Chapter II: The School (1)

It was a Pythagorean maxim that "everything ought not to be told to everybody." Therefore membership in the society was secret, silent, and guarded by the most solemn forms of obligatory pledges and initiations. Members were classified as Akousmatikoi or Listeners, Probationary Members, who did not live at the School, and Mathematikoi or Students, Accepted Members, who lived with their families at the central School of the Mysteries or at one of its branches. Probably the Mathematikoi were further divided into two classes: the Pythagoristae or exoteric members, and the Pythagoreans or esoteric members.

Practically any candidate of an upright and honest life was admitted at request as a Listener, but only the fit and the worthy were accepted as Students. Listeners, wishing to become Students, were forced to pass through a period of probation lasting from two to five years, during which their powers of maintaining silence were especially tested as well as their general temper, disposition, and mental capacity. A good working knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, (the four branches of Pythagorean mathematics), was required preliminary to admission to the School. Only the most approved members were admitted to the Esoteric Section. Women were admitted (an innovation from the Greek standpoint). Among these Theano was the most distinguished. She had general supervision of the women.

The members were devotedly attached to their Leader and to one another. They were enabled to recognize other members even when unacquainted by means of their secret symbols, and it is recorded: "If Pythagoras ever heard that any one used symbols similar to his, he at once made him a companion and a friend." Unquestioning loyalty was given to the counsels of Pythagoras by his disciples, for whom the _ipse dixit_ of the master settled all controversy, and the rank and admission of candidates depended solely upon the intuitive discernment of Pythagoras, who made all appointments.

The Students wore a special dress and had vows. They were trained to endure fatigue, sleep little, dress very simply, never to return reproaches for reproaches, and to bear contradiction and ridicule with serenity. The School of the Mysteries was a school of life, not a monastery. Pythagoras did not aim to have his disciples withdraw from active life, but taught them how to maintain a calm bearing and an elevated character under all circumstances. The intention was to train them to exhibit in their personal and social capacities a reflection of the order and harmony of the universe. The membership was international.

As it was a Pythagorean maxim that "friends should possess all things in common," new members upon entering the School handed over their personal possessions to the proper official who turned them into the common treasury. A student was at liberty to depart from the School at pleasure and at his departure he was given double his original contribution, but over his former seat was erected a tomb, funeral rites were performed, and he was ever afterwards referred to by the loyal members as deceased.

Purity of life was required and temperance of all kinds was strictly enjoined. All members ate at a common refectory in groups of ten, as at the Spartan _syssitia_. The diet was subject to a most careful regulation and consisted largely of bread, honey, and water. Animal foods and wine were forbidden. It is stated also that beans were tabooed because of their indigestibility and tendency to produce agitated dreams.

Much importance was attached to music, and to the physical exercise of the disciples. Each day began with a meditation upon how it could be best spent and ended with a careful retrospect. The students arose before the sun, and after breakfast studied for several hours, with an interval of leisure, which was usually spent in solitary walks and silent contemplation. The hour before dinner was devoted to athletic exercises. In the course of the day there were mutual exhortations not to sunder the God in each and all but to preserve the union with the Deity and with one another. The students were accustomed to visit Pythagoras at night, and went to sleep with music.

In a subsequent article some of the main tenets of the Pythagorean Brotherhood will be outlined.

THE AMERICAN WOMAN IN POETRY: by Grace Knoche

Current literature, from the freshly printed book to the literary columns of the daily press, affords certain unique opportunities for reviewing woman's work in the light of past achievement and future promise. Take, for instance, the single factor of woman in poetry--where past centuries number their woman poets by the twos and threes, as the last generation has done by little more than the threes and fours, the present finds them springing up thicker than clover in a fallow field and in many cases with a sweetness and fragrance in their songs as of clover blossoms themselves.

To the thinking mind this has a certain significance as relating to the inner unseen tides of that spiritual awakening now so seeming near for all mankind. For what holds poesy at its heart holds music there, and harmony and rhythm and something of that divine potency that lies in number; and with Theosophy at our doors we do not need Plato to tell us that

rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, bearing grace in their movements and making the soul graceful in him who is rightly educated.

The following are a handful of poems by women--most of them, significantly enough, by wholly or comparatively unknown writers--from among the last month's journals and papers, by no means a representative list, but just a few that found their way in the natural course to the study desk. Some compel attention because of the wholesomeness of sentiment and a certain honest openness in their delivery, others because of their musical lilt and flow, still others because of both. There are a few that may live, some that of a certainty will not and that yet have a value now. But that may be said of a hastily gathered handful of anything in its era.

They are typical of a surprisingly large class, while none of those whose poems are herewith quoted, with the exception of Edith M. Thomas, have so far written very much.

The first, by Angela Morgan in the _Cosmopolitan_, is a real Theosophical challenge, a veritable battle-cry, with something of the trenchant force and fire that flashes and thunders from out the lines of the old _Beowulf_:

Reined by an unseen tyrant's hand,
Spurred by an unseen tyrant's will,
Aquiver at the fierce command
That goads you up the danger hill,
You cry: "O Fate, O Life, be kind!
Grant but an hour of respite--give
One moment to my suffering mind;
I cannot keep the pace and live."
But Fate drives on and will not heed
The lips that beg, the feet that bleed.
Drives, while you faint upon the road,
Drives, with a menace for a goad;
With fiery reins of circumstance
Urging his terrible advance
The while you cry in your despair,
"The pain is more than I can bear."

