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- Lucifer, vol. 6, no. 31, March 1890, pp. 10-17
- Lucifer, vol. 6, no. 32, April 1890, pp. 114-118
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Title for references: Besant A. - Theosophy for the Profane
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THE question “What is Theosophy?” is often addressed to Theosophists, who – for lack of careful study or from general vagueness of mind – find themselves hard bestead to give an answer. The present paper is an attempt to throw into a popular form for non-Theosophists an answer in brief: because brief very imperfect; because popular very elementary; but not, I hope, therefore inaccurate or misleading. While intended for our non-Theosophical readers primarily, it may perhaps also serve some of our Theosophical ones, as suggesting fashions in which a hearing for the truths of our philosophy may be gained.
Theosophy, or Divine Wisdom, is a body of doctrine in philosophy, science, and ethics, wrought out by ages of patient and strenuous endeavour, by a brotherhood of students of various nationalities, who used every method – observation, experiment, meditation – to reach the truth, admitting no statement of fact into their records until it had been repeatedly verified by independent observers. This slowly accumulating body of doctrine has been handed down from generation to generation, guarded secretly through ages of persecution when knowledge was regarded as devilry, given out partly in allegory and fable and in this guise forming the basis of world-religions, and now, “breaking the silence of centuries”, coming forward to a world filled with the ruins of dead faiths, to be the bond of a Universal Brotherhood, the basis of a nobler ethic, the guide of a loftier Humanity.
In face of modern monotheism the name “Theosophy” is apt to convey an erroneous meaning. It connotes personality, limitation, the extra-natural. In the older days when the name had birth, it was not so. Then the many Gods were the personified aspects of the Kosmos; and when Zeus Pater was the sky, when Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, typified the collective creative, preservative, and destructive powers of Nature, when the veiled Isis was the mystery of the universe, it was natural enough to call the wisdom culled from Nature the wisdom of “the Gods”. That its hiero11phants did not fall into the blunder of limiting the Infinite, of personifying the Absolute, of circumscribing the Universal and Eternal Life, is obvious to any one who notes the names used to hint at the One Existence. But now that “God” is universally used to denote an extra-cosmic Deity, the word Theosophy misleads the casual enquirer, and it is regrettable that it is so bound up with the history of the “Wisdom-Religion” that change is impossible. “Divine” Wisdom really means only the sublimest wisdom, nature-wisdom, the wisdom which deals with the loftiest subjects attainable to human intelligence, and it is thus that “Theosophy” is translated by Theosophists.
Enquirers are often repelled at the outset by what appears to them the fantastic guise in which Theosophy is presented to them. The long and unfamiliar names frighten them, and they seem to need a new dictionary if they would understand Theosophical literature. The complaint is unreasonable: every science has its own terminology, created by itself to express with accuracy its own conceptions. The botanist, the astronomer, the geologist, needs his own scientific terms; androgynous endogens, multipinnate laminæ, prosenchymatous tissue, and other jawbreaking terms, may appal the timid student; but his more robust brother knows that this initial difficulty is but trifling, and that the trouble spent in mastering the terminology will be repaid a thousandfold by the greater accuracy of the scientific language. And so with Theosophy: English has not yet evolved the niceties of terms corresponding to the ideas that are to be acquired; the Sanscrit, used these thousands of years in subtle metaphysical disquisitions, has moulded the terms on the ideas, and the student must acquire the appropriate terminology in this, as in every other science. To jeer at the Theosophist because he does not call the Kamarupa the body, is as sensible as it would be to deride the geologist because he does not speak of the Archeopteryx as a sparrow.
It may, without exaggeration, be said, that Theosophy and Materialism stand face to face as mutually destructive theories of the universe, and that one or the other must be accepted by every thoughtful and scientific mind. When we come down to the bed-rock, only these two theories of life-evolution remain, and our election between them must depend on the value of the explanations they severally offer. Theosophy will be best grasped by the western mind if presented in comparison with Materialism, so that its agreements and disagreements therewith may be distinctly apprehended.
