Chapter I: DESIRE not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am here certainly (1)

shows me that the soul had need of an organ here. Shall I not assume the post? Shall I skulk and dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies and vain modesty and imagine my being here impertinent--less pertinent than Epaminondas or Homer being there? and that the soul did not know its own needs?

LET us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek _one_ peace by fidelity.--_Emerson_

Several years ago Katherine Tingley said to a group of Lomaland Students, while touching in a cursory way upon the general world-problem of woman's work and true place in life, that her great longing was to take up this question in a public way. She added, reflectively, and with a trace of sadness in her voice,

But I cannot do this as yet. I should have to do it Theosophically, and while the need is there, conditions are not yet ready; the time for it has not come.

As all Students know, the time came early in 1911, and the work that had waited so long was ushered in by a series of meetings for women only, at Isis Theater, San Diego, under the auspices of the Woman's International Theosophical League of Lomaland, a body founded by Katherine Tingley on July 24th, 1906. Any question as to this being the right time--the psychological moment--had a twofold answer in the eager and wide-reaching public response, and in the superb nature of the service rendered in the arrangement and conduct of the meetings by members of the Lomaland Woman's League. Everything was placed in their hands, though under the Leader's direction, from the advertising and distribution of tickets--the meetings of course being free although admission was by tickets secured in advance--to the seating of the audience and the carrying out of the beautiful and impressive program, of which Katherine Tingley's address was at each meeting the central feature.

The work was begun at a time when the tourist season was at its height and in the audiences that crowded Isis Theater to the doors were hundreds of women from distant points--Canada, Vancouver, the far South, the Middle States, the Atlantic Coast, Europe, and even the Orient. Consider that these were thinking women, by their very interest in Theosophy marked as women apart from the mass; consider as well that the subjects taken up by Katherine Tingley in the impassioned addresses that formed the axis, so to speak, the real fulcrum, of the meetings, were subjects of the most vital import to the home--the higher duties of wifehood and motherhood, the sacredness of the home as a spiritual temple and woman's duty as guardian of that temple, the key to a knowledge of child nature, the protection of the growing child, the Theosophic keynote of duty--and add to that the fact that nearly every woman in those vast audiences was an important factor in some home, and it is evident that the influence of these meetings could not be measured.

Consider also that this work was launched at the present time of transition, when all the old ideas of woman's work are being torn up, root and branch, in some cases, by fanatics who little dream of the reaction their frenzy and unwisdom is certain to produce, a reaction that will make doubly difficult the path of unselfish workers for a long time to come.

The climax of effort in the Woman's International Theosophical League was of course reached in the marvelous production of _The Aroma of Athens_, given under the League's auspices, with accounts of which both Students and the public are familiar. Social Hall was converted into a huge costumer's shop and greenroom for the space of nine magic days, with the Leader here, there, everywhere, directing, designing and fitting costumes, designing properties, drilling individuals, rehearsing, oblivious for the time of all such gentle excellencies as food, relaxation, or rest.

Here again shone forth in the members of this Woman's League the qualities that were of such pre-eminent service in the conduct of the women's meetings--intuition, fidelity, alertness, conservation of energy, the power to work on lines of least resistance, unity, trust. There was no friction, no personal competition, no jealousy, no over-reaching, no gossip, no "rule or ruin" spirit, no personality, and as a result there was a general capacity to get things done that made the onlooker wonder if some hidden Aladdin's lamp were not in a nearby corner, just "rubbing" results into existence.

What _was_ it? Pre-eminently, it was the power these women had created by learning to _work together_. It was the Christos-spirit, that magic-working something that harmony is powerful to create, the spirit of which Jesus spoke when he said, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

But _what_ did it? Theosophy as a system of thought did not, or it would have done so in past centuries, for Theosophy has been brought to the world before under this and other names. The inspiration that is born when women work for women did not, for if this could do it then we would have some royal examples of unity in women's organizations elsewhere. What then did it in Lomaland?

There was a Sower once who went forth to sow; and some seeds fell on stony ground and the fowls of the air devoured them; and others fell on thin and shallow soil, springing up only to wither in the noontide heat because there was no depth of root. But of the seeds which fell upon good soil we are told that they sprang up and bore fruit an hundredfold.

There is the answer, and the answer also to the question as to why Katherine Tingley could not and would not start this woman's work earlier. The seeds were waiting and they are forever the same, the Sower was waiting, the world was waiting, for whatever may be the needs or conditions of any age the true Teacher knows how to adapt her message to it. But--oh women of Lomaland! _we_ were not ready, for we were the soil. The Sower was compelled to wait until _we_ would let the hot plowshare of truth _in action_ break through, and break up, the hard surface-crust of mental limitations and personality, and reach, with its diamond-tipped point, the warm, rich, moist soil of integrity and soul-life that lay underneath.

It has taken time, and patience on the part of husbandman, and trust on our part, though with greater trust it could all have been done so much earlier. But we had no knowledge of our own natures, when we first touched Theosophic truth, and it was necessary to learn that in Katherine Tingley's curriculum lip-knowledge and wisdom are two different things--that one _may_ have a brain-mind understanding of the literature of Theosophy without being a Theosophist in the slightest degree; that in short, the Theosophy that is not lived, that is, applied to every act, every problem, every relationship of daily life, need not hope to be recognized in Lomaland.