Fear not the goad, fear not the pace,
Plead not to fall from out the race--
It is your own Self driving you,
Your Self that you have never known,
Seeing your little self alone,
Your Self, high-seated charioteer,
Master of cowardice and fear,
Your Self that sees the shining length
Of all the fearful road ahead;
Knows that the terrors that you dread
Are pigmies to your splendid strength;
Strength you have never even guessed,
Strength that has never needed rest.
Your Self that holds the mastering rein,
Seeing beyond the sweat and pain
And anguish of your driven soul
The patient beauty of the goal.

Fighting upon the terror field
Where man and Fate come breast to breast,
Pressed by a thousand foes to yield,
Tortured and wounded without rest,
You cried, "Be merciful, O Life!
The strongest spirit soon must break
Before this all-unequal strife,
This endless fight for failure's sake."
But Fate, unheeding, lifted high
His sword and thrust you through to die.
And then there came one strong and great,
Who towered high o'er Chance and Fate,
Who bound your wound and eased your pain
And bade you rise and fight again.
And from some source you did not guess
Gushed a great tide of happiness--
A courage mightier than the sun--
You rose and fought, and fighting, won.

It was your own Self saving you,
Your Self no man has ever known,
Looking on flesh and blood alone;
The Self that lives as close to God
As roots that feed beneath the sod.
That one who stands behind the screen,
Looks through the window of your eyes--
A being out of Paradise.
The Self no human eye hath seen,
The living one who never tires,
Fed by the deep eternal fires.
Your flaming star, with two-edged sword,
Made in the likeness of the Lord.
Angel and guardian at the gate,
Master of Death and King of Fate.

Perhaps more musical and exquisite in its technic is the following (by Edith M. Thomas in the _Century_), yet one looks in vain for the note of positive assurance that sings and rings out of the poem just quoted. Now one expects in poetry something more than rhymed philosophy, of course, and sheer beauty of rhythm has more than once endowed paucity of thought with an almost immortality. But the content is important, none the less. In the preceding poem one feels a mighty conviction forcing its way through every limitation to the goal of expression. The work of the older and better known poetess is more clearly poetic--to those who know the path and know the way its Sphinx-like questionings evoke their own answer in the deeps of consciousness. To the many, however, the first poem must reveal more.

THE UNKNOWING

I know not where I am:
Beneath my feet a whirling sphere,
And overhead (and yet below)
A crystal rampart cutting sheer--
The traveling sun its oriflam.
What do I know?
I know not what I do:
I wrought at that, I wrought at this,
The shuttle still perforce I throw;
But if aright or if amiss
The web reveals not, held to view.
What do I know?

I know not what I think:
My thoughts?--As in a shaft of light
The dust-motes wander to and fro,
And shimmer in their flight;
Then, either way, in darkness sink.
What do I know?

I know not who am I:
If now I enter on the Scheme,
Or revenant from long ago;
If but some World-Soul's moment-dream,
Or, timeless, in Itself I lie.
What do I know?

Here is a sweet touch from the Kansas City _Star_. The very name of the writer of it is so in keeping with tender dutifulness and so suggestive of clean-swept hearths and ministries to tiny, clinging hands, that one wonders if it be not a pseudonym. A miniature "psalm of daily duty" is it:

At morn I yearned a song to sing
That would inspire and teach
In words so true all men would hear
In them their own soul's speech.

But Duty stopped my pen and showed
The day's dull round of care--
The service to another's need--
A burden I should share.

At night the Day sung to the past
Her record clear and strong,
And richer, sweeter than I dreamed
I heard complete my song.

--_Emily Householder_

And from the same paper another ringing note on the sacredness of the day's duty--but this is no psalm, rather a trumpet call, gorgeous, full, and technically so splendid that it suggests the ancients:

TODAY

Voice, with what emulous fire thou singest free hearts of old fashion,
English scorners of Spain sweeping the blue sea-way,
Sing me the daring of life for life, the magnanimous passion
Of man for man in the mean populous streets of Today.

Hand, with what color and power thou couldst show, in the ring
hot-sanded,
Brown Bestiarius holding the lean, tawn tiger at bay,
Paint me the wrestle of Toil with the wild-beast Want, bare-handed;
Shadow me forth a soul steadily facing Today.--_Helen Gray Cone_

Will you have music? Then read these, so different in content, so unlike in the touch, for one is threaded through with compassion and tenderness while the other is just a little note of joy in life, which might rise out of self as well as unself in certain not yet conscious natures.

CANDLEMAS

O hearken, all ye little weeds
That lie beneath the snow,
(So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!)
The sun hath risen for royal deeds,
A valiant wind the vanguard leads;
Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds
Before ye rise and blow.

O furry living things, adream
On winter's drowsy breast,
(How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!)
Arise and follow where a gleam
Of wizard gold unbinds the stream,
And all the woodland windings seem
With sweet expectance blest.

