Though these items of racial heredity may appear foreign to Epilepsy, they will prove not only to have an important bearing upon the subject, but to be in line with the logical extension of the latest theories regarding the classic mystery of this disease. Theosophy, unique in offering the next word and in showing the next step onward to all thinkers, holds the clue now being sought by an earnest class of physicians who, having turned from the beaten paths of biology, are intuitively working out problems of psychic causation in a more hopeful because a more humanistic way. Analyses of the epileptic makeup are being pushed back through a neurotic childhood to an infancy which is said to "begin at outs with the environment," because of an abnormal antenatal psychology. By relating these findings to the symptomatic character of the average patient, a theory of "infantile tendencies" is argued as the cause of a reversion in type of individual development. The idea is now put forth that the convulsions and unconsciousness of the "fit" are the culmination of continued wish to escape the unwelcome mental and physical contact and irritation of everyday environment by returning to the serene antenatal state of irresponsible intra-uterine life. This explanation, however, does not quite explain its own origin. There is nothing to mother it, so to speak, because a disturbed or abnormal maternal mind and nervous system are offered as a causal relation to potential epilepsy in the child. Current physiology discounts the influence of the mother's feelings upon the make-up of the unborn, because of no direct nerve-connection between them. Physiology omits also the initial role of higher creative forces in fashioning a material instrument through the physical process of generation. The result is a topsy-turvy theory that the embryo "just grows," the inborn consciousness being practically nil and the mind and soul - if there is one - being the offspring of postnatal stimuli of the senses and muscles. Does this not leave a missing link in the theoretic motive of the subconscious ego, in yielding to a strong and enticing memory of an antenatal state of nothingness? How can it be lured back to enjoy a luxury it never knew? Would not a vicarious consciousness through that of the expectant mother mark the intra-uterine period as the time and place where the trouble began? Theosophy shows that the atoms of plastic, fluidic, sensitive, photographic matter of the model bodies, which make a responsive medium for transmitting thought and feeling, are especially active in that most intimate of ties which unites mother and child. A disturbed, rebellious, unhappy state of maternal maladjustment to the situation would react to key the embryonic psychic and nervous forces at odds with the physical elements of the forming body. Thus a neurotic heritage of inner discord would tend to extend its relations to the postnatal environment where the several principles of the nature would continue to be but partially reconciled to their own combination. The psychic susceptibility of the foetal makeup and the plastic power of the mother's thought, are part of the forgotten mysteries with the civilized, who could get valuable hints on psychology from some customs of so-called savages. The primitive races, being nearer to nature, still retain that instinctive sense which works with the play of natural forces. The self-control and native mysticism of the original American Indian were not merely a heritage of remote ancestral qualities, but were invoked by prenatal conditions, with the Indian woman's life set apart in a serene world of silence and conscious communings through Nature with the "Great Mystery." While the theory of "infantile tendencies" causing the epileptic attacks is inadequate to account for the symptoms, it is a significant step away from scientific materialism and toward the recognition of an immortal spiritual principle acting in the body. If existence is so

unforgettable a reality in the silence and darkness of foetal life, there could be no consistent limit to its extension before birth and after death. The alienists who recognize the interrelations of the physical, mental and moral principles of man which are working out a threefold evolution will be prepared, not only to understand and cure psychic disorders, but more than all, to prevent them. As a matter of fact, the incarnating soul is eager and able to understand and control matter; so that the evasion of everyday duties by convulsions and unconsciousness indicates a lack of spiritual action, and expresses some lower impulse. Madame Blavatsky says that epileptic fits are the first and strongest symptom of mediumship, and further that: "A medium is simply one in whose personal ego, or terrestrial mind (psuche) the percentage of 'astral' light so preponderates as to impregnate with it his whole physical constitution. Every organ and cell is thereby attuned, so to speak, and subjected to an enormous and abnormal tension. The mind is ever on the plane of, and quite immersed in, that deceptive light whose soul is divine, but whose body - the light-waves on the lower planes -infernal: for they are but the black and disfigured reflections of the earth's memories." W.Q. Judge says in The Ocean of Theosophy: "Mediumship is full of dangers because the astral part of the man is now only normal in action when joined to the body; in distant years it will normally act without a body, as it has in the far past. To become a medium means that you have to become disorganized physiologically and in the nervous system, because through the latter is the connection between the two worlds. The moment the door is opened all the unknown forces rush in, and as the grosser part of nature is nearest us, it is that part which affects us most; the lower nature is also first affected and inflamed, because the forces used are from that part of us. We are then at the mercy of the vile thoughts of all men, and subject to the influence of the shells in Kama-Loka. "In the state of Kama-Loka, suicides and those who are suddenly shot out of life by accident or murder, legal or illegal, pass a term almost equal to the length life would have been but for the sudden termination. These are not really dead. To bring on a normal death, a factor.... must be present, that is, the principles described.... have their own term of cohesion, at the natural end of which they separate from each other under their own laws.... Before that natural end the principles cannot separate." The reason the potential epileptic begins life "at outs with his environment" is because his range of consciousness is literally more or less out of the ordinary relations to life. In a negative, subconscious way he has substituted the evolving function of the astral principle in his make-up. He is en rapport, in a larger degree, and in the waking state, with that imminent but invisible realm which discounts our knowledge of density and space, as we travel its mazes in dreams. As the vibratory rates of matter increase with its gradations into finer forms, so the mediumistic types impress a close observer with their pervading, intangible sense of psychic tension. It is a nervous strain sublimated into an abnormal composite of exhaustion and endurance beyond our vocabulary to define. Unwittingly, the neurotics and psychics possess and yet suffer from a quality of force and consciousness only latent in the majority. The unknown realms of matter may not be invaded with impunity by those ignorant of the forces therein. The rash use of the X-ray, at first, proved the danger of this acquisition, with newlyvisualized ultra-violet rays of intensely rapid vibrations. At the other end of the spectrum, the

slowest vibration of light-waves produces red - which, by the way, is most often seen when the visual aura preceding the fit is one of color, though red has one of the smallest retinal fields of perception. May not the subjective sense perceive it because most active upon sensuous levels? The essentially psychic quality of most aurae is suggestive. Gowers states that the emotional aurae were all in form of fear, vague alarm or intense terror; the olfactory types were mostly unpleasant; objects appeared enlarged, diminished, or indistinct; some cases had a dreamy state, similar to the experience of drowning, when the detailed events of the life pass in review before the inner eye - all of which indicate that the senses are engaged with abnormal inner perspectives and the photographic records of the astral light. Gowers also reports theriomimicry, where the noises or actions of animals are strangely imitated; the patient mews like a cat, or more commonly barks like a dog; more often tends to bite, and in a curiously animal manner. A lad, failing to bite the nurse, bit the pillow, throwing his head back and shaking the pillow as a dog does a rat. As all model bodies survive their physical counterparts for a time, the unseen atmosphere must harbor the vital principles of countless vivisected creatures. The collective influence of these entities of animal impulses, unbodied but unable to disintegrate, must react upon the lower principles of humanity to which they are held by unnatural ties of human disease and human desire vicariously to escape the penalty of unwholesome living. The Nemesis of vivisection is Nature. Though a meat diet has long been regarded as injurious for epileptics, cases are now being treated with a serum prepared from the blood of another case. As the "blood is the life," what may be expected of this attenuated bit of cannibalism? The classic failure of treatment may induce the serum-therapist to employ such a remedy, unconscious of acting with mixed motives and with no intuitive sense of its good or ill effect. The active entity, in many cases of grand mal, on the contrary, is free from all mental and moral inhibition, because devoid of intellect and conscience, and, being like a strong nature-force, acts with no mixed motive, but is consistently and persistently selfish. It has an instinct as unerring as a chemical affinity for whatever adds to its vitality, or affords it sensuous experience. It is quite possible that a temporary lull in disturbances might follow the propitiatory libation of epileptic blood offered to the presiding genius of disorder, who would instinctively feel the strengthening of its contested position by this reinforcement of physical and astral essence. The ultimate effect upon the inner life, however, can only be "confusion worse confounded." The rationale of such a remedy is like giving mixed drinks for the convulsive stage of delirium tremens. An editorial in a leading medical journal, in reporting the serum experiments, begins with this naive expose of professional failure to read the old riddle of the Sphinx: "It is hardly necessary to recall to the minds of the profession the many theories that have been held in the past regarding the nature of epilepsy. The explanation of the ancient Romans who believed that epilepsy was a visitation of the gods, and that of the present-day savages who think that ancestral spirits enter the body and fight the indwelling spirit, causing convulsions, seems to be as plausible as any." The beliefs of old Romans and of unlettered savages may be nearer the truth, even in their differences, than are the latest textbooks. The mediumistic types find their own level in the invisible world, just as like natures are magnetically drawn together on all social levels. Naturally the experiences will range all the way from those of a Socrates or a Swedenborg to those of degenerates and perverts who are impelled into deeds of purposeless cruelty and unhuman crime. As the actuating evil-doer in these criminal cases is beyond detection by

present legal or laboratory methods, the convicted man is usually disembodied by the law, instead of being detained and subjected to adequate training by an enlightened medical psychology. As it is, the soul is deprived of its legitimate right to work through an incarnating period; but the coherent shell of lower impulses and desires, with its companion evil genius, is turned loose in the invisible realm of causes, where, earth-bound and uneasy, they react upon and are vitalized by both wicked and sensitive natures. With all other arguments against capital punishment and vivisection set aside, these questions could be settled for all time on the one issue of the reaction of the slaughtered animals and of the executed criminals upon society, which science claims to serve and the law assumes to protect. Current literature fully reports the wide scope of humanitarian work which is argued as an awakening of the "social conscience." The splendid and unlimited efforts of men and women along every line bespeak an innate sense of brotherhood, and an essential power of compassion which, if it consciously dealt with causes instead of with confusing effects, would be invincible. The social conscience has reason to be disturbed with the unnatural adjustments which allow the most tragic fates, the bitterest suffering and the heaviest burdens of society's Karma to fall upon the poor, the weak, the ignorant, and the psychics whose abnormal senses too often react more as a blight than a blessing. The epileptic career is not a thing apart from the social history, but gives "futurist" glimpses of the thought-forms which find conventional expression in the running text of our individual and social life. With a plus responsiveness to impressions, and a minus selfcontrol, the sensitives - most numerous in the brilliant and degenerate types of the adolescent New World - are human sounding-boards for the dominant social tone. Civilization in the parent countries has reached the deteriorated convulsive stage, unconscious of its innate divine power to cast out all devils of disintegration. Meantime egotistic young America, rich in unfulfilled promise, looks on in helpless ignorance of its divine ancestry, self-hypnotized by materiality, and facing the future with all the moral and emotional defects of neurotic immaturity. As the cosmic racial history shows a period when the descending spirit was becoming gradually involved in the astral strata of experience on its way to reach the depths and densities of materiality, so the disordered psychic forces of sensitives are part of the negative evidence of human evolution on the return trip through this level. But, whereas the original innocent journey, guided through the untainted matter of the "valleys of Paradise," has left indelible reminiscences of a Golden Age imprinted upon all peoples, the returning Pilgrim must use his acquired knowledge and free will to push through an inner atmosphere vitiated with the cumulative heritage of all human thought-forms. The growing army of sensitives, the increase in all mental and nervous types, and the lessened curability of insane cases, call for a racial analysis which goes deeper than the subconscious personal level, and includes a broader perspective than that of one life. The physical and mental well-being of the age is seriously endangered by its moral inertia and failure to use the innate higher powers, by which to rise above the sordid and sensuous levels of the outer and inner life in a normal evolution toward human perfectibility. The crying need of the hour is education which cultivates balanced character and gives the child the true philosophy of life. Doubtless the thought-forms that occupy the minds of some neurotic children, at times, would prove rather startling even to physicians, and would throw a strong side-light upon the role played by childhood's vices in deflecting every creative current of mind and body. The typical daydreams are a sort of diffused subjective consciousness, which may or may not become focused upon the inner organ of sight or hearing or ganglionic centers, with resulting clairvoyance, clairaudience or sensuous reaction. The negative condition of inert abstraction is a mulling along a borderland path that winds in and out of the everyday world and the dim

vistas of phantasy. The uncanny lure of this unknown but not wholly alien atmosphere may tempt the neurotic type on and on, until he suddenly loses all sight of familiar things in an attack of petit mal. Continued wanderings along the border, losing his path and finding his way back again, links him up with the unseen entities no less eager to enter his world than he is to invade theirs. His lack of positive moral fiber and self-control makes him a slave of his unmastered body, from which he is finally thrust out, at intervals, by a mischievous invader who takes possession during the attacks of grand mal. Must not preventive treatment begin with an education of the child based on definite knowledge of his whole nature? Mediumship is the passive, negative symptom of disordered power in the "controlled" subject, which the self-controlled seer uses with positive, conscious, unselfish purpose. Surely the truth of all this is being sensed by intuitive medical psychologists. An up-to-date reviewer says: "The epileptic begins life with the extreme egocentric attitude. Therefore he must pay the full penalty, unless indeed intelligent therapy turns to account this very weakness and utilizes it as a therapeutic measure." Experiments are being made to "turn to account" the characteristic points in make-up. The resulting success and failure strikingly accord with the teachings regarding human duality and man's septenary constitution. The present Theosophical students have nothing original to offer in presenting the truths so freely given by their Teachers during the past forty years, and to which current thought is converging. Apropos of the above are the experiments reported by Dr. L. Pierce Clark in an article partially reviewed in The Theosophical Path for July, 1916. Judging from the epileptic's symptoms that the environment did not fit the case, he endeavored by adjusting the daily work and play to the mental and emotional status, to elaborate a system of education and character-building, and thus round out the innate defects. His study of typical cases showed a frequent causal relationship between the mood and behavior and the epileptic reaction. In calling the patients' attention to this relation and enlisting their co-operation, he was surprised at their understanding and naive response. It would be natural, however, that they should feel distinct relief at having the intangible nature of their inner conflicts put into words, and at meeting sympathetic analysis of the semi-deferred existence interpenetrating their web of everyday affairs. So, in a matter-of-fact way, many of them said: "'If we are but to get square with our supersensitiveness to irritation and the resultants of anger, rages, and finally the states of mind where attacks are the only way out, we will simply suppress these irritative states and put a stop to the unconscious demand for fits.' Many tried this plan. The apparent working of the scheme was not essentially unlike drug sedation when extra dosage of bromides was employed. Disturbing anxiety dreams then appeared, the sleep was unrestful, and they showed all the signs of physical and mental stress. However, the attacks in most of the patients were steadily lessened; in one who had formerly had several attacks weekly, the fits were entirely suppressed for months. But at last the whole plan fell through; some of the patients had grand mal attacks in whom petit mal had formerly existed; others had serial grand mal, and one had a mild status; still others had delirious episodes, befogged and anxious states, or day-dreams of a hallucinatory character not unlike mild delirium, and some frequently acted as though actually intoxicated by drugs. In brief, direct unrelieved repressive acts on the part of the patient failed as disastrously as gradually increased sedative therapy used to. The whole scheme, however, worked better in the few who would follow a definite guidance and gain some substitutive reaction when the

repressive mechanism was applied. The whole observation but furnished additional proof that the fit was but the maximum logical consequence when given the particular type of makeup and instinctive demand which the essential epileptic possesses. None cheated or escaped the logical consequences of fits by a simple repressive remedy." Evidently the auto-repressive attempts pushed the scene of conflict more or less off the ordinary level of consciousness. The erstwhile arrogant invader, feeling the aroused willpower of his victim, retired from the open into the astral ambush of dreamland and subconscious regions. While it could win no decisive victory here, a sort of guerilla warfare of emotional irritation and disturbance could distract the patient's attention and hinder him from gaining firm foothold on physiological levels. But the hidden enemy, literally fighting for his life, would be instinctively aware of weakened resistance, either from relaxation of the higher will, or an indulgence of the patient's own lower nature. That the "whole plan fell through" is precisely what happened in a similar case where the unclean spirit, driven out, brought up reinforcements, and - "the last state of that man is worse than the first," as students of the Great Physician recorded. Quite naturally Dr. Clark found that, with the inherent make-up, the "....individual epileptic sees 'no way out,' and insists with a remarkable soulstubbornness that the particular trend of reality in which his conflict is engrossed must be annihilated, or he must react away from it by tantrums, day-dreams and lethargies, or alcoholic indulgences, as in the partly adjusted, or by a psycho-neurotic symptom, or even a plain psychotic episode which calls for no less than the annihilation of his own consciousness." There is no way out but so to center the mind and activities upon such a normal program of sustained devotion to the duty of the hour, as would gradually perfect the character. Then when at times the psychic senses drifted on to the astral levels, they would not perceive and absorb the dregs of subjective currents which correspond to moral inertia of objective planes; nor need they be charmed by the "perfidious beauty" of things which counterfeits that inner light which "lighteth every man that cometh into the world." It is the search for this reality which has its phases even in many egocentric natures, whose unhappy experiences afford insight into the vital truth of human duality. Dr. Clark says: "One often wonders what the mechanism of help is which the epileptic employs in his baffling conflicts. Painstaking study shows he most frequently takes up deep philosophical study, the reading or chanting of tragic epics, or becomes engrossed in profound religious subjects. When he is blocked in his everyday outlet, he goes to a deeper level of tragic thought, or music. This preoccupation seems to lessen the strictly local pain or hurt of a balked desire; it diffuses the poignancy of the feeling over a larger area of his mind; it lessens, as it were, the local intensity of the unsolved conflict. If one will study these 'helps' minutely and compare them, it will be found that the common motif in all is death, usually with a triumphal or victorious element at the end; in short, it is an epileptic reaction as characteristic to the make-up of such individuals as the seizures themselves. The content of these tragic words or songs is home, mother, and heaven in about equal proportion, excepting that the latter is a finale of the others." Some of the most intractable moral perversions and insanities result from a craze for phenomena and the possession of psychic power which are the baits of the various cults of

ghostology, spookism, etc., which, like a viscid froth, crest the turbulent wave of modern materialism. That the sorely handicapped epileptic should turn to such helps as deep philosophy or profound religious subjects, or the rhythm of tragic epics, is significant of his dual nature. He has but confidently to claim his divine birthright to transmute his weakness into strength, and paint upon the screen of time pictures of the living truth that there is a power of health and healing in the higher nature of even faulty men. Though Theosophy, in beneficently extending the human horizon and illuminating the dark areas, reveals of necessity the ghastly forms of unknown evils, they are dwarfed and disarmed by the greater knowledge of man's innate power to "overcome" all things - himself first. H.P. Blavatsky said, "that magical evocation formed a part of the sacerdotal office.... shows that apart from natural 'mediumship' there has existed from the beginning of time a mysterious Science, discussed by many but known only to a few. The use of it is a longing toward our only true and real home - the afterlife, and a desire to cling more closely to our parent spirit." (Vol. 11, pp. 48-52, 531-42) -------------------The New God - 'Psychology' - H. T. Edge We do not worship gods, like the ancients - so it is said; but the fact is that people cannot do without gods of one sort or another. One of our modern gods is called 'psychology.' We find him mentioned in the following quotation, which is given as an illustration: "Dr. ----, who has studied every phase of the problem of illegitimacy, declares that only a changing psychology can account for its proportions and steady increase, and that the tendency towards illegal sex relations is less grounded in economic than in sociopsychological causes." Having read the article in which this occurs, we come to the conclusion that the new science of psychology studies the conditions prevalent in the civilized nations of today, discovers certain influences at work there, and then says that these influences are laws of Nature and must be obeyed. This particular article is about the prevalence of promiscuity and illegal unions; and the argument is that, since such conditions are common, and getting commoner, therefore they must be founded on sacred laws of human nature, and we must adapt ourselves to them and model our legislation and institutions on their demands. Conditions existing among lowly and unadvanced communities of the past are cited and regarded as warrants for recognizing and sanctioning the outcrop of the same unregulated impulses and irregular practices in our midst today. The cult of the 'savage' or 'primitive man' sways our learned big-wigs; which will seem to many as equivalent to the worship of God Pan in his more degenerate form, or of some tribal fetish that must be feared and propitiated by his votaries. One question that is pending for settlement is Whether we shall order our lives by the laws of man's spiritual nature, or by those of his animal nature; by the wisdom that comes from self-discipline and the love of temperance, chastity, purity, justice, and truth, or by the weird and multifarious theories that come from an attempt to study human nature, in the spirit of an experimenter cutting up an animal; whether we are to allow propensities full sway just because they are strong, or whether we are to regulate them by firm and wise control based

on a fuller knowledge of human possibilities. Theosophy stands as the needed guardian of temperance and purity in a world threatened with the chaos of unscientific or quasi-scientific fads. Instead of bowing the knee weakly before the might of the passional nature of man, and saying that that nature cannot be controlled and must be catered to, Theosophy has the courage and the dutifulness to declare that man's passions can be controlled and must be controlled. The only reason why they are not controlled, and why this promiscuity and disorder is prevalent and increasing, is that the existing counteractive influences, whether religious or scientific, are not adequate to the purpose. In fact, we even find that religion sometimes bends the knee, and instead of speaking with the voice of authority in defense of the true and the strong eternal verities, it seeks to palliate and sanction existing abuses. As to science, do we not find that that sacred name is used by some people to give color to theories and proposals that would erect errors into fixed laws and govern mankind by a sociology of licensed instinct? It is to Theosophy therefore that we must look for faith in the power of human nature to reform itself, and for courage to preach the truth about man's higher nature and to insist on the application of wise and firm laws based on morality. For morality is not a mere convention, as those quasi-scientists try to think, but a law of human nature, based on unassailable facts in human nature. Man disobeys the laws of morality at his peril, because they are laws of his constitution. Because man, if not cared for, will behave himself in a way that the very animals would be ashamed of, it is proposed that, to make things just (!), woman shall also be given liberty (!) to do likewise. Thus woman, instead of elevating man, is to help pull him down. A fine theory, which we hereby turn over for castigation to the women's movements. Writing in the name of Theosophy, we can but state our conviction (as it is both our duty and our earnest wish to do) that weakness of every sort should be met with a firm hand; and that this will be found to yield to firm and wise treatment based on faith in human nature. Vices will raise their crests and threaten furiously, as 'tis their nature to; but we have the power to put them down, if we will but decline to be bluffed. Truly the world is losing faith in divine things and in man, when it is seriously believed by many people that man and woman cannot live chaste and temperate lives. Perhaps that is difficult for some people under the conditions of careless living that prevail, and the want of noble ideals and incentives to counteract the sordid materiality of so many existences. But Theosophy will demonstrate that it can be done, if only our lives can be temperately and carefully ordained, and our time and energy filled with inspiring ideals. In place of the bastard psychology of the lower nature, Theosophy proclaims the true psychology of man's higher and divine nature. (Vol. 13, pp. 5-7) -------------------The Angel and the Demon - Miguel Dominguez (Raja-Yoga College) One of the most interesting and instructive of the Theosophical Handbooks is the one entitled "The Angel and the Demon." A conscientious study of this Manual will lead us into that world of good and evil which we call ourselves. In this world presides a king, although he

seldom goes by that name, and a demon lives here too. When your conscience ceases to trouble you even about little things, when you no longer feel that pang at your heart after a wrong-doing, then be careful; you are getting estranged from the king, the real ruler. If you ignore the warning and lose all sense of right and wrong, then be sure that the king's place has been usurped, and nothing can save you unless you recall him. The government of this inner kingdom is a moral autocracy, and the better part of the inhabitants, realizing this to be the only good form of inner government, readily uphold the king in his efforts. But the pretender is a good diplomat. He will offer freedom to a passion, or promise ambition the fulfilment of its goal if they will help him in his designs. If he succeeds the whole kingdom is disrupted and the king has to flee, and then the pretender comes forward and claims the right to rule. But the conspirators now call themselves a free people and will have no ruler. There is quarreling and fighting, and the king slowly begins the work of re-conquest. The demon, however, is never annihilated. I believe he is meant to be trained and made useful; he has his place in the scheme of this world, but of course he cannot be trained until he is conquered. This demon is very resourceful, and when the king thinks he has subdued him, he laughs at him in another form. If the king is an Othello he will confound him with suspicion, or if a Hamlet destroy him with uncertitude. He ignores his good points and pampers to his weaknesses. He knows all the weak places in the ruler's armor better than the latter does himself, and he takes full advantage of it. A study of the history of this world which we have just been reviewing will help us to overcome many undesirable things. We can step into this world whenever we please; other people may be able to give us generalities about the place: its government and its inhabitants; but we alone can be in intimate intercourse with it. No one else is admitted. Here we need not cry for more worlds to conquer, for indeed, there is more in our five feet and a few odd inches of clay than in the twenty-five thousand miles that encircle the globe. In this, the real world, we see performed the deeds of the ancient heroes: Hercules daily does his tasks, and Theseus slays the Minotaur. Here also "Macbeth" is enacted, and King Arthur overthrown. Here are scorching Saharas and frozen regions and Indian jungles, and they are all ours, ours to make beautiful. As you ride through your kingdom you will find the kind of work that will train the demon. Set him to it and keep him at it, and you will not envy Napoleon his conquests. Whenever we read of the old kings and heroes, let us not regret that their time is past, but remember that every hour of the day we have the same opportunity for achieving even more glorious deeds. (Vol. 8, pp. 433-34) -------------------The Complex Nature of Man - Herbert Coryn, M.D. ''Let man look within himself," said Katherine Tingley, "and study the mysteries of his own nature. When he does this, he learns of the mysteries of life, and can begin to work understandingly for the development of all that is noblest and best in himself." When the Greek Oracle sounded down the centuries the great injunction: "Man, Know Thyself," it implied that man did not know himself and that he would find it greatly worth his

while to get that lacking knowledge. It is so difficult to get because this coming to know differs from any other coming to know in that it is the same as a coming to be, the attainment of a new kind of being. For instance, the musician feels one morning as he gets up that there is something coming for him. There are great doings somewhere in him. He is abstracted. Outer matters are not quite so real as usual. Then, as he sits down to his desk, a very high, rapt state of feeling comes upon him, out of which or in which definite melodies and harmonies presently begin to take shape, the internally heard expression of the feeling. These, with much labor, he arranges in due form so as exactly (as far as possible) to express and convey his feeling. But where, in him, was the feeling, the down-coming sweep of inspiration, before it came and while he knew merely that it was coming? In what highest part of himself? There is such a hidden, secret, sacred place in each of us; though, if it could get expression at all, that expression might be in some other form than music. But it is there, and self-knowledge means knowing about it, and knowing about it means coming to be that place, taking conscious charge of it, being not only the common self that we are now but also this extremely uncommon, ethereal, and inspirational self, this breather of the breath that is inspiration. The first step is to study Theosophy and thus know of this self with the mind, to assent to its existence; then to feel its overshadowing presence; then to become it. It can be done, said the Greek Oracle, and say all the great Teachers, in greater or less degree by every one of us; but it is very difficult. Nevertheless there is nothing else so well worth trying for. As H.P. Blavatsky said: "There is a road, steep and thorny.... but yet a road, and it leads to the heart of the universe.... There is no danger that dauntless courage cannot conquer; there is no trial that spotless purity cannot pass through; there is no difficulty that strong intellect cannot surmount. For those who win onward there is reward past all telling, the power to serve and bless humanity. For those who fail there are other lives in which success may come." A missionary was discussing religion with a Brahman and presently asked: "What, then, according to you, is God?" And the Brahman calmly replied: "I am myself God." He was not a lunatic. He merely meant that some of the creative power which called forth the universe and sustains it, was in himself. He would have said the same of other men - the missionary, possibly, excepted. To quote H.P. Blavatsky again, "Every human being is an incarnation of his God, in other words, one with his 'Father in Heaven.' ....In the case of each man, the soul of his 'Heavenly Father' is incarnated in him. This soul is himself, if he is successful in assimilating the divine individuality while he is in his physical, animal shell. 'As many men on earth, so many Gods in Heaven,' but these Gods are aspects or rays of the one 'Divine Spirit which no language can describe and which the mind in its limitations cannot comprehend but the fire of whose divine energy we can feel in our hearts awakening us to right action and illuminating our pathway.'" There is an old story of some Russian political prisoner, drearily occupying an almost naked stone cell. Recalling other days with outdoor nature, he so longed for sight of a flower or something green and living, that his imagination developed the picture of a rose so vividly that it seemed almost real to him. He imagined it in a glass of water blooming on the table and scenting the damp gloom. The color and every petal and leaf became clear to him. After a morning or two the jailer suddenly entered with a rose in a glass and put it on the table just on the spot where the prisoner had imagined his own mind-rose to be, and said: "I was in the