It is now many years since Feuerbach laid down the doctrine that only the sensible was the real. Science has been unable to develop along such line, and has embraced the opposite Kantian doctrine that we do not know the thing as it exists, but only as it impresses itself on us. We are organisms in a vast universe, touching it at certain points; our normal conception of the universe depends on the number of those points of 12contact – which we call senses – and would change if they changed. Imagine a person whose only active sense was touch, a person whose only active sense was sight, a person whose only active sense was smell, and a person whose only active sense was hearing, all confronted with a rose, and asked to describe it. No. 1 could give its shape and texture, No. 2 its shape and color, No. 3 its scent, while to No. 4 it would have no existence. But each one’s “rose” would be wholly different from the “rose” of the others, and none would realise that his neighbour was describing the object he had himself sensated. Only a person with all the four senses could synthesize the descriptions, and realise that each was describing the same object. We only know attributes, and only such attributes as are able to affect us. Those that do not affect us for us do not exist. We see the universe, so to speak, through five different windows, and the composition of the glass affects what we see: all that does not fall within the line of sight from one of these windows is to us non-existent, and that which does fall within it is distorted by the material through which we see it. Realising this, we understand that the universe is not limited by our knowledge of it, but that our perceptive ability limits our knowledge, and the acquiring a new sense would mean the opening to us of a new world.
Professor Crookes, F.R.S., has put the matter very well: “Those who assume – as is assumed by some popular writers – that we are now acquainted with all, or nearly all, or even with any assignable proportion, of the forces at work in the universe, show a limitation of conception which ought to be impossible in an age when the widening of the circle of our definite knowledge does but reveal the proportionately widening circle of our blank, absolute, indubitable, ignorance”. (“Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research”, Dec. 1889, p. 100.) The universe to us exists as perceived, and so the primary thing to us is consciousness, not matter. The primary and supreme certitude is Consciousness, the “I” that thinks; all else is matter of argument, matter of deduction.
Evolution – accepted by the Theosophist as by the Materialist, provided that the word be not narrowed simply to human origin from the anthropoid – implies the development of new powers in progressing races; as some rudimentary organs mark past stages, so do others presage future capabilities, and if man be on the arc of an ascending evolution, we must expect to find in him the germs, perhaps the unfolding buds, of powers hitherto unpossessed. A universe of unknown vastness; a Humanity with unfolding powers: what heights of knowledge, what glories of achievement, open out in endless vistas before the dazzled gaze!
For the building of the universe Materialism demands but two factors, Matter and Force. These it regards as separable in thought, but unseparated in fact. Matter, it says, exists in different states and in manifold modifications, but they are all reducible to the one conception – 13Matter. Force may act in many ways and assume varied forms, but they are all reducible to the one conception – Force. Out of and by this matter in motion the whole universe is builded; homogeneous and spread through space it once existed, circling, moving ever; moulding itself into atoms, aggregating into molecules, building worlds and systems of worlds, until “matter in motion” evolved the visible universe, and that mightiest of forces, the Will and Reason of self-conscious Man. “In Nature there is nothing great but Man; in Man there is nothing great but Mind.” And this Mind of Man is the crowning triumph of Force and Matter. Such is the last word of Materialism.
But Theosophy, opposing itself here to Materialism, demands that Mind shall be regarded as a primary factor in the universe, and builds the latter on a trinity instead of a duality of manifested existence. It teaches that Existence is One, but is manifested in three aspects, Purusha, Prakriti, and Mahat; Purusha is Spirit or – in the terminology of Western Science – Force; Prakriti is Matter, and Mahat Mind. Of Purusha-Prakriti is the substance of the visible and invisible universe, Mahat informing all. Purusha is as one pole of the magnet of the manifested, and Prakriti is as the other; all that lies between is dual, and whether the Purusha or the Prakriti aspect is the more apparent depends largely on the observer. Nothing exists which does not partake of both. Thus what seems to us grossest matter might, to other senses than ours, seem translucent or immaterial spirit; while the immaterial to us may be material to others. This the Materialist also would acknowledge, so that the chief question at issue at this point is the existence of the third factor Mind, as primary factor instead of as product. To this, as the crux of the dispute, let us address ourselves.
