Chapter II: The School (3)

According to Theosophy, "primitive" man in Europe was as the successor of a highly civilized man who lived ages before on the sunken continent of Atlantis, passing through a cycle of degradation as a consequence of his abuse of his opportunities in previous incarnations. Though the cubic capacity of the skulls of the earliest primitive races, so-called, is about the same as that of modern races, the possession of a large brain does not imply that they had a high civilization. This can be seen clearly in the case of the Eskimo, who have even more capacious skulls than some highly civilized races. A low condition of life amid a people who possess good brain development means either the presence of undeveloped Egos of limited experience, or of those who are suffering disabilities in consequence of past wrong-doing. In either case they are necessarily using the physical vehicles provided by heredity. H. P. Blavatsky says the evil Karma (the influence set in motion by past actions) generated by the sins of the Atlanteans heavily handicapped those Egos when they reappeared on the newly-forming European and Asiatic (in part) continents, and prevented them for long ages from rising out of the primitive conditions in which they found themselves.

It is a fact that man's mind is an incarnation from something very different from the material plane; it comes into humanity from its own plane. The Theosophical teachings show how each of the complex "principles" or constituents which compose the human personality, the vehicle of the Immortal Ego, is derived from its own plane or source, i. e., the physical body from the material, molecular world; the body-center of passions and desires from the plane or world of Desire, Kâma-Loka; and so forth. This is fully explained in the Theosophical literature, especially, of course, in the writings of the Theosophical Leaders. It is a most important clue, leading to many practical consequences, owing to the better understanding it gives of the causes of many of our human sufferings, of the rationale of the death-process, of the spread of epidemics, both physical and mental, and so forth. Theosophy does not fall into the materialistic error of imagining that mind is the product of some jugglery of blind forces playing with the molecules of inert matter--that the less can be the origin of the greater. When our psychologists have learned how the mind comes from its own plane, evolving in its own way, and incarnating in material forms to help them on in _their_ evolution, they will find a new sphere of research, and the text-books will have to be rewritten.

While the idea, now being dimly suspected by some anthropologists, that man's mind is not the result of a _very long and slow_ development from the beast, is correct according to the records of Theosophy, we must remember that the incarnation of the "Manas" or Thinker, which made incomplete man into the perfect septenary he is today, took place long before the temporary decline of the "primitive" man after the disappearance of Atlantis. One eminent scientist at least, Professor F. Soddy, F. R. S., lecturer on physical chemistry and radio-activity at Glasgow University, has lately suggested that in his opinion some great civilization may have existed (long before the "primitive" Stone Ages) which ruined itself and descended into barbarism by the abuse of the power to disintegrate matter and so to release forces of terrible potency whose existence the discovery of the properties of radium has faintly revealed to us, but which we have, fortunately, not the slightest idea how to unloose. Theosophy tells us that something of the kind did happen; but the mind of man was even then long ages posterior to the time when the "Sons of Mind" settled into the forms which only then, properly, could be called mankind.

For many years the existence of hundreds of giant portrait-statues on the wild volcanic Easter Island, two thousand miles from the coast of South America, has been known, and their origin and meaning is still one of the greatest of the world's enigmas. What was the mysterious race that carved them? How is it that such works, which obviously required the presence of a large and intelligent population, should be found on such a small island, so far from the continental lands? Archaeologists in general seem to avoid the problem; certainly no adequate theory has been advanced by the recognized authorities to meet the case. H. P. Blavatsky gave us the key to the mystery when she briefly described parts of the pre-Atlantean continent of Lemuria: Easter Island is an Atlantean vestige of that really primitive land whose truly primeval inhabitants were of larger proportions than ourselves. Well, lately we have seen three or four articles in different American and other magazines discussing the problem and trying to explain it upon the very lines of the Theosophical teachings, no other being considered reasonable.