castle garden watering my roses this morning and it struck me that I'd bring you one to liven things a little. So I picked out this one. I might have thought of it before." And the rose which the jailer had selected was the exact copy of the prisoner's mindrose, color, petals, and leaf-sprays. When it was dead the prisoner still had his own. In his mind it threw out more leaves and some buds and flowered graciously for him as long as he was in that cell. The teller of the story says: "I think he had created his rose, and, good reader, though it was but a mind thing, it was alive, which was why it grew; and, though it was but a mind thing, it was somewhat real so that the jailer saw it without knowing that he saw, and so brought in a copy of it." Hence say some philosophers - that the universe is a live flower created in the allencompassing mind of God, live and growing; and also seen by us because we too are minds with, if we but knew it, the same creative power, a power whereof the artists and musicians and poets do verily show a little ray, though so far they have to laboriously and manually work with heavy matter to show us what they have created. Some day, perhaps, man may get that closer power over all matter which now he has only over the matter of his own body, and even that but very slightly. For though this body-matter of ours has some of our life in it, it is of course, like all other matter, alive with its own life, a real life of its own outside our present consciousness and control, and in various degrees sentient. Fortunate, we may say. For we don't do so well with that much of our bodies as is under our control as to suggest our present fitness for any further powers over them. But why do we not all get inspiration all the time? Why is it only into the minds of poets, artists, musicians, that this great rarefying breath from above can enter? A bird is singing in the top of yonder tree. He seems half mad with the spring ecstasy of life, does not know how to get forth the pulse of it fast enough, changes his note and key, sets all the air almost tangibly as well as audibly athrill. Suddenly he sees a worm or a grub, stops his song and drops upon his meal. There is no more song for a while; he voices no more the swift and exultant rhythmic life-pulse in his being; he is scratching about the leaves for another worm, his little mind wholly full of that. Suppose he were always thinking of grubs and worms and flies and feathers to line his nest with, hoping that finer ones would come his way and fearing lest they should not, and remembering some he had last year and a row with another bird that he had about them? Where would be his song? What chance would his bit of the vast nature-music have to come through him? And where would be his happiness? For true happiness is nothing else but the unrestricted pulsing through of the great nature-life, whether the happiness of the bird as the simpler little pulses come through, or the intense and even painful bliss of the musician and poet as they get life's richer harmonies. They are harmonies that may come through as color and as scent as well as sound. Who that has eyes that see will fail to know that as the plant breaks into color with its flower, it too, in its way, is consciously feeling and showing forth the divine pulse of life? But our minds are full of something else. We too have to look after our grubs and worms and feathers for our nest. We too have to scratch amid dead leaves. The struggle for them is very keen. It takes most of the time to get enough of them, and the rest of the time we spend in getting too much of them. And the rest of our minds we occupy with memories of them and anticipations of more and better of them, and fears about them, and jealousies and quarrels and rankles of old quarrels: in a word, with the personally of life. And so we miss the inner beauties and spiritualities of life; we cannot hear within us the everlasting and actual music of life or see within and all around us its subtler pulses and washes of color or detect more than a few of its scents. And what music and color and scent we do get from around us we hardly and only

casually notice. It is the mind that shuts us off from realities, the mind of brain, the mind of daily life, always full, always a-grind, never still, always occupied and pre-occupied, a necessary servant and yet most of the time an enemy. We trained it to be what it is; we let it get its habits; we never learned to control it and its desires; we were never taught that there was a life above, beyond, to be reached by the stilling down of mind into its silence, and that only in its stillness and silence could the voice of great life be heard in its music and seen in its color and appreciated in its meaning. We never learned that we were all creative geniuses, gods, within, above, with power not only like the birds to give expression to the pulse that is already at work in space and nature, but also, because of our inner unity with highest and divined ideation, to do as it does and create the new, to be co-creators with it. It is in the power of creation, of initiation, that man overpasses all the lives below him. They voice a little of what already is. He can add to what is. The musician, artist, poet, has in some measure the power to still his mind and perceive and voice a little of divinity, perhaps to create a little more; and then to make his mind held back from all other matters, all grubs and worms - register and give form to what he perceives or has created. Theosophy points to the fact that we have two minds, one animal or human-animal, and one divine or human-divine. A cat watches a bird. To her it is something to eat. Its colors and grace go for nothing; its song is noise. It may be something to eat for us too. But if with our animal minds we note that, we also note first and chiefly the color and grace and song, and sympathize with the song's ecstasy. If we could keep our poor wandering attention long enough and closely enough upon the thrill of the song we should understand that much of divine life that it expressed, though the understanding might be much deeper than could go into words. Two men look at a tree. One man, using only the animal mind, sees only some feet of lumber and hence so much cash and hence so much to eat. The other sees the beauty of the up-springing, outflowing life, feels the full, tense life of the tree, may understand the tree, what a tree is for in the great plan, what it expresses, its share in the great working out of things. No animal has anything of that mind. The modern science books, and even the psychologies, tell us that man is nothing but an evolved animal, that his mind contains nothing which in some lesser degree the animals' minds do not contain. It is true that man's animal mind is but a development of the mind of the animal. But we have two powers (and their consequences) of which no animal possesses any germ. "A penny for your thoughts," we say when our friend has been leaning back in his chair silent for five minutes. A penny would usually be an excessive charge; but if he accepted the bargain and handed over the then contents of his mind, what should we have? What are we, any of us, thinking of at any given moment? Are we thinking at all in any proper sense of the word? There are snatches of memory connected with whatever the eye happens to fall upon, and other snatches which these first snatches suggest. There are hopes that this will happen or that not happen. There is what she said yesterday and what I said in reply, having been irritated. It is warm weather and there is some idea of an ice-cream. Something suggests a business interview to come off tomorrow, which is Saturday, and so where shall we take our usual little Sunday trip to? Which reminds us that we can't go because Mrs. Jones is coming to dinner and nothing seems to please her. And so on and so on. You see that cannot really be called thinking at all. Things are rambling along through the mind and memory just as they happen to suggest themselves or are suggested by what happens to be seen or heard or by the body's state of heat or cold or hunger or what not. The animals, the dog, the cat by the fire, the snake out on the path in the sun, - they think just in that way, save of course that it is all on a simpler scale. But if while the stream was going on you should decide that it was unworthy of you and

that in the face of any outer distractions you would hold to some one thing that really needed consideration; or if you decided that some one memory, say of a quarrel, or some one emotion, say a fear, was unworthy of you and should be quashed; if, in short, you made a judgment concerning your thought or feeling, and used your will to carry out your judgment, actually turning and holding the mind in some decided-upon and definite direction; or compelled yourself to feel kindly instead of angry or courageous instead of fearful! then you would have shown distinctly and exclusively human qualities or powers. You would have stood back from your mind and feeling, watched them, judged them, and then altered them. Will and judgment, in this sense, no animal possesses. An animal cannot watch its own mind; still less can criticize it; still less can alter it in accordance with an ideal of what it ought to be or do. Judgment and will are both of them beyond - not in or of - the personal mind, since one of them looks at and judges the mind and the other alters and controls the mind. It is because of the beyond-mind region, the region where dwell will and judgment, that we are truly human, and, in the higher levels of that region, divine-human. No animal can create an ideal of what it would like to be, or ought to be but is not, - and then go for it. Wherefore we are incarnate souls or divine-humans, incarnate in living matter of the highest complexity. We are so thoroughly incarnated and have given so much attention to the development of the animal mind, that we have forgotten that there is another, the mind that belonged to us before we came down to incarnation, that still exists, mostly unused, uncalled upon - save to a degree by the musicians, artists, poets, and a few others. It is only to be got at by withdrawing from and temporarily silencing the other, the personal, animal mind of daily life with its thoughts of grubs and worms and feathers and Mrs. Jones and ice-creams and deals in business. "Mind, the great slayer of the real," says H.P. Blavatsky, referring to this mind. To imagine, to have an ideal, is at once to show the presence in us of two minds, one personal-animal and one human-divine-creative. A picture of the garden in which he is accustomed to playing may come up in the mind of the dog as he lies before the fire. But he cannot add at will to his picture, cannot create to it. He cannot imagine it covered with a sheet of snow. He cannot at will combine his memories. He has seen a couple of cats fighting and may remember that. But he could not at will place the picture of the cats in his picture of the garden. Nor could he even retain at will the picture of the garden. For the mind which in us can do these things, can direct will according to a plan and purpose in this way, is not in him. Imagination is the willed combination of memories, fancy but their automatic selfarising combination. The first is human, the other animal. We can imagine an ideal of ourselves, a new self, calling to memory and combining all our best and noblest moments of the past and making ourselves feel that for self. For the time it is self; we have re-created ourselves. But we do not hold it long enough, do not make it clear enough for memory to grasp as a whole and carry it forward as a new life; we let our creation be dissolved by the other mind, the lower, the mind of common daily dealings. We can imagine a divine silver-toned peace spreading like a light over the earth and touching the hearts of men with a new yearning and a new love. But we cannot hold it long enough for it to do its perfect work in actuality. These are works of the higher mind. That mind has memories and perceptive senses as has the lower. With the ears of that mind the musician hears the inner melodies and harmonies of life, though, as for instance with Beethoven, the outer ears might be stone deaf. Then he goes to his instrument and plays aloud so that his outer ears upon which the lower mind depends may in their turn hear what has already sounded in his inner hearing. So the music, now present in both minds, harmonizes the one to the other, and if the lower will keep its empty thoughts for a while silent, it will become temporarily spiritualized. A man may

create very fine and noble ideals of himself in his greater or inner mind, but unless he translates them so that the lesser or outer mind can understand, they will come to very little. The outer mind understands action, and so, to mold it according to the new ideal, we must at once begin putting our new ideal character into action, deeds. Then the lower mind will understand and begin to alter itself accordingly. Acting out an ideal, translating it into deeds, is the equivalent of playing the inwardly heard harmonies upon an instrument. To live is a fine art, like music, or may be. As the current of life streams down and out over the planes of the universe, down and out to this one we see, it is touched near its source by the inner hearing of the musician and becomes the music he writes, the music he makes the gross wires render in place of their common noise. In the same way we may feel the inner, higher ideals of ourselves, our actual radiant selves before we came down and out to incarnation. We ought to find that ideal, for it is present in us as the soul, as the higher mind. And having found it we should render it as deeds and thoughts that correspond. To be inspired with one's own ideal of oneself is as splendid an experience as is that of the musician when he is inspired with his harmonies. To render it into terms of our lives keeps the inspiration alive for ourselves and others as he keeps his alive for himself and others by writing it down in notes on the paper. Indeed the ideal will come to nothing, it may be to worse than nothing, unless it is made to come forth into the deeds of daily life. And it has often perhaps unconsciously to themselves, come to birth and divine power in simple men and women who have never had time or strength or knowledge for set self-culture, showing itself in lives of self-sacrificing devotion to daily duty and daily drudgery, people often far upon a path not even entered by some of those who talk the most eloquently about it. To get this inspiration, this splendid and exhilarating and transforming inspiration of our inner ideal of ourselves we must learn the art, acquire the power, of mind-silence. Most of the mind-chatter that goes on ceaselessly in us while we work or walk about, and that floods out as lip-chatter, is quite worthless. The habit, instead, of inward feeling, of feeling inward, as it were listening inward as to hardly heard music, after our best self, our ideal, is not hard to begin upon. We can train the lower thinking mind to concentration upon one thing in all we do. We can hold it to its present task. We can devise and practice even some set technique of concentration. Who can look at a store window with such concentrated attention for fifteen seconds as to be able afterwards to enumerate all the things on which his eye rested? Who can read a paragraph in a book, or a verse of poetry, with so unflickering a mind as to be able at once to repeat it? Well, this concentration upon one thing is a useful step towards the power of not allowing the mind of brain to have for a while any of its common, empty, useless daythoughts, and holding it up in aspiration for the ideal beyond, the ever-present soul-thought. At night these common thoughts do often still themselves down with the stilling bodily currents ere sleep sets in. Take advantage of that. Read something that helps you towards your ideals, that raises the mind, and then silence and raise it still further. So entering upon sleep, the work continues; the ideal is written in upon the sleeping lower mind; and all the next days will show a working out of the ideal, or a beginning of the working out of it, into better thought and desire and deed. Thus living, we gradually transform ourselves. We become more potent thinkers. Our creative energies do their spiritual work far and wide. Our ideals radiate from us in greater and greater strength. Unconsciously we become helpers of the race. And some time will come the hour of full awakening, of completed self-redemption. The lead will have passed into gold. Life will have begun. In the words of Katherine Tingley:

"The science of life is Theosophy. Let us clear the way for the coming generations; let us through the knowledge that can be gained of ourselves, cultivate that quality of understanding that shall purify human nature and evolve soulful beings." (Vol. 14, pp. 267-77) -------------------Our Complex Personality - H. T. Edge We have heard of those cases where some one's personality has become broken up into several different parts, each part ruling the body at a different time. Such cases are reported by experimenters in psychological phenomena, where a Miss X (for instance) has had several distinct personalities, which were labeled A, B, C, etc., each having its own character, and each ruling in turn. Sometimes, again, we read in the papers of people forgetting the whole of their ordinary personality, and becoming (as it were) some one else for a time, and afterwards returning to their normal personality. But these are only special and extreme cases of what is really quite ordinary; for our character is made up of a number of such diverse elements, though in healthy individuals they do not become separated in the above way. Complex characters often experience this multiplicity of the personality so keenly that they begin to wonder "which is me," and even to think that perhaps there is no real "me" at all. The word persona means a mask, used by tragic actors on a large open-air stage, to represent the character they are impersonating and to give visible size to their features. It is no accident that the word "personality" should be derived from the word that means a mask. Shakespeare, among others, has compared life to a drama, and the world to a stage. Many of the ancient philosophers have frankly regarded the human being as a composite creature, and have considered the soul to be multiplex. This view will have to be taken again, nowadays, and made into a working theory of life. But the most important point is - Where or what is the real Self, if any? Who is the actor that plays the many different parts in life? It is possible to get to a point where we seem to consist largely of an angel and a devil, the one sober and scrupulous, the other libertine, but neither of them genuine. Yet this is by no means a complete analysis of our character; for there are fortunately times when neither of these fictitious personalities is on the stage, and when we are natural. The subject is recognized as of the greatest importance in the bringing up of children. As things are, the child is suffered to develop several of these different personalities; and in general it may be said that he develops a side of his character that is entirely concealed from his parents. The fond parent sketches out an ideal part for the child to enact, and yet at the same time overfeeds and over-indulges the child; so that the unfortunate being soon acquires a double personality, one half for show and the other half kept out of sight. He is not a conscious hypocrite; he merely does the inevitable and accommodates himself as best he can to the situation. It is of no use his trying to explain matters to the fond parent, for the determination of that parent not to see interposes an adamantine wall between parent and child. When the child grows up, the other side of his nature may come forth, and to the parent it seems as though the character had changed and the child had gone to the dogs. There are some psychologists so confused that they would have us think that this

suppressed personality is the real self (!), the voice of nature; and that we ought not to contradict it - if we do, we are guilty of hypocritical morality - and they talk of "human nature" and natural instincts and so forth. They say the passions of man ought to have vent, or else they will work dire mischief. But we see that these passions are nothing but weeds that were allowed to grow during childhood and youth. Save us from superficial psychology and fads and theories! There must be a real self superior to these shifting personalities. Philosophy deals with attempts to find out what is the unqualified ego and to define it. In practice we always find the ego (selfhood) in combination with some quality or qualities, by which it is colored; we find the actor in one or another of his garbs. We may try to strip him of his vestments one by one, in the effort to get down to the original undressed actor - to find out what is the real Self. But such a search baffles us, because in prosecuting it we have to strip the mind of all that constitutes conscious thought. The Eastern method of deep meditation seems more likely to succeed; and one might refer here to the Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, wherein the Eastern sage gives directions as to how the duly prepared candidate for such knowledge may proceed in his meditations, and describes the results attained by the process. In short, to attain the knowledge of Self, we must sooner or later, and in one way or another, go through such a process of profound self-analysis. Patanjali, however, and other such works, are to be regarded as the advanced textbooks of certain schools; and the rules of conduct they prescribe presuppose that the student has already passed through many earlier grades of self-study and self-mastery. This much can readily be inferred from the fact that these teachers make no mention of the numerous difficulties that would beset a Western and modern student who should attempt to follow out literally those rules without their necessary preliminaries. The question for us is how we ourselves, in this present day, may best set about finding the balance of our character and instituting a rational and effective system of education. The key to the problem is to subordinate the personal to the impersonal. In other words - to subordinate the particular to the universal, and to make the principle of solidarity paramount over the principle of personal or class interest. The personality of man weighs but little in the eternal scales, and if we aspire to something greater, we must look beyond the personal. The source or fount of the life we enjoy lies beyond the waters which we drink. A quenchless desire impels man to seek for the fount of his life and his joys, and this quest leads him towards the confines of the personal and towards the beginning of the impersonal. Upon what firm and changeless ground can we set foot in order to find vantage wherefrom to sway the conflicting elements of our own character? The young child has to be impressed with the indisputable truth that the great Life of which he is a part is far greater than the atom of that life in which his personality enshrines. In other words, he learns to make obeisance to the God within. The saying of Katherine Tingley (Foundress of the Raja-Yoga education), that when a little hand is old enough to be raised in anger, it is also old enough to be raised in giving gives the clue. Give a child a cake - and it may either eat it itself or hand it first to its comrade. But what a difference between the two acts! Here surely is the parent's opportunity. Here is the point where two streams have simultaneous birth on the mountain top, to fall ultimately into opposite oceans. From this moment of time springs the future horoscope of that child, and the fond or watchful parent is the magician that rules the stars. No need to invent either gods or stars to explain fate when such influences as these are seen to rule so potently. Fancy a child trained from earliest infancy to give rather than to receive, to think first of

others, and of self afterwards! Contrast it with the way children are reared. Herein is the explanation of life's actual riddles and the promise of life's forthcoming possibilities. When the kindly deed is done, the impersonal Self is the actor, and we here assert that this mode of action is the right and natural mode, such as the child's own true instincts would lead him to take, if it were not that the lesser and intrusive forces of his animal nature were suffered by his fond but not watchful guardians to interpose. When this natural morality is thus allowed to grow, there is no need for an artificial and unstable morality to take its place. Theosophy is a gospel of hope for humanity because it demonstrates that the obstacles in human nature are not insuperable and that many new powers lie ready to be evoked. Such a gospel is needed to counteract prevailing pessimism. In talking about war, for instance, people say that it is a necessary part of human nature, but they do not know what human nature is. Of what use is it to point to the evidence of history as conclusive, when the circumstances of humanity today are totally different from what they ever have been in history? And if war eliminates many evils that would otherwise have festered, so does a fever; yet if the disease germ had never been allowed to enter and grow, there never would have been need of the fever to purify the system. Is it essential to human nature that an outlet should be provided for the indulgence of strong animal propensities? Such is not the case with the animal creation, whose instincts are normal (except in some cases where domestication has modified them). And surely a well-balanced human being ought not to be troubled with inordinate lusts. The fact is that the standard human being is not normal, and what is called human nature is not human nature but disordered human nature. There are certain vices, largely fostered during unguarded school days, which get such a hold on the adult that they may seem irresistible. Is this human nature and should it be provided with an outlet? And the same applies to the more natural but still inordinate forms of vice: they are not human nature but distorted human nature; they need to be checked in the start, not allowed to wax strong and then "given an outlet." But what existing system of education, either by parents or teachers, has shown itself able to cope with the problem of youthful vice, either in secret and perverted form or in the more "natural" and open forms? The Raja-Yoga education can do it by instilling the principles of self-control and true poise from the outset, so that the vices never take root. Genius is a flower that has but little chance to blossom amid the conditions afforded in our present age for its growth. Like a rose tree, sapped by a swarm of parasitic insects, it puts forth pitiful dwarfed blooms. So much is this the case that the word genius has become almost synonymous with instability, and people have argued that genius is a form of insanity. It is the unbalanced and neurotic conditions engendered in youth that furnish the soil upon which grows this distorted product; and the unfortunate being oscillates between the alternating states of inspiration and dire reaction. Theosophy proclaims simple old-fashioned truths amid a turmoil of far-fetched theories. We are bid, on the one hand, to view our far ancestors naked, covered with hair, and armed with bludgeons ; and the most degraded types in the animal kingdom are heralded as those who have transmitted their bestial lusts as a heritage to be squandered by our misguided intelligence. And on the other hand we have gospels of despair, wrongly called religious, which never tire of dwelling on the hopeless sinfulness of man. Theosophy comes to proclaim again the glory of man and the strength of the human soul - if only man will learn to distinguish his passions from his aspirations and follow the light of his better nature. Whatever may have been the history of the evolution of man's physical body, it matters but little in face of the fact that our whole interest must center in the destiny of his soul. Deep within our nature is a great fount of grandeur and beauty that strives to express itself but is

continually thwarted. There is a beauty on the face of the child that speaks of the soul-life; but this beauty soon fades as the grosser senses develop and the mind of the child becomes centered on the material world. But if that beauty could be preserved? Then we might know what life is. The inner harmony makes life beautiful. We do not know, we cannot know, what life is and what its purposes are, until we have simplified our lives by removing those jarring distracting elements that fill us with doubt and turmoil. The purpose of life is a thing to be known by experience, as the bird knows it, and not by philosophical reasoning and theorizing. The joy of life grows in proportion as we can succeed in getting away from the personal. How gladly would many of us do this, if only we could! But we have cultivated habits of selfishness and personal thought that continually thwart our efforts to break from the prison in which we have shut ourselves. Europe is bowed down with grief [1915], and it would little become any people that should look upon this sorrow with an eye directed to calculating the possibilities of advantage to be derived therefrom. The quality of sympathy should make the smart of our fellow-man our own pain, and the impulse should arise in our hearts to make sacrifices that we may assuage the anguish. The strife was brought on by selfishness sowed in past years until a plentiful harvest of it was ripe; and shall we continue sowing the same harvest of appetite for private gain? Theosophy does not propose to endow man with new powers until there is some prospect that he will not forthwith prostitute them all to the cause of internecine strife; for there is no doubt that such would at present be the fate of any higher powers that might be conferred. Theosophy strives to arouse in man those powers that cannot be abused - the Spiritual powers, the qualities of heart and of the awakened intuition. How necessary, then, it is to study our own complex nature that we may learn to use the life that is ours. Our personality is truly an illusion, a set of habits, and a pretty dance these habits lead us! When our life nears its close - it is then that we realize that the purpose that directed it was not ours, and that we have fulfilled a destiny we had not planned. We may think we have failed; yet, though our petty ambitions have been thwarted, the purpose of the Soul may have been achieved. And it might have been possible for us to have realized better the real purpose of our life, so that, instead of trying to thwart it by chasing shadows, we might have helped it on. And all this knowledge would become possible if a collective effort on a large scale were made by many people, all trusting in their divine nature and striving towards the light within, a never-failing guide. (Vol. 8, pp. 305-10) -----------------------The "Sex-Hygiene" Fad - H. T. Edge One is glad to see that a certain well-known psychologist has spoken strongly against the prevalent fad known as the "teaching of sex hygiene to children." Katherine Tingley, the Leader of the Theosophical Society, has always protested against this and other fallacies of the kind, which, however well intended, are fraught with danger. And now we find her views receiving confirmation from authoritative quarters in the scientific world. The professor naturally bases his objections on his own familiar ground of psychology,

and his observations have certainly stood him in good stead in this case; for what he says commends itself to the judgment as simple common sense. He has put into reasoned scientific language certain facts well known to us all, but especially to those engaged in the care and education of the young, the feeble-minded, and the impressionable. These facts are summed up in the statement that the influence of example and of suggestion are far more potent in the formation of character than are arguments. The sex hygienists argue that, because it is wise to teach children about the danger of dirt and infection, so that they can guard themselves against disease, therefore it is wise to teach them all about the sexual functions. But a great fallacy creeps in here, as the professor shows. The cases are by no means parallel; and if we assume that they are parallel, we shall be led to disastrous conclusions. In the case of the dirt and the disease germs there is no question of morbid imagination, seductive mystery, powerful instinctual propensity, or romantic fantasy; but in the case of sexual matters these factors are of paramount importance. This makes all the difference and renders the argument futile; what is true in the one case is certainly untrue in the other. The learned psychologist rightly points out that the danger of initiating a girl into these mysteries is much greater than any dangers that could result from keeping her uninformed. To exaggerate the former dangers is impossible; the latter can be, and have been, greatly exaggerated. What, he sagely asks, are we to think of the wisdom of those who expect by their reasoned arguments to overcome the overwhelming force of the suggestions which they implant in that hitherto virgin but prolific soil? One is reminded of the schoolmaster who, on taking leave of his boys, said: "Be sure you do not pump down the back of each other's neck." One knows what those boys did directly his back was turned; what chance was there that they would have done it if he had not warned them? The sex hygienists argue that sex evils are due to neglect to teach sex hygiene; and that they can be removed by teaching it. We disagree on both points. The dangers are not so caused, nor can they be so removed. And not only can they not be removed by that method, but they will be greatly increased thereby. The customary reticence observed by the old to the young is a wise rule, thinks the professor, based on the psychology of the question; and again we entirely agree with him, basing our opinion, however, on still broader grounds. "The faint normal longing can be well balanced by the trained respect for the mysterious unknown"; but, on the other hand, if we initiate the child, then we leave an enormously accentuated craving with nothing to balance it but a mere warning or advice. Obviously the balance of forces greatly preponderates, in the second case, on the side of danger. For we have added an overwhelming weight on the side of danger and removed a counterpoise from the side of safety. We feel sure that the great majority of parents and teachers must feel instinctively that this is the case, and that their intuitions are borne out by the weight of their experience. Let them be assured that they need not be alarmed or shocked out of their position by the speciousness of arguments so easily shown to be one-sided and fallacious. There is no antagonism between intuition and reason, nor does experience contradict wisdom. The antagonism is between sophistry and sense, between experience and theory. We have stated that the sex evil is not due to reticence but to other causes. What are these? First and foremost, the age is sex-mad. So morbidly do thoughts circle about this subject that it thrusts itself into prominence in all doings - literature, the drama, art, conversation, religion, philosophy, all. What wonder that our children reflect the atmosphere they are brought up in! Then these children are left to associate with those who will corrupt them, allowed to go loose on the street, read papers and trashy novels, confronted

everywhere with suggestions; and, in short, are thrust headlong into an atmosphere thickly charged with the germs of moral disease. Here surely is cause enough! Is it not against this that our efforts should be directed? Suppose a parent should send his child into a leper colony or typhoid ward, armed with a scientific book about germs, and should argue that this was better than keeping him at home? Yet this is what is done with children. And what is the remedy proposed? To shield and protect them from the contamination? By no means. To inject into their minds more germs, and to do this as a prophylactic! The sex hygienists will protest against this view of course; they will say that they do not sow germs in the child's mind. Here is where we take issue, and the professor above-named takes issue. The force of suggestion will far outweigh the force of the advice. People with the best intentions may be mistaken, and we think we shall have large support in saying that this is a case in point. The dangers of reticence have been greatly exaggerated. A carefully brought-up child would have no difficulty in connection with his physiological functions, for these would be normal and cause him no trouble. He (or she) would feel no undesirable propensities, any more than does an unspoiled animal. There would be no more need to instruct him as to this particular function than there is with regard to other vital functions, which fulfil their duties naturally, without interference. This is the ideal; and it should always be remembered that ideals govern conduct and are necessarily in advance of attained results; if they were not, they would not be ideals. Also, if we reject high ideals, then their place will be taken by low ideals; for ideals of some kind man must have. The sex hygienists have set up their ideal; we set up ours. But supposing the nature of the child is not normal - perhaps oftener the case than not - what then? The answer to this question is very simple: the child is then a case for treatment. But what treatment? This is the crucial point, because one treatment may be right and another wrong. If a man has a bad leg, we do not necessarily have to cut it off. But to point to the diseases of society as an argument for a particular cure is no more logical than to point to the sores on a limb as an argument for amputation. Treat the child, we say; but not in the way proposed by the sex hygienists. This leads us to the grave question of secret vice, which is perhaps the worst and most subtle foe. After all, it is like straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, to make such a to-do about the "social evil," which, fearfully bad as it is, is comparatively natural; when there is this unnatural vice gnawing at the very core of youth. It may begin almost in the cradle and grow and flourish during all the years of childhood, so that the whole nature of the man or woman, including every cell of body and brain, every thought and habit, becomes warped and cast in a vicious mold, and the entire after-life is rendered a miserable failure. And this evil is almost ignored by parents and teachers. They do not even possess the means of knowing whether or not it is present; for it is subtle and often leaves no immediate trace that they know how to recognize. Moreover, their own prideful reluctance to recognize it in their own children is the surest kind of blinkers to fond eyes. And so the young hopeful leads a double life, until that becomes unconscious second-nature to him. Now what, it may be asked, is the right policy to pursue in the case of a child known to be in difficulties and dangers with his lower nature? The child must be enlightened and warned - but not in the fashion of these sex hygienists. What need is there to arouse his curiosity and to thrill his imagination with new and exciting suggestions? Why cannot the matter be argued out on the score of health? Why not on the score of decency? It is surely easy enough to point out and to prove that the habits debilitate the whole nature, physical, mental, and moral; produce illness, ill temper, shyness, deceitfulness, and vanity; throw the