My birds, come back! the hollow sky
Is weary for your note.
(Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!)
Ere May's soft minions hereward fly,
Shame on ye, laggards, to deny
The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye,
The tawny, shining coat!--_Alice Brown_

THE WAVES OF BREFFNY

The grand road from the mountain goes shining to the sea,
And there is traffic on it and many a horse and cart;
But the little roads of Cloonagh are dearer far to me
And the little roads of Cloonagh go rambling through my heart.
A great storm from the ocean goes shouting o'er the hill,
And there is glory in it, and terror on the wind;
But the haunted air of twilight is very strange and still,
And the little winds of twilight are dearer to my mind.

The great waves of the Atlantic sweep storming on their way,
Shining green and silver with the hidden herring shoal;
But the little waves of Breffny have drenched my heart in spray,
And the little waves of Breffny go sweeping through my soul.

--_Eva Gore-Booth_

The two following poems attack the same theme, a fruitful and varied one to lovers of Lomaland where the winter rains are the year's beneficence. But note the full rich lines of the work of the unknown writer, albeit the sonnet is of course the more difficult poetic form.

THE FOUNTAINS OF THE RAIN

The merchant clouds that cruise the sultry sky,
As soon as they have spent their freight of rain,
Plot how the cooling thrift they may regain:
All night along the river-marsh they lie,
And at their ghostly looms swift shuttles ply,
To weave them nets wherewith the streams to drain;
And often in the sea they cast a seine,
And draw it, dripping, past some headland high.
Many a slender naiad, with a sigh,
Is in their arms uptaken from the plain;
The trembling myrmidons of dew remain
No longer than the flash of morning's eye,
Then back unto their misty fountains fly:
This is the source and journey of the rain.

--_Edith Matilda Thomas_

RAIN

The patient rain at early summer dawn;
The long, lone autumn drip; the damp, sweet hush
Of springtime, when the glinting drops seem gone
Into the first notes of the hidden thrush;
The solemn, dreary beat
Of winter rain and sleet;
The mad, glad, passionate calling of the showers
To the unblossomed hours;
The driving, restless midnight sweep of rain;
The fitful sobbing, and the smile again,

Of spring's childhood; the fierce unpitying pour
Of low-hung leaden clouds; the evermore
Prophetic beauty of the sunset storm,
Transfigured into color and to form
Across the sky. O wondrous changing rain!
Changeful and full of temper as man's life;
Impetuous, fierce, unpitying, kind again,
Prophetic, beauteous, soothing, full of strife:
Through all thy changing passions hear not we
Th' eternal note of the Unchanging Sea?

--_Laura Spencer Portor_

Nothing is worse than bad poetry, unless it be bad art of every kind, of which the world today is having a surfeit. That we find a greater abundance of wretched verse, however, than of wretched painting and sculpture, and that there are still those who think that the poet's equipment need consist of little more than an unbalanced emotionalism, we may attribute perhaps to the fact that the pen and ink are readier to hand with the majority than palette and brush or calipers and modeling tool. Conceit and ignorance, working together, have made "to write poetry" almost a reproach.

The remedy would seem to be to diffuse a few simple truths, such as that true poetry has nothing to do with emotionalism, nor sentimentality, nor bad spelling, nor with metres that "interfere," like a clumsy horse's feet; and that where one in ten thousand who care for poetry may try to write it and succeed, the rest will fail and will neglect their proper duties besides. It is so in art, in literature generally, in music, in all things--the safe path is to drop the gleam and fire and fragrance of the soul-touch into one's life _in the shape of a more courageous performance of the daily task, whatever it may be_, and be content with that, which is the greatest thing in the world, anyway. If the Muse should decide to pick us out, willy nilly, she has ways of letting us know. Poesy has its technic, as has all art, and sentimental ignorance can never hope to pose as inspiration among those who know.

The real point to be emphasized is that this is part of a certain outreaching on idealistic lines of which the wholly remarkable work of the young women of the present generation in music, composition, painting, and sculpture, constitutes other parts. And this outreaching towards an art expression along various lines is so general, and is so differentiated in essence from the results of ordinary scholastic work or the general movement for the higher education of woman, that it cannot justly be ignored.

Few young women will, in the ordinary course, win a separate fame along the solitary path of pure art. Most of them, and most of those who come within the radius of the influence of their aspirations and their art work, will become wives, home-makers, mothers. Many more will become teachers, or are that now, wielding potent influence. It is these who will strike the keynote for the quality of atmosphere that is to shape, as it will surround, the generations yet unborn; and, because of that, the feeling and aspiration that many of the poems seen in our current journals disclose, is important and significant at this transitional time.

ANCIENT ASTRONOMY: by Fred J. Dick, M. Inst. C. E.

In perhaps no department of thought has appreciation of the achievements of antiquity been more inadequate than in that of astronomy. This is all the more remarkable when we remember that many facts have been published and are accessible, amply sufficient to convince any unbiased student as to the hoary antiquity of the science; and also as to the fact that in the remotest times it was a science whose exactitude surpassed that of modernity because based upon immense periods of observation and a profound knowledge of the harmonious laws underlying celestial motions; in comparison with which knowledge our generalizations and mathematical triumphs pale into insignificance.

