Olcott H.S. - The Outlook

I shall never forget the inspiriting effect upon my mind of a sermon I heard at New York on the Sunday after the Battle of Bull Run, in the first year of the Rebellion. Our army had been disastrously, disgracefully routed, and there was general gloom: the capture of Washington with the National archives and treasury seemed inevitable, and with it the overthrow of our Government. On the following Sunday the Rev. H. W. Bellows, one of our greatest pulpit and platform orators, preached the sermon in question to a great audience that hung upon his words. From that moment and throughout the four years of our titanic struggle I never despaired for the country. The eloquent preacher searched into the depths of the question of national life and strength, and appealed to the calm judgment, faith, and manhood of his hearers. A brave heart himself, he infused his courage into the heart of every sympathetic listener.

And now that I sit me down to survey the position of the Theosophical Society in the first half of its sixteenth year of activity, this old lesson comes back to me with force, and I feel the deepest regret that I lack the lofty power of Dr. Bellows to put into the hearts of all my colleagues the perfect confidence which many of us feel in the destiny of this remarkable movement. If there be faint-heartedness in some quarters and doubt or despondency in others, it is merely because the 162movement is not considered as an entity, but only viewed in fragments. There are hosts of men who are myopic as regards broad questions, and can see only what is close to the mind’s eye. Others become pessimistic when looking through smoky mental spectacles. From the very beginning I have had to listen to prophets of evil crying: Woe to Theosophy! Woe to the Society! because A has resigned, B turned traitor, C reviled, or D died. Yet the Society grows stronger and stronger every year: new countries come under its influence, new Branches spring up, new books are published, and the public interest in Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and other Eastern philosophies is ever deepening. What better proof is needed than the last year’s record furnishes – my splendid success in Japan and Ceylon, my late tour throughout the United Kingdom, the year’s returns of American work, the Pacific Seaboard Convention, the popular agitation in Great Britain following after Mrs. Besant’s adhesion, the excellent Convention at Bombay, the doubling of our Permanent Fund, the joining of the Head-quarters Staff by Dr. Daly and Mr. Fawcett, the sale of our books, notably of the “Secret Doctrine” and “Key to Theosophy,” the striking success of Mme. Blavatsky’s Esoteric Section? These are facts that are culpably lost sight of by timid friends and brothers. Full of the best intentions and thoroughly convinced of the truth of the old philosophy, they should not jump to false conclusions because they do not properly inform themselves as to the progress of our work, and perhaps because they lack the excellent quality of persistent pluck.

Viewing the theosophical movement, then, as a whole, I must honestly express my great satisfaction with the outlook. If it were a mere question of local activity or inactivity, we might say that we deplore the temporary reaction observable in this or that country, or in this or the other town; we might grieve over the effects of petty personal quarrels and misunderstandings, the decease of masterful workers, the defection of individuals once prominently active. But this is no local movement, it is confined to no city or country, no creed or race; it is essentially cosmopolitan and internationally evolutional. Its vitality, therefore, depends upon no one person, group or local organization. It is an influence provocative of a general stimulus of thought and awakening of conscience, the world over. It rests upon broad propositions not to be refuted or ignored. Yearly this fact comes into greater prominence; yearly our poor little personalities become more and more dwarfed, and our platform rises higher and higher. Look back fifteen years to the parlor coterie in New York who gave birth to the idea of such a Society as ours, and then glance at its outcome. Only thus may we estimate the progress achieved. What matters it, in making such a retrospect, that certain Branches or groups of Branches are for the moment lethargic, waiting like the Sleeping Princess for the kiss of the Delivering Rescuer? What matters it that the religious enthusiasm we created throughout India has been turned aside momentarily into the smoother and more flowery channel of politics? What matters it that for want of helpers about me, I have to leave India and some other countries to learn self-help and do the best they can, while I travel to new and far lands where the soil is ready for the sower, and the call most urgent for pioneers to start new vortices of this force: this force, whose potentiality is the spread of truth and the salvation of mankind from the abyss dug by those twin delvers, Ignorance and Superstition? If my colleagues should check off our register even scores of Branches which survive but in name – but do still survive so far as we have any official knowledge – and tell me that this or that remedy must instantly be applied, I can only admit the fact, while saying it is not vital since Theosophy stands. I can only point to the files of our Magazine and our official Annual Reports for evidence that I have said over and over again, in the strongest language, that, without men and means at my command, I cannot do what the simplest common sense shows to be indispensable. Take, as our nearest example, India, a vast country of 1,525,540 163square miles in area, over which I have travelled several times, and organized Branches of our Society. What the Hindus need is constant overlooking, and what they most value is encouragement by representatives of the Head-quarters. We should have an Inspector to each Presidency, if possible a European, residing at the capital town, going periodically over the ground, stopping at least a week each time with each Branch, organizing courses of study, making new Branches, and, himself outside caste, being a sympathetic friend, brother, good counsellor, and blameless exemplar to all his spiritual wards, so to say, irrespective of social or religious considerations. The ideal of such a man would have to possess the following qualifications: a good education; eloquence as a speaker; force as a writer; a thorough sympathy with Indian nature; appreciation of its sweeter and nobler qualities, and belief in his power to arouse its higher potentialities; a familiarity with Indian history, with the leading features of the various national creeds, and with the meaning and relative value of religious and caste observances; an inclination to be perfectly neutral in political, sectarian, and all other questions outside the three declared “Objects” of our Society; a sincere love for the Indian races, so sincere as to make him – when he remembers his Cleveland Streets, his Excise Revenues, and his Divorce Courts – prone to forgive them for the many and manifest defects in their characters, resulting from generations of national despiritualisation and the ever increasing struggle for life; and make him to set himself, with brotherly love, to bring out what is good, and noble, and admirable in these races. Above all, he should have the talent of organization, and a great fund of patience and gentleness, accompanied with absolute unselfishness. I appeal to the whole body of enlightened Indians to say whether I have exaggerated in my description; whether this is not a portrait of the kind of man many expect me to supply. This granted, then, how am I to draw down from the sky five such persons? And where find the others of special adaptabilities who are this moment urgently demanded for Ceylon, Burma, Siam and Japan?