During the past ten years the trend toward the Theosophical interpretations of some of the most pressing astronomical problems has been very marked. The re-opening of questions hither considered closed or else insoluble, has been an interesting feature of recent times. For instance, the belief that gravitation alone explained the movements of the stars has been seriously shaken lately, and, if we may venture to prophesy, it looks as if physics will have to return to the ancient and Theosophical acceptance of dual forces, attraction and repulsion--perhaps magnetic--to explain the new problem of astronomy, having found that gravitation is only a half-understood truth, as Theosophy teaches. In his inaugural address, Professor Bergstrand, newly appointed to the chair of astronomy at the university of Upsala, Sweden, made a special point of the fact that some utterly unknown force or forces besides gravitation must be operating to explain some of the newest discoveries in stellar physics. He was alluding particularly to the binding together of certain groups of stars in connected drifts across the depths of space. Several of such drifting collections of stars moving together across the vast depths of kosmos at equal speed are now known. There would not be anything so extraordinary in this, and nothing that might call for the postulate of some unknown law, but for the fact that in some cases members of the same star-group are found _at far distant parts of the heavens_ separated from each other by many other stars drifting in various directions between them--our sun for one. What is the mysterious binding tie, and how may it be reconciled with the known action of gravitation? One of the fundamental principles in nature, according to Theosophy, is the Duality of manifested forces: in _The Secret Doctrine_ H. P. Blavatsky treats of this very fully, plainly declaring that the _other half_ of gravitation will have to be reckoned with before long by physical science in the West. In the East there is practical knowledge of it, among a chosen few.

The newest speculations about the processes of solar and planetary development from nebulae are bound to lead to the discovery of the truth of the Theosophical teaching that there is an archetypal world, a world of causes, lying concealed behind all manifested material forms. Once this is admitted by scientists, once a sane metaphysical basis for the universe is found logically necessary, there will be a great change in the way of looking at phenomena, including the problem of human life, and we know that what the most advanced thinkers proclaim will be followed before long by the great mass; see, for instance, the strong effect the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, incomplete and materialistic as it is, has already made in every department of modern thought. Of course the acceptance of a merely metaphysical foundation for the facts recorded by our ordinary senses does not mean the acceptance of the reality of a _spiritual_ world; that is a far deeper problem, and has to be approached through the experience of the intuition, trained and untrained, but a long step will be made when it is thoroughly realized that the material plane is not the plane of ultimate causes.

According to one of the nebular hypotheses of today the collision of two suns, (dark and "dead" or otherwise) crashing into each other at tremendous speed, results in a vast nebula, in which, owing to the enormous heat produced, the atoms would be reduced to the state of "corpuscles," the root of matter on our plane, all alike, and without any of the characteristics of the elements, even in the most rudimentary form; there would be no metallic vapors, no gases, not even helium or coronium, nothing but the primitive corpuscular basis of matter. Then, as the nebula formed by the collision condensed and perhaps cooled, it would begin to rebuild its substance into the well-known elements, combinations would take place, and the evolution of a new solar system would be started. But now arises the important question: What causes the perfectly homogeneous or uniform "corpuscular" substance, the mass of _sub-atoms_ of unknown nature, to perform the astonishing feat of transforming itself into the marvelous complexity we find even in the simplest star? The problem is similar to that of the egg. In a new-laid egg the great mass of its constituent materials is structureless, but in a short time of incubation the eggshell is completely filled with a most complicated living organism. Is it not clear that behind both nebula and egg there must be an archetype or model form, invisible to ordinary eyesight, which is being used as the pattern into which the simple materials are being woven? and that there are Builders, who know the plan and work it out in a conscious harmony that we call the correlation of "natural laws"? "Blind forces," "necessity," "unconscious laws," are meaningless terms which only disguise ignorance, or _stave off_ the anti-materialistic and dreaded so-called "teleological" view that there must be "a Divinity that shapes our ends."