Such statements are hardly likely to meet ready acceptance from those who have not yet realized the immense antiquity of the human race, the cyclic rises and falls of nations and races coeval with vanished continents, and the fact that there were times when humanity had divine instructors in the arts and sciences. Yet without some recognition of these basic ideas it is hardly possible to comprehend even faintly the significance of some statements made in the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_--one of the oldest treatises on astronomy extant. There are many others--perhaps thousands--but they are not accessible at the present time, probably because they would be still less understood.

Another thing hardly likely to be appreciated in some quarters is the fact that on account of the intimate connexion between the facts of astronomy and cyclic laws affecting human destiny, this science for long ages was one of the sacred sciences, and its deeper mysteries were carefully guarded--as they are still, for that matter.

This last consideration throws an interesting light on the performance of Hipparchos (whom our text-books dub "the father of astronomy"), for he was not only silent as to the sources of his facts, but his data have been shown to be inconsistent with his methods, and are only explainable when calculated out on the principles enunciated in the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_. In short, he has been thus shown to have had access to Eastern sources of information, while at the same time some things were withheld.

This is but an instance of a policy which had been pursued for a very considerable period anterior to the time of Hipparchos. Just so much was given as would afford a stimulus for investigation; for humanity entered upon novel and strenuous conditions some five thousand years ago, and has had to win for itself a new path in science, as in other departments of activity.

Key-notes are sounded, and instruction given, at cyclic periods; yet man must win his own path to knowledge, and guarded sources of information could not help him, until he prove himself morally as well as intellectually fitted to advance.

This brings us naturally to a survey of modern achievement in astronomy, and the conclusion is almost irresistible that it has reached a point where further light must come, if only the enthusiastic followers of this kingly science would raise their eyes from the mechanical skeleton they have built so laboriously, and realize that the universe is living and conscious--in the interstellar spaces, as well as in the little fiery-looking balls that float therein. We should remember that it is part of human destiny to enter into the wider consciousness which alone holds the master-clues.

The above conclusion is supported by the statement of Simon Newcomb that the unsolved problems of astronomy seem to increase with every year, instead of diminishing.

It is a curious reflection, in these days of "exact" science, that real exactitude can only be obtained, as in pure mathematics, by proceeding from universals to particulars, never from particulars to universals. Yet the latter method has perforce to be adopted when no other way is in sight. That it fails, is shown by the simple fact that few of the "elements" or "constants" in modern astronomy are exactly known. No tables have yet been constructed, based upon purely mathematical formulae, which represent the actual motions, say of the superior planets. Those in the _Nautical Almanac_ are simply derived from such hypothetical formulae, with corrections found necessary by experience extended over what is an almost ludicrously insufficient term of years. We should like to see the astronomical formula in use which would show that the obliquity of the ecliptic, 23,000 years ago, was slightly more than 27°. No longer ago than August 1905 an eclipse of the sun began twenty seconds before the predicted time.

Fortunately our astronomers do not live in ancient China, or they might have been beheaded for this want of accuracy!

On the other hand, the achievements in the domain of theory during the last two centuries or less have been so remarkable that it is to be hoped the methods and facts given in the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_ may yet receive some attention from competent mathematicians, once they perceive their importance. The apparent discrepancies with modern facts, it may be pretty safely asserted, will be found to yield valuable results upon careful analysis.

Investigators will find that, contrary to the assumptions of some critics of Eastern chronology, a "year" does not mean a day, nor a month--although it is sometimes called "a day of the gods" in Eastern writings.

One of the first things to arrest attention in the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_ is that in a "great age" of 4320 thousand years there are exactly forty revolutions of the Earth's apsides, one revolution of which occupies 108 thousand years. (Young's _General Astronomy_, § 199.) The line of apsides is the major axis of the Earth's orbit. Here we glimpse a basic connexion between the great cycles of time and the apsidal revolutions.

Let us quote a few aphorisms from Book I of this ancient work.

27. By their [the planets'] movement the revolution is accounted complete at the end of the asterism Revatî.

29. In an age the revolutions of the Sun ... are 4,320,000.

30. Of the Moon 57,753,336.

31. ... of Jupiter 364,220.

32. ... of Saturn 146,568.

33. Of the Moon's apsis 488,203. Of its node, in the contrary direction 232,238.

34. Of asterisms 1,582,237,828.

36. ... From rising to rising of the Sun are reckoned terrestrial civil days.

37. Of these there are in an age 1,577,917,828. Of lunar days 1,603,000,080.

From these figures we find the mean value of the sidereal year during a cycle of 4320 thousand years to be 0.002403 of a day longer than at present, which of course means that there are slow changes in the length of the orbital major axis.

There is a point worthy of attention regarding the asterism Revatî, to which these revolutions are referred, and which is thus seen to mark the origin of the Hindû movable zodiac. The precise star has either disappeared, or has not, so far, been publicly indicated. But the place of the origin was carefully calculated in 1883, and found to have a longitude of about 20.5 degrees. Again, from the numerous facts connected with the important epoch of 3102 B. C., which marked the beginning of the current cycle of 432,000 years (See _Traité de_ _l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale_, by M. Bailly, M. Acad. Franç., 1787), its place was about five degrees westward of the other. This shows it to have a positive movement of 4´´ per year, giving one complete revolution in 324,000 years.