All this, of course, applies to the ideal or, as one may almost say, the impossible man. But let no one imagine, because such gifted beings are as rare as the Udumbara flower, that this is an excuse for sitting idly by and doing nothing. Let us simply try to do as well as we can. Person after person has come to India and Ceylon, worked more or less well for a time, and retired in despair. Yet, all the same, each has done something, which is far better than never to have done anything. The one eternal, imperative word taught the neophyte is Try. And to the Hindus I have only to say what I said in my first public address on Indian soil: –

“If India is to be regenerated, it must be by Hindus, who can rise above their castes and every other reactionary influence, and give good example as well as good advice.”

“Here is material for a new school of Aryan philosophy which only waits the moulding hand of a master. We cannot hear his approaching footsteps, but he will come; as the man always does come when the hour of destiny strikes.”

“It will be the work not of years but of generations to re-ascend the steps of national greatness. But there must be a beginning. Those sons of Hindustan who are disposed to act rather than preach cannot commence a day too soon. This hour the country needs your help.”

This is explicit enough, and after eleven years in India I simply reiterate it. Many have heeded me, have worked hard and well, have set the good example. Bombay in particular, once as lifeless and sadly supine as Madras and Calcutta are now, has become an active centre whose influence reaches even America and Europe through the publications of our Branch. Mr. Tookaram and others have “tried” in sooth with all their hearts, and reaped blessed results. I ask and implore others to do likewise, to help themselves and help their countrymen with164out waiting for me to find the ideal personages above mentioned. I myself am full of imperfections, I have scarcely any money at my command, I have a host of obstacles and difficulties to overcome. The movement spreads so swiftly as to have outgrown my ability to do it full justice. Formerly I could stop in India year after year, but now I am wanted in all directions.

I go to a new country, a popular excitement follows, Branches spring up, books are enquired for, a manager is immediately needed to follow after me and organize the movement. Where can I find him? And, since I have nobody to travel, and superintend, and teach, and agitate during my absence, I may upon returning find Branches fallen into torpor, indifference prevailing here and there, contemptible personalities at work under false masks of public devotion, and “reform” and “resuscitation” made watchcries by people who do nothing themselves. How cruelly unreasonable have not many been in their views of the situation and their strictures upon the Executive! The President’s mistakes, the President’s failures, the President’s this and that; as though the President ever pretended to be infallible like them, or were not the chief of the most incongruous and unprecedented association of personalities ever formed for the pursuit of the highest, most difficult ideal ever conceived of! To “command the Channel Fleet or perform the surgical operation for lithotomy”, Sydney Smith’s ideal difficulties, would be child’s play in comparison with the successful performance of this other task.