We cannot separate Mind from “Spirit Matter”, any more than the scientist can separate Force from Matter; but just as the Force-aspect or the Matter-aspect of a phenomenon can be brought into prominence, the other being thrown into the background, so can the Mind-aspect be rendered most apparent while the remaining duality is put back. If Mind be the product of Force and Matter it should grow with the growth of an organism, attain its zenith when that of the organism is reached, and weaken with its decay: if it be the product of Force and Matter it should be most active when they are in highest activity, and sink into passivity with their repose. If we can show that the first statement is not an accurate representation of the facts, while the second is exactly the reverse of the truth, we shall have gone far towards proving that Mind is a co-equal factor with, not a product of, Force and Matter.
1. Body and Mind do not grow, mature, exercise their greatest vigor, and decay, together. The senses are at their keenest in the young child, ere yet the mind can make the fullest use of them; they become less acute as youth passes into maturity and often fail while the mind is most active. The body develops in bulk and vigor up to the age of twenty-five, and is at its 14best from five and twenty to five and thirty; after thirty-five it begins to go down hill. The mind, on the contrary, has for its period of greatest activity the years from forty-five to sixty-five; it is then most fertile, most strong, most capable.[1] Sometimes it persists in vigor when the body is feeble from old age, burning brilliantly in its decaying receptacle. Can those which develop at such different rates be causally related? Can the mind at its strongest be the product of the body as it weakens towards old age?
2. The periods of activity and passivity of Body and Mind do not coincide. It is a marked and most significant fact that in order to obtain the fullest activity of the Mind we must render the Body passive, and physical lethargy may be made simultaneous with the most exalted exercise of mental functions. This fact may fitly be studied in three classes of phaenomena: (a) perception, a mental faculty, exercised apart from the organ of vision, and greatly increased by such separation in range and capacity; (b) paralysis of perception, with organ of vision in activity and object presented thereto; (c) perception of non-existent object, i.e., exercise of mental faculty when nothing is presented to the organ of vision. The study of one of these classes might wellnigh convince an unprejudiced enquirer; the study of all three must compel belief from the earnest seeker after truth.
(a) Under this class come all the phaenomena of clairvoyance: the facts here are so numerous and so well-authenticated that he who doubts the possibility of clairvoyance, is, as Schopenhauer said, “not to be called sceptical, but ignorant”. A couple of examples may serve as illustrations: Mme. Plantin was dying, and her daughter Mme. Lagandré, a clairvoyante, was thrown into the somnambulic condition: she then described the state of her mother’s right lung, heart, stomach, and liver; Mme. Plantin died on the following day, and a post-mortem examination was held on her body, conducted by MM. Cloquet and Pailloux, in the presence of Dr. Drousart, M. Moreau – secretary of the surgical section of the Royal Academy of Medicine, Paris – and Dr. Chapelain. The state of the organs was found to be exactly such as had been described by Mme. Lagandré.[2] Here it is obvious that the conditions of bodily vision were absent, and only two explanations are possible of the identity of the clairvoyante’s description with the facts discovered in the autopsy: either the clairvoyante really saw the internal organs, despite their opaque material envelope, or the well-known and eminent men of science entered into a scandalous conspiracy to deceive the public. Schelling, the German philosopher, gives a case that came under his own observation, in which a clairvoyante began to cry, and explained that “a death of a member of the family had taken place at a distance of 150 leagues. She added that the letter announcing the death was on its way. On awaking, she remembered nothing and was quite bright 15and cheerful, but when again hypnotised she again wept over the death. A week later, Schelling found her crying, with a letter beside her on the table, announcing the death, and on asking whether she had previously heard of his illness, she answered that she had heard no such news of him, and that the intelligence was quite unexpected.” [3] In this case we have the exercise of perception by the Mind at a distance unpassable by the bodily organs, annihilating space, as in the previous case opacity of matter was annihilated. Binet and Féré speak of the senses being “quickened to an extraordinary degree” under somnambulism, and in truth not only are the senses quickened but the mental faculties normally connected with them act under conditions in which the bodily senses are useless. The Theosophist contends that this exaltation of the mental functions – which increases in proportion to the passive condition of the body, and is at its highest when the body is lying in a trance, insensible to every external stimulus – is a fair experimental proof of the proposition that Mind is not a product of the physical organism, but is rather an independent entity, normally functioning through the organism, but cramped and confined by it.