child back behind his fellows in his studies and in his games; and lead in the end to a broken life, often ending in premature death, suicide, or the asylum. All this can be impressed on the child, with telling effect, and without suggesting any ideas whatever about procreation. And what is the treatment? First and most important, to keep his mind off the subject. (And how can this be achieved by the method of the sex hygienists, which works in exactly the contrary direction, and concentrates his mind with renewed force on the very subject he should avoid?) The child has to be kept busy all day, especially with open-air work and exercise. His diet has to be studied and regulated. He has to be carefully looked after, so that he may have no opportunity of falling victim to his weakness. One argument used is that other children or bad companions will initiate the child into evil, and that consequently it is better to forestall this by initiating him or her ourselves. What a sad lack of mutual confidence between parents and their children is here revealed! If the proper mutual relation existed between them, the parent would be the child's natural confidant in every slightest matter, and would instantly report any such mischievous conversation. Then would be the parent's opportunity to tell the child to cast all such ideas out of his mind and to avoid such company and conversation; a task that would present no difficulty to a cleanly-minded child. If, however, conditions exist which render these evils unavoidable, then the best we can do is to counteract them in every way by filling the child's life with pure, sweet, healthy influences. Why not appeal to the divine nature of our children? Why not strive to evoke in them a power that shall resist and overthrow every impure suggestion and be to the child a sure bulwark against every poisonous dart? This is the method of Theosophy. But perhaps the reason is that we lack confidence in our own divine nature. Many of the people, we shall be told, who advocate sex hygiene, are most worthy and estimable; and our strictures may therefore seem somewhat harsh. We admit their worthiness and the excellence of their motives, and can only add: "How mistaken!" But in any case, believing, as we do, that the policy is most harmful, we can only condemn it; regarding as an added danger the fact that names of weight can be cited in its support. As Theosophists, we say: "Initiate the child into the mysteries of his divine nature, confirm him in the habit of self-command in every deed, thought, and feeling; and then it will be time to see whether it is necessary to initiate him into anything lower." If those who advocate these mistaken views had any idea of the splendid possibilities of a child's nature, when encouraged to grow according to the laws of divine harmony, they could not for a moment entertain the bare shadow of such views. The mere suggestion seems a profanation. Let us ask you, parent, teacher, might you not be better employed than in teaching your daughter, pupil, by means of a flower pulled to pieces, certain well-known physiological things? Yes, it is possible that you might be better employed. Why see in the matchless rose nothing but a physiological arrangement of stamens and pistils? Why see in your own child nothing but a glorified animal with a negligible soul? And why could you not use the same flower as a symbol of the divine nature and use it as a means of inculcating the might, the beauty, the fragrance of the divine-human Soul and its invincible lordship over the things of the flesh? Truly you are neglecting priceless opportunities at your door. A marriage should be a sacred vow of chastity, truth, mercy, purity, nobility of life; a model for the harmonious living of the great human family. The family is the unit, the atomsoul of humanity. To achieve a harmonious family-life is to help on the whole of humanity to fulfil its own career. If our daughters grew up in such pure unselfish ideals of their functions and duties, they would not need to be inoculated against dangers which for them would never exist. The purity and dignity of their own natures would be more than sufficient protection. We repeat:

let our youth of both sexes be brought up in purity and self-command, their minds carefully kept free from all thoughts on the sex-question. And if their heredity has unfortunately rendered them prone to bad habits, treat them on the ground of health and decency. The plan of giving sex-instruction, no matter how delicately and carefully carried out, will do far more harm than good. It is not through want of this instruction that children err or incur danger; and therefore its bestowal cannot shield them. Its bestowal can, however, do additional harm and very probably will do it. The neglect to instruct a child as to his higher nature is a really serious neglect; and it is for want of just such instruction that people fall upon such desperate expedients as the one we have been considering above. (Vol. 8, pp. 41-46) -----------------Pride - R. Machell One knows the proud man's pride better than he does: this pride is what he lives for; it is the secret glory of his life, the crown he wears, when, throned in imaginary separation, he sits supreme within the fantastic palace of illusion, that his brain has built to shield him from the crude realities of life. The world's life goes on around him and he takes a part in it, but not as one who is compelled to do so, not as one of the common sort of ordinary humanity; but rather as a thing apart, an essence, an idea, too pure for contact with the vulgar crowd, too rare and delicate to be involved in the rude struggle for the necessities of life. The things that men call necessary are to him merely those things that all superior spirits scornfully accept as part of that which is their due. The other things, for which the more ambitious eagerly compete, are his by right of his superiority, although they frequently may be withheld from him by baser men, whose greed and envy blind them to their baseness as to his magnanimity. He is magnanimous most naturally, by reason of his great superiority; he could not be otherwise; and he would scorn to blame the ignorant world for being blind to the glory of his virtue. Their ignorance and blindness are but the natural condition of their class, their isolation the penalty of Nature's preference. All this is as the fuel for a sacrificial fire burning upon the altar of his egotism. In that temple no other worshiper has ever entered; and if the general world takes note of such a man, it is but to remark his oddity. His sense of personal superiority appears to them but as an affectation, or perhaps a symptom of incipient insanity; for they, blinded by their mediocrity, see neither crown nor throne, nor do they smell the fragrance of the sacrificial fire: they simply see the man, and think him mildly mad. They scarcely stay to mock him; for the game of greed they play is all-absorbing; the daily scheming to secure the means to enter upon other schemes is not a mere diversion: the game of life is serious, and demands an absolute devotion to the pursuit of the elusive prize, the golden apple of success. He scorns success: he is too proud to enter into competition with inferior men for a mere pittance; he, who by right might claim such wealth as they must toil and struggle to attain. For the same reason he has no heart to learn a trade, or even to qualify himself for a profession. Being assured of his ability to fill the highest office in the state, how can he stoop to such indignity as mere apprenticeship. Thus the success he so despises seldom stops to tempt him with her smiles; and so his shoes are often such as would not recommend a man

for a position of responsibility. There is a revelation to be found in a man's shoes, if one but give one's mind to its interpretation. An old shoe testifies most eloquently to the peculiarities of the wearer, and this evidence is of unquestionable sincerity, being offered unwittingly and without guile. The testimony that a man's shoes bear to his character is stamped with conviction, such as few human witnesses can hope to emulate. Such testimony might be considered doubtful in a court of law, but then we know that justice is blind. Pride of the most magnificent sort is paradoxically sensitive. It is the poorest kind of armor, resembling the old paper-mache outfit of ancient noble Japanese or Chinese warriors before the introduction of artillery. It makes a very fine appearance, and was most useful in its day; but now its value rests on an aesthetic basis. The Greek and Trojan warriors seem to have had great use for pride, with which their long harangues were swelled 'almost to bursting.' Truly the times are changed, and pride is not honored quite in the same way as it was formerly. But there are strange survivals, ghosts of a scarce forgotten past, still haunted with a strange confused memory of some imaginary grandeur, that was perhaps an unattained ideal of past lives. The times are changed, but there is no lack of opportunities in life for the display of all our weaknesses in forms adapted to the age in which we live. Pride is not always arrogant: it may be softly silent, more insidious than assertive. In such a case the manner of the man is most retiring, his voice is gentle, he stoops in his walk, and tiptoes gently, as he seeks the lowest seat or a position of too obvious obscurity. He knows the value of humility, and uses it as a self-conscious beauty might manipulate a fan, in order to attract attention to the charms the fan occasionally conceals. The softness of his manner seeks to hide the rancor of his elemental self, as treacherously sudden in its action as a cat's claws. An artificial smile may curl the lips, and the voice may purr confidingly, in uttering withering sarcasm, or some allusion charged with devilish malignity. Pride is not always admirable. Sometimes the bitter humor breaks out openly, but usually it hides behind humility, as bloody war lies latent in peace treaties. His sensitive pride, that shrinks from dishonorable acts with real aversion, unwillingly accepts equivocal expedients, by means of which he tries to escape humiliations forced upon him by his inability to provide himself with ordinary comforts, such as seem necessary to him. So petty mean nesses and subterfuges are often the stepping-stones on which he delicately makes his way, hither and thither, tortuously traversing by uneasy stages the doubtful borderland that lies between respectability and social outlawry: a dismal region haunted by ghosts of greatness that was not, but that "might have been," shadows of men not strong enough to pass through into the nether world of vice, nor to maintain their footing on the safer side. The doubtful ground is rotten here and there, its pestilent corruption half concealed by a rank bramble-growth of wild luxuriance, whose claw-like thorns catch at the threadbare garments of respectability, and wound the wretch who seeks the pitiful shelter of that social purgatory. The pitiful host that wanders here is all made up of separate souls, self-exiled, isolated by their own egotism, deprived of human sympathy by their own self-sufficiency, which does not in any way suffice. They all believe themselves pursued by fate, or by the jealousy of men less scrupulous than themselves but stronger. They all seek shelter from the ordeals they have themselves invoked. For what is pride but an internal declaration of superiority, that is a constant challenge to the higher powers to take notice of the aspirant to honor. The aspirant, who has no knowledge of himself, and thinks himself superior to his fellows, asserts his faith in his superiority, even by his mental attitude. This is a challenge to the 'god within': and if his pride be strong enough to make his challenge heard, the deity

within, the soul of him, takes notice; and that notice is his opportunity. Either he rises to the occasion, and from his new position issues another challenge to his own soul to lead him on along the path of power; or then and there surrenders, overwhelmed by the trials he has unwittingly invited. Shrinking before the golden opportunity, he declares to himself that fate has turned against him, and he tries to find shelter from the storm he has himself let loose about him. But there is no shelter for a man who flies from his own soul. The pride, that raises men and ruins them, is in itself a mystery, for there is that within which is divine, though that which veils the inner truth is sheer illusion. Truth, to the mind, is veiled in falsity, because the mind of man can only deal with the appearance; the reality is for the soul alone. Man is divine, and knows it in his soul, but in his lower mind knows neither his own divinity nor his duality; and so mistakes his inner consciousness of soul-superiority to the illusions of the outer world for an assurance of his personal superiority to his fellows, deluded like himself, and like himself in essence, divinely great. Pride is the veil that hides the soul, and man must strip off this veil ere he can know himself and stand secure above the illusions of the lower world, master of his mind and senses, knowing his actual identity with that which rules the universe and which he once called destiny. It is the soul of him that prompts him to assert himself, although he may obey the impulse ignorantly and foolishly, proudly persuaded of his personal predominance and individual separateness, seeking but satisfaction for his vanity. The storms that break upon his head are actually invited by himself, and offer him the opportunity he needs to free himself from the illusion of his separateness. Man is his own initiator in the mysteries of life, his own redeemer from the ills he brings upon himself, being in no wise separate from the rest, but sharing in their thoughts and deeds as well as in the consequences. But this is true of Man collectively; no single personality can stand alone in self-sufficiency, because the true Self is not a personality nor an agglomeration of untold entities, but rather That of which all these are separate reflections, as grains of sand reflect the sunlight separately, which light is the one light of all. So from of old experience has told us "pride precedes a fall": and we may add that pride survives innumerable falls. The lessons of experience are generally learned unwillingly, by tedious reiteration, until the disciple finds his teacher and learns to recognise his true Self outside the limits of his own egotism. By that time he is on the path that leads to true self-knowledge; his pride is already purified of its grosser elements. Pride is a paradox it raises men and casts them down again: the falls it presages are lessons to the learner in life's school, or they are punishments for those who can not understand the mystery of Self, who see the anger of the gods in natural law, and seek by prayer to win some favor from an imaginary deity, whose wrath they dread, not knowing the Law that orders all impartially, nor their own share in its administration. So too, this monster Pride has in it paradoxically something of the divine, which wins the admiration of the multitude - ignorantly responsive to a beauty they cannot comprehend, and just as ignorantly blind to a deformity in which they share. Pride is a part of our humanity and must be purified beyond all recognition in the gradual evolution of the race; for man is not merely human: his humanity is but a school in which the Soul must learn. What lies beyond might make the wildest dreams of pride seem strangely inadequate. (Vol. 12, pp. 315-18)

"Do not ask a question unless you intend to listen to the answer and inquire into its value. Try to recollect that you are a very small affair in the world, and that the people around you do not value you at all and grieve not when you are absent. Your only greatness lies in your inner true self." - W. Q. Judge -----------------General Theosophy Adversity - E. A. Neresheimer Man is free to choose between many ways of action in all circumstances; yet there is a plan of nature, conformable to which he is obliged to move. Whichever course he adopts from personal motive, whether good or bad, there will subsequently be corresponding reaction upon him, a reaction known as Karma, the law of cause and effect. Through want of compassion and lack of knowledge he oft chooses wrongly, inconsiderately, selfishly; in consequence, the rebound which follows as effect, though the thought or deed has long been forgotten, is sometimes considered to be personal adversity and hardship. The theosophic premiss is that the law embodies the highest justice and intelligence, devoid of emotion and unerring in its compensation. Among the many pleasing incidents experienced in life, divers other things befall mankind: sickness, poverty, disappointments, loss of loved ones, miscarriage of plans, thwarted ambition, worry, discouragement, pain, misfortune, and various tribulations. All these are in a sense states of mind, largely susceptible of gratifying amelioration by a proper mental attitude when one is inclined to think seriously about the possible connection involved between the occurrence of events and the orderly progression of sequences obtaining throughout the great economy of sentient life and nature. Adverse conditions may remain quite what they are, but our mental relation to them can be altered in a moment or by degrees; if we succeed in so doing the aspect of an affliction will modify itself in its effect upon us and often completely change. Physical injury, loss of organ or limb, calamities and misfortunes, strange to say, are seen to be borne contentedly after a time, and are looked at from a viewpoint much different from the first dreaded anticipation of them. Who has not seen a maimed person more resigned to his fate than we imagine we would be? In numerous cases wonderful resourcefulness has been shown under stern trials. It is all an experience of life, generally wholesome and disciplinary, pulling up a person, so to speak, to a new view of himself; forcing introspection and a seeking for causes, broadening sympathy for others, and generally culminating in a state which is none the less happy than the former. Severe visitations come only to those already strong. No greater burden is put on one than he can carry, and he could carry more if he were to summon his natural powers. And behold! what a stroke of fortune it sometimes is in the unfoldment of unexpected mentality and moral incentive - a veritable forthcoming of latent, godly powers, besides the strengthening of Will, and the finding of firmness, patience, and fortitude. Do we not sometimes witness absurdly morbid states of mind on the part of average persons, when they meet merely slight reverses, such as are not worse than those borne by thousands who are happy despite them? Taken by surprise they act as though dumbfounded

and stunned. Being so unprepared for small metabolites, how can they evoke remittances out of which great deeds are born? Do not these need just such gentle impacts from the benign illusion-destroyer - Mother Nature? Others again who firmly pull themselves together in manly fashion, striving for a more reasonable accommodation to the new circumstances nine out of ten of them rise out of the trial stronger, and perchance discover within themselves some unexpected reservoir of consciousness and strength. The soul is the doer of things, also the enjoyer and sufferer. In the course of its descent from spiritual estate it has fallen under the seductions of matter, forsaking the while the domain of its pristine divinity. Time was, before the middle period of the Great Life-Cycle was reached, when the evolutionary pilgrim was serenely carried on the wave of nature's sole responsibility. The acme of consolidation and perfection of physical form is reached; henceforth man, the creature of the Path, must become the Path itself. Matter and the vectores of the soul becoming more refined on the return arc, the human entity has entered upon the cycle of individual responsibility. Nature will no longer be in our debt for the mere act of living. She may no longer compensate with molding the fairest possible forms out of a promiscuous mixture of good and evil; the true relation of earthly beauty and eternal truth depending from this time forward upon man's conscious efforts in one direction only, that is to say, a life in harmony with the cosmic plan. The Law is Compassion Absolute! Karma is its method. Reincarnation its Instrument. It has been a long journey of the spirit downward in order to obtain contact with matter in its many phases. Many have been the experiences in this vast labyrinth of sentiency, waking and sleeping, activity and rest, joy and sorrow, enlightenment and darkness, heaven and hell, over and over again, for ages upon ages. In the cycles to come when man shall have spontaneously ranged himself on the side of the Higher Law in his appointed cooperative work with nature, the tyranny of personal desire shall cease, the thraldom of illusion end, and man regain his spiritual estate.... The human unit is an integral and absolutely indispensable part of the scheme of the Universe. Strange to say, even this tenet is quite a new one to most men and women of today. In consequence they flounder from emotion into despair over troubles actual or imagined, are in fear of death, of god and man, and afraid of adversity, as if any of these things were of the "least" or "utmost" importance. It is quite another thing to have anchorage on at least a fragment of truth and reality; one then knows that to our essential nature most of the objects of dread are but temporary, disciplinary, often wholesome, from which one is expected to learn priceless lessons necessary in development. The certainty that nothing whatever can happen that could in the least affect or destroy one's individual integrity as a permanent unit and inseparable part of the universal economy, should inspire us with great confidence in our spiritual stability. Be it said that the whole Universe would sooner fall to pieces than that destruction should overtake one single unit. No! We are of much more importance than that. And our troubles? On another plane of consciousness, the plane of the soul, they are non-existent, except in the sense of a mere incident, just as one single letter might stand for an incident in a volume which contained many, many subjects. No great philosophy is needed to train our minds to dwell on the inward life, whence, after no long time, a serene state is born to us, and a widening of our outlook and consciousness, and in consequence there arises a natural inner stimulus, even an urge toward contemplation of the deeper resources of our being. Hold to some lofty impersonal subject which appeals to us as an unquestioned truth: Brotherhood is a fact in nature; the latent Divinity of man; the unity of Cosmos; and similar verities of great number and profound import suggested in Theosophic teachings; rise with them in the morning, letting them penetrate into us during the day, and retire with them,

holding them as the last thing before sleep. Never fail in the performance of the least duty to the fullest extent of ability, resigning all personal interest in it, being content in the mere correct discharge of any act as Duty. Cease day-dreaming or letting the mind wander aimlessly into the past, or into anticipation of the future, instead, live consciously alert to the smallest thing connected with every thought and act, at the same time being discriminately positive as to what is proper and what not. Doing this with pronounced intent, firmly fixed will and good cheer, will soon crowd out "gloomy streaks," and having made a disciplined instrument of one's mind, adversities will soon be found to have assumed an entirely different aspect. There is no universal prescription for meeting or brushing aside things that happen; whatever occurs has to be met somehow, and therefore our mental relations to the circumstances determine the quality of the effect the happenings shall have upon us. If a broad enough view is taken we may extract from adversities a salutary and valuable lesson. It is unwise to complain, or to mope or pray for better fortune instead of making effort to fathom their meaning. Nothing ever occurs for which adequate causes are not in existence in man's atmosphere, whether generated in the remote past or in the present life. Through many links uniting a long chain of events these causes come to fruition as effects - the conditions which bring them to a focus having not arrived. The source of trouble must be looked for within ourselves and consolation sought in the fact that the experience is a means to progress. Calmly and courageously looking on new conditions as opportunities for growth, will promote individual self-reliance and heighten our trust in Divine Justice. (Vol. 9, pp. 273-76) -----------------------On Backsliding - T. Henry The title of this article might have been more learnedly written, 'Action and Reaction'; but, as that would have been vague, leaving the reader in doubt whether we meant to write on science or philosophy or what, we have used a word familiar to our pious ancestry, and about whose meaning there can be no doubt. Backsliding is a state of reaction, which, supervening upon a state of zeal, plunges the soul of the devotee in a temporary despair, causing him to do those things which he should have left undone, and to leave undone those things which he should have done. And, in order to account for the catastrophe, he is fain, professed monotheist though he be, to imitate all mankind before him and attribute his woes to an evil Potency - to wit, Satan, the Devil - modern representative of Typhon and Ahriman. As a matter of fact, however, our zealot has merely illustrated a well-known and invariable law of Nature, which science calls the law of action and reaction. Our emotional nature is subject to such fluctuations, back and forth, from hot to cold; and if we mix up too much emotion with our piety, we shall inevitably suffer from alternating moods of exaltation and depression, self-satisfaction and self-undoing. What we need, therefore, is a steady constant devotion which shall carry us through all our emotional changes, so that we shall not be carried away by our enthusiasm, nor yet chilled by the deadness that will surely follow it. We need to separate our emotions from our genuine devotion; for the emotions are liable to change, and if we attach ourselves too much to them, we shall get carried away by them, and shall despair when there is really no need to do so.

When confronted by a law of nature, we should not resent or try to oppose it, but accommodate ourselves to it and make use of it. This principle of reaction is such a law; and in many concerns of life we actually do avail ourselves of it. If we have been doing hard work, and find ourselves tired, we do not throw down our tools in despair and vow never to work again; only an idiot would do that. We rest awhile, keeping our object in view against the time when we can work again. And meanwhile we can profitably employ our leisure in something else. It is evident that, to every pair of opposites, there is a third or balancing state which can carry us through. A traveler does not allow his purpose to be affected by the alternating states of his body, but persists in it whether he is walking or resting. And so we should try to find this constant and unshifting basis beneath our ever-changing moods. We should aim at being "the same in pain and pleasure, heat and cold, favor or disfavor," etc., as the Bhagavad-Gita says. Our backslider needs not to be discouraged from his efforts by his backsliding; he can recognise that weaknesses and old habits cannot be overcome all at once. And the next time he makes an effort, he will make it more wisely and not put so much personal emotion into it. It is within our power to progress continually in the attainment of poise and balance; for we have only to compare our present condition with what it was in the past in order to see that already we have advanced. A person in a bad state of reaction and despondency would do well to keep as quiet as possible until the state has passed. He should not allow his mind to worry him, for the mind itself is mixed up in the state of reaction and is likely to mislead him. Theosophy comes very much to our aid here by assuring us that, beyond our thinking mind, there is the heart, a surer steadier source of wisdom; and although the surface waters of our mind may be dark and stormy, the heart behind is tranquilly awaiting the return of calm. So if we can manage to cultivate this trust in the innate wisdom and strength and goodness within us, we can find a way to tide ourselves through all despondent moods. Our main difficulty comes from the habit of restlessness and 'living on our nerves,' so much engendered by our way of life in this civilization. There are some people who can never be still, but must always be either working or amusing themselves; they cannot even sit still on the cars, but must read a novel or a paper, or smoke, or chew gum. With these people, the real strong side of their nature never gets a chance; they do not give it one. They let themselves be pulled about hither and thither by the calls of the body and its nerves, by the stomach, and by the idle or troublesome thoughts that flit unbidden into their mind. It would do such people much good to cultivate the power of sitting quiet occasionally, just so that they might see to what extent they can control their impulses if they really try. Hence most of our backslidings and moods of despondency are not due at all to any infirmity in our purpose or to any change of heart or lack of zeal. They are simply due to the fact that we have not learnt to control our body and nerves and thoughts and emotions, and that we allow ourselves to be swayed by these. After a time we come to realize that this is so; and then we find a new power to let the currents go by without being upset by them. We discover that our purpose is constant, and that we are true all the time, and we give up making mountains out of molehills and getting discouraged because we cannot keep our bow ever on the stretch. Both in our philosophy and in our conduct we are always striving to unify dualities, to, bring harmony out of contrasts, to solve dilemmas, reconcile opposites, and come to a conclusion or a decision. One of the commonest symbols of the universal mystery-language is that of a wheel rotating; it signifies continual motion and change around a motionless center. We are built on this pattern, and have the power of shifting our mind about from one part of our constitution to another; so that we can dwell either in the rim of the wheel or in its

center. If we dwell in the rim, we rise and fall with every tide in continual restlessness; but we can gravitate towards the center, rest there, and watch the changes going round. Another symbol of equilibrium is the balance, as seen in the zodiac; and if we hang from each pan of the balance another balance, making three altogether, the symbol becomes even more suggestive. Every tendency in our nature is related to some other tendency, of the same kind, but of an opposite pole; and if we know this, we may be able to control both tendencies by balancing them against each other, just as we can carry a long heavy pole by holding it in the middle. Ignorance of the fact may cause us to fail in overcoming a fault, because it is connected with something else and we do not suspect the connection. For instance, we may be striving to overcome our unpleasant emotions, such as anger and resentment, while all the time we are unwisely indulging our pleasant emotions. Both conditions are emotional, and indulgence in the one leads to indulgence in the other. We need to overcome all emotional weakness, both pleasant and painful; so that, if we cannot overcome one fault alone, it may be quite easy to overcome two at once. And so with other habits which we may find it hard to overcome; they may be subtly connected with something else which we unsuspectingly tolerate, and thus we may be frustrating our own efforts. From all this it will be seen that action-and-reaction is a fundamental law of nature; and therefore we should learn how to make use of it. When we have worked so long at one thing that the tools and material are overheated, it is time to work a spell on something else. (Vol. 14, pp. 495-99) -------------------The Common Sense of Theosophy - Frank Knoche If this were a sermon, the following would be my text. It is taken from the writings of Katherine Tingley, whose great effort is to the end that men and women shall take a commonsense position with regard to themselves, their duties, and their relations with their fellow men: "Universal Brotherhood has no creeds or dogmas; it is built on the basis of common sense.... Let us cast aside creeds and dogmas, then, and unite as brothers, each working to improve the condition of the other, and all working for the common good of humanity.... (for) the old order of things passes away and we are brought face to face with the great and grand possibilities of the new." The great value of Theosophy to the world today, with all humanity rushing helterskelter, pell-mell, none can tell you whither: few with time to be quiet, few who care to be calm, and half the world strangling in a sea of agony and blood, is the fact that it gives the inquirer a rational, common-sense answer to his questions. For who is not an inquirer today? Everyone who meets you has a question, either in his heart or on his lips, perhaps only one, but that one, for all his search, still unanswered. As William Quan Judge so well expresses it in one of his little-known articles: "Within the mind and heart of every thoughtful individual there exists some vital question unanswered. Some subject is uppermost, and asserts itself obtrusively with greater

persistency because he is obliged to deal with it without a visible prospect of a solution of the problem. As the center in a circle, so is every individual with regard to his environment. At times it seems impossible for him to pass beyond the circle owing to one unanswered question." But with most of us more than one question recurs to the mind, and with such persistency that we look here and there for the answer. "Who am I? What am I? Whence did I come, and whither do I go? What is the purpose of life, or has it no purpose at all? Is there any solution to the riddle of existence?" Modern science can give us everything, seemingly, except an answer that satisfies the heart; the five-hundred and odd religious sects have so far failed to give us an answer that satisfies the mind. So the materialist says: "Why trouble about the matter at all? Life is merely the result of certain chemical combinations and interactions; ergo, when these are dissolved, life ends : and why worry about a future that we shan't be there to see?" The religionist says: "These questions are not to be solved. The thing is to have faith, and let the answers go." But the live man of today, facing as he does live issues, is not so willing to let the answers go. He could not run his business on such a plan and succeed, and he is not willing to run his life so. Man is a Thinker, first of all: so say the Ancient Books, and so say reason and experience both, and he has more than the animal brain. The man who cultivates only the material side of his nature, however, shutting off the channels of spiritual inquiry, is no more than a high type of animal. Such are indeed rare, though many do pass through periods of spiritual obscuration when the heart-life is shut away for a time. But far below the surface waters are the deep tides of Soul, and in the inner chambers of every heart there dwells a memory that makes man more than he seems. This is why, so fortunately, most men have not lost all sense of their spiritual heritage, even though they may not be able to analyze the intuitions that urge them on to solve the great mysteries of duty and of life. Most men want to know what life means and what it holds at its very core; most men want to find a basis for that brotherly relationship with their fellows that is so satisfying and so rational and brings such splendid results; most men want more knowledge of themselves, too, and it is this inner urge that causes them to inquire with such earnestness into questions of a future state: that bourne beyond which we are ushered, without will or sanction of our own too often, by the mysterious hand of death. As corollaries to these main questions are others: Why is one person born in the lap of fortune, while another, equally intelligent, equally good, is born with everything acting to hold him down? Why is one hampered with a frail or diseased body and a weakened mind, while another is vigorous physically and alert mentally? Why is one a moral weakling from his birth and another a tower of moral strength and spiritual illumination? Then, too, why are there such undependable qualities in men, so that it is often a throw of the dice whether the man whom we elect to a position of trust will meet our expectations or disgrace his high office? How came it that Nero, for instance, after a promising, seemingly blameless youth, suddenly developed hideous and cruel traits of character? How came it that Joan of Arc, a simple shepherdess, unlearned in the ways of the world, unable to read even the simplest book or to write a letter, stepped suddenly from the pastures of Domremy into a career of unparalleled military success? She could teach, and she did teach in their special science, the greatest generals of her time. Surely there is a mystery here! But is there not mystery in every life? Indeed, who can think for even a moment of the supreme mystery of human nature and not find question after question lining up before him with the demand that some common-sense answer be found? Now, leaving for the time being the consideration of questions relating to individuals, let