Theosophy offers as a fact, demonstrable from the very presence within of the higher, divine nature, that men in time will attain the stature of Creative powers, Builders of future world-systems, just as the Higher Beings who are the guides and directors of the present evolution were once men and lower than men in past aeons. Evolution of men will not stop with the perfecting of the mental and moral nature; once the godlike nature of the Higher Self is admitted, it follows that there can not be a limit assigned beyond which man may not go.

There may be some truth in the collision-theory of the origin of certain nebulae; it seems to explain the sudden appearance of "temporary stars," at least; but, by its very nature, it cannot explain the origin of the universe of suns as a whole. Again, after each collision the speed of the new body formed from the material of the two colliding spheres would be less than their combined speed, because much or all of their motion would be arrested and transformed into the energy which would be needed to scatter their substance in all directions. If two equal bodies, moving at equal speed, met in a line joining their centers, the resulting nebula would have no motion at all. It has been pointed out that if the collision theory alone is relied upon to explain the structure of the universe it must fail, because during the infinity of past time a condition of absolute stagnation would have been attained, the universe would have "run down," nothing being left but one gigantic dead and dark globe!

In this idea of "running down" there is a paradox, which is apparent enough, and we need not trouble to follow it further. We have to seek a reasonable hypothesis--a theory such as Theosophy presents of a universe which can wind itself up again after it has finished its cyclic career--a theory which does not overlook the fact that the material cosmos is the manifestation of intelligent Mind. The impressive system which was worked out in the Orient (and before that elsewhere) ages ago, of the transformation of energies from visible to invisible planes under Cyclic or Periodic Law, the universality of alternations of manifestation and rest, clears up the primary difficulties of the case. It is to H. P. Blavatsky, the great Theosophist, that we are indebted for making this reasonable hypothesis clear. Fortunately, the time-spirit of science in this century is less atheistic than that of the nineteenth, and the broad principle of Theosophy, that there are great spiritual Beings, the glorious efflorescence of past ages of development, guiding and controlling the formation and maintenance of the worlds, is becoming the subject of serious consideration among some of the most advanced thinkers, for the atheistic hypothesis that matter "runs itself" is almost at its last gasp.

In another subject, the nature of Light, many new and interesting speculations are being advanced as the result of the discoveries of the extraordinary properties of radium and the _x_-rays. To students of Theosophy these are significant, for H. P. Blavatsky, in _The Secret Doctrine_, goes deeply into the question whether light is an actual substance of some kind, or a mere undulation of an ethereal medium. She points out some of the difficulties of both theories, giving special attention to Sir W. Grove's celebrated lecture in 1842 wherein he considered he proved that light and heat must be affections of matter itself, and not the effects of an imponderable fluid--a finer state of matter--penetrating it. Sir Isaac Newton held to the Pythagorean theory that light was made of almost infinitely minute corpuscles, but the phenomenon of diffraction is supposed to have upset this. H. P. Blavatsky does not reject the wave theory as part of the explanation, but she contends that the ultimate causes of light, heat, and electricity must be sought in a form of matter existing in supersensuous states, states, though, "as fully objective to the spiritual eye of man as a horse or a tree to the ordinary mortal"; and, above all, that these forces and others are "propelled and guided by Intelligences." She devotes many chapters of the third part of the first volume of _The Secret Doctrine_ to this subject, throwing an entirely new light upon it in its deeper bearings, and showing the enormous importance of a proper understanding of it if we are ever to learn our true relationship with the external universe. She says:

To know what light is, and whether it is an actual substance or a mere undulation of the "ethereal medium," Science has first to learn what are in reality Matter, Atom, Ether, Force. Now, the truth is, that _it knows nothing of any of these_, and admits it. (_The Secret Doctrine_, Vol. I p. 482)

Since she wrote _The Secret Doctrine_, though hardly twenty-three years have elapsed, several discoveries in physics and chemistry have been made which have greatly modified the scientific view as to the nature of the atom, of the electric current, and of matter in general; all these modifications are leading straight in the direction of her teachings. It is even claimed that