(b) If a person be hypnotised, and it be suggested to him during the hypnotic trance that a certain person or thing is invisible, the suggestion will persist when the subject is awakened, and the object will be invisible and will remain so under all tests. On one occasion on which I was myself rendered invisible, I was sitting on a chair on the seat of which an envelope was lying: the person who had been hypnotised did not see me, but he saw the envelope on which I was sitting. Experiments of this kind, varied in all kinds of ways, have been performed over and over again at the Salpêtrière by Dr. Charcot and his colleagues, and the total paralysis of perception in connexion with selected objects has been repeatedly demonstrated. Since in all these cases the visual organ is in activity and reports faithfully on all objects except the forbidden one, it is clear that the inhibition is of the mental faculty not of the bodily function.
(c) Equally significant is perception of an invisible object, the vision of an object created by the will of the operator. “A subject was told there was a portrait on a piece of blank cardboard; when she awoke she saw the portrait, when the cardboard was turned round the portrait was reversed, and when the other side of the cardboard was shown nothing was seen, although these changes of position were made out of sight of the patient. Even more strange is it that such an imaginary portrait is seen magnified or diminished if looked at by the subject through an opera-glass.”[4] “Hallucinations” may thus be produced at pleasure, the perception, dominated by the hypnotiser’s will, “seeing the invisible”. So independent can the Mind be made of the Body, so complete the divorce between organ and faculty.
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Of these classes the first is the most helpful in our search after the Mind as an independent entity. Naturally from this study of clairvoyance and clairaudience, of the functioning of the Mind untrammelled by physical limitations, there arises the question: “If the Mind can thus exercise some of its faculties apart from the body, ought it not to be possible to detach it as an entity from its enveloping physical organism, and present it palpably separate and independent?” To this question Theosophy answers in the affirmative, alleging that such projection of the intelligent entity can be performed at pleasure by any person willing to undergo the necessary training. Now this is a matter of evidence, not of a priori theory, for or against. The sceptic who, without investigation, denies it, is as sensible as the Indian prince who denied that water could assume a form so solid that men could walk on it: water had always been liquid or gaseous, never solid, in his experience, in the experience of all his fellow-countrymen, in the experience of his ancestors; solid water would be anti-natural or supernatural. For Western thinkers as for Indian princes all that is beyond experience should be matter for suspension of judgment; denial of the unknown and refusal to investigate is the mark of the narrow and bigoted intellect. Hundreds of men and women of intelligence and character testify to their own vision of the “Thought-body” of a living person; some can consciously project their own “Thought-bodies”, communicate with distant friends while the physical organism lies entranced, seeing and hearing, being seen and heard.
That the average man and woman should need training before they can either project their own intelligences or become sensible of the presence of others, is surely not surprising. If the eyes of the dyer become more sensitive to shades of color than are the eyes of average persons, we recognise that training gives to his sight the added delicacy; and how, save by training, can we expect to render our organisms sufficiently sensitive to respond to those super-ethereal vibrations set up by the “Thought-body”, vibrations which we must sense if we are to see it and communicate with it? Years of patient practice are needed to give facility in the ordinary natural sciences; how much rather then when we would study the occult! Yet here, as elsewhere, Nature unfolds her secrets to the unwearied and persistent searcher after truth.
It is in connexion with the physical and mental results of this training that occur the “phaenomena” which have raised so much discussion. Increased powers naturally and inevitably follow increased knowledge of nature, and increased development of both body and mind; just as an Edison, with years of study and of training behind him, can work marvels that seem as miracles to the uninstructed, so can a Master of the Occult Sciences – nay, after his measure, even a fairly advanced student – produce phaenomena that seem miraculous to the average man, and which, because they seem to him to be prima facie miraculous, are promptly denounced by him as frauds. The average man has always a tendency to suspect what is higher than himself, and he more readily accepts the hypothesis of fraud than the hypo17thesis of superiority. The Theosophist has no difficulty in accepting the reality of the much-attacked phaenomena, because he has generally had some slight glimpses, at least, of some of the powers which, at present, normally lie latent in Nature, and he is therefore prepared for their occasional emergence. But he cares far more for the acquiring of the loftier knowledge and of the more radiant purity that are the characteristics of the more highly evolved man, than he does for the mere possession of the accompanying powers. The scientist cares but little for the ability to perform startling experiments: they are his toys, that he plays with for the amusement and instruction of unscientific audiences; what he values is the growing knowledge that he is gaining from his patient study of nature, the accumulated store of experiences that are the wealth of the mind. So also the student of Theosophy looks with comparative indifference on astounding phenomena; while he stretches forth eager hands for those treasures of knowledge and of character that do indeed make man imperial over nature, but whose value lies in their ennobling of the inner life not in the power they give over the outer.