us turn to those that touch whole nations. How can we account in a common-sense way - for common sense is not to be satisfied with anything short of real justice - for the great catastrophes that engulf large parts of the world, in nature, in government, in man's relations with his fellow man? These things cannot be accidents - one's common sense revolts at the idea. It is no accident that my field produces wheat and my neighbor's corn: I planted wheat, and he corn - that is all. It is surely not rational to hold that only the little portion of this globe that is under my immediate gaze is ruled by law, and that things for which I cannot see the cause are therefore causeless, accidental, due to the caprice of some Deity who says that he has spells of being jealous. No, this will not do; and so the questions line up. There is, for instance, this uncomfortable Antiquity, about which we are hearing so much today. As our archaeologists are cataloguing discovery after discovery, we see a complete upsetting of our old ideas, the claim of materialistic science, as to man having evolved in a straight line from animalism up. We find that there were epochs in the remote past, and many of them, when humanity was far more cultured and stood far higher spiritually than anywhere on earth today, and that the Dark Ages, when man's spirituality was at its lowest ebb, came after great periods of Light. That looks as though we had been going backwards, and naturally the thinking man feels that if there is any way of reconciling the undeniable facts of history with theories of evolution and the peace of one's own heart, it would be a satisfaction to find it. For we must have some part in all this, some very close relation to the world as a whole and not merely to some one little corner of it, or these things would not concern us so. And indeed we have. Let us consider, for a moment, the whole world as though suddenly depopulated, left without a living human being on its surface: every village a deserted village, every State a waste. What would logically result? Have you ever observed what happens to a house that is left untenanted for any length of time? It begins to deteriorate at once, and continues to do so much more rapidly than when occupied, even though it was subjected to the hardest use. Can we not imagine from this what a deserted world - one that Nature had intended as a 'man-bearing planet' - would be like after about a hundred years? It would be like a body with the breath of life withdrawn, or like a living person with the mind clouded or gone. One who follows up this line of thought will soon come to the conclusion that the moving spirit, the guiding power in Evolution, is Man himself - not material man, nor merely intellectual man, but Spiritual Man. Indeed, as the old Sages taught, it is for the Soul's experience and emancipation that the universe exists. And that Soul - what is it? Whence came it? What is its mission, its destiny, its home? So that here we are again, back to the first question of all, the great question that includes all lesser questions within it. And Theosophy contains the answer. In her first great work, Isis Unveiled, H.P. Blavatsky gives us a glimpse of the questionings of her great mind and compassionate heart, and of the source from which she brought back to humanity the Ancient Light: "When, years ago, we first traveled over the East, exploring the penetralia of its deserted sanctuaries, two saddening and ever-recurring questions oppressed our thoughts: Where, Who, What, is God? Who ever saw the Immortal Spirit of man, so as to be able to assure himself of man's immortality? "It was while most anxious to solve these perplexing problems that we came in contact with certain men, endowed with such mysterious powers and such profound knowledge that we may truly designate them as the Sages of the Orient. To their instructions we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science with religion, the existence of God and the immortality of man's spirit may be demonstrated like a problem of Euclid. For the first time we

received the assurance that the Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute and immovable faith in the omnipotence of man's own immortal self. We were taught that this omnipotence comes from the kinship of man's spirit with the Universal Soul God! The latter, they said, can never be demonstrated but by the former. Man-spirit proves God-spirit as the one drop of water proves the source from which it must have come. Tell one who had never seen water, that there is an ocean of water, and he must accept it on faith or reject it altogether. But let one drop fall upon his hand, and he then has the fact from which all the rest may be inferred. After that he could by degrees understand that a boundless and fathomless ocean of water existed. Blind faith would no longer be necessary; he would have supplanted it with Knowledge. When one sees mortal man displaying tremendous capabilities, controlling the forces of nature and opening up to view the world of spirit, the reflective mind is overwhelmed with the conviction that if one man's spiritual Ego can do this much, the capabilities of the Father Spirit must be relatively as much vaster as the whole ocean surpasses the single drop in volume and potency. Ex nihilo nihil fit; prove the soul of man by its wondrous powers - you have proved God!" It was from these Sages that H.P. Blavatsky received the teachings of the Archaic Wisdom-Religion, fragments of which she gave to the world as Theosophy, that synthesis of religion, science and philosophy which Katherine Tingley, her Successor, is now, through the School of Antiquity, proving to be absolutely practical as applied to daily life, and which contains the answers for man's perplexing inner questions. But so many have the idea that Theosophy is abstruse and incomprehensible that before going on we can do no better than quote this brief definition of it from the writings of William Quan Judge, the Second Leader of the Theosophical Movement, whose heroic defense of the principles for which Madame Blavatsky gave her life, made it possible for the School of Antiquity on Point Loma to be established. It cannot be quoted too often: "Theosophy is that ocean of knowledge which spreads from shore to shore of the evolution of sentient beings; unfathomable in its deepest parts, it gives the greatest minds their fullest scope, yet, shallow enough at its shores, it will not overwhelm the understanding of a child. ".... And just as the Ancients taught, so does Theosophy; that the course of evolution is the drama of the soul and that nature exists for no other purpose than the soul's experience." There is a story somewhere of a man who found himself a prisoner in a black and dreary room. Year after year he pined and fretted there, when one day a brilliant thought occurred to him: he opened the door and walked out! He was evidently a stupid man, with a good part of his brain set aside and preserved from use, but that very fact is what gives the story its point for us here, and it is certainly material to the theme: common sense. Moreover, the application is plain, for no thinking mind can deny that humanity at the present time is behaving with the acme of stupidity with regard to many of its major affairs. The result is that we are traveling in a vicious circle, the very remedies we are pottering with, in the hope of getting ourselves out, acting only to keep us in. The common-sense man would say, "Why not stop pottering and tinkering, and smash an opening in that circle? Then walk out!" That is exactly what Theosophy gives one the power to do, and that is why it is the pre-eminent court of appeal for the common-sense man. When Alexander cut the knot of Gordius, he gave us an example of common-sense treatment of a seemingly hopeless affair. When a bird wishes to be free of swamp odors or noisome vapors, it does not organize a committee, or write an

essay on the evil ways of the world, or settle down on the swamp surface to stay there - it simply flies up and away! And we can always do as wisely if we will use our common sense, remembering that man is a Soul, and that the Soul has wings! The question may be simply one of opening the door so that the Soul can use its wings, or, it may be, of taking off the chains of conceit, prejudice, bigotry, false pride, cynicism, ignorance, and all purely brainmind ideas, so that the Soul is free to rise. So here we are at last, with man definitely placed before us as a Dual Being: both soul and body, both animal and divine, the God and the lower human harnessed together by the Higher Law and destined to struggle on in harness until the God shall triumph over the other or - depart, to leave the obstinate lower mind to follow its course alone. The common-sense man at this point will say: "Obviously, the thing for me to do first is to make the acquaintance of myself - in short, to study myself. If it is true that man is dual in nature - and it must be so, for here and there I do see men calmly walking out of prisons while I stay in - and if it is true that man possesses a wonderful equipment of spiritual power in his make-up, along with another sort of equipment of which he is not so very proud, it behooves me to get out these reserves of mine, look them over and take stock of what I have on hand." He is right. The rational plan, when one has determined to discard old business methods and start in with new and better ones, is to make an inventory and see what there is in stock to go upon. That is exactly what Theosophy not only encourages one to do, but gives one the power to do. And, in this matter of an inventory of oneself, it turns on a flood of light. Now light is just what old lumber-rooms need - and no one can deny that the average, undisciplined human mind is not inaptly described as a lumber-room: wishes, desires, ideas, opinions, facts and fancies, all bundled in together, good and bad alike, with the cobwebs of ignorance and obscuration binding long artistic lines over the whole. The moment one begins to think, he realizes this fact, and then it is up to him, whether to allow the old accumulation to remain, with its waste and dirt or to clean it up. If he brings in a light and decides that the cleaning process must go forward, the first thing that he discovers is that this collection of resources, equipment, treasure and trash, this lumber-room, that is 'myself,' is Dual in its nature and make-up. This part is animal, that part, Divine; and then man begins to find his true dignity, and realizes that while he does have a physical heredity from the kingdoms of Nature, he has also a spiritual heredity from Deity. He sees himself, as the old Stoics used to say, as a "portion of Deity." He sees that part of his equipment is of a permanent nature, infinitely valuable and only needing to be brought out and rid of dust and debris to make him richer than any Aladdin; and that another part is trumpery and mostly deserves the trash-can. Or perhaps it is misused material that at last, now that the light is turned on, he can find a way to make over, and render of service to the part that is permanent and not trash. How plainly then he sees that all his life long, quite unconsciously most of the time, he has been adding to the accumulations in this lumber-room which he calls 'myself,' sometimes by things of priceless and permanent value, but mostly by trumpery-stuff. A conquest over some weakness - that has piled up the permanent gold for him: how clear it all is now! Weak compliance with something he knew was wrong, a yielding to impulse or desire, selfishness, criticism, cynicism, bitterness - there these are, like ghosts rising up to frighten and shame him. Without the Theosophic teaching of the Duality of Man, how would a person who seriously set out to understand himself ever be able to find his way? In despair he would exclaim with Pascal: "What a chimera is man! What a confused chaos, what a subject of contradiction! a professed judge of all things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth! the great depository and guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty! the glory and the scandal of the

Universe!" But Theosophy leaves one in no such dilemma as this. How rationally the subject is stated in the following words, from some writings by Katherine Tingley which, when originally issued, were for private instruction only but parts of which have been occasionally quoted publicly in recent years: "Have you thought who or what is this 'I'?.... What is 'myself' and what 'my life'? Have you meditated on that Higher Self to which.... you aspire? This thought and meditation is the first step to an understanding of the real nature of the inner and outer man. It clarifies your whole being, unloading and separating from you much that you have hitherto thought to be yourself, helping you to an understanding of the valuelessness of much that you have hitherto desired and perhaps thought necessary to your welfare or peace of mind, separating the chaff from the wheat in consciousness, conferring added power of insight into human nature and discrimination in your dealings with men. "We all know that the inner man is true, eternal, strong, pure, compassionate, just. The outer is too often weak, wavering, selfish: its energy arises out of desire and ambition. Yet it is the instrument which the soul, the inner, seeks to perfect in compassion. It is in this outer nature, usually physically dominated, that arises the common feeling of 'I', and it is to the blending of this with the real 'I' within that evolution tends.... "From the time the Resolve is taken, the disciple has ever with him two forces. Two invisible companions, formed of his own essence, one evil, one Divine, the secretion or objectivation of the opposite poles of his own self-consciousness, they represent his good and evil angels, the Augoeides and its counterpart, each seeking to absorb his being. One of these in the end must prevail over the other and one or the other is strengthened by every act and thought of his life. They are his higher and lower potentialities passing slowly into potency as the energies (both good and evil, note) of the soul are awakened by the effect of the Resolve and the vibrations thereby called down or called out. And if the Resolve be kept, if effort be continual, if no failures or falls discourage the aspirant and are always followed 'by as many undaunted struggles upward,' he has always the help and counsel of the divine 'Daimon,' the 'Warrior'; and victory, however far away, is certain. For this is an unconquerable power, 'eternal and sure,' an actual presence and inspiration if you will but recognise it, having faith and faith and faith. Why then, it will be natural to ask, if this Warrior, fighting for us, is invincible, do we ever fail? It is lack of faith, unwontedness of resort to this place of energy, the habit of yielding to temptation without pause or thought, the nonrecognition (by meditation) of the Duality of our Nature. "Do you understand what 'Theosophy' means, or have you sought out the definition of it given by H.P. Blavatsky and W.Q. Judge? "To make it a 'living power,' think of it not so much as a body of philosophic or other teaching, but as the highest law of conduct, which is the enacted expression of divine love or compassion. It is this which is to be made the guide of life as a whole and in each of its acts.... Do every act as an intent and loving service to the Divine Self of the World, putting your best into it in that way." Is it common sense, then, to possess resources that are infinite and yet go through life fearful and whining, or wicked and bold, as though one had no spiritual resources at all? We need not worry as much as we do. There is help for every emergency if we will look for it in the right place. We have only to make out a draft in the proper way: it will be honored. Never fear that.

And here we meet the next great problem, one that all men meet but of which the business man sometimes feels that he has rather more than his share - the problem of dealing with others. Now there should not be the confusion and uncertainty that there is about this question of our relationship with our fellows. There should not be the endless suspicions and difficulties that only stultify our own power to give and to serve, and keep men separate and apart. And we know it. In truth, most of us, upon reflection, are ashamed of the blindness we show in our relations with others, of our misjudgments, our ignorance of their nature, and the rest. To quote homely Epictetus: "Diogenes well said to one who asked from him letters of recommendation: That you are a man he will know as soon as he sees you; and he will know whether you are good or bad if he has, through experience, the knowledge to distinguish the good and the bad; but if he has not, he would not know though I were to write him a thousand times. For it is just the same as if a drachma asked to be recommended to a person. If he is skillful in testing silver, he will know you (the drachma) for what you are. We ought then in life to be able to have some such skill as in the case of the silver coin, that we may be able to say, like the judge of silver, 'Bring me any drachma and I will test it.'" Only - we are not, and the terrible war in Europe is but part of the shameful result. Here again Theosophy turns on its saving light - and, by the way, was any method ever invented more thoroughly common-sense than just the turning on of a light, when you want to find your way in the dark? By the light of this ancient torch, Theosophy, we see that others are dual as we are ourselves. Familiar with the keynotes of Duality in our own nature, we recognise them at once in the nature of another. Worry, suspicion, hatred, fear, discontent, restlessness, ambition, laziness, and the all too common railing at fate - these we know at once as keynotes of the lower, animal nature in man; while joy, peace, brotherliness, discrimination, clear vision, love of work, desire to serve, willingness to sacrifice for a principle, delight in rendering service to others - these show that the God in man is in the ascendency. How the air clears! We find the next questions almost answered in advance, for these relate to the point of contact with our brothers, and how we shall keep that sweet and unsoiled. Here again Theosophy shows us the common-sense way, so that others will be better for having met us, so that our home, our community, our city shall be better and the awful blots that now exist on our so-called civilization become a little less black. It is simply the white solvent of Sincerity, a quality so whole and so pure that we lose the taste for anything else. I can do no better here than quote again from Madame Tingley, whose teachings on life and duty are so pre-eminently practical and sound: "Just as far as we give up trying to seem, and give our time to an honest attempt to be, will our eyes open to a true discernment in relation to those with whom we have to deal. The attempt to seem, the aping of virtues we know ourselves not to possess, is not only an act of self-poisoning, not only an utter stultification of the soul and intuition, but a poisoning of all those with whom we have to deal. Moreover, it makes us utterly negative, utterly the prey of others, utterly unable to judge them aright or to repel the touch of their lower natures. The first requirement, then, is Personal Sincerity, an unreserved owning-up to one's own soul of one's faults; and then, a steady fight to conquer them. Thus in time men become invulnerable, spiritually strong; and best of all, while we are making that honest fight, we cannot poison anybody else." So much for the so-called smaller issues that affect the personal life. What about

those greater ones that affect whole nations? It is the same. If I can live on amicable terms with my neighbor who has a different social status, a different religion, different ideas of duty and of life and who belongs to a different race, why cannot a nation do the same? Nations can, and they have done so, again and again. On Point Loma today, as students under Madame Katherine Tingley in the School of Antiquity of which she is Foundress-President, and as men and women playing their parts as active working factors in life, are representatives of many different nations; and there is an entire absence of the difficulties which beset the ordinary city of the world, and of which the newspapers keep us so thoroughly aware. We who live here may be pardoned for believing that the right way is the common-sense way, and that selfishness and greed in the conduct of civic or national or international affairs is not only a travesty on common sense, but is absolutely unnecessary and absurd. So that, inevitably, when one looks at life and history from the viewpoint of Theosophy, one's ideas undergo an immense broadening, and the laws whose guidance we invoke in the smaller issues stand out in a clear light as the great guiding laws of the world, to break which means discord, suffering, and confusion, and to keep which, builds for harmony, justice, and peace. There is Karma, the law of cause and effect, the law which Paul stated in the wellknown words, "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." There is the Law of Cycles, by which one can study understandingly the rise and decline of nations, and can see how it is that a period of retrogression is only an arc or a smaller cycle in the Great Cycle of Universal Life, which moves on with a forward general trend all the time. There is Reincarnation, which explains so many of the seemingly hopeless puzzles of life, and which is in reality a mighty key, unlocking vast treasuries of knowledge before the mind and opening the pages of history in a new way. Brotherhood as a fact in Nature, which is admittedly the only common-sense basis for relations of a personal kind, becomes equally fundamental with regard to the wider and deeper relations that exist between state and state. And so one might continue, for the great universal Laws which Theosophy enunciates, and which have guided whole nations in the far east through periods of unexampled glory, are by no means figments of the imagination. They are rules of action, not only for you and for me, but for the nations to which we belong. They are rules of guidance for the world. We live in a world of material uses and demands, and we have to meet material issues; but because a man must put his feet on the dusty road to get to his journey's end, it does not follow that he must put his head there, too. The common-sense way is to keep one's head up in the sunshine and pure air and out of the dirt and dust; otherwise, how shall one see to guide his feet? Theosophy, with its call to humanity to awaken to something finer and higher than material things, shows man how to stand erect and keep his head where it belongs; and however soiled or thorny may be the road under one's feet, there is always the clear sky of hope above and the pure air of Spiritual Knowledge. For Theosophy is Spiritual Knowledge, glowing in the alembic of a perennial confidence and trust and transmuting the baser metals to gold. (Vol. 14, pp. 134-47) -----------------Compassion and Wisdom - T. Henry

Compassion is the law of laws - eternal harmony. - H. P. Blavatsky There is often more in a quotation than is gotten out of it at first sight, and the above may be a case in point. At first sight, it might seem to mean mexely that compassion is a very great thing and a fundamental principle in the universe. But closer attention brings out the connexion which the quotation makes between justice and mercy: compassion is a law, and the greatest of laws; it is the highest justice; it is eternal harmony - universal adjustment. In Shakespeare's well-known passage, mercy is represented as something superior to justice, a divine principle which over-rules justice and seasons it. "Earthly power doth then show likest God's, when mercy seasons justice " "Mercy is above the sceptred sway; it is enthroned in the heart of kings, it is an attribute to God himself." Here, of course, justice is limited and set in contrast to that mercy which it excludes, or to that nobler form which justice assumes when it is seasoned with mercy. One might argue that such justice is not real justice at all but only human justice; and that human justice becomes divine or real justice when the element of mercy combines with it. On the plane of ordinary human intelligence, we see things not as wholes but piecemeal - by their several aspects. At one time the justice impresses us; at another time the mercy; and justice and mercy seem to be separate and opposite. But, as each of them becomes more perfected and refined, they approximate and blend; and, in proportion as our intelligence becomes sublimated, we are able to discern better the essential unity which otherwise reveals itself only in separate aspects. When justice and mercy seem to be opposed, it is because our conception of each of them is imperfect. A man maybe just; a man may be merciful; but the divine love and wisdom know no such difference; mercy and justice are one; the "eye is single" and not double. The doctrine of Compassion is founded on truth and is philosophically valid. 'The Two Paths' is the title of one of the divisions of H. P. Blavatsky's book, 'The Voice of the Silence'; and this section defines clearly the difference between the true teachings and those of certain schools which teach that compassion has nothing to do with the attainment of wisdom. "If thou art told that to become Arhan [a perfected man] thou hast to cease to love all beings - tell them they lie. If thou art told that to gain liberation thou hast to hate thy mother and disregard thy son; to disavow thy father and call him 'householder'; for man and beast all pity to renounce - tell them their tongue is false. Thus teach the Tirthikas, the unbelievers." We can trace the beginnings of an attempt to divorce ethics from knowledge, in the utterances of some people who, claiming to speak in the traduced name of science, would have us believe that science is colorless and that good motives and feelings only upset the mental equilibrium of the savant. In some of the defenses of vivisection we can see much the same thing. Theosophists oppose vivisection quite as much for its effect on the vivisector as for any other reason. If its practice entails a purposeful hardening of the nature and drugging of the merciful feelings, then such practice means a starting out on a path that leads on towards - soul-suicide. The law of Karma is usually defined as universal justice; but we must beware lest this definition give rise to an idea of ruthlessness and indifference. Though it may be necessary to avoid such an expression as 'the will of God', because that would suggest the personal God of theology and various narrow ideas connected therewith; yet it will not do to go to another extreme and put a mechanical scientific God at the head of the universe. If the universe is the sum-total of intelligent beings (of whom man is one kind), the universal law must be the expression of these intelligences; and it may be doubted whether such a thing as a purely mechanical action exists anywhere, in the great workings or in the minute details. What the

Eternal Harmony is we can only dimly conjecture; love wisdom, and power are the three aspects under which we consider it. How can our mere minds synthesize these three into one? The two schools of Occultism spoken of above are elsewhere styled the Heart-Doctrine and the Head-Doctrine, and their fundamental difference is clearly and emphatically described in 'The Voice of the Silence.' The one, as said, is founded on compassion, while the other brushes aside compassion as an obstacle. This latter aims at the attainment of power and the satisfaction of desire; those who follow it are 'Black Magicians,' and all whose art belongs to the night side of Nature. As examples of great Teachers of the Heart-Doctrine, we need but point to the Buddha and Jesus, about whose basic teaching there can be no possibility of mistake. And, so far from setting compassion in opposition to Wisdom, they make it the basis of Wisdom, the means of attaining Wisdom. The Wisdom of the Heart is superior to Headlearning. The latter, unillumined by the former, means in the end destruction. There is danger that science may wander off along the wrong track and lend itself to the teachings of the lefthand school - teachings which, however much they may be trumpeted as new and advanced, are in fact as ancient and retrogressive as is Error itself. Theosophy proclaims the Doctrine of the Heart, and has to oppose everything that sets up a lesser 'standard in opposition to the truth, especially when that standard is falsely described as Theosophical. The predominant civilization of today is at a stage of its growth where there is much activity of those intellectual faculties which deal with physical science and its applications; but where there is also great ignorance and perplexity about the essential nature of man and his destiny, and about the nature of the universe and the fundamental laws of existence. In short, the mental development of this civilization is at present very uneven. That part of the mind which we have cultivated so highly is not adapted to the attainment of the kind of knowledge whereof the race stands in need. On the contrary, it would seem that a further extension of knowledge along the same lines as heretofore, without any leaven of deeper knowledge, would only lead us into greater complexity and disunion. New discoveries do not settle questions, but merely open up new problems. Under these circumstances, what is needed is intuition. Man is essentially a thinker, and thought constitutes his real world. In regarding man as thinking mind, we are at once faced with the fact that this mind is under dual control and oscillates continually between two contrary influences. The one that tends downward arises from the action of the bodily passions on the mind; for these arouse desires and selfish ambitions, and create anger and many other forms of delusion. The prevalence of such influences in our civilization has kept us in a state of ignorance and confusion as to the important facts and laws of life. What, for instance, has become of the great truths of Karma and Reincarnation? And what a confusion is our philosophy of life because of the lack of a knowledge of these truths! Or what do we know of the heredity of the human race, forced, as we have been, to choose between uninforming dogmatic assertions on the one hand and the speculations of materialistic science as to man's merely physical origin on the other hand? We are told that certain animal instincts found in man are inviolable laws of his nature and must be recognized as such and legislated for. Children are regarded as subjects for endless and multiform experimentation in education. There is so much 'head-learning', such a vast and complicated structure of abstract theories, that the simple facts are lost sight of, and the problem grows more complex and bewildering the more we philosophize over it. All that is necessary is to inculcate in children habits of self-knowledge and self-control; but this necessitates the existence of the same qualities in the parents and teachers, which again means that they must have constant recourse to that superior fount of knowledge just spoken

of under the name of intuition, which gives certainty of action. Able writers have shown mankind as passing from the simple healthy state of nature-life to the complicated and troubled life of civilization; and have asked themselves whether civilization is really the final stage preceding the extinction of a race, or whether there is a higher stage of simplicity and health to be reached after man has passed through the afflictions of civilized life. Does a Golden Age follow, as well as precede, the Iron Age? The practical point in this is that we cannot go back to barbaric ignorance; and, as we yearn for health and simplicity, we must reach them by going forward. A primitive man would be free from our problems because his mind would be still undeveloped; instinct would suffice him, as it does the animals. But we, with our complex minds, need a superior faculty to superintend them. Ancient philosophies tell us that ignorance is caused by the passions clouding the mind, so that it oscillates in a continual vibration, instead of reflecting like a mirror the light of the spiritual sun of intuition; and they enjoin the tranquilizing of the mind by self-study and dispassion. No other way to master passions and emotions exists than to eliminate personality, with its vexing storms of pride, jealousy, anger, and lust; and to escape into a larger freer life where we feel ourselves one with Nature and with our fellow-man. So we get back once more to the Law of Compassion, the greatest of laws, as the road to Wisdom and Happiness. Surely the present state of the world has sufficiently demonstrated that a higher wisdom is needed than that on which we have been relying. Apart from the immediate troubles incidental to the war, and apart from the problems that will arise as soon as the war is over, there are the troubles that were in existence before it began, such as the alarming growth of pulmonary tuberculosis and other enfeebling diseases, the increase of subtle vices, the general trend in many different respects towards an unmanageable complexity, and in short the whole problem of disintegration which threatens our civilization. And yet, as a remedy, people are seeking larger and yet larger doses of the very medicine that is so largely involved in causing the evil. We have many clever writers proposing all sorts of schemes along the old lines; but the bare idea of intrusting the actual management of affairs to such theorists fills us with alarm. - Yet, when aspiring to return to the simplicity of old-time morals, we find ourselves in danger of falling a prey to the forces of reaction and dogmatism. Theosophy alone offers an escape from both extremes to the sane path. Love and Wisdom have their counterparts in lust and cunning; and just as the latter pair constitute an evil alliance fraught with horror and disaster, so the union of the two former is man's salvation. And love in this sense means compassion and harmony, which also are true Wisdom. (Vol. 13, pp. 113-16) ---------------------The Hindrance of Desire - Percy Leonard In a Sanskrit book already old when Christianity began, appears a remarkable statement. Patanjali the author assures us that once we have conquered that almost universal tendency to covet everything that seems desirable, we acquire the power of acquiring all material wealth. The reader, dazzled by the glowing prospect, is tempted to resolve to rid his mind of every trace of personal desire and thus by an easy short-cut, become the lucky possessor of what others spend long lives of labor to attain. But the subtle

and intelligent laws that control human life are not to be so easily imposed upon, and we can never gain the end in view by simply persuading our desires to lie quiet for a time with the promise of indulgence later on. Thus it is very clear that Patanjali's recipe is only open to the man for whom the goal has lost its value, so that he who had all material wealth within easy reach, would have no possible inducement to take possession of it. The action of the curious principle involved is plainly obvious even on the low level of a commercial application. A man of business wholly indifferent as to the result of his ventures, would occupy a standpoint far above his feverish competitors, now hurried onward by the mad delirium of an over-sanguine hope, now plunged into the depths of equally foundationless despair. His judgment would remain so cool and so deliberate as to decide unerringly between two closely balanced probabilities. His power to estimate the trend of markets and the course of values would appear almost miraculous to his excited rivals; and this simply for the reason that having freed himself from the disturbing influence of desire, the clear discrimination of the Higher Mind would be the ruling power in his affairs. Patanjali however had far higher planes of human interest and activity in view when he set down the statements we are now considering. In the sphere of the emotions we may trace the effect of this attitude of indifference every day. A man who is selfishly eager for love and sympathy is instinctively recognized as a vampire wherever he goes. Consciously or unconsciously he is always demanding that kind of psychic food preferred by his nature, and all with whom he comes in contact resent the selfish appeal and retire into their citadel in self-defense. That man on the other hand who freely radiates love and sympathy to all, careless of personal returns, is like the sun a universal benefactor and welcome in all companies. His mere approach calls forth a genial flow of kindly feeling which he returns with added force, since he is in his own person a living generator of such vital currents and not a mere absorber. It often happens that the eager devotee of knowledge by his very impetuosity raises a barrier in the way of his attainment, while the man who quietly pursues his level course of universal helpfulness, will often light on unexpected truths while occupied with very commonplace affairs. To those intent on helping Nature, the grateful mother lifts her veil, and as her fellow-workers they find themselves admitted to the inmost shrine, while selfish seekers tire themselves in vainly battering at the outer gate. And on a higher level still the action of the selfsame law may be observed. Religious but none the less selfish - devotees who long to reach "that sweet and blessed country that eager hearts expect" will clamor for admission all in vain, because the very vehemence of their desire shows them as discontented with their lot, and hence rebellious in respect of that Good Law which places every man in that precise environment which is at once his destiny and his inevitable due. The man who glows with never-failing cheerfulness and sheds an influence of serene content already lives in Heaven, while discontented people even if admitted to that region (if it can be thought of as a point in space) would still be discontented. Man is essentially divine and sits beside the secret spring from which all goodness flows, his deeper life inseparably blended with the heart-throbs of the teeming population of illimitable space, and with that cosmic energy that sparkles in the midnight sky feeding the veins of solar systems with exhaustless streams of life. When man, forgetful of his high estate, stoops down to snatch some private gain, by his own act he makes himself an exile from his royal home and goes to swell the crowd of mendicants who wait expectant at the outer gate. Thus everything of value is ours, yet so deceptive is the glamor of the separated life, that we suppose our welfare is promoted by acquiring and retaining private hoards of wealth. Appeal and exhortation are but insults to the man who grasps the situation as it stands. The