Matter can vanish without return.... Force and matter are two different forms of one and the same thing.... By the dissociation of matter, the stable form of energy termed matter is simply changed into those unstable forms known by the name of light, heat, etc. (_Evolution of Matter_, by Gustave Le Bon)

This leads to the startling suggestion that what is force on this plane may be substantial on another, and we are now seeing, as a result of the study of the _x_-rays, and the [alpha], [beta], [gamma] rays of radium, all of which can pass through ordinary matter with ease, a revival of the ancient and supposedly extinct theory held by Newton, and others before him, that light is a body composed of corpuscles--whatever they may be. Professor Bragg, of the Leeds University (England), has been investigating the problem with great care, with the result that he has come to the conclusion, as he announced to the members of the Royal Institution, London, the other day, that the "gamma" rays of radium and the _x_-rays are corpuscular, and not merely pulsations in the ether. He thinks they are probably electrons, corpuscles of negative electricity

which have assumed a cloak of darkness in the form of sufficient positive electricity to neutralize them.

It seems also that as ultra-violet light, which exists in ordinary sunlight, possesses many of the properties of the above rays, Professor Bragg may not be far wrong in his further suggestion that it also may be corpuscular in its nature. He asked, very pertinently, that if this light be corpuscular, why may not all other forms of light be so? When we recollect that the "corpuscles" themselves are a purely metaphysical concept, it is plain that science is moving rapidly towards a very different and far more reasonable and Theosophical idea of the universe than the materialistic one. _Vivat!_

THE BRIDGES OF PARIS: by G. K.

The Bridges of Paris are of distinctive interest and their very names suggest in part the fascinating panorama of French history and legend--Tolbiac, Bercy, Austerlitz, Sully, Marie and Louis Philippe, Notre Dame, Pont San Michel, Solferino, La Concorde, Alma, Iéna, Passy, etc. The Seine flows for seven miles through the city and is at its widest (nearly 1000 feet) at the extremity of the island called La Cité. This island communicates with the right bank of the Seine by the bridges of Notre Dame and Au Change. The latter, as is evident from the familiar device sculptured above the piers (see illustration), was built by the first Napoleon.

The Palais de Justice is located in La Cité and the Greek façade by Duc is considered one of the finest examples of this style in modern architecture.

From the Boulevard du Palais on the east it is separated by a magnificent eighteenth-century railing in wrought iron and gilt. On this side lie the Salle des Pas Perdus and the Sainte-Chapelle. The fine square tower known as the Clock Tower stands at the corner formed by the Quai du Mord and the Boulevard du Palais; and on the north side lies the Conciergerie prison with the dungeon once occupied by Marie Antoinette.--_Gaston Meissas_

OLD BRYNHYFRYD GARDEN

by Kenneth Morris

There's a quiet old enchantment of the heart that's calling, calling
From when Myrddin wielded magic powers, and Gwydion wove his tales;
And you'll hear it any April morn, when the apple-bloom is falling
In old Brynhyfryd Garden, in White, Wild Wales.

There's an Ousel in the Orchard there, and dear knows what he's
telling;
But I think there's Welsh comes welling from his throat when no
one's nigh,
And it's he that in Cilgwri in the olden days was dwelling,
And he saw the Quest of Cilhwch, and the old worlds die.

There's a lonely, lofty spirit that will fire your soul with craving
For the kind and haughty glory of the old, Heroic Kings,
Where the foxglove and sweet-william on the turf-topped walls are
waving
In old Brynhyfryd Garden, when the West Wind sings.

There's a ruin filled with nettles, where I think Ceridwen lingers
When she's out to gather herbage for the Wisdom Broth she brews:
And maybe you'll close your eyes there, and you'll feel the touch of
fingers,
Or the dropping down of healing with the cool June dews.