And this takes time. From the precept to _the life_ there is a path to be traveled, often a long one. It is indeed plain that the work upon which the women of Lomaland have been permitted to enter is one that could not be done Theosophically by any body of women who had not gotten beyond the limitations of the lower psychology, that master of the brain-mind, where only diversity lies; it could not be done by any who had not found and clasped hands on the plane of soul-life, where alone is unity. If all other proofs of brotherhood as a fact in nature--Theosophy's shibboleth and standard--were to be swept away and the Woman's International Theosophical League alone permitted to remain, that would suffice to demonstrate to the world that Theosophy is what the Teachers declare it to be, a living power, and that universal brotherhood _is_. Small wonder that as we listened to Katherine Tingley's heart-appeal to the women of the great world--truly orphaned, as is all humanity--we saw barriers swept away, limitations dissolve, mountains move, and, verily, a new world come into being. In the discourses of Epictetus, slave of the profligate Epaphroditus, and in chains, but the grandest Stoic in all Rome, we read:

Never then look for the matter in one place and progress towards it in another....

What then is progress? ... lo, _if_ a man, in every matter that occurs, works out his principles, as the runner does in reference to running and the trainer of the voice does with reference to the voice--this is the man who truly makes progress, and who has not traveled in vain.

If I were talking to an athlete, I should say, Show me your shoulders. And then he might say, Here are my Halteres. You and your Halteres look to that, I should reply, I wish to see the _effect_ of the Halteres!

That is the point and that is Theosophy.

The burden of this ancient problem of woman's work lies heavy upon the world, unspeakably heavy because so many lesser problems are enfolded within it--the problems of the home, of the protection of childhood, of man's true place in the grand creative scheme, of the much misunderstood and more discussed sex-question, in short, of education in all its phases. To borrow the old Socratic metaphor, myriad other problems hang down from it as from a ring held in suspension by a magnet other rings hang down, chainlike, one depending from the other. To carry such a burden, or even part of it, requires not treatises nor diplomas but _shoulders_, strong shoulders, strong in a threefold sense, physically, yes, but still more mentally and spiritually.

We women of Lomaland see now why this great public work for women could not have been begun earlier with absolute confidence on the Teacher's part that the heat of noontide endeavor would not cause it to wither and fall away. It would have withered if begun earlier, as women's efforts are withering all over the world today, partly because they are mistaken in themselves, it is true, but mainly because _the soil is not there_. The workers themselves cannot stand the test. The storms of jealousy and rancor, the hot winds of ambition, the noontide heat of heavy demands, the shallow soil of brain-mind interests and desires which point like a weathercock to a new quarter with every gust of illusion--ay, these are what test the nature.

Thinking it all over, a gratitude wells up within the heart too deep for words to touch--gratitude to the Teacher who has led us along the path with so much patience and love; helping but not putting props under us; heartening and encouraging, but not carrying us along on silver platters; forcing us to put into practice these treatises we have been studying--for Theosophy is the science of soul-strength and it enunciates principles and possesses rules. Lomaland is verily a great School of Philosophy, greater than those of past ages, for here divine principles are actually demonstrated which in the golden days of our historic past were but dreamed of, and the Woman's International Theosophical League is one of its Halls of Learning. Plato and Epictetus, Sappho and Hypatia, would understand.

Gratitude--it is a feeble word, plumb the depths of its meaning though you will. Even the most splendid examples of womanhood that graced the audiences at the various Women's meetings which the Teacher of Theosophy addressed, can realize what is being done and what is going on only to a very limited degree. We in Lomaland do not realize it fully for if we did we would rise to that height of trust and calm that would verily make us _like_ the Teacher; not like her in wisdom, for that is the rare fruit of ages of search and service, and we are but beginners on the Path; but like her in a certain _quality_ of courage and devotion that would makes us ten times in effectiveness the instruments in her hands that we are today.

For the acquirement of soul-strength is the object of this soul's gymnasium, this _life_, the living out of which in all its fulness of opportunity alone makes it possible for the Teacher to sow the seeds of that tree the leaves of which shall be for the healing of the nations. Here is the keynote, sounded clear amid the resolving harmonies of Katherine Tingley's last address:

Overcome! That is the song the gods would sing to you women and to all the world. Overcome! Learn to overcome and learn to love!

ILLUSION AND REALITY: by Lydia Ross, M. D.

The Man was wearied with success. He had sought to win beauty, fame, fortune, and personal power, and he had linked them all with his name. Around him was a wide circle of desirable things; within him was a restless center of discontent.

Far into the night he sat musing over his career. He had been fortunate beyond all expectation. He could name no ambition which had not been gratified; but the thought brought with it no feeling of elation or of satisfaction. Just now his keenest sense was that stinging ache in his breast which so often came of late at quiet times like this.

"It is all illusion and disappointment," he said, at last. "Marriage is a failure; fame is a mockery; happiness is not had at any price, and life is not worth living."

That nameless hunger from which he suffered was so baffling. If it were only possible to find the meaning of that dreary want. With all the new inventions for lighting the world why was there no illumination for the dimness of the inner life? If he could only find the source of that hungry need which devoured all the pleasure in his possessions.

Filled with intense desire for light, he drifted into the Land of Dreams with its countless pictures. There he saw a moving figure which was himself and yet not himself. There were no familiar lines in the form; but the eyes were his own and through them he read the thoughts.