Indian sage has pointed out the way; this leads to the elimination of futile desires; the wise will scarcely hesitate as to the path to follow. (Vol. 11, pp. 252-54) -----------------The Waters of Forgetfulness - Percy Leonard "A calm, unbroken forgetfulness of the personal self for all time." - W.Q. Judge "From me come memory and knowledge and also the loss of both." - Bhagavad-Gita To forget is to cease to remember and has a positive aspect as well as a negative one. Mere inability to recollect a past impression of the mind may be a consequence of weakness of the will or a disordered brain, and such forgetfulness is in no way to be admired. The power to still the mind and check the swift, chaotic torrent of the pictures of the past, is, on the other hand, a faculty of perfect manhood worthy of no small effort to acquire. Our days are spoiled by the revival of the memories of bygone sorrows and the disappointed hopes of which most human lives are full. Where is the need for ancient quarrels to be fought again in shadowland? Why should old heartaches have their smart renewed, and wounds that have been healed be opened once again? We suffer from ourselves in this, as in so many other things. Man does possess the power to make sad memories disappear at will. We are not forced to sit and watch the moving pictures flitting on the mental screen in which we pose alternately as hero, saint, and martyr in an unending series of adventures drawn from the buried past. By practice and a strong and determined will the flowing stream may be arrested and our distracting memory subjected to complete control. But there exists a better way, in which almost unconsciously the same effect is gained. If we become absorbed in some great enterprise in which the general good of all is sought for, then by a simple process of starvation all the interests of the personality dwindle and disappear. No longer nourished by persistent thought, they die, and with them their creative source the personality, which like a fog wreath melting at the rising of the sun, dissolves its outlines, leaving the soul to pass again to its primeval liberty. To some rare individuals the knowledge that the way is open for a plunge into the waters of oblivion comes as a great deliverance from an irksome servitude. The narrow limitations of a life that ceaselessly revolves about the petty center of the personal self has little to attract, and with a feeling of intense relief they sever the confining bond and henceforth use the body and mind merely as facile instruments with which to study life, or as effective tools with which to work for the advancement of the race. But for the masses as they blindly struggle on without an object or a goal in view save the instinctive will to live and to enjoy, to plunge into this healing oblivion seems like suicide, and loss of the lower personal memory like absolute destruction. They might conceivably consent to part with the distressing records of their failures and their pains; but the delightful memories of triumphs and successes they will never willingly let go. But memory, like other things, consists of two opposing poles which utterly refuse to be disjoined. We cannot let the pleasant memories in and bar the door to the distressful throng, for each of the opposing

hosts insists upon its right of entry if the other is admitted. To those for whom oblivion has no terrors, there is the changeless peace of life impersonal, greatness of outlook, depth of discernment, and as a refuge and a home the shoreless spaces of Immensity. What a cessation of disquieting anxieties would follow the forgetting of the self-bound ego fretting within its cage of personal desires, limited ambitions, and all the tedious, narrow schemes that end in self. What an escape to godlike freedom, as the constricting memories of self slacken their deadly grasp upon the mind. This much at all events is sure, that we as personalities are soon forgotten by the public mind. Where are the great commanding figures which stood out so boldly from the screen of time even so lately as a hundred years ago. Faded to shadowy phantoms, at the very most they occupy a line or two of solemn prose upon the pages of our history books; but as for any live reality, they seem as nonexistant as the footprints of a child upon the sands when the flood tide comes sweeping up the shore. Why not find the fulness of the greater life in that untroubled sea of cosmic joy that knows no bounds nor any term of years. But in the loosening of all painful bonds that must precede the gaining of the great freedom, there is a danger that the liberated soul forget the suffering masses of the race still shut within the prison-house of self, and slaves of every selfish wish that rises in their minds. In cutting loose from our entanglements, the cable-tow that binds us to the race must be preserved intact; for true oblivion does not mean the self-indulgent shirking of responsibility for those below. The Great Forgetting sets us free to use our wider vision and emancipated powers in the great cause of Universal Brotherhood and the uplifting of the Race. (Vol. 8, 402-4) --------------------Friends or Enemies in the Future - Eusebio Urban (William Q. Judge) The fundamental doctrines of Theosophy are of no value unless they are applied to daily life. To the extent to which this application goes they become living truths, quite different from intellectual expressions of doctrine. The mere intellectual grasp may result in spiritual pride, while the living doctrine becomes an entity through the mystic power of the human soul. Many great minds have dwelt on this. Saint Paul wrote: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to he burned, and have not charity, it profiteth nothing." The Voice of the Silence, expressing the views of the highest schools of occultism, asks us to step out of the sunlight into the shade so as to make more room for others, and declares that those whom we help in this life will help us in our next one. Buttresses to these are the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation. The first shows that we must reap what we sow, and the second that we come back in the company of those with whom we lived and acted in other lives. St. Paul was in complete accord with all other

occultists, and his expressions above given must be viewed in the light Theosophy throws on all similar writings. Contrasted with charity, which is love of our fellows, are all the possible virtues and acquirements. These are all nothing if charity be absent. Why? Because they die with the death of the uncharitable person; their value is naught, and that being is reborn without friend and without capacity. This is of the highest importance to the earnest Theosophist who may be making the mistake of obtaining intellectual benefits but remains uncharitable. The fact that we are now working in the Theosophical movement means that we did so in other lives, must do so again, and, still more important, that those who are now with us will be reincarnated in our company on our next rebirth. Shall those whom we now know or whom we are destined to know before this life ends be our friends or enemies, our aiders or obstructors in that coming life? And what will make them hostile or friendly to us then? Not what we shall say or do to and for them in the future life. For no man becomes your friend in a present life by reason of present acts alone. He was your friend, or you his, before in a previous life. Your present acts but revive the old friendship, renew the ancient obligation. Was he your enemy before, he will be now even though you do him service now, for these tendencies last always more than three lives. They will be more and still more our aids if we increase the bond of friendship of today by charity. Their tendency to enmity will be onethird lessened in every life if we persist in kindness, in love, in charity now. And that charity is not a gift of money, but charitable thought for every weakness, to every failure. Our future friends or enemies, then, are those who are with us and to be with us in the present. If they are those who now seem inimical, we make a grave mistake and only put off the day of reconciliation three more lives if we allow ourselves today to be deficient in charity for them. We are annoyed and hindered by those who actively oppose as well as others whose mere looks, temperament, and unconscious action fret and disturb us. Our code of justice to ourselves, often but petty personality, incites us to rebuke them, to criticize, to attack. It is a mistake for us to so act. Could we but glance ahead to next life, we would see these for whom we now have but scant charity crossing the plain of that life with ourselves and ever in our way, always hiding the light from us. But change our present attitude, and that new life to come would show these bores and partial enemies and obstructors helping us, aiding our every effort. For Karma may give them then greater opportunities than ourselves and better capacity. Is any Theosophist who reflects on this so foolish as to continue now, if he has the power to alter himself, a course that will breed a crop of thorns for his next life's reaping? We should continue our charity and kindnesses to our friends whom it is easy to wish to help, but for those whom we naturally dislike, who are our bores now, we ought to take especial pains to aid and carefully toward them cultivate a feeling of love and charity. This adds interest to our Karmic investment. The opposite course, as surely as sun rises and water runs down hill, strikes interest from the account and enters a heavy item on the wrong side of life's ledger. And especially should the whole Theosophical organization act on the lines laid down by St. Paul and The Voice of the Silence. For Karmic tendency is an unswerving law. It compels us to go on in this movement of thought and doctrine; it will bring back to reincarnation all in it now. Sentiment cannot move the law one inch; and though that emotion might seek to rid us of the presence of these men and women we presently do not fancy or approve - and there are many such in our ranks for every one - the law will place us again in company with friendly tendency increased or hostile feeling diminished, just as we now create the one or prevent the other. It was the aim of the founders of the Society to arouse tendency to future friendship; it ought to be the object of all our members.

What will you have? In the future life, enemies or friends? (Vol. 12, pp. 395-96) ------------------A Wanderer in the Hall of Learning - H. T. Edge Character Studies are a useful way of appealing to people, because in this case we are studying real living persons, whereas sermons are generally abstract. A character-study is illustrative, so that the reader can make all necessary applications to his own case; the sympathies are aroused and the human touch evokes an interest that abstract reflections do not usually convey. The life of Edgar Allan Poe is not one that can be recommended as likely to impart an exhilarating and wholesome impression to the soul; for its study brings us in contact with a morbid personality, from which we turn with relief to the contemplation of such a contrasted life and character as that of Lanier. Yet lessons may be learned from this morbid life. ---------* Some later studies hold much of Poe's "morbid" personal life was only a popular myth. - dig. ed. ---------The difficulty experienced by writers in characterizing this remarkable and isolated personality is apparent from the perusal of any account of his life and works; and while one would shrink from any attempt to narrow down an ample subject by trying to force it into a mental pigeon-hole, the following contribution may be suggestive. It is stated in The Voice of the Silence, which is an English rendering, by H.P. Blavatsky, of a manual of instructions used in certain Tibetan schools of mystic students, that the pilgrim in search of wisdom must pass through three Halls, of which the first is the Hall of Ignorance, whereof we read "It is the Hall in which thou saw'st the light, in which thou livest and shalt die." To which the commentary adds that this is "The phenomenal World of Senses and of terrestrial consciousness - only." This, therefore, is the Hall in which most of us live. But the aspirant comes to the second Hall, of which we read: "The name of Hall the Second is the Hall of Learning. In it thy Soul will find the blossoms of life, but under every flower a serpent coiled.... "If thou wouldst cross the second safely, stop not the fragrance of its stupefying blossoms to inhale. If freed thou wouldst be from the Karmic chains, seek not for thy Guru in those Mayavic regions. The Wise Ones tarry not in pleasure-grounds of senses. The Wise Ones heed not the sweet-tongued voices of illusion."

(Explanatory notes: Karmic chains, chains of Karma, chains of destiny wrought by acts committed with desire. - Guru, teacher. - Mayavic, pertaining to May'a, or illusion.) We also read in Light on the Path: "It is a truth that, as Edgar Allan Poe said, the eyes are the windows of the soul, the windows of that haunted palace in which it dwells.... If grief, dismay, disappointment or pleasure can shake the soul so that it loses its fixed hold on the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light is useless.... In sensation no permanent home can be found, because change is the law of this vibratory existence." Finally, to quote from Poe himself, The Haunted Palace says: In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace Radiant palace - reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. ..... But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate, (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

his

home,

the

glory

Such stories as 'The Black Cat' and 'The Imp of the Perverse' show the ever-present consciousness of a dreadful shadow-side, whose actual existence is only too apparent throughout the biography; any personal intemperance that may have existed being but mere trifling symptoms of a cause which lay much deeper - lay, in fact, "in the monarch Thought's dominion." And do not the quoted passages give a convincing explanation of this case, as also of similar cases of erratic genius? Will not many readers find an echo in the records of their own obscure interior lives? The Karma, or destiny, of this life was evidently wrought in past lives; for the poet was born with his exquisitely sensitive nature, his keen intellect, and his estrangement from the world of men. These conditions he had made for himself beforehand. His ardent nature had pushed on beyond the confines of ordinary experience, until he found himself in that Hall of Learning, with its fair blossoms; but beneath each blossom was a serpent which uncoiled. And what moral lessons shall we read into this life? The punishment of an avenging deity, the uncomprehended decree of an inscrutable providence, or the ruthless lottery of a blind chance? Why not see in this drama of a Soul the workings of natural law, challenged by the proud freewill of man, and dealing with that perfect equity which alone is the perfection of mercy?

Modern thought is more accustomed to recognise the workings of natural law when these manifest themselves in the physical world; hence we may illustrate the point by taking a case conceived to be analogous - the case of an opium eater. Who blames providence for the retribution which this debauchee of private pleasure brings upon himself? He is simply using his free-will to challenge a natural law; and the cause and its effect are as inseparably bound up with one another, though separated in time, as night and day. He chooses, like Aladdin, to rub the lamp and summon the powerful genie who opens to him the magic palace; and the genie becomes a tyrant, and the palace a haunted prison. He will unlock and consume in solitary bliss the juices of his life, and unerring law decrees that the spendthrift shall want. The poppy, with its evanescent bloom and maddening juice, and the rose with its thorn, are true symbols. Intoxication, of whatever kind, whether produced by drugs or fanaticism or unwise mental or physical practices, runs through a definite and invariable cycle of stages, beginning with lofty exaltation and ending with debasement, reaction, exhaustion. It is said that he who would arouse in himself the higher vibrations must be strong enough to stand the lower. The reactionary excesses of unstable genius are not arbitrary retributive visitations, nor unfortunate chances, but simply the natural effect of an unbalanced self-development. In this connexion it is appropriate to speak of certain contrasted schools of opinion in regard to art (literary and otherwise), as to whether the love of beauty and the love of knowledge are distinct from moral purpose or inseparable from it. Some poets and some writers, we know, have more or less impatiently sought to dissever these pursuits from all ethical coloring; while others have insisted upon the connection. No doubt the impatience sometimes observable in the former school can be attributed to reaction from a too puritanical attitude. Yet, taking Lanier as an example of the latter school, one could scarcely impute anything so austere and unlovely to his beautiful nature. And he says that "true art is inexorably moral," and - unless you are suffused with truth, wisdom, goodness, and love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist. Then there is Wordsworth's Ode to Duty, wherein, addressing Duty, he sings: I, loving freedom, and untried; No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust: And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferred The task, in smoother walks to stray; But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. Poe, is on the whole, indifferent to the ethical question in his art, although he is unfailingly pure and refined. As long as we are children, we may perhaps "trust in the genial sense of youth"; but, having aspired to a knowledge beyond the innocence of childhood, a surer guide and stay is needed. We must find strength within, and where shall we find it if not in purposes which are both lofty and impersonal? In mythology there are monsters with the face of a goddess and the talons of a bird of prey, or with a human head and the scaly tail of a fish; and these are symbolic of a certain power in human nature, as also of corresponding powers in nature, which may be roughly described as the snares of the senses. In astrology, again, we have the Head and Tail of the Dragon, which are the north and south nodes of the Moon. This particular dragon, once aroused from slumber, has to be mastered, if we are not

to be mastered by him. In short, it is necessary to anchor our will in a center independent of sensations. We read Poe, and others like him, because they waft us to a mystic region away from the work-a-day world; but yet such influences have the quality of an opiate, for they inspire not to noble action but to private mental indulgence. Even so, however, they may serve some people as a stepping-stone. Have we only the choice between this mystic but unprofitable region and the garish light of mundane consciousness? Nay, for there is that light which is to this mystic glamor as the sun is to the moon; and the latter is, as has been said, but Hall the Second, and there are three Halls. Let us read further in The Voice of the Silence. "Seek for him who is to give thee birth, in the Hall of Wisdom, the Hall which lies beyond, wherein all shadows are unknown, and where the light of truth shines with unfading glory." This 'second birth' is the spiritual birth, which is also referred to in the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Again we read: "Allow no image of the senses to get between its light and thine, that thus the twain may blend in one. Having learnt thine own Ajnana (non-wisdom), flee from the Hall of Learning. This Hall is dangerous in its perfidious beauty, is needed but for thy probation. Beware Lanoo, lest dazzled by illusive radiance thy Soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light. This light shines from the jewel of the Great Ensnarer, Maya. The senses it bewitches, blinds the mind, and leaves the unwary an abandoned wreck." Thus there is a higher stage, to which the other is but introductory. It is highly important to understand that we do not get beyond the weaknesses of our lower nature when we develop astral senses or psychic powers; but that, on the contrary, we increase our temptations and liabilities. The knowledge of this fact would safeguard many an unwary and fascinated explorer of mystic regions, and is much needed in these days. Truly the world would have been in great danger but for the help of Theosophy, the champion of true progress and of harmonious human development. The quest of knowledge, in our order of civilization, is wholly unguarded, so that any discovery that is made is at the disposal of everybody, however unworthy, careless, or even criminal. Prevailing motives are not sufficiently unselfish and elevated to render the possession of such knowledge safe. Theosophy aims to save civilization from a lopsided development that would be fatal; and when we review the diseases that vex modern life, we can understand that that is no sure basis on which to build a great learning. It is the same in individual life, for few people of our civilization possess the necessary vital integrity and self-command, without which they would be thrown off their balance. Indeed we actually find that it is the unstable natures that are more likely to be attracted to psychism. Yet it was not the modern Theosophical Society which said: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Theosophy however echoes this ancient maxim; and, while holding out a limitless prospect before the aspirant to wisdom, it protects him from the dangers of that quest. It seems that the quest of truth and beauty cannot be a merely personal matter; and that he who seeks them for his own satisfaction alone, or in neglect of the larger interests of that

humanity of which he is but a fragment, is destined to disappointment. Beauty is fleeting and unseizable unless it is realized in conduct; without such realization it remains fugitive and represents nothing that we can grasp. (Vol. 12, pp. 329-33) -----------------Karma and Memory There are useful analogies between Karma and memory, and Karma might perhaps be described as a kind of memory. In memory we recollect past experiences, and in Karma we experience the sequel of past acts. Bergson, in his theory of memory, regards recollection as an act of perception, similar to the perception of spatial objects; but in the case of recollection, it is not spatial objects, but another kind of objects, that we perceive. This other kind of objects he regards as belonging to the temporal, not the spatial, order of existence. So, for Bergson, recollection is the act of perceiving these temporal existences or "durations"; and these, he says, are verily part and parcel of ourselves. Thus we have this authority for regarding a man as a being who exists complete in time as well as in space, his past, as well as his present, being actually existent. When the man recollects anything, he merely reviews that part of himself which we call his past. But this past exists just the same, whether he reviews it or not; just as a dog's tail exists, whether he is looking back at it or not. What Bergson says about a man's future we are not prepared at the moment to say; but the question naturally occurs: Why should not this also be a part of the man's existence? In this case, instead of recollection, we should have prevision, whenever a man turned his eyes upon that part of his anatomy which we call his future. But, be this as it may, we have at least gained the idea that an action or an experience may extend over a long range of time, have its beginning in the far past, and its end in the distant future; and that the whole thing is one whole and forms a part of the man himself. Applying this idea to the question of Karma, we conclude that an act and its sequel are one complete whole, although the sequel may be far removed in time from the original act. Hence, when a man "works out his Karma," or experiences the Karmic result of previous acts, he is really only finishing what he had begun. The illustration of a stone thrown against a wall may help; the throw and the rebound can be regarded as two phases of a single action. The difficulty of appreciating either the rationale or the equity of our experiences is thus seen to be merely the common error due to regarding in detail what ought to be regarded in its totality. This same error is common enough in other matters besides the one we are dealing with. For instance, we criticise a man's actions, in ignorance of the fact that his actions largely depend on the actions of other people. Returning to the question of Karma, we find that some people are now engaged in eating the sugar, while others are occupied in enjoying the inevitable nausea; which seems inequitable so long as we do not connect these two kinds of experience causally with each. Doubtless, in the view of the Soul, which is beyond the temporal limitations of the lower ego, the entire experience, including enjoyment and remorse, is undergone knowing and willingly. Reverting to the original topic of the connection between Karma and memory, and defining memory as being a return to spheres occupied before, we see that the same definition applies to Karmic recompense. For instance, a person who has at some past epoch in his Soul's history sown the seed of wrong in matters of love, may escape the retributive

experience as long as he keeps himself out of the region of love. But, no sooner does he fall in love, and thus re-enter that sphere, than he meets with the thistles which he has planted there, and the ball which he threw rebounds upon him. Pendulums swing longer in proportion to their size; and the larger pendulums that we set in motion may take a very long time to swing back. Again, if we bear in mind the law of cycles, it is clear that we cannot meet with the relics of our old experiences until such time as we may find ourselves traveling again along the same track; and it is as though we were traveling around a curved track and continually throwing off nails to puncture our own returning tires, or sowing flowers and fruits to rejoice our subsequent visit. (Vol. 9, pp. 195-6) ---------------------Karma and Suicide - H. Travers A newspaper paragraph records the case of a young man who shot himself because he had tuberculosis. He preferred an immediate end to the prospect of a lingering death. Suicide is never justifiable, and may well be regarded as evidence of insanity temporary at least. Under Christian ethics, it is an impious interference with the Divine will, entailing future retribution. As to the attitude of a man who believes, or claims to believe, that death ends all, we find this position so untenable that we are unable to use it as a basis of argument. Under such a belief, life becomes so absurd and meaningless a farce that one can find no serious arguments either for or against suicide. A disease has of course its physical causes, which can be traced. It may be due to careless living by the individual or to heredity. But we are not at present concerned with the physical cause; it is not enough to know the how; our intellect demands to know the why. The ethical side of the question calls for consideration. This can only be understood by accepting the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation. We incur suffering because we ourselves, by our own acts, have sown the seeds of it, either in this life or a preceding one. We reap the consequences of our own acts; but these consequences need not be considered as merely punitive; they are educative; they are due to the desire of the Soul to restore the balance which has been destroyed - to realize justice. To attempt to evade the consequences by suicide, is merely to postpone them; the Karma must be worked out some time. In addition, the suicide has sown new seeds of bad Karma by his violent and unnatural act. If he was out of his mind when he did the act, he will not suffer so much; for the consequences of an act return upon the actor; and the mind is involved in those consequences only to the extent in which it was the actor. The act of self-destruction does not end all; the victim hurls himself violently into the next world before his time, interfering with the natural orderly processes that attend a natural death. We are here for the purpose of learning; and every experience is an opportunity. It has been said that those who suffer live more truly and learn more thoroughly than those who do not. By suffering, the will is exalted. We have to master the meaning of pleasure and pain some time. So the law which decrees that a suicide cannot avoid his fate is a merciful law, because it decrees that he shall have again the opportunity which he has thrown away. Our lot in life is, in the last analysis, the lot which we have elected for ourself. As an athlete in training will willingly undergo hardship for the sake of his purpose - that of

strengthening himself; so the Soul plunges willingly into mortal life for the sake of experience. And one of the conditions of that experience is a temporary forgetfulness. Thus we lose sight of our real purpose and become confused. Inadequate education has perhaps shorn us of the power to invoke our spiritual will; we have never accustomed ourselves to resort to that divine aid. Many people spend their lives battling with ill-health or deficient vitality; it was needed for the strengthening of their will. A spendthrift needs the lesson of poverty to teach him thrift. Courage that is dependent on physical strength is not the best sort. The moral of the whole matter is that a better understanding of life is needed; and on this we can found a more adequate education. (Vol. 14, pp. 503-4) --------------------The Law of Karma - H. Travers One of the chief Theosophical teachings is that of the law of Karma, the law in accordance with which every man reaps that which he has sown. Every experience which we meet is a consequence of causes which we ourselves set in motion at some time in the past; and our present acts and thoughts will give rise to other consequences in the future. This law thus secures perfect equity of fortune for every man, and no circumstance is either casual or arbitrarily inflicted. The doctrine, however, cannot be understood without a knowledge of Reincarnation; for the period of a single life on earth does not comprise enough time to manifest all the workings of Karma. It is obvious that many of the experiences we are now meeting were not caused by anything we did in this life; and in such cases the causes were set in motion in a previous life or lives. In the expression, "law of Karma," the word "law" is used to denote a rule of nature; in the same sense, in fact, as that in which the word is used in science. Thus the law of Karma is as much a natural fact as the law of gravitation. The existence of this law is demonstrated to our mind by means of study and observation. But our neglect of the fact of Reincarnation has naturally blinded our eyes. It will be observed that this law is quite similar to certain scientific generalizations such as the "conservation of energy," but that it is on a far larger scale than these scientific generalizations. Science, with its love of truth and method, its readiness to generalize and bring things under a uniform rule, should welcome the doctrine of Karma. And it has already made considerable steps in that direction; for it is owing to science that we nowadays recognize the causes of so many things that once were attributed to the "will of God" or to mere "fate." We know now that epidemics are due to carelessness and dirt, and that no God will save us from the natural consequences of our own negligence in such concerns. May it not be the same with many other of our experiences - perhaps even all our experiences? Theosophy answers: Yes. In some cases the workings of Karma can readily be traced; as, for instance, when a decrepit old age succeeds an intemperate youth. In that case we can trace the connection between cause and effect, link by link. Likewise, if a man incurs enmity by his own ill-nature, we can trace the injuries he incurs at the hands of other people to the injurious character of his own past actions. And many other such cases can be easily imagined. But in other cases

the connection between cause and effect is not so apparent. Yet all that is needed, in order that we may trace out the connection, even in these cases, is more study and more knowledge. Accidents are not always easy to trace to their cause; yet we may go a little way in the direction of a solution without much trouble. We are normally protected from accidents by the alert instinctive senses of our organism; but sometimes we get up in the morning with our nerves so out of tune that these instincts do not play their due part, and we consequently cut ourselves with our razor, take the skin off our knuckles against the door, and bring various other parts of our anatomy into conflicting juxtaposition with sundry portions of inert matter. The matter might even go to the length of throwing us under a street-car; and in these cases we have traced accident to carelessness, or rather to a certain disordered condition set up in ourself by our own negligence. This may supply a hint as to the workings of Karma. May it not be that the seeds which generate events are lurking somewhere in our own being, ready to sprout into manifestation when occasion offers suitable conditions? A new-born child is like a seed, fraught with latent germs that will unfold into character, and these seeds are the fruitage of prior experience. But it is not only character that is thus carried over from life to life, but also destiny. This much an astrologer might willingly admit, claiming, as he does, to be able to read in the planetary configurations at birth, not the character alone but the destiny as well. But it is evident that, when we begin talking about such a thing as the seed of an event, we are entering a domain where our knowledge is defined mostly by its gaps. Nevertheless this is not superstition or guess-work, but something that can be known and worked out. If any critic should say that the Theosophical explanation is speculative, we might at least answer that so are all other explanations, and that Theosophy, with its law of Karma, is but offering an explanation where none other exists to dispute the field. But we do not have to stop short at mere speculation. Let us take some simple case and examine the ordinary theories about it. Supposing a man has a railroad accident; how would current theories set about explaining that? We might imagine a few devout people satisfying themselves with the reflection that such was the will of Deity, and seeking no further. We might imagine a very large number of people simply accepting the fact without the slightest attempt at explanation. And we might imagine that a scientist or philosopher, if questioned, would put us off with the remark that the occurrence was "purely fortuitous." In the last case we have gotten a fine phrase indeed but nothing more. So the situation can be summed up by saying that ordinary knowledge provides us with no explanation whatever, leaving the field open to anyone who may have an explanation to offer. And here it must be admitted that even many Theosophists leave us nearly as badly off as before when they tell us that the accident was "our Karma" - an explanation which will strike many as being merely a substitution of the word "Karma" for the word "God." One would like to go a little deeper than this if possible. But first let us pause to consider some other things which we do not know. Take that familiar illustration of "chance," the tossing of a coin. What is the cause that determines whether it shall fall heads or tails? Or, if you choose, take the cards and tell me what determines the order of their dealing. It cannot be that here we have effects without causes; and yet, if these are effects, and if all effects have causes, these effects must have causes. Then what are those causes? This is the field we have to explore. Perhaps the ancient art of divination, in its numerous forms, some of them now being revived, might help us a little. Those who tell fortunes by the fall of the cards, or by marks made "casually" in the sand, or the grounds in a teacup, or the movements of birds, must