This proper motion, if that of an actual star, is of the same order of magnitude as that of many stars. It would perhaps be interesting to glance at the relation between stellar movements and the greater cycles dealt with in ancient astronomy, for all analogy would indicate revolution in orbits to be a general law; and moreover, probabilities would indicate that our system is not too remote from the center of the stellar system. Assuming the average cross speed to be twenty miles per second, stars at 7 light-years distance would make one revolution while the Earth's apsides made four. Those at 70 light-years, one in a "great age." Those at the estimated distance of the farthest visible stars, 5000 light-years, would perform a revolution in just one manvantara of 308 million years.

Doubtless all such revolutions are superposed on other lesser revolutions down to those known, as in cases of double stars, etc. And it may be suggested that there are not improbably a number of axes of revolution, or rather principal planes of revolution, having some harmonious mutual inclination.

In order properly to relate the above mean value of the sidereal year to its present value, we should have to know our place in this cycle of 4320 thousand years; and the same observation applies to the other figures. We may return to this point at another time, as the necessary data are given in the same work. The effect of stellar proper motions, already referred to, would have to be considered.

The figures for the Moon make the mean value of the sidereal month 1.103 seconds longer than its present estimated value.

Those for Jupiter make its mean sidereal period about a quarter of a day shorter than the present one of 4332.58 days; while those for Saturn come out 6.55 days more than the present period of 10,759.22 days.

The methods of calculation and tables connected with the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_ were rigorously applied by M. Bailly to an observed interval extending from the epoch in 3102 B. C. to a certain moment on May 21, 1282 of our era, at Benares--a period of 4383 years and 94 days; and the mean place of the Moon thus found was less than a minute of arc different from that calculated for the same interval by the modern tables of Cassini. An astronomy which could achieve a result like this by methods and tables at least five thousand years old, points to the enormous duration of some prior high civilization.

The precessional movement of 54´´, peculiar to the _Sûrya-Siddhânta_, being referred to "Revatî" with its 4´´ direct motion, gives 50´´, like ours.

It is as well perhaps to recall what Iamblichus states:

The Assyrians have not only preserved the memorials of seven and twenty myriads [270,000] of years as Hipparchos says they have, but likewise of the whole apocatastases [planetary sidereal periods] and periods of the seven rulers of the world. (Proklos on Plato's _Timaios_, Bk. 1.)

H. P. Blavatsky, commenting on this, says it is

about 850,000 years since the submersion of the last large island (part of the Continent), the Ruta of the Fourth Race, or the Atlantean; while Daitya, a small island inhabited by a mixed race, was destroyed about 270,000 years ago, during the glacial period or thereabouts. But the Seven Rulers, or the seven great Dynasties of the _divine_ kings belong to the traditions of every great people of antiquity. (_The Secret Doctrine_, I, 651.)

She also informs us that

The chronology and computations of the Brâhman Initiates[2] are based upon the Zodiacal records of India, and the works of ... Asuramaya. The Atlantean zodiacal records cannot err, as they were compiled under the guidance of those who first taught astronomy, among other things, to mankind. (_The Secret Doctrine_, II, 49.)

[2] But these are not the modern Brâhmans, as is clearly explained in H. P. Blavatsky's own writings.--F. J. D.

THE PATH: by Gertrude Van Pelt, M. D.

Thou wilt shew me the path of life.--_Psalms_, xvi. 11

Nothing so stirs the heart with gratitude as the thought of the Great Souls who have opened the Path, who keep it open, and who guide the steps of the hungry searching multitude to its entrance. They have carved the way through the rock of matter. They have waded through the mires of delusion. They have cleared away the confusing and entangling underbrush of doubt. They have hewn down the mighty obstructions. With dauntless courage each one has destroyed the dragon which guarded the treasure from himself, thus inspiring all who follow. They have erected signposts all along the journey, and with their hearts' blood have written thereon the messages which every pilgrim may read, and so avoid one step amiss. Not only this, but having achieved the goal, they have retraced their steps again and again, to direct the uncertain feet of the children of earth, to combat ignorance, vice, and injustice; to encourage, uplift, and teach. Though unseen in many times and places, it is they who keep the lights burning.

Terrible as are the difficulties, the discouragements, the disasters, which the human children encounter, it is the Great Souls who prevent them from being impossible; who ward off the clouds of despair lest they settle over the globe like a pall of darkness paralysing all effort. Without these Elder Brothers all would be lost in the labyrinth of matter, never finding the thread which could lead them out. But to be without them is inconceivable, unthinkable; for all must sometime find the Path and tread it. No means have been omitted to make it plain. All nature exists but to point the way. All experiences, all events, difficulties, disappointments, all good, as well as so-called bad fortune: all tend to the same issue. It has been described in every language of heart or head, that all, even the beasts of the fields, in some vague way, may hear and gradually understand.