The danger of encouraging superstition is sometimes urged as a reason for meeting all these alleged phenomena with unbelief. I, for one, would never ask anyone to believe them without the fullest investigation. No one has a right to believe without having carefully examined the evidence on which rest the alleged facts. Neither has any one the right to deny their occurrence without investigation. Superstition is far more likely to arise when facts, which many know to have occurred, are met with a blank denial, and in the absence of careful investigation often acquire a greater weight than should really belong to them. Abnormal circumstances looming through the twilight of partial knowledge may appear “miraculous”, where the clear light of full investigation would reduce them to their proper proportions. Superstition is never the child of knowledge; it is begotten of ignorance and is fostered by fear.
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FORCE – or Spirit – Matter and Mind are, then, the factors which build up the objective Universe, the primary manifestation of the Eternal One Existence. Aspects of the One, reflexions of the One Reality, they, in allegorical language, evolve from within outwards, from centre to circumference, fashioning the seven planes of the Object-World. On each plane they manifest, in the forms suited to each plane. Thus Matter has its seven stages, and in each the original, or protyle, sub-divides into the sub-stages that here we speak of as atoms, then as elements, and these again into other stages, as with us into solids, liquids, and gases. Correlated with each stage of matter is the corresponding stage of force and of mind – Prakriti, Purusha, Mahat, manifesting on each plane in harmonious multiplicity of forms. As the ray of white light is but the blending of seven colors, so do these seven differentiations of each make up the primal whole. In the prism of manifestation they are divided into the seven, but the prism of thought, intercepting them as manifested, recombines them into one. To sum up the thought: to the Theosophist each of these seven planes has its own material basis, its own life-conditions, its own organisms, suitable to those life-conditions, its own phase of consciousness. That is, on each are beings suited to their environment, as the bird to the air, the fish to the ocean. Shall this terrestrial plane be instinct with life, burgeoning with vitality, replete with varied forms, each adapted to its own surroundings, and shall all other realms of the vast universe be silent, unmusical, dead, a ghastly corpse to which is bound one globule seething with life?
Any reader who has grasped this conception will at once realize that the inhabitants of one plane can only cognize the inhabitants of another by developing in themselves senses capable of vibrating in response to impressions coming from that other sphere. Even within the limits of our own plane we can find a luminous analogy; air-waves strike on the ear, a mechanism fitted to respond to them, and we hear; ether-waves strike on the eye, a mechanism fitted to respond to them, and we see. The ear is deaf to the light-waves; the eye is blind to the sound-waves. For each organ the impulse that throws the other into activity does not exist. Or again, on this terrestrial plane, at each end of the spectrum, there are ether-waves invisible to us, because their waves are too long or too short for the vibration-limits of our retinal cells. There are sounds so shrill that in our ears they are silence. The air may be turbulent with beating waves emitting 115shrillest sounds, and in our brain there will be silence, because we have no fibres that can quiver with responsive rapidity. Light and sound-waves may dash up against us, and we remain in darkness and in silence; bathed in light we are blind, beaten with sound we are deaf. And if this be so within the limits of a single plane, how shall organisms, that remain unconscious of the swifter vibrations on their own plane of matter, answer to the vibrations of matter rarer or grosser than their own? There is, then, nothing inconsistent with the analogy of nature in the existence of intelligences other than our own, of whose presence we are normally unconscious. In verity, according to analogy such there should be, if Spirit, Matter, Mind, have builded a universe and not only a world.
If man were an isolated creature, an unprogressive entity, there would be little to interest him in the view of the universe just presented; for he would be for ever shut out from planes other than his own, and he could acquire of them no experimental knowledge. But Theosophy teaches of man that he is builded on a plan similar to that of the Universe, and that he is a progressive, an evolving being. That sevenfold differentiation of the Macrocosm is paralleled by a sevenfold differentiation in the Microcosm, and he has in him the potentiality of living on each plane. In him a spark of the Eternal Fire, Atma, denizen of the loftiest plane of consciousness. In him the vehicle of that highest, the lamp that carries the flame, Buddhi, dweller on the sixth plane, that essentially of spiritual life. In him, link between the higher and the lower, between Atma-Buddhi and his more material aspects, Manas, the manifestation of Mahat conditioned in humanity, the Mind that is the Individual, the bridge by which spiritual consciousness reaches human self-consciousness. In him also the lower quaternary corresponding with the astral, the terrestrial and other planes, of which there is not here space to speak particularly.