He knew that this Traveler had come from afar. Along dusty highways, in shady bypaths and green meadows, through thickets and unwholesome swamps and across waters he had played a part in many scenes of a changing world. Youth and strength and gaiety were his companions, and together they sought activity and pleasure. Through places all unknown and often full of hidden dangers they made their way with merry jest and idle song and noise, fearing nothing save it were the Silence.

Then came a day when the Traveler grew tired of dust and heat and stains, of noisy mirth and empty songs and poisonous miasma. He wished for solitude and rest. As his companions sped along he turned aside and wandered into the deep forest. Throwing himself upon the ground long he lay beneath the trees with closed eyes and fingers threaded through the soft grass, finding refreshment in the touch. His chest rose with deep draughts of clear air, and as the cool quiet stole into his blood the throbbing pulses sank into a healing stream.

He had found some pleasant places in the old life that seemed so far away now, but this was beyond compare. Filled with a novel sense of awakening, the past appeared but a feverish dream. The sweetness of the place seemed to be taking form somewhere near and to be surrounding him with a delicious perfume.

As he sprang up his wondering eyes rested upon a new-blown Rose growing near. The dainty folded petals had uncurled and opened out until its golden heart was centered in tinted light. Its fragrance filled the air with a subtle tenderness. It was beautiful!

He had not failed to gather flowers, too, in his time--conventional hot-house blooms and gorgeous tropical beauties, and some with cold, odorless petals--how many had drifted through his hands. Never was there one among them all like this. Standing out against the guardian green leaves like a beloved queen, it shed a royal circle of uplifting peacefulness over everything.

Softly he knelt before this symbol of purity and loveliness with its message from the source of light and sweetness. The soul of the Rose was glowing upon him with tender beauty and glad fearlessness. His own soul stirred into life and looked out of eyes all too sadly strange to their indwelling guest. The littleness and folly of the past were but faded pictures of half-forgotten dreams. He knew that this was the awakening; this was the steady, noble, tender glow of real life.

His heart dilated with a sense of all that life might mean: its dignity, its love, its aspiration, its unspeakable destiny. Oh, but he would struggle to keep alive this enlarged and transfigured sense of things! His rapt gaze rested on the Rose until the mystery of color and light and sweetness entered into his very heart. He felt himself a part of the brightness that lives at the center of all things, and his confident soul swept out to the unseen stars to claim its own. Beyond and beyond, throughout distant space, everywhere was a flush of light and beauty and a radiant heart of peace.

Then came a memory--a mere shadow from his dream-life--and a selfish doubt brought him back to earth again. The Rose still smiled upon him in sweet faith. He would never leave it, but together they would live the larger life. As the wind whispered in the leaves the Rose bent and brushed his cheek and a swift wave of tenderness surged over him.

What if someone else should find this flower and should rise upon its power as he had risen? What if he should lose it? A hungry look stole into his eyes and his old self in a misery of longing cried hoarsely, "Never! It shall be mine, mine, only mine!" He leaned forward until the petals quivered beneath his breath. What if it should turn from him? "It is mine, mine," cried the selfish self as with eager, passionate grasp he kissed it and crushed it close, close, until he grew faint and sick with the spent sweetness.

He is stung with pain. Ah, the thorns, the thorns! Impatiently he tries to pick them out, but the sting remains. And oh! the pitiful Rose that he holds--so crushed and weary and broken! Gone is the delicate fire of the higher life that breathed through every curve of its free-born petals. And the fragrance which had radiated waves of tender gladness falls like the faltering breath of some beautiful, wounded, dying thing.

* * * * *

In the dim light which fills the mind in sleep, a mountain scene took form upon the moving screen. Up the steep side a Hunter toiled, burdened with weapons and game. In his strangely familiar eyes was a weary, dissatisfied look. The trail he had followed grew indistinct and was lost; but as he pushed onward he reached a place where the rough mountain side stretched out into a broken level of fertile plateau. How grateful it looked after the steep climb. This was the place to rest, he thought, catching sight of a tiny, sheltered lake and turning his steps toward it. Even now he can see its unruffled surface reflecting the blue sky and a drowsy chorus of encircling pines.

On the lake-shore the Hunter stood spell-bound with the beauty of the scene. The spoils of the chase and the weapons dropped from relaxed fingers as with uncovered head he drank deeply of rest and comfort and inspiration.

As the wind swayed the bordering pine-branches flecks of light came and went through the shadowy circle of scintillating water. Around the shallow border the glint and tint of glossy stone and delicate shell lighted the mosaic curtain of shadows with the fire of a living iris. Deep and dark and clear was the mystical center. A tall, slender fringe of grasses around the edge softened and deepened the whole liquid beauty before him like the lashes of a sentient eye.

A feathery cloud floated by overhead. Its reflection brushed the surface like a breath of fancy, a mere passing thought. The opalescent gold of the sunshine sank down, down, down, until, transmuted into a look of love in unfathomed consciousness its glow was diffused through the limpid depths.

Beyond the beauty of the lake was the infinite calm, the untouched purity and the perfect peace.

The atmosphere was filled with restfulness. From the lighted depths came an answering look to his eager eyes. The soul of the lake speaks to him in lingering softness and silence; and oh, how serene it is! The iridescent picture of a flying bird falls into the clear water, a song in color. He sees his own face bathed in a tender light.