One of those who has gone before and returned to show the path to others, said: "I am the Way." Another, with a different sidelight on the same truth, said: "Each man is to himself absolutely the way." For each one in traveling it, does so by passing through the mazes of his own personality, first as one blindfolded, then as one slowly awakening to its meaning, and finally as one consciously subduing and transmuting it. And when he has reached the goal, he _becomes_ the way. His whole being is an expression, an exposition of the way--the mystic Path, which lies within and yet without; which is so far, and yet so near. _Light on the Path_ expresses it as follows:

Seek out the way.... Seek it not by any one road. To each temperament there is one road which seems the most desirable. But the way is not found by devotion alone, by religious contemplation alone, by ardent progress, by self-sacrificing labor, by studious observation of life. None alone can take the disciple more than one step onward. All steps are necessary to make up the ladder. The vices of men become steps in the ladder, one by one, _as they are surmounted_. The virtues of men are steps indeed, necessary--not by any means to be dispensed with. Yet, though they create a fair atmosphere, and a happy future, they are useless if they stand alone. The whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way.

SAN DIEGO: by Kenneth Morris

That San Diego has the greatest of futures before it, who shall deny? Katherine Tingley, Leader of The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, foresaw its destiny, saw its possibilities, fifteen years ago, and began forthwith to lay the foundations of peculiar greatness for it. There are thousands of cities in the United States, doubtless in Canada too, centers in all the new worlds established from Europe, that have before them a huge metropolitanism, and are to grow populous beyond the Old World capitals. Why not? The wind of increase bloweth where it listeth, and we can only safely prophesy change and reversion, change and reversion. Where the deserts are now, dwelt of old the builders of sky-scrapers; aeroplanes soared over lands the oceans cover; and Dreadnoughts floated and made war, perhaps, where now are Alps and Andes. Here is a land in its beginnings; many millennia lie before it in which to grow. We need the grand vision when we look out on the ages to be; only so can we sow the right seeds for their harvesting. We cannot tell what nations or cities are destined for high material greatness; probably there is room for every one to hope. But for San Diego a peculiar and more excellent fate is reserved, whose falling she may hasten by her clear-sightedness, or retard by her perversity; still, it lies before her. She is to be the City of Righteousness, the metropolis of the world's culture, the Mecca of distant generations of poets, artists, philosophers, and musicians. It is not mainly her own citizens who make this claim. They, with all their high ambitions, with all their golden dreams, are hardly alive to the great possibilities of the town.

In an age pre-eminently of material progress, it is natural to lay most stress on the material advantages of site, climate, etc. So there is no end to the writing on the Bay--the one bay between San Francisco and somewhere far away in Mexico--with all it offers for commerce and for strategy; or on the unwearying efforts of the sun; on the glorious hinterland, so rich and beautiful; or the new railway that is to open it up, and link San Diego with the east; on partial awakenings at Washington to the great strategic importance of this town, and the certainty that these partial awakenings must become whole-hearted and thorough some time, and bear fruit a thousandfold. Time, time, time--there is time for all these things. Innumerable palaces will be seen, surrounding this blue jewel of a bay; looking down on it from amidst exquisite parks and gardens on the heights; there will be drives as famed as any in Switzerland or Italy. Nature herself has provided for this; and the tide of empire is rolling westward.

Time and again San Diego has been named with two cities of the Old World; and there is something instructive in either comparison. She is "the Naples of California," and again, "the Athens of the Pacific Coast." Cuyamaca has been likened to Vesuvius, and our bay to the Bay of Naples. Indeed, no doubt there is a physical resemblance. The conditions that made Naples are largely historic; but then they are largely climatic, and matters of situation, also. As for history, the history of San Diego lies before her. All historic conditions--Camorra, lazzaroni, plague, pestilence, national inefficiency, vice, and famine, or the blessings which are the reverse of all these--are the fruitage of one cannot say what tiny seeds sown, one cannot say when or how often. You take a child, and give it no training or bad training in its first years: it was the offspring of highly cultured parents, perhaps; but what disasters may not lie before it? On the other hand, you take a child, who has had no advantages, and give it a Râja Yoga training such as Katherine Tingley is giving to so many at Point Loma and elsewhere--such, in truth, as only Katherine Tingley knows how to give--and you need set no particular limits to the hopes you hold for that child's future. There is a great parallelism with this in the early years of a city or community.

Up and down the world there are a thousand cities, as was said, with huge material destinies lying before them, which by their very situation they will not be able to escape. But in how many cases have they not been without far foresight in their youth, to guard them against the perils of that most perilous time? "They sow their wild oats," we say; a phrase that is meant to cover a multitude of iniquities. One can no more cheat the Law with such an excusive expression, than one can write an I O U for one's debts, and comfortably thank God that one need think no more of _them_. He who has sown his wild oats may have gained a certain wisdom and experience out of the sufferings resultant from them; but he will never be the man he might have been. He will have lowered the whole of his possibilities, and can pay thereafter only so much per cent of his debt to the world and humanity.

Climate and situation might have prepared for San Diego only such a fate as that of Naples; and there are other elements of possible danger as well, which it would require no ordinary wisdom and foresight to guard against. Indeed, have there not been revelations here and there in our cities, which should make us judge charitably the home of the Camorra? But now there are many thousands up and down the world who believe in San Diego; who cannot think she will fail or fall into gross error; who already look on her as a Mecca for their hopes; who know that she will shed light around the world. Reference is made, of course, to the great membership of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, which has its ramifications among all the peoples of the globe. For them, San Diego rose above the horizon when Katherine Tingley declared her intention, some fifteen years ago, to found the City of Learning, the World's Theosophical Headquarters, on the heights of Point Loma, within the city limits of San Diego. They had reason even then to know that what Katherine Tingley says she will do, is done; and they have had a million times more reason for that certainty given them since.