Now in the man of to-day the higher triad, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, is mostly latent, but the third is evolving from the germ to the bud, though the perfect blossom be yet in the future. In the cases given on pp. 14, 15, of vision without bodily organs, of vision through material obstacles, of vision of thought-projected images, may be seen the promise of that blossoming, the pledge of that evolution. In somnambulism, in the mesmeric or hypnotic trance, may be found some of the scientific proofs of the earlier stages of the Manasic growth, of the commencing development of that Manasic sense which shall function on the fifth plane, and make its existences as real and as tangible to us as the existences that we are conscious of on our terrestrial, the third.
But man’s progress is not bounded by the full evolution of Manas, for the latent spirit in him can also be evoked, and he can rise to the higher plane of which that spirit is the rightful denizen. And higher yet, till he 116is lost in the radiance of Atma, and becomes consciously one with the All. But these higher planes can only be conquered by the conquest of his lower self; the brute in us must die that the God may live; those heights will not bow down to us, we must climb to them; our true life is there awaiting us, but it must be won, it cannot be given.
Out of such contemplation of the task of every son of Man, there springs to our lips the question: “How can one life suffice for such high duty?” To this comes the answer of Theosophy: “No one life is sufficient for this emprize. For this long evolution many terrestrial lives are needed, until the lessons of experience have been learned, and capacity has been builded by effort.” Therefore does Theosophy teach the doctrine of Re-incarnation, that the Manasic entity, the true Individual, linked to Atma-Buddhi, puts on and off the garment of many lives, setting the warp of his future life as he weaves the woof of the present into the warp bequeathed him by his past. Over and over again he dons the raiment of the flesh, learning and rising, blundering and recovering, pilgrim for the long cycle that he must tread with patient steps. Karma, we call the law of adjustment under which this pilgrimage is trodden, the law which is the expression of the truth that the past determines the present, in the mental, moral, and spiritual worlds as much as in the physical.
This doctrine of Re-incarnation has a weird repulsive aspect in the eyes of the Western World. Christian and Materialist alike repel it, the one with abhorrence, the other with scorn. The Christian, lapped in the hope of an easily-won heaven, a heaven in which a few slight efforts during one brief span of life are to be rewarded with an eternity of unchequered bliss: the Christian naturally enough shrinks back from the idea of the well-nigh endless struggles which Theosophy bids him face, the weary stone-flecked path up which Theosophy bids him toil. As a man who hoped to be borne upward without exertion to the summit of a lofty tower, and finds himself compelled to climb the myriad-stepped staircase, step by step, lifting the weight of his own body with every upward effort, so does the Christian wake from his day-dream of an easy salvation into the stern environment of Theosophic doctrine. He would fain turn back to his dreaming, and he pays no meed of thanks to the uncompromising truth-teller, who bids him rise and gird up his loins to struggle towards the distant goal. The sternness of natural law glooms with forbidding visage on the pampered child of unmerited fortune; but let him take courage, for justice grows beautiful as we gaze at her, and the joy of a personal conquest outweighs a thousand times that of a carelessly taken gift. Yet if the Christian studied the teachings of his own Scriptures, he would find there – as in most Eastern sacred writings – the doctrine of Re-incarnation not obscurely taught. The Jews looked for the coming of Elias as pioneer to the coming Christ. And the apostles asking Jesus: “Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” met with no rebuke from their teacher, no question as to how they supposed a man could sin ere yet he was born, but were answered:
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“Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents,” thus admitting the possibility of a sin anterior to the man’s birth into his then earth-life. To the Christian who believes Jesus to be infallible, this answer of his should be sufficient to establish Re-incarnation as a truth. All who believe in the immortality of the soul, indeed, must, if they are logical, accept this doctrine, for perpetual post-existence to the body implies pre-existence; “that which begins in time ends in time”. As Hume acknowledged, in criticising the doctrine of immortality, “Metempsychosis is, therefore, the only system of this kind that philosophy can hearken to”. The Materialist, to whom life and mind have no existence save as the outcome of functional activity, is logical in ending at death