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The Psychological Review. December 1882.
“THE PERFECT WAY,” AND ENGLAND’S MISSION IN INDIA.
A correspondent asks insertion of the following:—“One of the most interesting passages in ‘The Perfect Way’ is that in which the authors discuss the mission of England in India. It points out, that England guards the Bible and the purest Christianity. England shelters also Buddhism in her fold. The religion of the future is destined to emerge from these, the two great world-creeds. Both will be sublimated and purified, and this process will be brought about by studying the merits and differences of the two religions. All this was written before the campaign in Egypt, which has virtually given to England the gates of the East—a point considered so important by Eliphas Levi, and others. The career of England in India is very remarkable. Its conquest was made quite against the wishes of all English rulers. The Suez Canal was constructed in the teeth of Palmerston and English public opinion. Tel-el-Kebir was gained by a Prime Minister who hates war. Such coincidences are at least curious. A novel, published about a month ago, is already attracting considerable attention. It is called ‘Under Orders.’ It sketches Indian life and the intrigues of small officials with a firm hand. We ask how was India won and secured, if these are its rulers? Mountains of ice, as colossal as the Himalayan ranges seem to part the copper-faced Brahmin and the white-faced Christian. It has been wittily asserted, that ‘if the English quitted India to-morrow, they would leave no traces behind them except broken beer-bottles.’
“I think there are signs of better things. The reception of the bronze heroes of Zagazig in England has shown the Indians that the Englishman has a heart beneath his buckram. The Theosophist also is bringing white man and black man together—not to exchange smirks and insincere commonplaces, but to discuss death and the after-life; and to make bare the innermost thoughts of each. Many of the Asiatic fancies seem strange to us, but their discussion cannot fail to help the cause of truth.”
The Psychological Review. December 1882.
MONTHLY SUMMARY
OF
“THE THEOSOPHIST” (BOMBAY).
Our Indian contemporary contains further “Fragments of Occult Truth,” which are excellent reading, and which, unlike some occult truth, are full of “sweet reasonableness,” and do not violently shock the unprepared mind. The evolution of man is declared to be an affair of many lives in many worlds. His life does not begin here, nor does it end with the present fragmentary existence. We are not brand-new creations when we are born here, nor is our eternal future determined by the “blundering, helpless acts of ignorant human life.” We pass through a cycle of existences in a chain of worlds, until we are thoroughly developed. Certainly we are not all of us on the same plane of development; nor do we all derive the same benefit from this world as a training-school.——The Reviewer of the “Perfect Way” makes a temperate and dignified re<... continues on page 14-144 >
Editor's notes
Sources
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Psychological Review, v. 5, December 1882, pp. 543-544, 557-558