He will seize this mysterious beauty of a living calm and hold it forever. It shall reflect only his face, he thought, jealous of the very sky. "This treasure is for me, for me alone," he said, as his eyes followed the shafts of light that illumined the shadowy depths. "For me," plunging in and stretching out greedy hands.

The first footstep broke the mirror of light into troubled waters. The soil and sand rose beneath the desecrating feet in a sorrowful cloud that hid the glory in advance and around him. "The peace lies deeper yet," he thought, watching the center and pushing on. But ever before him rose the obscuring cloud of his own creation. He can no longer wade, but strikes out boldly, greedily, to plunder the lake of its secret. He finds that no physical force or finesse can touch the delicate beauty he desires; and after vainly striving to grasp the fine lines of soul-sense, he returns to the shore, weary, disappointed, and bitter.

"It is all illusion," he railed. "No other Hunter excels me in strength or skill; yet when this promised happiness is almost within my grasp, it fades and disappears. There is no reality behind the dissolving pictures of a deceitful world."

The Dreamer looked from the fair strength of the Hunter on the bank to the cloudy, restless water. There he saw reflected his own figure--a dusky, broken image with the pessimistic poise. Then the light which he had longed for shone full upon his mind. He was the Traveler whose rude selfishness had despoiled the trusting Rose. He was the Hunter of Happiness. Around him were the rejected trophies of his skill--sweet-voiced birds and creatures fleet of foot and quick of eye. Too well they vouched for his unerring aim with bloody breast and broken limb and dull, unseeing eyes. He had wasted the life that gave these things their joy and beauty. Only the pitiful, unlovely forms were his possessions; from these his wearied senses turned in sick distaste.

The Dreamer's eyes fell before the luminous scene in which the Hunter was the one dark stain. How worse than blind his whole career had been. His life was but a crowded list of failures. How fair were Nature's pictures everywhere before he marred them with greedy, sordid touch. Now he saw that the world was alive with a wondrous reality for those who sought it unselfishly.

"The fault is all my own," he groaned in bitter shame. "That is mine, indeed, all mine. Oh, for a chance to redeem this wretched past!" he cried, pierced with so keen a heartache that he awoke.

Through the open windows the dewy morning air came in, sweet with the breath of flowers and alive with the subdued joy of birds. The great elms brooded over the lesser things with stately tenderness, while with slender, outstretched branches, like waving magnetic fingers, they soothed and awakened the freshened earth. In the east the lavender veil fell down before the sacred flame which daily gives new hope and strength to light dull lamps of clay.

VENICE: by Grace Knoche

It is one of the world's wonders that a little community should rise up from the midst of untillable marsh lands--literally out of the sea--and within a few centuries, through its energy, thrift, invention, and sheer ability, should become a world power not only in diplomacy, arms, and commerce, but in architecture, art, philosophy, and _belles lettres_. And all this, in spite of envy and attacks from without and conspiracies from within.

The power of Venice, "the wealthy republic," was so great in her palmy days that the honor of alliance with her was covetously sought by emperors and popes alike. At a time when, as history declares, a dictum from the Pope, or a threat of excommunication, would have brought almost any other nation of Europe to its knees in groveling terror, Venice laughed at both and pursued the even tenor of her imperial way.

The climax of her independence of dogmatic rule was reached in those glorious and courageous later days when Fra Paolo Sarpi lived and guided her destinies, Sarpi, "the noblest of the Venetians," who realized more fully than any other in that republic the dangers that would threaten should outside influences ever gain a foothold in the chambers of government. Had there been a successor to Fra Paolo, one worthy of his example, one who grasped his purposes, knew the spirit of the teacher that molded them and what beneficent power lay behind, who possessed as well the power to continue Sarpi's work--had such an exceptional soul appeared, Venice would not have decayed. At Fra Paolo's death the decline of Venetian greatness set in.

In the course of her history--and three centuries practically included the period of her undisputed greatness--Venice attained a position of supremacy on virtually every line of activity. In war she was dreaded. Says Yriarte, author of _L'Histoire de Venise_:

The arsenal of Venice, which still exists, was its palladium; the high organization of this establishment, the technical skill of its workmen, the specially selected body of the "arsenalotti," to whom the republic entrusted the duty of guarding the senate and great council, and its admirable discipline, were for centuries the envy of other European powers.... At the most critical period in its history, when it (Venice) was engaged in its great struggle with the Turks ... the arsenal regularly sent forth a fully equipped galley each morning for a hundred successive days.... At the acme of its prosperity the arsenal employed 16,000 workmen.

It is impossible to touch upon the political life and fortunes of Venice in the short space of a single article. Moreover, information on this is very accessible, for the Venetians themselves were great chroniclers, who firmly believed that their city was building in a strange way for the future and that its foundation stones should not rest unmarked. And though the last thing these old recorders dreamed of was the imminent decay of their proud city--their idol, their divinity, the object of their passionate adoration--they were right. Venice _was_ building for the future--to which seeming mystery Theosophy also has the key.