evidently think that these apparently casual happenings are in some way connected with future events. Perhaps there have been ancient magicians who did not merely think this but knew it. So-called casual events, then, such as those consulted in the various kinds of divination and in observing and interpreting omens, are mysteriously connected with other events; and by interpreting the one, we may be able to forecast the other. This conclusion may be arrived at either inductively by actual observation and experience, or deductively - by applying certain known principles. The first is a question of experience, the second a question of philosophy or science. The conclusion that all events are interwoven with each other seems inevitable to a scientific mind, and the contrary conclusion is rejected as something offensive to our ideas of the orderliness of the universe. The fact that we do not happen to discern the connection between one set of events and another should not militate against the above foregone conclusion. For one thing, such ignorance is only to be expected; for, unless our knowledge is complete, there must be gaps in it. And here are some of the gaps; but the prospect of filling them up is by no means hopeless; indeed it is certain that we can fill some of them up, and there is no ground for setting any limit to the extent of possible knowledge in that direction. It is useful to point out how far we have already advanced in the casual interpretation of events through our later discoveries in science. Science has connected together a vast mass of phenomena, dependent on each other through the working of sundry laws of nature that have been studied. Such events, at one time called fortuitous, for want of a better explanation, are now assigned to their proper causes. In other cases, where we know that there is a causal relation, but cannot perceive its mechanism, we postulate some "medium," such as the "ether," to supply this place. The appearance of disturbances in the luminous atmosphere of the sun is found to coincide with magnetic storms on this earth; and to explain this we devise a theory of the ether, electrons, and what not. Astrologers are fond of pointing out that it is but a step further to suppose a connection between the movements of the planets and the happenings on earth; that magnetic storms are probably but a particular effect of an alteration in some subtler atmosphere of the earth, which alteration likewise affects men's minds, thus causing waves of emotion and states of mind in the human family. To connect with each other events that seem widely dissimilar in character and unrelated, we need a whole universe of new mediums like the ether, unseen beings, unknown forces, and so forth; and if we had this completer knowledge of the contents of the universe, it might be quite easy to trace the connection between, say, a malicious thought and a broken leg, or to find out just what change in a man's internal economy is necessary in order to make him lose all his money or go down in a sea-disaster. Another interesting question is, What is the form in which the seeds of destiny are brought over from a past incarnation, attach themselves to the growing child, and afterwards unfold into character and events? But this is clearly a large and complex question and one that we can hardly expect to answer except on the basis of a greatly improved knowledge of nature's laws. It would be possible here to throw out many suggestive hints, the fruit of long reflection and study, but there is more than one reason for refraining. For one thing, space lacks for giving the information which a student ordinarily gleans for himself from a study of Theosophical books and reflecting thereon. For another thing, a logical pursuance of the trains of thought suggested would lead one to the discussion of invisible beings, such as Elementaries and Nature-Spirits, higher forms of matter, latent powers in man, and various other things which have to be dealt with in a guarded manner. This of course explains why H.P. Blavatsky leaves so many chains of thought uncompleted and confines herself so often to suggestive hints and partial information. Hers was the delicate task of saying enough to

show people the reality of the supreme Science, and yet not saying enough to disclose things better not known to the world at large. However, enough has probably been said to show that this doctrine of Karma is not mere speculation, nor matter for unquestioning belief, but a thing that can be studied and understood; and that there is a profound scientific background to it. The ethical value of the doctrine of Karma is of course strongly emphasized by Theosophical writers on the subject. To understand that our destinies are regulated by unerring law, as merciful as it is just, and not left to capricious fate or arbitrary will, is to become reconciled to our destiny. It is satisfying to realize that there is an unerring law that deals to each man his exact meed of weal or woe. And a new hope and purpose is given to life when we understand that, by our present sowing, we are making our future harvest, and that not the smallest effort can fail of fruitage. But it may be useful to say a few words about a certain too narrow and commercial view of Karma that is sometimes taken. It is only a mind lacking in imagination and expansiveness that can depict to itself a kind of Recording Angel (only with a Sanskrit name this time) sitting up aloft, or possibly somewhere inside, with a ledger wherein are entered the debit and credit accounts of the highly important Mr. Me, and doling out from time to time, with apparent arbitrariness, drafts of good luck or bad in accordance with the state of the balance on the books. Such an idea amounts to little more than exchanging the arbitrary providence for a scrupulously honest financial providence with a love of fair-play but devoid of all emotion. Whatever truth there may be in such a view, whatever watchful intelligences may be concerned in the carrying out of universal law, it is possible to overdo this aspect of the matter and to belittle and commercialize the idea of Karma. After all, our distinctions between good and bad luck are very artificial; they are regulated by our tastes and our wants and our preferences, and such distinctions cannot be of much account in the eternal scheme of things. The welfare of the Soul surely counts for more than the nature of the external circumstances, and we know that a character may be starved amid abundance and may grow in grace amid adversity - or perchance the other way round. So it is not well, in speaking of Karma, to lay too much stress on the difference between weal and woe, or good and bad Karma. If there is an important difference it lies in the nature of the Karma as regards the welfare of the Soul, good Karma being that which assists progress, and bad Karma that which tends to destroy the Soul-life in a man. The pattern of an individual life must be very complex, when we consider the elements that enter into it. An immortal Soul has entered upon a period of earth-life, bringing with it a store of seeds or mental deposits, that will afterwards unfold as character and destiny, or perhaps be carried on to a still later period of earth-life. The nature of the Soul's Karma has determined the kind of heredity it will choose or be attracted towards, and the kind of entourage it will be born into. But, as it is not within the bounds of probability that the Soul will find conditions exactly suited in every detail to its requirements - or, in other words, will secure a perfect fit - there must be a certain amount of ill-adjustment, a certain amount of undeserved experiences, both good and ill. So the Karma of the Soul, the characters of the parents and ancestry, the country, surroundings, and other circumstances, are all woven together in the formation of a complex pattern. If we look into our own motives we find that they too are complex, varying, and inconstant, likely to lead us along a crooked path, somewhat like that of a cow being driven to market and stopping by the wayside to investigate the pleasures and pursuits offered by the pasturage on the borders. But the real purpose of the life is known to the liver of the life - that is, to the Soul; and we shall understand that purpose better the more closely we can identify ourself with that Soul, or, in other words, realize our true Self.

Besides individual Karma, there are of course various kinds of collective Karma, for example national Karma and racial Karma. Nations as a whole, and races as a whole, can commit actions and thus set in motion the laws of Karma; and consequently they can experience the natural results thereof. Of this we have, in the present European troubles, a striking instance. [1915] Individual men and women are involved in the Karma of their nations and in that of the whole race. If anyone should be disposed for a moment to reflect on the equity of this circumstance, let him remember that we must either cast our lot with our fellows for good and for ill, or else make the fruitless attempt to live in isolation from all socicty. On the small scale we all accept such conditions, by the voluntary associations which we form with each other, accepting, over and above our individual deserts, such fortune as may befall the body to which we belong. Collective Karma will of course move on a slower and heavier scale. It may be easier, too, to trace its workings, for humanity as a whole never dies and so there is no gap of death to be bridged in this case. It is interesting to trace out the causes of the present trouble in the mistakes of the past. And among other things is impressed on us the important lesson that those who merely sin by omission become involved in the retribution. It is sometimes considered difficult to reconcile the idea of Karma with that of free will, but the difficulty is due to confusion of thought. People may argue that causes and effects will go on generating one another in an endless chain, leaving the individual no chance of escape. Yet experience shows that people do escape from such chains of circumstance. The fact that one debauch generates the desire for another does not mean that we cannot escape from the habit. There are fortunately always means for escaping from habits, just as a man who is caught in a vortex may lift himself out of it, so that its whirlings no longer affect him, so may a man raise himself out of these Karmic entanglements. The principle is that he should plant his feet on higher and firmer ground. We have the power of resisting impulses, thereby tending to exhaust the effect of Karma and refraining from generating more of the same kind. A free will is, for all practical purposes, a will that is free to choose a higher law in place of a lower; and to that extent at least the human will is free. Any further discussion of the question of free will is apt to carry the philosopher so far ahead of present experience and needs that he loses himself in the mists of abstract thought. Our thoughts and emotions are creative powers that tend to produce acts and physical results; so that our future destinies are in our own hands. It is one of the ironies of life that our desires often produce their fruits at a time when we have abandoned those desires and are desiring something else; which accounts for many misfits and much discontent. It should be remembered that we have to face the facts of life, whatever our religion or philosophy may be; so that, whether we believe in Karma or not, we shall incur good and evil fortune and be obliged to live out our life in the body which we have and with the various other endowments and circumstances that are ours. But if the teaching as to Karma helps us to understand life better and to confront our destiny with more confidence and success, then we should do well to study those teachings. For instance, suppose you are born with a weak and nervous constitution, which has hampered you all through life and is likely to continue doing so; it is no use repining; you can only make the best of the facts. But it helps you greatly to know how and why you have that particular kind of a constitution and how to avoid generating any more Karma of the same sort. A study of your character convinces you that you abused the laws of health at some time in the past, that your will was weak and your proclivities strong; and you see that your present weak physique has given you the opportunity of learning patience, self-control, and sobriety. Karma explains many things which seem hopeless puzzles without it. What could seem more iniquitous than the fate of a drug fiend who has acquired the habit through using

narcotics to deaden pain, and whose fearful fate seems all out of proportion to any guilt he may have incurred? How are we to explain why one man has such a fate and another not? And bear in mind that the facts are so, whether explained or not. The sufferings are the Karma of past acts, and the difficulty of seeing this is due to the fact that the consequence is so far removed from the cause. But, looking at the question from another side, we see that men are committing acts which do not produce any consequences at present, and that they die without ever reaping the consequences of those acts. Put the two cases together and they explain each other. The man has gradually acquired a powerful tendency to selfindulgence, and this is its culmination; in the drug habit we see self-indulgence carried to its bitter end, and all its folly revealed. But the Karma of self-indulgence, a fault of long standing, acquired in past lives, was suspended for a part of the man's life; why was this? Because other kinds of Karma were operating, or because the cyclic moment for the incidence of the self-indulgence Karma had not arrived. For all things work in cycles; there are definite periods between the sowing of seeds and their fruitage, and causes are separated from their effects by various intervals, just as a ball thrown up will return sooner or later according to the force with which it was thrown. In considering Karma we must try and free our minds from the fashion of regarding ourselves as victims of fate or recipients of chastisement and favor. We should rather take the position of responsible beings engaged in the working out of practical problems in experience. A man who really repents of a wrong he has done to another, is not only willing but glad to suffer himself, in the hope of expiating the wrong. A conscientious man is willing and eager to pay off debts and settle old scores. And so with the Soul in its wisdom, even though the deluded mind may not understand. A strong resolve to live aright will very likely bring down some old unsettled scores for the man to settle; and thus may be explained the unexpected obstacles that confront one who has made such a resolve. But if we invoke the law of justice, we must be willing to abide by its decrees. The Karma of past acts cannot be avoided, but it can be allowed to exhaust itself in such a way that no fresh Karma of that kind is generated. It is the thoughts that start the evil; the body merely repeats the impressions that have been made upon it by the mind. If the thoughts are guarded and purified, the ill-consequences will gradually expend themselves. Meanwhile the seeds of better conditions for the future can be sown. It is a matter of observation that old people, or people soon to die, continue to take an interest in life and to start new enterprises; which would be folly if their actions came to an end at death. The truth is that their actions are inspired by a knowledge greater than that of the present life; for the knowledge of Karma and Reincarnation is intuitive. The subject of Karma is practically inexhaustible, and any cursory treatment of it must necessarily be discursive; but a few hints, though fragmentary, will serve to start many lines of thought in the intelligent reader; in which case the purpose of these notes is fulfilled. (Vol. 9, pp. 101-9) -------------------Nature's Silence - R. Machell There is a silence in Nature that impresses one as being all replete with sound, though there may be but the song of a bird to break the stillness. It is not so much sound that one

feels, as the source of all sounds; and that is perhaps the essential characteristic of silence. The power of silence is greater than that of sound because of its potentiality. The strong man is the man of will rather than the man of muscle, for will controls muscle; and silence controls sound: though the latter fact is not so plain to all perhaps. Those who are most keenly alive to the suggestion of Nature's moods, know that the stillness of the night is vastly different from the silence of noon, or of early morning, when the mists slowly melt into the haze as the Sun takes control of the day. Strange that we should be able to speak of the Sun controlling the day, or of a day being devoid of sunlight, when the Sun's presence is the day. And yet we do sometimes regard the day as self-ordained and the sun as its attendant. But in the night, when the Sun holds court on the other side of the world, there is a stillness not comparable to that which fills the air, as the returning regent rises above the mountains, and dissolves the mists, before the wind wakes, while yet the wet leaves drip the dewdrops to the earth, and life goes pulsing silently from root to branch, from filaments invisible beneath the soil up to the flower that opens to anticipate the summons of the Sun, the celebration of the day. And then the stillness of the noon, when the activity of day yields to an overwhelming sense of satisfaction, that pervades and permeates the whole conciliabulum of Nature's infinite administration. The climax of the day is the siesta; the multitudinous activities of life culminate in an intense desire for sleep. But when the stillness of the night is most intense sleep vanishes, the senses strain to free themselves from their allegiance to the body, and to attune themselves to the vibrations of the infinite. The mind is clarified and rarified spontaneously, as if in answer to the appeal of some acknowledged overlord, some sovereign supreme, some hierarch, who calls his innumerable family to join in celebration of the sacred rites ordained of old to keep men mindful of their own divinity. But whether at night or in the daytime silence is mysterious, and the brain-mind has little use for mysteries; it loves to babble endlessly, it dreads the silence, as a cat fears a pail of water, not unadvisedly. Yet even cats will sometimes go a-fishing, their natural dread of water yielding to their passionate love of fish; and chatterers will make experiments in silence with similar motives, seeking to gratify their curiosity, and their love of small sensations; just as a cat will risk the wetting of its paws to catch a fish. No doubt the ocean of silence must contain more strange things than the fish that cats may catch; but those that love the ocean truly know that the mysteries of the Great Deep are spiritual verities, beyond the comprehension of a cat, or of a chatterer, or even of a brain-mind seeker for occult phenomena. It may seem strange to speak about the silence of the sea, and yet it is as surely there as solitude, that is so often painfully impressed upon one in a crowded city, when the sense of isolation may become quite as intense as that felt by a castaway upon the ocean. The silence of the sea seems stamped on its denizens, although the seals are noisily loquacious. They are not truly people of the sea, they love to "lie i' the sun" and chatter, just like the gossips of the earth. But the sea's silence is appalling in its potency. When the winds taunt the tranquil deep the waves arise and rage magnificently against the eternal rocks, which, catching the humor of the hour, join in the tumult of the breakers, grinding themselves to grains of sand, and chanting a murmurous undertone to the wild howling of the storm: then the tumultuous winds, superb in their magnificent impotence, pass, and the silence reasserts itself upon the surface of the deep. The wildest storm seems but a comic interlude in the eternal drama of the elements; the real tragedy is in the Silence. Noise and the fury of the

storm are villains who commit imaginary crimes upon the stage, to entertain the populace, but behind the exoteric drama, that delights the crowd, there is the mystery, that hides the inner working of the tragedy, and veils the conflict of titanic forces struggling silently to maintain the balance of the manifested universe. And the soul of man senses the great drama that the brain-mind cannot comprehend, feels strangely exultant or unreasonably depressed, thrills unaccountably with strangest sympathy for the unseen, unheard, unthinkable drama of the universe concealed from the brain-mind by Silence. Sound is an active force, and speech and song most powerful; but Silence has a potency that awes. In it there is the infinite; and the soul of man alone can penetrate the mystery, being itself linked with infinity; while the mirror of the mind cannot reflect the silence that is formless. That delicate mirror may indeed be shattered by excessive sound, it may be clouded by excess of speech, but silence stops its ceaseless oscillation, and the resulting revelation seems to the brain-mind as a dreadful void, more terrible than the fury of the storm. The brain-mind fears the silence that the Soul loves so wisely and so well. Therefore 'twas said of old "speech is of silver, silence is of gold." Right speech is excellent, because its rightness is proportionate to its rarity, and merely serves to punctuate the silence of the reticence which wise ones exercise. (Vol. 10, pp. 433-35) -----------------Old Age and Senility - H. T. Edge We have been reading a scientific article on old age and its attendant phenomena, in the course of which the author, after marshaling a motley array of facts, elicits the conclusion that the mental and moral faculties need not share in the decrepitude of the body, although in many cases they do so. Some old men retain their mental and moral vigor unimpaired until their last summons; while others become more shut in, selfish, and feeble in temper and ability, in proportion as their bodily tissues grow stiff and clogged. This of course is commonplace knowledge, nor does it seem to gain much in importance from being clothed in more or less technical language. Science investigates the corporeal changes incidental to old age; and certain materialistic theories would fain have us believe that these corporeal changes stand as causes, and that the mental and moral nature follows them. But experience shows us that such is not the case; the mental and moral natures suffer in varying degrees; a circumstance which sufficiently proves their independence of the bodily changes. Nay, they are even capable of arresting the physical decay of old age and thus of prolonging life. In thus stating the facts, the writer in question leaves a somewhat vague and trite effect, for want of a clear and definite philosophy by which to arrange his ideas. Also, from the attempt to follow conventional theories without contradicting experience, he seems to vacillate and contradict himself. The duality of the human mind is not sufficiently dwelt upon. The fact is that the lower half of the mind gravitates towards the body and identifies itself with the bodily sensations; so that a person who has cultivated that side of his nature over-much, loses control in old age and becomes senile in his faculties and temper. But the higher part of the mind aspires towards the moral faculties; instead of blindly following sensual impulse, it

acts with will-power in pursuance of principle; hence a person who has cultivated this side of his nature is able in old age to withstand, and even to avail himself of, the changes incidental to senescence. The fact that the mind and body react on each other is not to be denied; but it is equally true that the higher nature can control the mind, and can control the body through the mind. Hence the materialistic theory is just true enough to be false; it approximates to the truth in cases where the person is of a low grade of development, and deviates more widely from the truth in the case of persons of fine character. Who shall venture to set limits to the extent to which the higher faculties can control the lower? Common experience shows us that persons can retain their judgment and sympathies intact, and even riper than ever, to the last day; it is conceivable that even bodily decay might be indefinitely arrested, supposing that to be desirable. But what an argument for immortality! that which grows old, the body, dies; but the mind grows not old; the inference is that it does not die - that is, the higher part of the mind. And such is in fact the teaching of Theosophy. The body dies, and with it also perish some other principles not known to modern science. The real Self is immortal. Between these two stands the personality - not the immortal Individuality, but the temporary self that lasts but for one incarnation. The relation of these three with each other may be roughly illustrated by taking some geometrical figure, a circle for instance, to represent the Soul, and another circle to represent the body. When the two circles overlap, a third area is produced between them; when the circles are drawn apart, this third area vanishes. Thus the personality, formed by the overlapping of Soul and body, disappears when the Soul separates from the body; but the Soul does not disappear. This however is but an imperfect representation and must not be pushed too far; we can scarcely expect to define Individuality and personality in such simple terms. The teachings on this subject outlined by H.P. Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy state that the most refined and spiritual aspirations of the personality are preserved, so that the immortal Ego reaps a 'harvest' from each incarnation. We have to define man as a trinity; otherwise there would be no connection between his two halves, and no conceivable purpose in incarnation. The human soul stands between the spiritual soul and the animal soul, and is the link. The following quotation also is apposite: "The human soul.... is the only and direct mediator between the personality and the divine Ego. That which goes to make up on this earth the personality, miscalled individuality by the majority, is the sum of all its mental, physical, and spiritual characteristics, which, being impressed on the human soul, produces the man. Now of all these characteristics it is the purified thoughts alone which can be impressed on the higher, immortal Ego. This is done by the human soul merging again, in its essence, into its parent source, commingling with its divine Ego during life, and reuniting itself entirely with it after the death of the physical man.... Only that which is worthy of the immortal God within us, and identical in its nature with the divine quintessence, can survive.... "The mental and spiritual ideations of the personal 'I' return to it, as part of the Ego's essence, and can never fade out. Thus of the personality that was, only its spiritual experiences - the memory of all that is good and noble, with the consciousness of its 'I' blended with that of all the other personal 'I's' that preceded it, survive and become immortal." - H.P. Blavatsky It will be seen therefore that the question of personality and survival is not to be solved like a proposition of Euclid; nor indeed could this be expected. But the essentials are clear enough; that which is high and noble in man is imperishable, and therefore cannot grow old;

the more the man lives in this, the less does he yield to the influence of senescence. He uses it as one of the normal states of the body, and avails himself of its advantages. Dramatic dialogues can be written, showing the contest between ardent youth and cynical old age; but both contestants are equally under the sway of the body: the one, ardent, because the body is young; the other cynical, because the body is old. Death and rebirth occur continuously in the body, as biologists can tell us. An unremitting will-power resists the natural tendency of the body to disintegrate; dead remains are excreted and new materials generated. Death itself is the same thing on a larger scale; the cycle of mortal life and death is a large cycle comprehending smaller ones of the same kind, just as the annual cycle comprehends the diurnal. Some people hold that, though the Spirit be immortal, it merges into the World-Soul, as indistinguishably as a drop of water is (or is said to be) lost in the ocean. But Theosophy teaches that Individuality is not lost; though, in entertaining this idea, we must be careful not to confuse Individuality with personality. The alleged survival of the mere personality - a notion toyed with by men of science - seems to many people a prospect worse than extinction, a veritable living death; and the character of the alleged communications from the deceased is all that is needed to prove the low source from whence they emanate. A conviction of the truth of reincarnation is calculated to give us such a new conception of life that it is impossible to forecast the effect which such a belief will have on humanity when it becomes more general. The conventional ideas tempt people to say: 'All is over; it is no use doing anything now'; and to live in memories and regrets instead of in prospects and resolves. But there is no more reason for thus giving way than there is for abandoning hope and effort because a day is closing in. The ability to accept as a fact the weariness of the body, and even that of the mind and spirits, and yet to fall asleep in the full assurance of renewed strength on the morrow, is one that we all have; and it is only a matter of evolution and growth before we shall be able to face old age and death in a similar spirit. If birth and death are processes which take place continually in the body and also in the mind, and we are continually resisting the tendency to disintegration, we achieve a kind of immortality in the course of daily and hourly victory over our mortal elements. But it is anger, fear, lust, and jealousy that are associated with the disintegrative forces in our body; while the nobler thoughts and emotions are associated with constructive powers. Therefore it is well, in the interests of youth, to cultivate these finer and constructive qualities and to eschew the destructive ones. There is a saying, to which we will give a different significance: "Whom the Gods love die young." That is, they never grow old. (Vol. 14, June, 1918, pp. 526-28) --------------------An Old Book - Philip. A. Malpas Who was Tiphaigne de la Roche? About the middle of the seventeenth century several books appeared in Paris written by an author of this name, and considering the really remarkable knowledge he showed, it is surprising that he is not better known to literary fame. Under the disguise of a playful satire on society as constituted in those days, this author wrote the book Giphantie, an anagram of his own name. It was published in 1760, a

date which is important for those who might suspect that it was written after the event. In accordance with the custom of the time, he makes a somewhat ponderous title page which is not the less interesting for that. Giphanties Or A View Of What Has Passed What Is Now Passing And, During The Present Century What Will Pass In The World The introduction describes the writer's great inclination for traveling. "I consider the whole earth as my country, and all mankind my brethren, and therefore thought it incumbent upon me to travel through the earth and visit my brethren," he says, "I have often found great folly among the nations that pass for the most civilized and sometimes as great wisdom among those, that are counted the most savage. I have seen small states supported by virtue, and mighty empires shaken by vice, whilst a mistaken policy has been employed to enrich the subjects, without any endeavor to render them virtuous. "After having gone over the whole world and visited all the inhabitants, I find it does not answer the pains I have taken. I have just been reviewing my memoirs concerning the several nations, their prejudices, their customs and manners, their politics, their laws, their religion, their history; and I have thrown them all into the fire. It grieves me to record such a monstrous mixture of humanity and barbarism, of grandeur and meanness; of reason and folly. "The small part, I have preserved, is what I am now publishing. If it has no other merit, certainly it has novelty to recommend it." Describing a vast 'desart' in Guinea, the traveler felt an intense desire to explore it, and in spite of the danger penetrated far into the sandy waste. Then arose a sandstorm, which, but for the protection of a 'benevolent Being,' would have proved his death. The storm subsides and he sleeps peacefully through the night. On awakening he finds himself within sight of a green oasis which grows the more luxuriantly as he advances into the interior. Even the plants in that wonderful land seemed to possess consciousness, and their variety, as well as that of the birds, beasts, and fishes, was wonderful to behold. Trees 'co-eval with the world' form an immense amphitheatre which majestically displays itself to the eyes of the traveler and proclaims that such a habitation is not made for mortals. Wondering that he had not seen any inhabitants in these gardens of delight, the traveler heard a voice: "Stop and look steadfastly before thee; behold him who has inspired thee to undertake so dangerous a Voyage. "I looked a good while and saw nothing; at last I perceived a sort of spot, a kind of shade fixed in the air, a few paces from me," says the narrator. "I continued to look at it more attentively, and fancied, I saw a human form with a countenance so mild and ingaging that instead of being terrified, the sight was to me a fresh motive of joy." The benevolent shade declares himself to be the Prefect of the Island, who had been prepossessed in favor of the wanderer by his inclination to philosophy, and had defended him

from the hurricane. He explains: "This Solitude.... is an island surrounded with inaccessible desarts, which no mortal can pass without supernatural aid. It's name is Giphantie. It was given to the elementary spirits, the day before the Garden of Eden was allotted to the parent of Mankind. Not that the spirits spend their time here in ease and sloth. What would ye do, O ye feeble mortals! if dispersed in the air, in the sea, in the bowels of the earth, in the sphere of fire, they did not incessantly watch for your welfare? Without our care, the unbridled elements would long since have effaced all remains of the human kind? Why cannot we preserve you entirely from their disorderly sallies? Alas! our power extends not so far: we cannot totally screen you from all the evils that surround you: we can only prevent your utter destruction. "It is here the elementary spirits come to refresh themselves after their labors; it is here they bold their assemblies, and concert the best measures for the administration of the elements." In Giphantie, Nature has an opportunity of doing many things which would be impossible in the outer world. One of her works there is the constant endeavor to increase the numerous tribes of Vegetables and Animals and to produce new kinds. She works with admirable skill, but does not always succeed in perpetuating them, in which case they return for ever into nothing. The Guardians of the Island cherish them with the utmost care, and when they are sufficiently organized to produce their kind, plant them out in the earth. Hence the new plants sometimes discovered by naturalists and the sudden disappearance of certain exotics which, meeting an unfavorable climate, decay and are lost as a species. The Prefect speaks of many plants he has which can produce marvelous effects in medicine - such as one for fixing the human mind, only in fifty years of Babylon (Paris) he has never observed a mood worth fixing. Here nature "....incessantly repeats her labors, still endeavoring to give her works that degree of perfection which she never attains. Flowers she endeavors to make still more beautiful. Animals she tries to make still more dexterous. Mankind she endeavors to render still more perfect, but in this is not so successful. "Indeed one would think that mankind do all in their power to remain in a much lower rank than nature designs them! and they seldom fail to turn to their hurt the dispositions she gives them for their good." The nature of the elementary spirits was originally pure, consisting as to their material substance of fire, or air, or of their unmixed elements. But by mixture with earthly impurities their pure essence becomes spoiled and some have even become so degraded through the mixture of various elements that they have been visible to men. People have seen them in the fire and called them salamanders, and cyclopes; they have seen them in the air and called them sylphs, spheres, Aquilons; they have seen them in the water and called them sea-nymphs, Naiads, Nereids, Tritons; they have seen them in caverns, desarts, woods, and have called them Gnomes, Sylvans, Fauns, Satyrs, and so forth. From the astonishment caused by these apparitions, men sank into fear, and fear begot superstition. To these, Creatures like themselves, they erected altars which belong only to the Creator. Their imagination magnifying what they had seen, they soon formed a Hierarchy of Chimerical Deities. The sun appeared to them a luminous chariot guided by Apollo through the celestial planes; thunder, a fiery bolt darted by Jupiter at the heads of the

guilty: the ocean a vast empire where Neptune ruled the waves: the bowels of the earth, the gloomy residence of Pluto, where he gave laws to the pale and tremulous ghosts: in a word, they filled the world with gods and goddesses. The earth itself became a Deity. When the elementary spirits perceived how apt their apparitions were to lead men into error, they took measures to be no longer visible: they devised a sort of refiner by which they got rid of all extraneous matter. Thenceforward, no mortal has seen the least glimpse of these spirits. The great column or refiner is shown and many spirits are seen ascending after purification like exhalations from the sun. It is explained that their visibility is artificially produced by the adoption of a very thin surface partaking of the nature of the spirits who assume them, much as looks describe a man. Human beings use these surfaces very much and thus it is that a "Babylonian would rather be nothing and appear everything than be everything and appear nothing." All is one gigantic sham in society. There is a description of something like a telephone. A vast globe is ingeniously erected by the utmost skill of the spirits. By minute tubes to all parts of the earth sound is conveyed to the globe and the current which had grown weak in the imperceptible pipes is reinforced on its entry into the globe in such a way that all the joy and sorrow of the world is heard with every kind of sound in a confused disagreeable murmur. By the placing of a rod on any point of the mapped surface of the globe any particular speech or sound can be detached from the rest - a sort of universal telephone 'central.' With the addition of a 'mirrour' anything can be seen at the same time; it is in the seer's power to "view the habitations of every mortal." The traveler uses the 'mirrour' and the rod and sees and hears much. "I beheld wise nations rejoice at the birth of their children," he says, "....and deplore the death of their relations and friends; I bebeld others more wise stand round the newborn babe, and weep bitterly at the thoughts of the storms he was to undergo in the course of his life: they reserved their rejoicings for funerals, and congratulated the deceased upon their being delivered from the miseries of this world." And so the book goes on, describing the wonders of this 'Island' in the midst of an impassable desert. Of the many ideas given, perhaps the strangest for the time (1760) are those on the constitution of man. Discussing the principles, there occur some paragraphs of no little interest. "The rational soul is united to the human body, the instant the motion essential to life is settled there," we read. "It is separated the instant that motion is destroyed; and once separated, it is known to return no more, it departs forever; and enters into a state of which there is to be no end. "The universal soul is united and separated in the same circumstances: But it is not always separated forever. Let, in any person, the motion essential to life, after having totally ceased, come to be renewed, (a thing which every physician knows to be very possible) and what will be the consequence? The rational soul, which departed upon the ceasing of the vital motion, cannot return; but the universal soul, always present, cannot fail of reuniting with the organized body set in motion again. The man is dead, for his soul is separated from his body. He preserves, however, the air of a living man; because the universal soul is resettled in his brain, which it directs tolerably well. "Such to you appears a person perfectly recovered from an apoplectic fit, who is but half come to life; his soul is flown; there remains only the universal spirit. Excess of joy, or of grief, any sudden opposition may occasion death, and does occasion it, in fact, oftener than is