When this famous humanitarian came to San Diego, grass was growing in some of the streets there, where there should have been boulevards bustling with life. The old first "boom" had long since spent itself, helped to its grave by ready inimical hands; and there seemed no special reason for its resurrection. It was then that she made her promises. This little city of the quiet streets should come to be, not the Naples, but the Athens of the west. It should have population; it should have riches and commerce and splendor; it should flourish abundantly when its enemies had long since faded out and been forgotten; and all this was the very least and most insignificant part of its destiny. There should be a new and timelong age of Perikles here; new Phidian studios; new Groves of Akademe. Time--we must not be niggardly with that, perhaps; these things should not be in a day; but assuredly _they should be_.

It will be asked, on what grounds Katherine Tingley based these promises of hers. The answer is: on her own intentions with regard to the place; and on her knowledge of the laws that govern the growth of civic and national life. Is there no knowing the future? The farmer sows his seed under the impression that there is. He has cultivated the soil; plowed and fertilized it; now he can put the seed in with a certain confidence. Only it is not everybody that understands the preparing for these greater national or civic harvests.

It is safe to say that from that time the second great San Diego boom dates. The Theosophical Center was started on Point Loma, and from the first has been attracting life to the city across the bay. This is not the place to give statistics as to the number of thousands of dollars that have been spent in San Diego each year; nor as to the amount of labor that has been employed. From the start it was enough to give the city that new impetus of life which was needed--a fact proven by the rise in the population from 17,000 to 50,000 in ten years.

Then came the founding of the Râja Yoga system of education, with its first and chiefest exemplification in the College on Point Loma. Do all our citizens realize what this has meant for the city? On merely material lines, for example? Not only from the eastern States, but from Europe and Asia as well, hundreds have made the pilgrimage to San Diego to investigate the Râja Yoga College and system on the Point. They have gone away and filled their own lands with the rumor of the fame of this wonderful new thing that has its Headquarters--at _San Diego_. The press of England, of Japan, of Germany, of Holland, of Sweden, have been made abundantly aware of the fame of this Theosophical Center--at _San Diego_. A Greek play is given in the open-air theater on Point Loma, _San Diego_--and we read critiques of it in the morning papers of Bavaria. We pick up a Tokyo magazine of current date, and find in it a picture of a group of children who are receiving their education at Point Loma, _San Diego_. Katherine Tingley landed in Liverpool in the summer of 1907; and the next morning's London papers teemed with accounts of her--pages of accounts of her--and of her colossal and beneficent undertaking at Point Loma, _San Diego_. And so on, and so on, and so on. With the best facilities in the world and a genius for advertising, and with the expenditure of millions, San Diego could hardly have advertised herself in the way that Mrs. Tingley, through her Theosophical work, has caused her to be advertised; and it has cost San Diego nothing.

But all this has been merely, or mainly, for the material advantage of the city. A man (or a place) may acquire a false fame, that he cannot or will not live up to; and he will be paid with contempt later, more oppressive than the obscurity he had at first. Mrs. Tingley has done more than this. She has laid down the lines, and labored without ceasing, for the real advance and benefit of the city. Is it nothing that San Diego should have in its core a Center such as this Theosophical one at Point Loma--a center where the higher life is being lived, where money is not the motive, where the greatest effort of the age is being made to uplift humanity? The greatest effort? Yes; because the one that knows best what must be done to attain success, and on what foundations in the nature of man this success must be based.

Consider her fame throughout the world; her fame as an orator, that will crowd the biggest halls in any city in Europe, and bring hundreds to the doors who cannot gain admission. There _may_ be some other living Americans of whom as much can be said; but there are not many. How many visitors are attracted to San Diego yearly by Katherine Tingley's famous work at Point Loma, and because this world-renowned orator will certainly be speaking at the Isis Theater twice or three times, or perhaps more often, in each season? And what will be the result of these many speeches of hers, that so many thousands have heard?

The result may not be so visible yet that "he who runs may read"; neither is the result of the great fertilizing you gave your field--until the grain has sprouted, and the brown earth is covered with greenness. But the result is that seeds of coming greatness, in a real sense--seeds of a higher, cleaner, saner life--have been sown in the life and thought of the city. In time you shall see the harvest. It will be a clean city, such as Calvin, for example, strove to make of his Geneva; a city without stain or blemish, without saloon or redlight. Beyond that, it will be a city perhaps of many theaters, in which the highest, the most classical and beautiful of the world's dramas will be shown--and in which there will never be anything shown approaching the commonplace, the vulgar, the stupid. It will be a City Beautiful, a place of marvelous architecture, exquisite gardening. It will be a city whose press will be clean, elevating, unsensational, instructive; a press that will not lie nor slander nor _touch personal themes_; that will give the news, and not rake hell and the gutters, fact and fancy, for all kinds of nauseousness and nonsense; a press that will be a model to the press of the world. From all the world the best people will be sending their children to be educated here.

There is no limit to the high possibilities of San Diego--the high possibilities that Katherine Tingley has helped to make possible. How long, O San Diego, before these things shall be? It is for you to answer; it is for you to answer.