Suffice it to say that when the inner history of Katherine Tingley's visit to Venice, upon the occasion of her first trip around the world in the interest of Theosophy, is given out publicly, a new interpretation will be given to some of these old records. The spirit of Venice has never died although untoward aims and evils have for nearly four centuries obscured the outer expression of it. But that, like the history of Fra Paolo, is another story, too, and volumes would be needed to contain it.

Venice was in her days the commercial link between Europe and the Orient and her merchants neglected no opportunity. The result was that not only did the city become fabulously wealthy but new trades and wonderful art-crafts sprung up. Rare damasks, glass, tapestries, silks, enamels, metal-work of various kinds, plastic work, mosaics, brought from the countries of the Orient by Venetian merchants, served as models to craftsmen who not only copied but improved upon them in the great industrial centers which sprang up. Venetian art-craftsmanship became throughout Europe a synonym for the ultra, the perfect.

A link between Italy and Greece, Venice afforded an asylum for Grecian men of letters when the light in their own land failed. These men Venice honored. They taught in her universities; they lighted up in the city not only a knowledge of the great literary monuments of the ancients but a love for them; they filled her libraries with translations. Plato, Socrates, Thucydides, Strabo, Xenophon, Homer, and Orpheus, became something more than names. Says Yriarte:

Venice, more than any other town, has the credit of having rescued from oblivion, by editions and translations, the master-pieces of Greek literature.

The art of printing was welcomed upon the very threshold of its discovery and the services of Venice on this line are unique in the history of letters. Her printers were not mere workmen; some of them were scholars. "The Aldine Press" is synonymous with scholarship today as it was in renaissance Italy. Symonds describes the enthusiasm of the elder Aldus (or Aldo) for Greek literature, and his life-ambition, which was "to secure the literature of Greece from further accident by committing its chief masterpieces to type." He relates how Aldo, already a scholar and qualified as a humanist, "according to the custom of the country," spent a further two years in a study of Greek literature. Not a Venetian himself and with no ties in the city, by some "accident of fortune" he selected Venice as the place in which to build up a work whose parallel the world has not since afforded and of which a similar record is not to be found in the past unless possibly in the secret records of ancient China.

At Venice Aldo gathered an army of Greek scholars and compositors around him. His trade was carried on by Greeks and Greek was the language of his household. Instructions to typesetters and binders were given in Greek. The prefaces to his editions were written in Greek. Greeks from Crete collated MSS., read proofs, and gave models of calligraphy for casts of Greek type.

Not counting the craftsmen employed in merely manual labor, Aldo entertained as many as thirty of these Greek assistants in his family.

His own energy and industry were unremitting. In 1495 he issued the first volume of his Aristotle. Four more volumes completed the work in 1497-98. Nine comedies of Aristophanes appeared in 1498. Thucydides, Sophocles, and Herodotus followed in 1502; Xenophon's _Hellenics_ and Euripides in 1503; Demosthenes in 1504.

The troubles of Italy, which pressed heavily on Venice, suspended Aldo's labors for awhile. But in 1508 he resumed his work with an edition of the minor Greek orators; and in 1509 appeared the lesser works of Plutarch.

Then came another stoppage. The league of Cambray had driven Venice back to her lagoons, and all the forces of the republic were concentrated on a struggle to the death with the allied powers of Europe. In 1513 Aldo reappeared with Plato ... in a preface eloquently and earnestly comparing the miseries of warfare and the woes of Italy with the sublime and tranquil objects of a student's life. Pindar, Hesychius, and Athenaeus followed in 1514.

But Aldo's enthusiasm for the classics was not confined to those of Greece. He issued superb editions of the principal Latin and Italian classics as well, in an exquisite type especially cast for his Press and which it is said he had copied from the very handwriting of Petrarch.

There is something very reminiscent of the Orient in Aldo's reverence for beautiful calligraphy. To the Chinese scholar the ideograph is sacred and to write it well demands art and philosophy both. There is an ancient Chinese legend which says that once upon a time certain ideographs "came down from their tablets and spoke unto mankind." Curious, that one should recall it here. But not to know Aldo is to miss a great light upon the spirit that made Venice what it became, the spirit that animated every soul in that wonderful city--devotion to a high ideal, absolute unselfishness and service. Where is the Press today that combines these unpurchasable qualities with the acme of scholarship? We know of one--but only one.

Even in a short article, with Venice herself a subject for volumes, libraries, it is impossible to omit the following--also from Symonds:

Aldo ... burned with a humanist's enthusiasm for the books he printed; and we may well pause astonished at his industry, when we remember what a task it was in that age to prepare texts of authors so numerous and so voluminous from MSS. Whatever the students of this century may think of Aldo's scholarship, they must allow that only vast erudition and thorough familiarity with the Greek language could have enabled him to accomplish what he did. In his own days Aldo's learning won the hearty acknowledgment of ripe scholars.

To his fellow workers he was uniformly generous, free from jealousy and prodigal of praise. His stores of MSS. were as open to the learned as his printed books were liberally given to the public. While aiming at that excellence of typography which renders his editions the treasures of the book-collector, he strove at the same time to make them cheap.... His great undertaking was carried on under continual difficulties, arising from strikes among his workmen, the piracies of rivals, and the interruptions of war. When he died, bequeathing Greek literature as an inalienable possession to the world, he was a poor man.

To touch with any show of justice upon the architecture of Venice would task the eloquence of a Ruskin. But it is possible to indicate a few of the causes that contributed to make Venice the architectural marvel of Europe and her palaces and churches unique in the world.