imagined. Let a fit of jealousy or passion affect you to a certain degree, your Soul, too strongly shocked, quits its habitation forever: And, let your friends say what they please or say what you will yourself, you are dead, positively dead. However, you are not buried: the universal soul acts your part to the deception of the whole world and even of yourself. Do not complain, therefore, that a relation forgets you, that a friend forsakes you, that a wife betrays you. Alas! perhaps it is a good while since you had a wife, or relations or friends; they are dead; their images only remain. "How many deaths of this kind have I seen at Babylon?.... "I shall now speak of the signs by which the living may be distinguished from the dead: And, doubtless, the reader sees already what these signs may be. To behold wickedness with unconcern; to be unmoved by virtue; to mind only self-interest; and without remorse to be carried away with the torrent of the age, are signs of death. Be assured, no rational soul inhabits such abandoned machines. What numbers of dead amongst us! you will say. What numbers of dead amongst us! will I answer.... "I will conclude with opening a door to new reflections. Suppose a man like so many others, vegetates only, and is reduced to the universal soul. I demand whether the race of such a man is not in the same state. If so, I pity our posterity. Rational souls were scarce among our forefathers; they are still more so among us; surely there will be none left among our offspring. All are degenerating, and we are very near the last stage." The interest in the above account for those who remember the Theosophical division of the human constitution into seven principles lies in the distinct indication of such principles. The whole chapter is too long to copy, but we are told "there are in us two contrary Beings, which oppose one another," as is "manifest by the clashing between the passions and the reason." The 'universal soul' is described as everywhere present and homogeneous, like a sea in which fishes swim, one may say. The animal soul is clearly distinguished from the higher, manly, rational soul. Matter is described as something separate. The universal soul may be present everywhere in the solar system or even farther, but it has its bounds, it is God alone that fills immensity. The 'motion essential to life' is distinguished. Here are five 'principles' described by a Parisian in 1760 and in other places he shows that he does not limit his 'principles' to these five alone. Among the wealth of ideas put forward in this remarkable little book, the famous description of the photographic process, or, as some describe it, the cinematograph, has always been a stumbling block for scientists and critics of every hue. Facts are pitchforks, but this pitch-fork has no handle visible. The best that science can do with the matter is to relegate the thing to the storehouse of 'literary curiosities,' and not to keep it too closely under observation. For it was published forty years before the first glimmerings of photography dawned on the scientific mind, and yet today, more than a hundred and fifty years afterwards, it describes our most modern development of the art. The mocking omission of chemical details is disconcerting to say the least, for without such details, how can we tell just how much he did not know? Here is the chapter, in its entirety: The Storm "Some paces from the noisy globe, the earth is hollowed, and there appears a descent of forty or fifty steps of turf; at the foot of which there is a beaten subterraneous path. We went in; and my guide, after leading me through several dark turnings, brought me at last to the light again. "He conducted me into a hall of middling size, and not much adorned, where I was

struck with a sight that raised my astonishment. I saw, out of a window, a sea which seemed to me to be about a quarter of a mile distant. The air, full of clouds, transmitted only that pale light which forebodes a storm: the raging sea ran mountains high, and the shore was whitened with the foam of the billows which broke on the beach. "By what miracle (said I to myself) has the air, serene a moment ago, been so suddenly obscured? By what miracle do I see the ocean in the center of Africa? Upon saying these words, I hastily ran to convince my eyes of so improbable a thing. But in trying to put my head out of the window, I knocked it against something that felt like a wall. Stunned with the blow, and still more with so many mysteries, I drew back a few paces. "Thy hurry (said the Prefect) occasions thy mistake. That window, that vast horizon, those thick clouds, that raging sea, are all but a picture. "From one astonishment I fell into another: I drew near with fresh haste; my eyes were still deceived, and my hand could hardly convince me that a picture should have caused such an illusion. "The elementary spirits (continued the Prefect) are not so able painters as naturalists; thou shalt judge by their way of working. Thou knowest that the rays of light, reflected from different bodies, make a picture and paint the bodies upon all polished surfaces, on the retina of the eye, for instance, on water, on glass. The elementary spirits have studied to fix these transient images: they have composed a most subtile matter very viscous, and proper to harden and dry, by the help of which a picture is made in the twinkle of the eye. They do over with this matter a piece of canvas, and hold it before the objects they have a mind to paint. The first effect of the canvas is that of a mirror; there are seen upon it all bodies far and near, whose image the light can transmit. But what the glass cannot do, the canvas, by means of the viscous matter, retains the images. The mirror shows the objects exactly; but keeps none; our canvases show them with the same exactness, and retains them all. This impression of the images is made the first instant they are received on the canvas, which is immediately carried away into some dark place; an hour after, the subtile matter dries, and you have a picture so much the more valuable, as it cannot be imitated by art nor damaged by time. We take, in their purest source, in the luminous bodies, the colors which painters extract from different materials, and which time never fails to alter. The justness of the design, the truth of the expression, the gradation of the shades, the stronger or weaker strokes, the rules of perspective, all these we leave to nature, who with a sure and nevererring hand, draws upon our canvases images which deceive the eye and make reason to doubt, whether, what are called real objects, are not phantoms which impose upon the sight, the hearing, the feeling, and all the senses at once. "The Prefect then entered into some physical discussions, first, on the nature of the glutinous substance which intercepted and retained the rays; secondly, upon the difficulties of preparing and using it; thirdly, upon the struggle between the rays of light and the dried substance; three problems, which I propose to the naturalists of our days, and leave to their sagacity. "Meanwhile, I could not take off my eyes from the picture. A sensible spectator, who from the shore beholds a tempestuous sea, feels no more lively impressions: such images are equivalent to the things themselves. "The Prefect interrupted my extacy. I keep you too long (says he) upon this storm, by which the elementary spirits designed to express allegorically the troublesome state of this world, and mankind's stormy passage through the same; turn thy eyes, and behold what will feed thy curiosity and increase thy admiration." (Vol 13, pp. 363-68)

------------------------Pessimism and Perfectability - R. Machell That the world has need of Theosophy is hardly to be questioned by anyone who understands the meaning of the word 'Theosophy.' That Theosophy is in the world and is accessible is not to be denied. That there are students of Theosophy willing and even anxious to disseminate a knowledge of the teachings of Theosophy, ancient and modem, is proved by the existence of the Theosophical Movement. And that the possibility of the application of these teachings to the vital problems of life is being actually demonstrated at Point Loma, is known to countless honest investigators, as well as to a limited number of students actually engaged in an attempt to make that lofty enterprise an accomplished fact. What then prevents the world from grasping more eagerly this means of self-redemption from the woes of life? Pessimism! Pessimism is self-distrust, and consequent distrust of others measured by the same standard of doubt and disbelief in man's perfectibility. It may be asked if Pessimism is not a true estimate of the facts of life. Theosophy says "No!" It is delusion. But the mind of man is querulous, seeking reasons, and arguments to buttress up its tottering decisions, built by an enfeebled will upon a shifting stratum of opinions. The restless mind seeks reasons, and must be humored during its convalescence, until it regains its self-reliance. Many antique traditions tell of the fall of man from a position of honor among the Gods who were his kin; and of his consequent loss of power and wisdom and self-knowledge. And all the history of man teems with accounts of efforts made by men to re-establish man upon a basis of divine authority within himself. Man self-redeemed by knowledge of his own essential divinity. This is the ideal offered by the great teachers of humanity, and eternally perverted by organized pessimism into a weak submission to an extra-human god. Man's pessimism is the raw material from which such idols are created; and the passion of man's heart supplies rich garments, wherewithal to make these dead gods beautiful. If pessimism is a fact in nature it is a very doubtful one, for it is based upon denial. It is a negative quality, a negation of something - of what? Of something that exists? or of a mere delusion? The negation of a mere delusion is certainly a somewhat vacuous foundation for an edifice. What is the reality? Can we establish life upon a mere negation? Even the pessimistic world looks for some solid fact on which to build, or for some little spot of rock, on which to stand for a moment safe from the eddying waters of dispute, and from the quicksands of delusion. Where is this solid ground? Where can it be but in the Soul of man himself, and in the Universal Soul, of which he is a part? Outside of man, all is illusion, that is to say appearance; for man can only know external things by their appearances; and that means that the thing itself is not known, but only its appearance. To know the thing itself man must be able to identify himself with it; and this can only be achieved if he and it are of one essence, and he is able to become aware of his identity

with it, and consequently with the essence of all things. But this is self-knowledge, and it is consciousness of the essential divinity of man: for there can be no higher conception of Divinity than the Universal-Soul: the source, and origin, and ultimate, of all existence. This is the basis of optimism. On this is founded the belief in the perfectibility of man, without which all hope of progress is illogical. But the conviction of man's ultimate perfectibility is actually based upon the fact itself, which is the root of consciousness in man. This fact is his essential divinity. His interior knowledge of his own nature is perhaps subconscious, while his belief is formulated by his brain-mind in response to the subconscious impulse; and this mind-made belief is subject to modification, even to complete perversion, by the mind, which is imperfect usually, and not infrequently defective or diseased. From this we get the multitude of varying beliefs and creeds, and also the fanaticism of conviction springing from the subconscious certainty of truth, which is not well aware of the peculiar twist that the defective mind may have bestowed in passing on the expressed belief. It seems to me that this fanaticism, and power of devotion to a worthless cause, is a sure indication of a fountain of interior knowledge; no matter how distorted may be all the theories, beliefs and creeds that issue from the mind of man. Even a pessimist can scarcely deny the power of men to rise to heights of heroism entirely unjustifiable and inexplicable by the philosophy of negation. Many a professed pessimist has himself given the lie by his own acts to his denial of his own divinity: for man cannot rise above himself, no more than water can; and if he rises above his normal level, we may know of a certainty that we had hitherto misjudged his limitations. The ultimate certainty of knowledge comes only from within; but it may be approached by many roads; experience is one, and study is another; both are necessary, and the study of Theosophy is best, coupled with experience gained by the practical application of its lessons to the daily life of individual students, working together in harmony for humanity. (Vol. 13, pp. 227-28) -----------------------Scientific Ghostology - H. Travers A recent writer on the subject of Ghosts - Professor Schrenk-Notzing - thinks that modern thought is reverting to ancient necromantic practices. He says that science is not telling the whole truth about psychic research; but is keeping silent about one matter which is the most important of all. What is this matter on which, as he charges, the investigators are keeping silent? To quote him: "We hear a great deal about the wonderful phenomena of 'cross-correspondences,' by which, it is maintained, evidence is being furnished of the operation of one mind, independent of an external to the experimenters and the medium. We hear of wonderful occurrences.... We hear nothing at all about the effects, moral and physical, which attend the evocation of these phenomena." And what are these moral and physical effects, as to which science is (according to the

Professor) concealing the truth? We continue : "....of the permanent undermining of health and character and well-being which result from them, and of the terrible disorder which the disclosures emanating from this source are apt to produce in the social and family life." These are grave charges. To proceed to detail: "Sir William Barrett was constrained some years ago to declare that 'he had observed the steady downward course of mediums who sit regularly,' and so open-minded an investigator as Sir William Crookes wrote, after his experiments with Home: 'I could scarcely doubt that the evolution of psychic force is accompanied by a drain on vital force.'" Lombroso declared that, after a seance, the medium is overcome by morbid sensitiveness, hyperaesthesia, photophobia, and often by hallucinations and delirium, during which she asks to be guarded from harm. There are also serious disturbances of digestion, and paralysis of the legs, so that she has to be carried and assisted to undress. Another medium mentioned by Schrenk-Notzing awoke from the trance in a state of absolute exhaustion, having lost much blood. As a general thing, he adds, it was two days before the medium recovered from the prostration. We are told that few men of science believe that the dead are trying to communicate with us. What poverty of imagination! This comes of living in a world of abstractions dubbed realities, till all the reality is driven out of life. The idea of a universe in which the dead are experimenting and speculating on one side of a wall, while we are speculating and experimenting on the other, in mutual fatuous attempts to establish communication, is something that passes power of description. What a revelation it would be if the experimenters on this side could see the denizens of those murky regions that are holding out their hands to those so eager to grasp them. These denizens of the astral realm are not devils; neither are they human spirits. They are, in the vast majority of cases, human shells; or, semi-conscious elementals. At times, in reading of such experiments and speculation, it flashes into the mind that a large and representative section of our thinkers positively do not realize what man is or what life means; the whole business seems conceived on so small a scale that one is reminded of the proverbial cheesemonger's outlook on life. Materialism has many facets, but it always narrows the vision; and to a considerable extent vision has been of the microscopic order not adapted for viewing things as a whole. Too much living in an imaginary world has contributed to a limitation of vision that makes such speculations seem not absurd. But to people of imagination, poets, artists, historians, mathematicians, philosophers, to anyone who views human life on the larger scale, there is the greater, the larger world. There have always been attempts at evocation and they have always been unseemly. For the only things that can be evoked are the decaying remnants or "shells" of what was once a human being. If there be any men competent to summon back the Soul from its place of rest to the purlieus of earth, such are not to be found among the adepts of physical materialism, nor among the dignitaries of churches. Nor is it easy to imagine what occasion could warrant such an evocation. Rather than seek so to drag down the liberated Soul, we should aspire to purify our own lives to the point of being able to understand the mysteries of life and death and to live in those realms of thought where Death does not hold his sway. For bereavement is a condition of our ignorance, and is inevitable as long as our conscious life is centered in the phenomena of the physical plane and restricted solely to the concerns of

mundane life. In this connection we may remember the vogue enjoyed a generation or so ago by hypnotism, and mark how it has since abated. The dangers have been found to outweigh any possible advantages. The methods at present claimed by materialism as peculiarly its own are of their very nature unadapted to the discovery of useful knowledge as to the fate of the Soul after death, but eminently calculated to bring to light any purely materialistic phenomena that may be connected with the subject. The present cycle of civilization has reached a stage in its evolution at which it has developed forces that are incompatible with each other; and the result has therefore been a catastrophe. The sequel may be either a change for the better, or, failing that, further catastrophes in the future. Fortunately the crisis may be expected to afford an opportunity for the aroused conscience and intelligence of our race, so that we may hope to see the beginning of a new order of life. This new order must involve the principle of discipline in the real sense of the word; discipline imposed, not by force, but by the common obligation recognized by everybody to respect those high ideals that constitute the essential vitality of a race. We have been living too much at haphazard; and liberty of action, so excellent in itself, has swung too far in the direction of license and non-control. Science has advanced so far that the question of motive becomes all-important for it, in order that its achievements be not perverted to ignoble and destructive uses. Those who have insight are aware that psychism is fraught with great danger to civilization, and all the warnings uttered by Theosophists in this regard have been justified by events; further justification can be avoided by heeding them now. For psychism, if pursued under the conditions that now obtain, must inevitably result in disaster. The pursuit is thrown open to all and sundry without the slightest safegard or guarantee; while uncontrolled desire, self-love, idle curiosity, and ignorance, vie with each other among the motive powers that inspire the quest. A greater self-knowledge and self-control in the individual is the one thing that will be needed in the immediate future for the up-building of a renovated and stable order of society; and so the question of education occupies the center of the field. The controlling power in man is his own higher nature; but this cannot act unless by his mind he effects a junction between the higher and the lower. At present he is not trained to do this. On the contrary, self-love is generally made the ruling motive; but luckily there has been enough naturally good and inherited stamina in the race to counteract a good deal of the injurious tendency. But we cannot live for ever on our capital, and the race will grow more sophisticated and morally infirm unless some change is made. Nor is the suggestion to abandon children to their natural caprices of any use; for these caprices are of a mixed nature, and it is the harmful ones that find the most fertile soil. We must be able to guide and protect our children morally, even as we guide and protect them physically. It is for this that they are intrusted to us as parents and guardians. The above may seem like a digression from our original topic, but it is not so. What men want to know is how they are to avoid aimless wandering into mischievous bypaths, whether in psychism, vivisection, the invention of engines of wholesale destruction, or what not. And the answer is as above - by proper education. There is but one sure way to obtain direct knowledge concerning the mysteries of life and death; and that is to awaken dormant spiritual (not psychic) perceptions. And these, as all Teachers assure us, cannot coexist with any form of blind selfishness or selfish passion. Such direct knowledge, therefore, is necessarily reserved for the wise and selfless. But ordinary intelligence, even though denied direct knowledge, finds the highest possible approximation thereto in the results of unerring logic applied to an unprejudiced observation

of the facts of life. There is also the Secret Knowledge, the traditional philosophy, of the human race; but as this is not recognized, we do not more than mention it. What is known to us as a human "personality" is an unstable compound, whose coherence is temporarily effected by the fact of its embodiment and by the terrestrial conditions pertaining to that embodiment. The decay of the body, the removal of the conscious entity from terrestrial life, means the break-up of the personality (not of the Individuality), as though the center-pin were knocked out. There is a genuine decomposition, which one might illustrate by a chemical analogy: from the stable compound, sulphate of copper, remove the copper; the remaining SO group is no longer coherent, but splits up, and its constituents may enter into fresh combinations with extraneous matters. And thus it is the body that holds together the conflicting elements that go to make up man. Take away the body; and the self-conscious human mind, having now no fit physical vehicle through which to manifest itself and perform its functions, retires, and its lower vehicles decompose. The immortal essence is withdrawn and retires into ineffable peace; a vestige or imprint of intelligence is left behind and for a while animates the "shell." If natural processes are allowed to act, this shell soon disintegrates, being cut off from its root - and this is the "second death." By vampirizing the living, it can temporarily recreate a simulacrum of the erstwhile personality, and thus perhaps pose as a lost relative returned; and this is unnatural, i.e., artificially induced. It is easy to understand from the above how there may be enough left of a deceased one to constitute, together with the vital magnetism provided by medium and sitters, a plausible imitation of the deceased. But it is improbable that circumstances would bring together these factors, and it is much more likely that the phantom evoked contains nothing whatever of the departed one. The medium is a sort of vital reservoir or machine, ready to unconsciously impersonate anything; and the minds of the sitters contain the characters to be impersonated. In The Secret Doctrine (I, 244) we find the author quoting a French Kabalist, Eliphas Levi, and subjoining her own commentary, as follows: "The soul has three dwellings. These dwellings are: the plane of the mortals; the superior Eden; and the inferior Eden." (Levi) "The Soul (collectively, as the upper Triad) lives on three planes, besides its fourth, the terrestrial sphere; and it exists eternally on the highest of the three. These dwellings are: Earth for the physical man, or the animal Soul; Kama-loka (Hades, the Limbo) for the disembodied man, or his Shell; Devachan for the higher Triad." (Commentary) Thus, apart from the Soul's eternal existence, it has three abodes of life. With its physically embodied life we are familiar, though perhaps we cannot be said to understand much about it. Its spiritual life is, in modern literature, a vagary of religious controversy. About the abode of the "shell," nothing is understood at all, but the facts have always been recognized by ancient races, as they are still by the races we call primitive. The ancient teachings, beliefs, and practices, relating to the shade and its Limbo, are often treated by modern scholars as though they represented beliefs as to the destiny of the immortal Spirit; and thus much learned ignorance is displayed. (Vol. 8, pp. 57-61) ----------------------------

Theosophy and Self-Culture - H. T. Edge Question: What has Theosophy to say on the question of self-improvement, methods of physical or mental self-culture, the development of concentration and of will power, and such-like matters? Answer: These are not to be regarded as ends in themselves, but as means to an end; and that end must be that which Theosophy holds in view. The same methods are susceptible of being used as means to other ends, and herein lies the necessity for caution in recommending them. A man may proceed far in self-development before he arrives at that crisis in his life when he has to make a definite choice between good and evil, between the path of duty and that of selfishness. This truth has been expressed in the statement that the right and lefthand paths follow the same course in their beginnings. Harmonious, even, balanced development is what Theosophy inculcates. It is possible that, in seeking to cultivate certain features of our character, we may neglect other features that are more important, and thus achieve a top-heavy lop-sided development that will prove a hindrance rather than a help. It would be futile for a man to try and develop muscle if his arteries and breathing apparatus were defective; his muscular system would merely pull his constitution to pieces. Some men develop their mental powers in advance of their bodily health, and end by losing both. Even though the bodily powers should be developed evenly, and the mental powers also, and there should be a proper balance between the two - still the moral nature might be deficient, and the result would be an accomplished villain or a selfish genius. All sides of the nature must be developed; and the moral character most of all, because this is the main interest of the Theosophists, and because the moral character is the center of stability around which all else moves. When we see announcements about the cultivation of will-power and concentration, it is generally personal qualities that are referred to, and morality and character are not considered at all. Obviously Theosophy can have no interest in teaching people in general how to succeed merely selfishly in their business or how to acquire power merely to influence for selfish ends other people. The contrary is true - that Theosophy would naturally discourage such a course, as being likely to promote that selfishness that is the chief obstacle against which Theosophy strives. The case of the advertisements offering to teach concentration and will-power for purely personal ends is an extreme; and in considering other cases of self-culture, we must bear in mind that there are many shades and degrees, making it difficult to lay down a general rule. But the question of motive enters into all cases as the really important touchstone of their value. An illustration may be of service here, to show the difference between selfdevelopment when it is done in a solitary and personal manner, and when it is done in a spirit of fellowship. A man may fasten up an apparatus of strings and pulleys on his bedroom wall, for the purpose of developing his muscles by pulling, or he may lie on his back on the floor and kick his legs in the air; but yet, if he is asked to turn out of doors before breakfast and give his aid to some effort for the common good, wherein others are taking part, he may find himself a most inefficient recruit with a strong instinctual spirit of rebellion incarnate in all his joints. This proves that personal inclination and judgment are not altogether trustworthy guides in physical development, as they omit many things which a whole-hearted effort for the common good brings out. Again, a man may have the power of doing excellent work as long

as he works alone, but find himself unable to work harmoniously in co-operation with other people; and here again we have incomplete, lop-sided development. Applying these illustrations, we find that any kind of self-development may labor under the same fault of solitariness, and thus result in rendering the individual cranky and narrow and one-sided. Keeping in mind the question with which we started, we repeat that Theosophy favors self-culture in so far as this term covers what is conducive to the ends which a Theosophist must have in view; and that if, in following any path which seems to be a path of self-culture, the Theosophist finds that he is being diverted from his main road, then he will naturally forsake that bypath. This, of course, is but an instance of the familiar situation wherein some lesser and private aim interferes with the pursuance of a larger and co-operative aim. A Theosophist residing among a large group of colleagues engaged in work such as is carried on at the International Theosophical Headquarters, would not find his circumstances favorable to the pursuance of such a bypath of solitary self-culture, as he would thereby isolate himself from the active work and from sympathetic association with his co-workers. But he would find no check whatever, but great encouragement rather, for such self-culture as serves to give self-mastery and efficiency as a worker in the Theosophical cause. Thus it is clear that self-culture is a colorless term which derives its meaning from the motive that inspires it - whether a personal desire or ambition, or whether a wish to become a worker for Theosophy. A good Theosophist has no desire to be able to swallow a towel and bring it up again, like some fakirs in India, who are not otherwise particularly holy or useful; nor would the ability to stand unflinching while a match burns on his bare arm be considered serviceable in itself, so long as this fortitude was accompanied by human frailties of a much more serious nature. The power to control others would be useless, because Theosophy discountenances any such interference with another's free will; and no doubt there are Theosophists who find that they have already too much power to interfere with others, and who are trying to get rid of some of it. The getting of money by the exercise of secret mental powers over weaker and trusting natures would be considered (as it in fact is) as an act of black magic, fraught with much trouble and hindrance to the operator himself. It is undoubtedly the experience of some people that systems of bodily self-culture, apparently quite harmless or even beneficial, may in certain cases defeat their own object by causing the defects against which they are directed to reappear elsewhere and in some other form. To try and save energy by economizing the movements of the body and practising a sort of lounging, may result in damming up a waste-pipe for nervousness, and thus making the person more nervous than before. People may say, "Power through repose"; but it is conceivable that I may find more repose in walking about than in sitting still; while there may be cases in which a pickax or a tennis racket will be found conducive to the kind of repose desired by the jaded nerves. In this case, what is called 'relaxation' - flopping into an armchair and imagining yourself to be a wet rag - would be hard work, exhausting to the nerves. Yet this is not intended to disparage the method altogether; it is merely a way of saying that even the best medicines are not serviceable in each and every possible case. It was said just above that the term 'self-culture' is colorless in itself, and derives its color from the motive that inspires it. But this is true only when the word 'self' is used in the ordinary vague way. Theosophy bases much of its teachings on the distinction between Self and self. The latter - spelt with a small initial - applies to the personal self, which is regarded as an illusion; the former - spelt with a capital initial - designates the true Self. Thus true Selfculture means the cultivation of the real Self, and therefore implies the subordination of the fictitious self (or rather, selves). In other words, Self-culture becomes synonymous with Spiritual culture and implies self-sacrifice and the practice of the 'fruits of the Spirit' as these are defined in the Christian Bible (Galatians). It is said that "he who works for self, works for

disappointment;" and the reason is that he pursues that which is transitory and local, instead of that which is permanent and universal; wherefore the invariable law of change leaves him stranded. It is the real Self, immortal throughout the cycle of rebirths, who is the actual liver of the life; and its purposes override the fleeting desires and ambitions of the false selves which from time to time occupy the stage of our life's drama, and which masquerade before our deluded fancy as the real Self. If self-culture means the development of any one of these passing and limited phases, then we must stand ready to abandon such self-culture at any moment when the interests of our per-manent nature demand. Both individuals and communities pursue their goal not by sailing straight before the wind, but by a process of tacking, which leads them, now to the left, now to the right, of their course. And each new tack, necessary at first, ends by carrying the ship too far to one side, and thus necessitates a tack to the other quarter. A veering in the direction of individualism and the assertion of personal rights can be traced in recent history, and is manifested in utilitarian philosophies and in a type of religion which emphasizes personal holiness and personal salvation. But still more recently a reaction has set in; and similar alternating phases are traceable in individual life-histories. The desire for self-culture is associated specially with the age of youth; while a more advanced age is apt to bring with it a realization that these alms do not constitute the real object of life, but are merely subordinate and subsidiary thereto. Some people perhaps are disappointed when this realization comes; but wiser and stronger natures accept the fact and apply the right interpretation. Though our ambitions and loves may seem to have failed, the apparent failure is due only to our mistake in regarding them as ends instead of means; in truth they should be regarded as successes, in that they have fulfilled their real purpose - that of providing a temporary experi-ence, or of conducting us along particular bends in the road of our life. The man who has 'made himself' by assiduous devotion to a utilitarian policy, but who finds himself in his old-age equipped with a starved nature that cuts him off from many of the amenities of social life, is often held up as a type and an example. In the larger field of view compassed by Theosophy, extremer cases of this type may be discerned. It is possible to cultivate to excess, not merely the faculties that win material prosperity, but also many that are usually called virtues; and thus to become a solitary saint or a man sitting aloft on the tower of his own perfections. And when the fact of Reincarnation is taken into account, we are enabled to see how a character may pursue paths of self-culture through successive lives until an extremely self-centered and unsocial type is produced. Further, the path of personal self-culture leads on into the realms of the occult towards the goal of the sorcerer and black magician - an individual who has mastered some of the forces of his lower nature, not by subordinating them to the higher nature, but by intensifying the personal will. This, the 'lefthand' path, must either bring great trouble when it is abandoned and the work of undoing begins; or, if obstinately clung to, can end only in Spiritual death, as with Margrave in Bulwer Lytton's A Strange Story. What shall be said of what is broadly known as 'New Thought'? Here again it is impossible to lay down a definite ruling. Breakfast foods have not an, absolute value; they are indicated in particular cases. Thorough mastication of food is good, but there are other roads to heaven. One man's meat is another man's poison; and what is one man's meat today may be the same man's poison tomorrow. 'New Thought' may give a man a leg up just when he needs it. Also it may lead him far astray. Possibly it may tend to a state of selfsatisfaction, of a rather hide-bound and impervious kind, likely to prove troublesome when the man tries to escape from it. Let us apply the touchstone: is the satisfaction of the personal self the chief aim? Do we say that, by helping ourself, we shall be enabled to help others; or