But, though India has been instanced, I do not wish to draw any invidious comparisons. If there were as many difficulties to overcome in other countries, I doubt if the outlook there would be anything like as encouraging as it is here. I have, and have ever had, the most perfect confidence that the Hindus have the disposition and latent capability to redeem their national reputation. Other Europeans complain that they cannot get on with them: I never had the least difficulty. Perhaps my unwavering love for them may blind my eyes to their faults and deficiencies, but I think not. I believe they only want leaders – Native leaders. Nobody ever talked more plainly and boldly to them about this than I, because nobody ever had a more ardent desire to see them worthy of their ancestral renown. Let them help me to make a good working organization, and the moral and spiritual redemption of India will proceed swiftly and surely. Bombay and other towns have shown the way. With proper organization the National Congress has sprung up; without it, it will crumble to pieces. Yet it is ten times more hard to find men to perfect the Theosophical scheme than to find others to carry on the Congress work; for politics are comparatively a paltry affair, and tend to personal demoralisation. An astute politician would serve for that work, while a sort of saint is needed for the first named! The Hindus are disposed to give a most filial and unquestioning obedience to leaders whom they respect and whom they think love them and their country. Let us try to find such.

Mr. Judge thinks the future centre of the Theosophical movement will be America; it may be so, but that depends upon the help that comes to us to put the Indian branch of the general movement upon the best footing. Let us wait and see. We have just met two almost irreparable losses in the untimely deaths of Pandit Bhashyacharya and of Charles Francis Powell, my beloved American colleague. Who volunteers to step into the vacant places, to trample upon self, and assume the heavy duties and responsibilities of this unpaid and heart-trying work?

To sum up the Indian situation before turning our thought elsewhere, I may say that it is most encouraging as regards the persistent effect of our associated work upon the patriotic zeal and religious bias of the Indian peoples, and as to its tendency towards a coalesence of previously disunited castes and races. This tendency, begun by us, is now being enormously increased by the Congress move165ment. In the apathy of certain Branches, for example those of Calcutta, Madras, Poona, etc., etc., is shown the effect of insufficient leadership; which evil is remediable and, under the peculiar circumstances of Indian political administration, liable to be remedied at any given moment. It is as unsafe to predicate the collapse of our movement upon the momentary torpor of any given Branch or Branches, as it is to count upon the indefinite continuance of the useful activity now seen in others, when the local leader or leaders may to-morrow be ordered away to some other station by their official superiors, leaving no worthy substitutes behind.^[1]

As for Ceylon, I may say that the force of our movement was never so great or so increasing as it is now. Eleven new Branches have been formed within the past year, our vernacular semi-weekly organ, the Sandaresa, is rapidly increasing its circulation, our English one, the Buddhist, more than holds its own, the Women’s Education Society has enrolled 800 Sinhalese lady Members, our English High Schools at Colombo and Kandy have each nearly 200 boy scholars, a girls’ school has been opened by the W. E. S., at Wellavatte, about 30 other schools in other localities have been placed under our management, the Hindus and Buddhists of Trincomalee and, in fact, of the whole Island, are working together in full fraternal reciprocity, the Ceylon Section of the General Council has been formed and is now at work. Many shortcomings and defects are chargeable to the Sinhalese, but to me, who have worked with them since 1880, all the facts above enumerated seem full of bright promise for the future. The unfaltering sympathy and aid of Sumangala Maha Thero make this promise all the more cheering.

The unanswerable logic of statistics will prove whether or not the views above expressed as to the general outlook of the Society’s interests are too optimistic. With the single exception of 1883, when I was breaking new ground all over India, more Branches (29) were formed in 1889 than in any one year before. Commencing with 1876, the yearly increment has been as follows; 1, 0, 2, 7, 16, 24, 42, 11, 17, 15, 22, 21, and 29. Up to the close of the year 1889, we had issued 207 charters; and, deducting eleven officially extinguished, we had a total of 197 living charters at the close of last year. A process of weeding out is going on, but appearances indicate that at least as many new Branches will be annually enrolled as will suffice to fill the gaps thus made. I am making some important changes at the Head-quarters in the hope of increasing the effectiveness of the small working staff; and have been greatly touched by the home greetings that have poured in upon me from every quarter of India since my return from distant wanderings.

To sum up the situation in one sentence, I affirm that throughout the world the cause is prospering wherever there are self-helpful Branches and individual members, and languishing wherever there are not. So will it be to the end of our cycle, for so has it ever been with every cause from the very beginning of time.

(The Theosophist.)

Footnotes

↑ For lack of space we are compelled to omit our President’s review of the activities of the American and British Sections, and of our European Lodges. As, however, they are perfectly familiar to our readers, the omission may easily be filled in.

[v6-p165-n1-1] For lack of space we are compelled to omit our President’s review of the activities of the American and British Sections, and of our European Lodges. As, however, they are perfectly familiar to our readers, the omission may easily be filled in.

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