According to tradition, there were both castles and "churches" in Venice several centuries before the earliest examples that survive. The first "church," it is said, was founded in 432 by one Giacomo del Rialto, but the earliest of which we have tangible evidence--and it is still standing--was built in the eleventh century. Of the eleventh and twelfth century castles or palaces, a number still may be seen.

Venetian architecture, like her literary and industrial life--indeed, like her whole life--was a combination of Oriental and Occidental influences. Her people were discoverers, adapters; they had a perfect genius for appreciation of the artistic, the eloquent, the statesmanlike, the progressive--in a word, "the Good, the Beautiful and the True" in the work of others--and with opportunities strewn along her path thicker than flowers in June, Venice seemed to grasp them all.

Although Venetian architecture was complex and composite to a degree, it is possible to trace the predominating influences as they set their mark upon style after style. Up to the thirteenth century the prevailing style was Byzantine, of which the leading characteristics seem to have been in Venice the semi-circular arch and a prodigal use of sculptured ornament. The method of construction employed by the Venetians--the walls being of a fine hard brick which was covered with stucco, or in the finer buildings with thin slabs of costly marbles and porphyries--permitted no end of surface decoration. And in this the color-loving Venetians reveled. Moldings, carvings, rolls, _cavettos_, flutings, panels, bands and diapers of flowing scroll work, lent their support to most varied adaptations of characteristic Persian or Moslem design, with its semi-conventional foliage, animals, dragons, birds, flowers, etc. Markedly beautiful, and in a way peculiar, is the effect of the façades of many buildings, "studded with gorgeous panels like jewels on a rich brocade."

But in the thirteenth century a period of transition ushered out the round Byzantine arch, and in the pointed Gothic arch of the countries immediately north. Very soon, however, the Early Renaissance style, as exemplified in Verona and other Italian cities, became a dominating influence, this in turn to give way to the Classic, which became the "grand style" of sixteenth-century Venice. After that, the deluge--of mediocrity.

The Venetians, a conquering people by virtue of their navy which was the envy of Europe, made their city the storehouse of rich treasures stripped from the ruined cities of the past, and from other cities made her own by conquest. And her merchants did the rest. Quantities of rich marbles were brought from fallen Aquileia, Ravenna, and Heraclea, cities which in their turn had brought them from Egypt, Greece, and Arabia, and Numidia--

the red porphyry of Egypt and the green porphyry of Mt. Taygetus, red and gray Egyptian granites, the beautiful lapis Atracius (_verde antico_), Oriental alabaster from Numidia and Arabia, the Phrygian _pavonazzetto_ with its purple mottlings, cipollino from Carystus, and, in great quantities, the alabaster-like Proconnesian marble with bluish and amber-colored striations.

Add to this magnificence a lavish use of gold and color, particularly the warm ochres and earth reds, and the costly ultramarine, and the modern mind, accustomed to uncolored and unstriated marbles and the quiet gray of stone, can hardly imagine the gorgeous luxuriance of color that marked the city in her prime.

The architectural glory of Venice is of course the Church of St. Mark, which, says Professor Middleton,

stands quite alone among the buildings of the world in respect of its unequaled richness of material and decoration, and also from the fact that it has been constructed with the spoils of countless other buildings, and therefore forms a museum of sculpture of the most varied kind, nearly every century from the fourth down to the latest Renaissance being represented in some carved panel or capital, if not more largely....

During the long period from its dedication in 1085 till the overthrow of the Venetian republic by Napoleon, every doge's reign saw some addition to the rich decorations of the church--mosaics, sculpture, wall linings or columns of precious marbles. By degrees the whole walls inside and outside were completely faced either with glass mosaics on gold grounds or with precious colored marbles and porphyries, plain white marble being only used for sculpture, and then thickly covered with gold.... No less than five hundred columns of porphyry and costly marbles are used.... A whole volume might be written on the sculptured capitals, panels, screens.

The use of inlay is almost peculiar to St. Mark's, as is also the method of enriching sculptured reliefs with backgrounds of brilliant gold and colored glass mosaics, producing an effect of extraordinary magnificence.

One of the great glories of St. Mark's is the most magnificent gold retable in the world, most sumptuously decorated with jewels and enamels, usually known as the Pala d'Oro.... This marvelous retable is made up of an immense number of microscopically minute gold cloisonné enamel pictures, of the utmost splendor in color and detail.

Of the architecture and art of the great council hall of the doges, the Ducal Palace, little need be said after the description of St. Mark's, for while not so lavishly ornamented, it is a world in itself in the style of architectural beauty that most appealed to the Venetians.

The original Palace of the Doges was built in the ninth century, but the vicissitudes of war and of fire decreed its rebuilding several times, and the Ducal Palace that we know today dates from the fourteenth century. Says Professor Middleton:

The two main façades, those towards the sea and the _Piazzetta_, consist of a repetition of the same design, that which was begun in the early years of the fourteenth century.... The design of these façades is very striking, and unlike that of any other building in the world....

The main walls are wholly of brick; but none was left visible. The whole surface of the upper story is faced with small blocks of fine Istrian and red Verona marbles, arranged so as to make a large diaper pattern, with, in the center of each lozenge, a cross made of verde antico and other costly marbles. The colonnades, string-courses, and other decorative features are built in solid Istrian stone.