do we say that, by helping others, we shall help ourself? If there is risk of accentuating the personal self at the expense of our finer nature, we are on the wrong track. A time may come when we shall yearn to abandon all our perfections and become a man among men. Some people find themselves already endowed with an acquired propensity to personal (or selfish) self-culture, which stands in their way; others again may really need some true self-culture; there is no rule for all; the touchstone must be applied. The worst thing a man can do for himself is to try and make occult powers subservient to personal desire. And this applies even to cases where the personal desire is latent and not manifest to the man himself. In fact it applies to the case of the well-intentioned but ignorant and inexperienced man. Hence the indiscriminate practice of 'concentration,' 'will-culture,' etc., is fraught with such risk that it is always the subject of disapproval and warnings in Theosophical teachings. Its effect is to intensify the forces of desire in our lower nature, and to awaken other forces of desire that were dormant; and thus the experlimenter is thrown off his balance. The instances of this are numerous and should serve as warnings. This is not self-culture; it is lop-sided developinent. It must either fail disastrously or else start the practitioner on the left-hand path. William Q. Judge, the successor of H.P. Blavatsky as Leader of the Theosophical Society, has dealt with this in his pamphlet, "The Culture of Concentration" and H.P. Blavatsky has treated it in "Occultism and the Occult Arts." Any system of self-culture that leads in this direction must be viewed with disfavor. (Vol. 13, pp. 145-49) "The disciple who has the power of entrance, and is strong enough to pass each barrier, will, when the divine message comes to his spirit, forget himself utterly in the new consciousness which falls on him. If this lofty contact can really rouse him, he becomes as one of the divine in his desire to give rather than to take, in his wish to help rather than be helped, in his resolution to feed the hungry rather than take manna from Heaven himself. His nature is transformed, and the selfishness which prompts men's actions in ordinary life suddenly deserts him." - Light on the Path -------------The Temple of Life - W. A. Dunn Perhaps the least understood and most abused part of human nature is the body. It has been variously styled: "The temple of God," "This muddy vesture of decay," and a host of other expressions tending more or less to one or the other of these extremes. The emphasis usually given of the "Ills the flesh is heir to" has tended to obscure the opposite truth of "physical regeneration," with all its attendant blessings of power to function spiritually, in proportion to the purification attained. It is a strange incongruity, that while we never blame a piece of good machinery for faults committed by an incapable workman in charge of it, we yet attribute to the body conditions which entirely proceed from the use to which it has been subjected. It is an obvious fact that physical habits are but the perpetuations of original impulses of thought and desire along the exact lines in which the habits continue to move. Just as fire continues its "habit" of burning the particular material which has been ignited, so are particular bodily conditions aroused by the igniting power of thought and

desire, which conditions tend to continue of themselves until eradicated by some purifying process. Now when the spiritual forces of life elicit response from the heart, the entry of this new element into the personal consciousness gives the light by which former habits are seen as false and limiting. The unfortunate tendency then arises to blame the body and its functions for the bundle of obstructing habits it has given birth to by the forces of desire and thought which the occupant of the body originated therein. As well say that a plot of good land is responsible for inferior crops, the seeds of which were planted by an ignorant agriculturist. When a farmer hears "good tidings" of a better mode of farming, he does not blame his land for having grown the bad stock he formerly planted; on the contrary, rectifies his mode of thought and action, in full faith that his land will nurture and yield the better crops he proposes to plant. Applied to human nature, the truth underlying this picture seems apparent. The body itself, like the primeval soil of the earth, is only negatively responsible for the physical conditions the mind is bound up with when it first awakens to a truer vision of life. Unless it is clearly recognized that the physical tabernacle enshrines powers to function along lines of the highest spirituality - the misguided mind will tend to look outside itself for help which never comes, and regard its body as an inferior principle. Before the farmer plants his new crops, he first clears the ground of its weeds and stubble - without such thought of preparation he will either condemn the future harvest, if sown on unfilled soil, or remain a mere observer of other peoples' fields. This illustration suggests that all failure to realize the aspirations of the Soul lies at the door of conduct in all its aspects. If former habits of life are permitted to retain hold over the physical organism, the highest aspirations must become blighted for lack of soil wherein to take root. The forces of personal life (as contrasted with aspirations of a higher nature) have a tremendous advantage in that they are already in possession of the physical energies, whereas the ideals of the Soul are still, as it were, "in the air," unable to enter the stream of life because their rightful places are already occupied by "thieves and money-changers." When these facts are pondered upon, the rightful place of the body as the soil upon which all harvests of human experience are sown and reaped, becomes clear. The stubble of past harvests and of present growing crops are in possession, it is true, but so also is the primeval soil, irrigated by the pure waters of the heart - richly present to nurture the seeds of spiritual existence after the soil has been cleared of its encumbrances and tilled by the action of pure desire and thought. The Spiritual Will, which by determined effort, readjusts the chaos created by the thoughtless personality, is then enabled to enter its own house and become one with nature - as epitomized in the purified physical body. (Vol. 9, pp. 127-8) ---------------------The Secret - Francis Dana The workman wrought for himself alone And shaped his fancy in marble stone; Strangely hewn to his mood and whim, Precious and perfect it seemed, to him: But the master saw it and turned away

Bitterly smiling, as who should say, "Here may be genius, my son, no doubt, But only a genius could find it out." The workman wrought, with a sadder face, A nobler image of wondrous grace, Subtly lovely in limb and line, Blest with the touch of the gift divine: But the master sighed, as he held his hand, "To us 'tis given to understand. But what is here for the throng below Our little brothers who do not know?" The workman summoned his wit and will, And made a figure with pleasing skill, Set it up where the world might gaze, And reveled deep in the people's praise: But the master frowned as he said, "My son, Worse than this may never be done. You have mocked the gift of the gods on high For the base delight of the vulgar eye!" The workman toiled in sorrow and shame, Forgot himself and his hope and fame, Working for nothing but work alone, And the master said, "You have done your part." But the people wondered and wept and smiled, Youth and elder, woman and child; And the thing he fashioned was scarce his own: "The simple truth is the goal of art." - The Youth's Companion (Vol. 13, p. 285) ---------------------The Third Eye: Ancient Races and Continents - H. Travers The cyclic evolution of human races, submerged continents that were once dry land on which humanity flourished, the interpretation of the geological record, the possession by some of the ancient races of faculties which are not manifested in present-day humanity, and the relation of the animal kingdom to man - these are some of the topics which have to be studied in connection with each other by the student who would understand the teachings about the earth and man, about past ages and universal evolution, which are outlined by H.P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine. Geologists divide the past history of the earth into periods in accordance with the

thicknesses and the character of the sedimentary deposits which they study. These periods are necessarily very great in duration compared with any figures which our meager knowledge of history has accustomed us to assign to the duration of human races; but the finding of fossil animals and plants in the rocks has compelled us to admit that the lower kingdoms of nature flourished in those remote times. Among the plant and animal remains, too, we observe a progressive scale of forms, from the simple organisms that flourished in Palaeozoic times to the complex types of the later strata; and this fact has been regarded as supporting the broad conception of evolution, in accordance with which the more complex types are held to have been derived from the more simple. Finally, since this theory of evolution has sought to regard man as merely the highest point in the scale of zoological evolution, the idea that man appeared on earth for the first time in geological eras that were comparatively recent seems reasonable. The evolution of man is a fact, but it is not accomplished in the way imagined by the theorists, nor has it followed the same course. The facts prove conclusively that the aboriginal races at present on the earth are not evolving in the way in which the evolutionary theories would seem to require that they should be, but that they are retrogressing. The patent fact is that these peoples are the remnants of races that were once civilized, and that their greatness lies in their memories and not in their prospects. As races, they are passing away, their life-cycles nearly over; and the evolution of the human Egos tenanting the individual bodies must be achieved by reincarnation in more advanced races. Observation (when unencumbered by speculation) also teaches us that the progress of humanity is brought about by influence, instruction, and example communicated by more accomplished people; and to this must be added the potent effect of the incarnating souls of great men from the past - whereby is explained the emergence of great geniuses and leaders. Conformably to these ideas, then, we should expect to find, in the records of the past, evidence that great civilizations have flourished and have handed down their culture from race to race, just as we ourselves have built up our own civilization upon what we have recovered from the ancient Orient, from the ancient Levant, and from every available source. We should not expect to find any evidence that our culture has proceeded from savagery by a mere process of spontaneous evolution, though we might look for the signs that cultured races have come over and taught our rude forebears, mingling their blood and instilling their culture and living force. And truly this is just what the records do prove, once we can rid our minds of preconceived theories and avoid regarding human history from a point of view exclusively biological or exclusively anything else. As to fossil evidence of the existence of man in remote geological ages, there can be no doubt that it will be forthcoming as soon as we find our minds disposed to receive it favorably and to interpret it without prejudice. So far the tendency among anthropologists has been to minimize the value of the evidence as much as possible and to use every endeavor to make it support preformed ideas as to what ought to be found. It is essential also to bear in mind that fossil remains in general constitute but a very small proportion of the number of organisms of their kind that actually lived and died - a fact which is seen even more clearly when we contrast the remains of the higher animals with those of such types as the Mollusks. Human bones are of perishable material, nor does man secrete a hard shell. Further, man has probably not at any time been wont to lie down and die in the mud, and have other men come and attach themselves to his skeleton, thus building a human coral reef; and in fact his favorite mode of disposing of his remains has been to burn them. These considerations alone are surely enough to account for the infrequency of human fossils, as also for the circumstance that such as are most often found are those of low type, being the luckless remains of poor wights that have somehow missed their funerary dues. Finally we may point

out that the remains of many of the people considered in the present writing lie where they cannot easily be gotten at, unless by some submarine Challenger expedition of the future. An appreciation of the Theosophical view of human history relieves us of the supposed necessity for regarding man as a recent product of evolution; hence no theories will be upset by any proofs that may be forthcoming of his immense antiquity - even as a civilized being. At this point it becomes necessary to state that the Theosophical view of evolution, being greatly more comprehensive than those of contemporary scientific opinion, is under no obligation to regard organic life as having pursued a course as simple and uniform as that imagined by the theorists. Like all Nature's works, the course of evolution is complex, varied, and involved to a marvelous degree; and what has so far been discovered is evidently but a few fragments that it is difficult to piece together in their proper places in the puzzle, for want of so many missing pieces. Moreover, an important exception has to be made in favor of man, who is far more than a product of zoological evolution, being separated from the animals by a gap wider and far more significant on account of his intellectual and spiritual nature, than those which sunder animal from plant and plant from stone. Theosophy, finding itself quite incompetent to shut up its mind in compartments, and to study man from an exclusively biological point of view, or in any other exclusive way whatever, is bound to take into its calculations the fact that man is a being endowed with the marvelous and unique faculty of self-consciousness and all which this implies. And, since self-consciousness is not evolved or produced in any way by gradual stages from animal consciousness, we must seek the source of this faculty elsewhere. It has been, in short, communicated, and has to be regarded as primal, underived, an essential part of the primordial Cosmic Soul. Thus, if we take this view, we shall find no difficulty in the way of regarding man as a Soul whose antiquity is illimitable; and the question of his earliest appearance on this earth assumes an entirely different aspect. For, instead of trying to trace his evolution zoologically from the animal kingdom, we may expect to regard man as descending rather than ascending, and as having assumed the physical condition, in which we now find him, at some epoch, prior to which he was not physical. This is in fact the teaching in The Secret Doctrine. Certain early races of men were not physical, and man has, as it were, solidified or condensed, or put on "coats of skin," as the Jewish allegory has it. According to these teachings we have a history of humanity on a scale commensurate with that of the geological ages. Now it is recognized by geologists that certain areas now beneath the ocean were once dry land, and likewise that most of the present dry land has been at one time or another below the sea. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the sunken continents were the home of past great Races of humanity. The two most recent of these continents are those of Atlantis and Lemuria, the former name being taken from Plato and the latter having been adopted by A.R. Wallace. On these continents flourished respectively the Fourth and Third Root-Races of humanity - our own Root-Race being the Fifth. The Atlantis spoken of by Plato in his account of the disclosures made to Solon by Egyptian priests, was merely the last surviving island of the great continent which itself had sunk long before. To the great Atlantean humanity is due much of the mysterious culture whose remains were inherited by races that belonged to the Fifth Root-Race, and which has been preserved in part in the ruins of Central and South America, as well as in many other places. Lemuria had its vast extent in the southern ocean; and when it sank, it contributed fauna and flora both to Australasia and to the southerly peninsulas of the great continents, as naturalists can testify by the remarkable analogies between these faunas. Also, certain types became shut up in the islands of the southern ocean and are now found in these parts only. New Zealand and Australia are relics and memorials of Lemuria, both in fauna and flora and in their aboriginal humanity.

In connection with this, we read lately that a lecturer described the most ancient living reptile - that called by the Maoris the tuatara, to which science, perpetuating some modern patronymic, has given the name Hatteria punctata, or Sphenodon Punctata. It is a sort of lizard, of which the male is two feet or more in length and the female about half that size. It is the sole surviving member of the whole group of Rhynchocephalia, and is described as an almost ideally generalized type of reptile. The nearest ally is a fossil form in the Jurassic rocks of Germany. Thus it may be described as a surviving fossil, and in order to find anything structurally like it we must go back to quite early geological times. It combines in many respects the peculiarities of both the crocodiles and the turtles. But the most interesting thing about this Sphenodon or Hatteria is that it presents in a remarkable degree a peculiarity noticeable in some animals, particularly the lower orders of the vertebrata, of having a third eye, now atrophied, but necessarily active in its origin. To quote from The Secret Doctrine: "It was thought, at first, that it was no more than the prolongation of the brain ending with a small protuberance, called epiphysis, a little bone separated from the main bone by a cartilage, and found in every animal. But it was soon found to be more than this. It offered as its development and anatomical structure showed - such an analogy with that of the eye, that it was found impossible to see in it anything else. There were and are palaeontologists who feel convinced to this day that this 'third eye' has functioned in its origin, and they are certainly right." (II, 296) It is necessary here to state another teaching of The Secret Doctrine, which has a most important bearing on evolution and on the relation of the animals to man. Reasoning from the fact of the many analogies found between the structure of man and of the animals, and taking into account the fact that the human foetus goes through a set of transformations like the succession of types in the animal kingdom, we can infer nothing definite unless we establish other premisses. Such analogy does not of itself imply derivation of one form from another. If such derivation is a fact, it may or may not have been accomplished by the ordinary physical processes of reproduction. And the derivation may have proceeded from the animal to the man or from the man to the animal. The Secret Doctrine definitely states that, in this Round, (that is, in the present great cycle of evolution) man preceded the mammals. (Vol. II, p. 180) The Bible, by the way, represents Adam as being created before the animals. The animals, further, are created on models furnished by man himself, and use up some of his cast-off physical and psychic materials. It is easy to understand, in the light of this teaching, why the animals present such resemblances to man, both physically and in character. Also, one would like to know what becomes of certain passions and tendencies which man generates, and which become at last so gross and intense that they could no longer be satisfied in a human form. Is it not reasonable to suppose that such tendencies are worked out harmlessly in the animal kingdom, where they are free from that association with intellect and selfconsciousness which makes all the difference between a horrible vice and a mere instinct? Thus we see around us the incarnations of our own thoughts and passions, good, bad, and indifferent. But the immediate bearing of this teaching is that it enables us to make an important inference with regard to the lizard and his third eye. If such a structure is found in animals, may we not look for its analog in man? The eyes in the human embryo grow from within outwards, originating in the brain, and not, as in insects and cuttlefish, being a part of the epidermis. Our mammalian ancestors, suggests an eminent zoologist quoted by H.P. Blavatsky, may have been transparent - which would, of course, enabled them to use their eye while yet it was a wholly internal organ. And indeed, according to the teachings, there

was a time when man and all the animals were transparent. This need not surprise anyone who believes in evolution, for it would be a strange thing if matter itself were not subject to evolution, and consequently different in its properties in those remote ages from what it is today. It was subsequent to this transparent stage that man "fell," the event known as the separation of the sexes took place, and man (and with him the animals) became grosser and acquired "coats of skin." * -----------* Hatteria punctata is mentioned in the books on reptiles as having no copulatory organs, and as being unique among its class in this respect. What bearing this may have on the subject we are not prepared to say; but it is suggestive in view of the fact that man lost his inner sight through a certain physical degeneration which animalized him. ------------The early Race of mankind here spoken of was endowed with a power of inner sight, having a corresponding sense-organ, which we refer to under the name of "Third Eye." The various myths of Cyclopes will be recalled in this connection, as also the frequency of the mark in the center of the forehead in representations of Buddhas and other divine personages. The putting out of the eye of the Cyclops by Ulysses may have symbolized the supersession of this spiritual vision by cunning, or the loss of the third eye through the abuse of human faculties. It should be carefully noted that the inner sight spoken of as pertaining to the third eye is not what is ordinarily understood as clairvoyance or astral vision, but true discernment, whose use cannot be dissociated from absolute purity of mind, heart, and body. But the animal of those days did not have a third eye in the same sense as the man. In the animal the structure, but not the function, was copied, and found its analog in an internal eye that was the organ of physical sight. With the densifying of the body the eyes have become external, and two instead of one - another fact pregnant with meaning; our eye is no longer "single," we see double; and duality pervades our entire mental life, giving rise to irresolvable dilemmas and to irreconcilable differences of opinion. This ancient lizard, then, unique and lonely survivor of a multitudinous race now represented solely by its ancestral portraits hung in the galleries which the geologist excavates, stands as our reminder of our own most glorious past. And even the familiar lizard of many parts of America has in the center of its forehead the same calloused lump. It is indeed inspiring to reflect thus upon our past and upon the latent faculties within us, which once were active but now are usually dormant. For let it be remembered that Paradise Lost has its sequel, and that the "curse" on man was accompanied by a promise. Man was endowed with Free-will, and abused the privilege, as he still does; but the gift carries with it its own redemptive power, and man shall win through to greater heights. (Vol. 9, pp. 335-41) ---------------Three Essays - Drych Ail Cibddar (Kenneth Morris) I. "Of Moral Evil and of Good"

"One impulse from the vernal wood Can teach us more of man, Of moral evil and of good Than all the sermons can." So much the worse for the sermons; 'tis a crushing indictment of them. Of man, indeed, the woods do have something to say; but not, I think, of moral good and evil; and for this reason: I have to arrange all that for myself, or they will refuse to notice me at all. The great sky-roofed world holds aloof from him who has followed evil wittingly. I go into the woods, or on the seashore, or where I can see the mountains, as they say 'with some matter on my conscience' and am to observe an ugly silence on these my brothers: brothers for the nonce no more, for I am exiled out of the Worlds of Beauty and may hold no intercourse with anything divine. The mountains turn their backs on me; I can see blueness and sky above, but not the heavens; the trees have become uncommunicative, and will vouchsafe me no news of their dreaming. I guess they know nothing of my transgression; having it not in them at all to conceive of evil: their nature is not moral; they are not cognizant of our inward warfares and tribulations. But I think they wonder why it is that, instead of a bright kindred spark of eternity: a jolly, silent, understanding and understandable fellow: this grey, uncomfortable nothingness has come out to them, to whom no word can be spoken in any language known. Yesterday the mountains whispered to me: Mystery, mystery! and I answered back to them: Mystery, as kingly as your own! - they knew that I said it, and were well pleased to find their wisdom echoed and shared. The sea said: Mystery, and boundless exultation! and I answered with like words, having it in my heart to know and say them. As for the trees, what they muttered was: Silence, wisdom, mystery! and I gave them happily the countersign: Mystery, wisdom, silence! and heard their laughter of assent, and had enjoyment of their fellowship. Going on then to duties at my desk I found that it was not I who was doing these, but I and the Spirit of the Mountains, the Trees, and the Sea. II. Pride and Scorn The proud man is a fool; consider what blasphemy he does, when with a curl of the lip or a frigid tone in the voice, he suddenly wounds or puts another out of confidence. We talk of the lofty tower, up which the haughty fool has climbed; unluckily he may do damnedlier than abide there in prideful solitude, when he uses his tower as a vantage ground from which to shoot shafts at the passers by. Those who have real towers of strength, built up of service rendered: those who live in fortresses of the Soul: look only for occasions to help; they are notorious for large simplicity, and grandly humble; and shine like the beneficent sun on all timid and budding aspiration and on the fallen that would rise. 'He does not suffer fools gladly,' we say; but he does, if he has no profound annoyance from himself. Because of some clearness in common thinking, or some deftness with his hands to work, he gives himself leave to condemn and wound unmercifully the multitude that fumble and strive. But it is no cynicism to say that men are mostly fools: given the right eye for it, or the right point of vision, you can see almost any man, short of an Adept, as a fool. There is some spot undefended, that we do not face towards and have not noticed; he who catches sight of us there will see a pretty spectacle. But there is also, commonly, another place, where we have reared up some noble pillars and pinnacles; there, he who has eyes to see may catch at least glimpses of the grandeur of the Human Soul. What else is worth seeing? what else is for pride and comfort and beacon to the race? Go about, you who

will, prying only for men's sewers and dustbins; think still, if you must, that because you are spiteful-cynical there shall be no more gods and heroes! You pride yourself on nothing but a kind of blindness, a diseased and distorted vision. Man is a divine Soul; that is the first fact to be taken for granted. The second is that he has in him the gates of hell, and may draw upon all the resources of evil. Do not foolishly magnify, nor wickedly condemn him; but believe that your thought of him is evoking the angels or the hellions. We are no great matter till we have come to some knowledge of the evil in ourselves: till we have faced the hostility of hell, and felt the sting of its inflictions. To think slightingly of another, because those armies are arrayed against him, and perhaps prevailing, is to put yourself in alliance with them against the Soul of the man; and the greater condemnation is on you. And if you, too, are fighting that battle within, will you subscribe to the doctrine that a man is the hell in him? Will you say that you are the evil, and not the Soul who opposes it? The scornful man pours his contempt on the wicked: that is, the souls who are worsted in the conflict with evil; or on the stupid, who have not achieved sending down such a ray as may illuminate their minds. In either case he insults the Soul; whose coadjuvant is it our place to be, not its blasphemer. That it should have established as much mastery as it has, upon the treachery and slime of this chaos-cosmos in which it is incarnate, is a marvel we can only comprehend when we think of the long aeons of its effort; but for which it would be to wonder, not that hands are clumsy and brains dull, but that brute matter should register at all any clear divine thought, or should move at all in obedience to motions of the Spirit. A long, slow march towards victory is going forward; should we not be content to add our weight to its impetus? Oh but proud man, proud man: though you base your pride on miracles of achievement: though you are extremely clever, and of great gifts and parts: though you have unmeasured genius both in thought and action: you do not play your part! You are opposing the on-movement of the Divine! When you made the fool shrink within himself, and convicted him of the hopelessness of his folly (that raking sneer did it): when you made that man, severely wounded by evil, feel so keenly that he was the evil that had wounded him, and had better cease fighting, and go down: I do not doubt you were requisitioning from Karma lives of brainless stupidity and abject vice! Because it is sympathy, compassion, that is the final mark of a man, and the crown-jewel of human attainment; not cleverness of any sort, which is a kind of evil, except in the hands of the compassionate. III. Criticism I have only my brain-mind with which to criticize you, brother; and am to consider now how fit is this instrument for the work. You came into this world out of infinity; the cycles of human history are behind you, in which there was time for you to have lived more lives than this mind of mine has lived minutes. I behold two or three threads of the rainbow pattern in which you are woven; am I not therefore well qualified to call you weakling, knave, or fool? Let us say you are nothing but what your heredity has made you; then if I should use mathematics, and count up the sum of your ancestors since Atlantis sank - nay, since Rome fell but the other day - I should find the figures stupendous. Each one of your forebears would have lived his twenty to seventy years, in all the days whereof he was weaving something for you; if you are nothing but what those millions made you, how infinitely varied you must be! You cannot escape to have in you heroes and martyrs and philosophers, poets, hangmen and their victims, fallen men and women belike: every element that makes up humanity. What I saw in you yesterday, or this morning, appeared to me cowardly, lacking candor, uncharitable;

I am inclined now to think it may have been the fall of a Roland, the glorious failure of a hero. But in truth I know you are much more than the child of those long generations; since I have seen that in you which is not of this world, nor compounded of any faults or virtues. Eternity it is: I cannot conceive but that some part of you is older than these seas and mountains, older than the world, than this dragon pageantry of heaven. From behind all your characteristics, something looks out at me which reminds me a little of the Sphinx; more, of a dark blue night of stars. As I behold everlasting motion in the sea, I guess at the sources of everlasting motion in you; as I sense indestructibility in the pleroma, I feel the archeus of it in you; deeper than 'this intellectual being,' far underlying 'these thoughts that wander through eternity.' Shall not this be fulfilled of its destinies, which have been since before the world began? You are too august for my criticism, brother; I grow somewhat frightened when I contemplate what awful forces are in motion.... what a tremendous epic is a man. They are right in saying that the Son of God came into the flesh, Which is the light of every man that cometh into the world. I cannot, taking thought upon it, conceive of you otherwise than as that! You are the hero of the long drama of the Incarnations, who have contended against the heredities of a thousand lives; there is no phase of human existence, thought, action, character, the seeds of which are not in you; and yours is the titanic enterprise of molding all to divine ends. If I saw one thread slip from your fingers, I did not see the million threads you hold. If I saw one weed in your garden, I did not see the thousand acres filled with bloom. All those fields are yours; heaven knows what myriad others may be mine. If that part of your territory which I pass daily is weedy, I am convinced, there are vast landscapes in my own territory, sown thick with tares; and I have never discovered them yet. I should have ventured far into them, I think, and made gardens of a few, had I never cast presumptuous eyes on your domain. In me also is the Eternal; but That criticizes no man: knowing the task It has undertaken in all, and what ages it needs for fulfilment, and what difficulties lie in the way. No: I have only a brain-mind wherewith to criticize you; and it is a thing compounded of the failings of lives and generations, with little vision you could call better than sheer blindness: an acre that I am to weed; not a weapon I am to use against God in you. What else is in me and wiser is not given to criticism. (Vol. 14, pp. 283-86) ---------------------The Triple Man - H. Coryn, M.D. (The members of a California medical association recently visited the Raja-Yoga College, founded by Katherine Tingley at the International Theosophical Headquarters on Point Loma. The following is part of an address of reception from one of the resident physicians.) It was one of Mme. Katherine Tingley's objects in the founding of this institution to show the power of a rounded and completely balanced education to develop among the children here under her care a unique perfection of health. As men who are familiar with the vital statistics of the day, you will know that whilst our

medical science has lengthened the average span of life, this lengthening is mainly due to increased knowledge of the diseases of childhood and of the methods of warding off and treating them; but that in spite of all we can do, the diseases peculiar to middle and old age are increasing the number of their victims and steadily extending themselves back to the earlier periods of life. In other words the people's hold on life is secretly lessening underneath the deceptive lengthening of life. Katherine Tingley desired to show a new way of health through a balanced education which should call out the powers of all parts of the child's nature, holding that only in the cooperation of all the powers could secure foundations of complete health and long life be laid. The physical, mental, and spiritual must evolve together for mutual perfection. (1) The physical life is here developed to the full. The climate permits of open-air work and play all the year round. Games, drills, exercises and gardening are part of the daily program. And the dietary is carefully studied and under constant medical supervision. (2) In healthy bodies the minds of the children are alert and eager, and as fast as they awaken are applied by carefully trained teachers to every department of modern education, singing and instrumental music being specially considered. (3) But beyond the physical and mental the children are from the first awakened to recognize the moral duality of their own natures - the spiritual as the controlling higher, and the wayward personal as that which is to be controlled. They are steadily taught to recognize this fact of conflict between the two, and in that early recognition of the real existence of the higher they learn to take sides with it in the conflict, and it becomes a more and more fully developed conscious element in their lives. It is Katherine Tingley's teaching that it is only by the full cooperation of this third element in human nature, the full letting of this into active life, that mind and body can come to their best. It is this highest aspect of our threefold life which gives the power of self-control, the power to resist the impulses whose so-often unrestrained gratification in the ordinary man gives us doctors the most of our work; and it is this which can come to the aid of and sustain the vitality when in the ordinary case it begins so prematurely to fail. Our life is threefold and each of the three requires the development of the others for its perfect functioning. And the spiritual, the controlling part, the seat of will, when it is fully awake in consciousness, when it is fully present as a part of the mind, gives awareness of immortality, keeps the vista open before the mind's eye in later years when ordinarily the thought of death would begin to cloud the horizon and to become one of the principal factors in depressing vitality and shortening life. The spiritual, in a word, keeps mind and hope and energy and will alive. It therefore gives power to resist disease, to extend the years, and to make old age a serene period of the richest ripening of consciousness. It is the application of this principle of threefold education, the full eliciting of the three great activity-forces of human nature, which constitutes the system called by Katherine Tingley Raja-Yoga, words meaning "Royal Union," union of the three. (Vol. 11, pp. 126-27) -------------------------------------

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