The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society

Established for the Benefit of the People of the Earth and all Creatures

OBJECTS

This Brotherhood is part of a great and universal movement which has been active in all ages.

This Organization declares that Brotherhood is a fact in Nature. Its principal purpose is to teach Brotherhood, demonstrate that it is a fact in Nature, and make it a living power in the life of humanity.

Its subsidiary purpose is to study ancient and modern religions, science, philosophy and art; to investigate the laws of Nature and the divine powers in man.

H. P. BLAVATSKY, FOUNDRESS AND TEACHER

The present Theosophical Movement was inaugurated by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in New York in 1875. The original name was "The Theosophical Society." Associated with her were William Q. Judge and others. Madame Blavatsky for a time preferred not to hold any outer official position except that of Corresponding Secretary. But later, in 1888, she dissolved a Center in France and cancelled its by-laws, which action was afterwards formally ratified by the Executive Council of the Society. Referring to this she wrote in her English magazine as follows:

This settles the question of the actual right of the Corresponding Secretary--one of the founders--to interfere in such exceptional cases when the welfare and reputation of the Theosophical Society are at stake. In no other, except such a case, would the undersigned have consented or taken upon herself the right of interfering.

Later she assumed the Presidency of the British Section of the Theosophical Society. Further, in response to the statement published by a then prominent member in India that Madame Blavatsky is "loyal to the Theosophical Society and to Adyar," Madame Blavatsky wrote:

It is pure nonsense to say that "H. P. B. ... is loyal to the Theosophical Society and to Adyar"(!?). _H. P. B. is loyal to death to the Theosophical cause and those Great Teachers whose philosophy can alone bind the whole of Humanity into one Brotherhood_.... The degree of her sympathies with the Theosophical Society and Adyar depends upon the degree of the loyalty of that Society to the CAUSE. Let it break away from the original lines and show disloyalty in its policy to the cause and the original program of the Society, and H. P. B., calling the T. S. disloyal, will shake it off like dust from her feet.

All true students know that Madame Blavatsky held the highest authority, the only real authority which comes of wisdom and power, the authority of Teacher and Leader, the real head, heart, and inspiration of the whole Theosophical Movement. It was through her that the teachings of Theosophy were given to the world, and without her the Theosophical Movement could not have been.

BRANCH SOCIETIES IN EUROPE AND INDIA

In 1878 Madame Blavatsky left the United States, first visiting Great Britain and then India, in both of which countries she founded branch societies. The parent body in New York became later the Aryan Theosophical Society and HAS ALWAYS HAD ITS HEADQUARTERS IN AMERICA; and of this, William Q. Judge was President until his death in 1896.

To one who accepts the teachings of Theosophy it is plain to see that although Theosophy is of no nationality or country but for all, yet it has a peculiar relationship with America. Not only was the United States the birthplace of the Theosophical Society, and the home of the Parent Body up to the present time, but H. P. Blavatsky, the Foundress of the Society, although a Russian by birth, became an American citizen; William Q. Judge, of Irish parentage and birth, also became an American citizen; and Katherine Tingley is American born. America therefore not only has played a unique part in the history of the present Theosophical Movement, but it is plain to see that its destiny is closely interwoven with that of Theosophy; and by America is meant not only the United States or even the North American continent, but also the South American continent, and, as repeatedly declared by Madame Blavatsky, it is in this great Western Hemisphere as a whole, North and South, that the next great Race of humanity is to be born.

ENEMIES OF PROGRESS

While the main object of the Society from the first was to establish a nucleus of Universal Brotherhood, there were some, we regret to state, who joined the Society from far different motives. Many were wholly sincere in their interest and efforts to benefit the human race, but as in other societies, so in this, there were a few who entered its ranks seeking an opportunity to gratify their ambition and love of power. Still others, in their carping egotism thought that they knew more than their Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, and were jealous of that Teacher, and later of the one whom she left as her successor and Teacher in her place.

Thus it was that there were attacks from the very first against the teachings of Theosophy, but more than all against the one who brought again these teachings to the world--Madame H. P. Blavatsky--and on handing the guidance of the Theosophical Movement on to her successors they too have been subject to similar attacks from the forces of evil, whose very existence is threatened by the spread of the teachings of Theosophy, which are the teachings of truth.

Madame Blavatsky's mission was in part to tear down the materialism of the age on one hand, and dogmatic domination on the other, and this made for her many bitter enemies. It was not long before enmity and unbrotherliness met her on every side, and these culminated in a plan to overthrow the influence of Theosophy and discredit her before the world. It was in India, in 1884, that this plan unfolded. Two ingrates, (French people, man and wife) who had been befriended by Madame Blavatsky when they were starving and ragged, and who later attempted to blackmail some of the members of the Society, and confessed themselves to be bribe-takers, liars, and forgers, associated themselves with the Christian College of Madras, India, and sought to destroy Madame Blavatsky and her work. It was afterwards discovered--admitted by the missionaries themselves, and published in the Madras _Mail_--that these missionaries had agreed to pay a large sum of money to the above-referred-to people for letters of Madame Blavatsky. These letters, as was afterwards proven, were gross forgeries.