Very beautiful sculpture, executed with an ivory-like minuteness of finish, is used to decorate the whole building with wonderful profusion. At each of the three free angles is a large group immediately over the lower column. At the south-east angle is the Drunkenness of Noah, at the south-west the Fall of Man, and at the north-west the Judgment of Solomon. Over each at a much higher level is a colossal figure of an archangel--Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel.

The sculpture of all the capitals, especially of those on the thirty-six lower columns, is very beautiful and elaborate, a great variety of subjects being introduced among the decorative foliage, such as the virtues, vices, months of the year, age of man, occupations, sciences, animals, nations of the world, and the like. On the whole, the sculpture of the fourteenth century part is finer than that of the later part near St. Mark's.

On the walls of the chief council chambers are a magnificent series of oil paintings by Tintoretto and other, less able, Venetians--among them Tintoretto's masterpiece, Bacchus and Ariadne and his enormous picture of Paradise, the largest oil painting in the world.

Up to and during a part of the sixteenth century the state prisons were on the ground floor of the Ducal Palace, but they were finally removed to a new structure on the opposite side of the narrow canal, and a bridge, the "Ponte dei Sospiri" or "Bridge of Sighs," was thrown across the canal, connecting the two buildings.

In the magnificence and beauty of its homes--its _palazzi_ or palaces--Venice is unique in the world. It is said that no other city, then or since, is to be compared with Venice in the loveliness and romantic interest of its domestic architecture. Up to the twelfth century the Byzantine style of architecture prevailed, but the thirteenth and fourteenth century palaces--whose builders were more or less influenced by the design of the Ducal Palace, then nearing completion--are Venetian Gothic.

The climax of splendor was reached in the "Golden House" the wonderful _Ca' d'Oro_, so named from the lavish use of gold leaf on its sculptured ornamentations. It was literally a "golden house."

No words can describe the magnificence of this palace on the Grand Canal, its whole façade faced with the most costly variegated marbles, once picked out with gold, vermillion and ultramarine, the walls pierced with the elaborate traceried windows and enriched with bands and panels of delicate carving--in combined richness of form and wealth of color giving an effect of almost dazzling splendor.

But following close upon this magnificence--which was reflected in nearly all the palaces that were built toward the close of the fourteenth century--came the inevitable reaction toward a less ornate style, the Early Renaissance. Compared with the _Ca' d'Oro_ one writer has described the sixteenth century palaces, which followed Early Renaissance and Classic models, as "dull and scholastic." They certainly must have been a restful change.

So much for the architecture of Venice--

White swan of cities, slumbering in her nest
So wonderfully built among the reeds
Of the lagoon.

But the visitor to the Venice of today finds his interest in her buildings doubled from the fact that upon the walls of many of them are to be found the works of some of the greatest painters the Occident has known. When we reflect that in the sixteenth century Venice possessed a school of art that for power, technical perfection, and gorgeous interpretation of color, stood pre-eminent in its own day and has not been surpassed in ours, little more need be said. Palma Vecchio, Giorgione, the great portraitist Lorenzo Lotto, Paul Veronese, Tintoretto, and--Titian! What a galaxy! Surely nothing more need be said upon the art of Venice. As in everything else, the impossible seemed not the exceptional but the mediocre.

In short, to give one the outline of only a few of the activities of the people of this City of Destiny is to drown oneself in superlatives. Her history is as fraught with heroism, with simple dauntless courage, as that of the Dutch Republic; it is as colored with romance as that of Palmyra or Thebes. _Karma_ is the only key to an understanding of the strange destiny which brought to flower such transcendant energy in so seemingly sterile a soil. _Reincarnation_ is the only theory which can hope to throw light upon the _quality_ of effort that marked her citizens as a body of people apart, who must have worked together in the past as they unquestionably will in the future.

Not that Venice was perfect; her citizens made their mistakes; there were the jealous and the covetous, and there were conspiracies within her borders as well as without. Her doges were not all, like Caesar's wife, "above suspicion," her counsellors were not all like Fra Paolo nor all her scholars like Aldo. But there was no apathy and there _was_ a nucleus of impersonal, united effort sufficiently vitalized to hold back the agencies of disintegration during century after century of steady upward effort. And then the Wheel of Destiny turned and the Venice of Sarpi passed.

But the days to dawn will again see Venice whirled upward into the light on the rim of this mighty Wheel. This is inevitable. It is Theosophical teaching. The old clans will gather--and _there_--and they will work again and aspire again and build again; and in the light of the lessons learned through the failures and successes of the past will rise again to greater heights.

Doge and counsellor, artist and craftsman, scientist and scholar, statesman, philosopher, and poet--as the "whirling wheel of spiritual will and power" brought to you great opportunities in the past, so will it bring them to you again and yet again, in the future.

HUMANITY AND THEOSOPHICAL EDUCATION: by Elizabeth C. Spalding

Had our modern philosophers studied, instead of sneering at, the old Books of Wisdom--they would have found that which would have unveiled to them many a secret of ancient church and state. As they have not the result is evident. The dark cycle of Kali-Yug has brought back a Babel of modern thought, compared with which the "confusion of tongues" itself, appears a harmony.--_H. P. Blavatsky_

To the placid minds of one part of humanity the idea that there is an imperious need for Humanity to be saved, may seem quite absurd. To them the world appears to be moving on well enough; children are born to them, and are trained in the same methods they were, and their ancestors before them for centuries, possibly; life passes smoothly along, so they ask in wonder, Why change?