that which begins at birth; he alone holds, on this point, a defensible position. Argument to him must stand on other ground, but only very roughly here can its lines be suggested. Thus, heredity is insufficient to explain the complicated facts of human development. Take twins, born of the same parentage, fashioned in the same environment, yet often differing utterly and completely from each other in qualities; take the commonplace child of brilliant parents, the genius born of mediocre father and mother. On the other hand, take the physical, mental, and moral similarity constantly found between parents and offspring; or the unlikeness to the parents, and the reversion to a more distant ancestor. Take the tendencies, the instincts, the inborn thought-matrices, found in the child born in a civilized nation, all implying a vast accumulation of previous experiences, moulding the brain of the developing infant. Are all these physically transmitted in the microscopic cell which gives the life-impulse for the physical body? If not, how do they mould the brain of the European child, making it so widely different in its intellectual activities from that of the child of the Andaman Islander or the Veddah? Re-incarnation explains the otherwise chaotic facts of heredity, and unifies the whole. Theosophy teaches that the Ego, about to be re-incarnated, is drawn by a natural attraction to the types best fitted to provide the physical envelope suited to it, and that it supplies the ethereal form on which the physical body is moulded during intra-uterine life. Thus nothing is lost: the energies, the conquests, the attainments of the individual are not lost at death; he starts anew from the platform his efforts have won, and fashions the instrument wherewith he shall gain further triumphs.
The argument most frequently heard against Re-incarnation is that we have no recollection of past lives. Passing by the obvious fact that the waking consciousness functions through the physical brain, which is part of each new personality and most certainly does not survive death, it may be suggested that, even during the life-time of the body, want of recollection does not prove the non-happening of an event. There is no memory of intra-uterine life, closing with a death which is the birth into a higher form of life; there is no memory of early infancy, and but scattered events emerge from childhood and youth. Yet the months of pre-natal life, and the early period of childhood, are patent in their influence on our later 118development. Our ignorance concerning them does not modify their moulding effect on our maturity; why, then, should our forgetfulness of yet earlier lives prove that our present is not the child of our past?
It is worthy of note that the doctrine of Re-incarnation has recommended itself to some of the greatest minds of our race; and, while this does not prove its truth, it does justify a careful weighing of its claims to acceptance. E. D. Walker thus forcibly sums up its position in the world of intellect: –
“When Christianity first swept over Europe, the inner thought of its leaders was deeply tinctured with this truth. The Church tried ineffectually to eradicate it, and in various sects it kept sprouting forth beyond the time of Erigena and Bonaventura, its mediæval advocates. Every great intuitional soul, as Paracelsus, Boehme, and Swedenborg, has adhered to it. The Italian luminaries, Giordano Bruno and Campanella, embraced it. The best of German philosophy is enriched by it. In Schopenhauer, Lessing, Hegel, Leibnitz, Herder, and Fichte the younger, it is earnestly advocated. The anthropological systems of Kant and Schelling furnish points of contact with it”, etc.
A long list of further names, eminent though not so great as these, is given, and it may be well to remember the brilliant host of its defenders when mere idle scoff is used as the only argument against it.
The central ethical teaching of Theosophy, the Universal Brotherhood of Man, has in Re-incarnation one of its strongest supports. Sprung from the One Life, treading the same pilgrimage, sharing the same experience, suffering under the same trials, victorious in the same struggles, aiming at the same goal, what else than brothers should be all the children of men? In face of this fundamental equality how trivial are all distinctions of race, of sex, of class – trivial as the distinctions between king and beggar on the stage. The vital point is not what part the actor played, but how he played it: on that depends his cast in the drama next produced.
With the Universal Brotherhood, the very essence, the beginning and the end of Theosophical teaching, this rough outline may fitly find its close. Only in the hearts of a few is lighted as yet this glowing ideal, but from them the flame shall spread from man to man. Life after life shall become luminous with the sacred fire, until all dross of hatred, of jealousy, of wrath, shall be burned away, and only the pure gold shall glow out from the lambent glory, the gold of a Humanity enriched by Love.
Footnotes