On the other hand is noticeable amongst a large class, a great unrest, a fretting against established conditions, and a reaching out for something new. Individuals striving with different motives, but massing together into various societies, and associations, united in the purpose of breaking down the old, but with no ideals upon which to form new and better ones. It is like building an edifice on shifting sands.

This vague but extreme restlessness is permeating every race and country. Is it not pitiful that with such an expenditure of force, there should be a lack of the right understanding to lead men and women out of all their difficulties, discouragements, and adverse conditions, to the correct solution of life's problems? Truly the world is harvesting a chaotic mass of thought that unless checked, will tend rapidly towards degeneracy, and the disintegration of all things. We need a clearer and cleaner atmosphere mentally, morally, and physically, and to secure this the minds of people must be opened to the truth.

Theosophy offers to humanity this knowledge, and shows the way to restore balance and harmony. These few words convey a simple declaration of the truth, but a world of meaning lies in them.

Down through the ages has this touch of wisdom been kept burning in the hearts of a few. Great Teachers passing its light to their pupils, they in their turn to others, thus forming a noble and devoted band. They held the knowledge as a sacred trust awaiting the time to come, when humanity could receive these truths, without crucifying the great Souls who revealed to them the teachings.

H. P. Blavatsky had the key to this knowledge, the "Secret Archaic Doctrine" in other words "Theosophy," which she brought to the western world. In _Isis Unveiled_, written thirty-three years ago, she wrote:

The said key must be turned seven times before the whole system is divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he who understands the whole.

In her book, _The Secret Doctrine_, which followed later, she gave out much more information. So little did the world then understand her that she was considered a charlatan by some. But others did recognize that a Teacher had come, and they gathered around her. She appointed Wm. Q. Judge, another Teacher, as her successor, to carry on the work she had created, the Theosophical Society. He, in his turn, appointed Katherine Tingley, the present Leader of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, who is electrifying the world with her educational work in different countries.

Katherine Tingley is now making practical the true Theosophical education.

What is a Theosophical education?

"Man Know Thyself," was one of the most valued teachings of the ancients. To know that one is a compound being, spiritual, mental, and physical; to know that this trinity also makes man a dual being; that he has both the potentiality of the God, and the lower forces as well; to learn how to conquer the evil that the God may prevail, and the soul be liberated to become the living power in him for good. All this is but a part of what Theosophy teaches.

Socrates asked "Which of us is skilful or successful in the treatment of the Soul, and which of us has had good teachers?" If that question were asked today Katherine Tingley's students could answer, here, at Point Loma, and her various centers throughout the world. Consider what it means to a child, to enter upon life's path favored with an understanding of these truths, imparted to him in such a simple, practical, logical manner that he lives naturally from the beginning, the proper life. "The first shoot of every living thing is by far the greatest and fullest." Such a child has the right foundation on which to build; he is truly educated.

The physical has not been strengthened at a loss of the mental and spiritual; the intellectual has not been so abnormally developed that the intuitional and spiritual have been absolutely shut off. The Theosophical education gives a gradual unfolding of the whole nature, from within, outwards. Its growth may be likened to the ripening of the Lotus seed into the pure, white perfect blossom. The soul of the child who has developed under this training (making due allowance for Karmic heredity) will look forth, when matured, upon the world with so clear a vision, that confusion of ideas will be to him an unknown quantity. He can more clearly detect right from wrong--the necessary from the unnecessary, the practical from the unpractical--the true brotherhood from the selfish independence. In fact he will restore equilibrium, and always for humanity's welfare.

Theosophy has been a revelation to the women. Women as a rule cling to old established forms and conventionalities, some from fear of varying kinds, others from ignorance, or a lack of desire to take the initiative, owing to an inertia which the habits and customs of centuries have bred in them. It is mainly because of the manifold possibilities which have been dormant so long in woman that she feels the impelling urge to do something now, perhaps more than ever before. In her effort to respond, she sometimes strikes an extreme note which results in making the whole tide of life about her, of which she should be the harmonious center, stormy and discordant. Without the spiritual thread of knowledge how can she act wisely? Yet woman is responsible to a large degree for the unsettled condition that the minds of men are in today, and she always will carry a heavy responsibility, because she is the matrix of humanity.

One of our best-known American cartoonists has pictured the condition of the world, as a large globe held in a woman's hand. Consider what a power for good woman has in her position of motherhood, which must of course embrace wifehood. Words cannot depict all the fine possibilities and capabilities of mother-love. It has been said that great men have great mothers, and if we trace the life and thought of the mother prior to the child's birth, we can invariably find a clue which explains the strength, or weaknesses of the child.

Are not the majority of humanity simply drifting? Men and women growing apart, the seeds of separateness and consequent disintegration being sown, instead of their growing together into the nobler, fuller comradeship which Theosophy encourages.

As Katherine Tingley has said:

We want not only the hearts, but the divine fire, the divine life, and the splendid royal warriorship of men and women. Theosophy is the panacea.

BOOK REVIEWS: "Commentary upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex" (William E. Gates) by C. J. Ryan