Ancient Magic of the World, it's the fires of you are burning
When the Wind is in the pine tops, and the moon is o'er the vales;
It's a rumor of immortal hopes, Immortal Hearts returning
That's in old Brynhyfryd Garden in the white West of Wales.

International Theosophical Headquarters,
Point Loma, California

MISUSED POWERS: by R. W. Machell

"Use with care those living messengers we call words." So said William Q. Judge, a very wise man.

The misuse of words seems a trifling matter to those who habitually misuse every function of mind and body; but the results of perversion are disastrous to body, mind, and soul. The misuse of terms, when not due to ignorance of their legitimate meaning, is in itself an indication of a perverted mind diseased by habitual misuse of the functions of both body and mind, which two are so intimately related as to share inevitably the consequences of right or wrong living.

The words we use and the way we use them are not mere accidents but are sure indications of our mental condition, and the mind and body are so mutually responsive that it is hard to say which affects the other and which is the affected one, for habits of body are induced by habits of mind and the mind in turn is influenced by the bodily condition resulting from those habits. With self-indulgence as the unfortunate rule of life, and with the ignorance of our own nature and of our relation to others, which is almost universal, it is not surprising that wrong living should be the general rule, and that misuse of the powers of mind and body should be so common; nor is it at all strange that there should be so much unhappiness in the world, nor need we marvel if people in these conditions should think that their sufferings, mental and physical, are due to everything except their own misconduct. And if men can not see that they are indeed the makers of their own sufferings, how shall they be able to realize their responsibility to others? With selfishness as the rule of life, and with ignorance of our interdependence, and of our intimate union one with another throughout the whole world, it is quite natural that we should feel little responsibility to others for the effects we produce in the world by the use or misuse of words: a responsibility that is increased by the spread of education and by the increase in the number of persons who read without thinking, and who take thoughts from books as they take water from a tap, unquestioning as to its quality. Pure water is now recognized as essential to health and is supplied in all civilized communities, but pure language and pure thought are left to chance; and while the supply of literature is as plentiful as the supply of water, the quality of our literature is not subject to the same scrutiny as is our water-supply, and the stream of thought that flows through the channels of our publications is frequently contaminated by unhealthy and unwholesome matters. Purity of thought and purity of words are essential values, for words are embodied thoughts, and from thoughts spring deeds, and the deeds of man are his life.

The responsibility of writers and speakers has hardly yet been recognized; though illustrations of the dangers of trifling with essential values, or of misusing talents, or indeed of perverting from its right use any function, are actually supplied by some of our brilliant writers, who have recklessly and often ignorantly become apostles of mere degeneracy and powerful instruments for the demoralization of the people. Even those who see the evils scarcely seem to appreciate either the causes or the consequences of the corruption of literature and the confusion of language.

Some recent reviewers, however, have begun to question more closely the character of the influence exercised upon the world by some writers, whose works have excited general or special admiration, even calling some of them defaulters, for that, holding great talents, they have used the light they held to dazzle the eyes and to confuse the minds of others, so as to make them blind to the path of right living, which is virtue or morality.

One of these critics, Paul Elmer More, literary editor of the New York _Evening Post_, in a study of the influence of Walter Pater, distinctly suggests that the author confused the truth and in fact misrepresented history, reading his own desires and inclinations into the teachings of Plato in one case, and in another of doing the same for Christianity, making them appear to exalt sensuous beauty above spiritual beauty which is the soul of virtue; whereas Plato himself exclaims: "When anyone prefers beauty to virtue, what is this but the real and utter dishonor of the soul?" Mr. More suggests that Christianity is equally misrepresented by this brilliant writer, but in his perversion of the real meaning and purpose of true Christianity he is simply drifting with the tide of so-called Christian civilization, which has been, almost from its first appearance as a politically established religion, a clear departure from those teachings concerning the Christos in man, attributed to Jesus, the supposed founder of the system, and which in their original purity are identical with Universal Theosophy of which they are a part and upon which they are drawn.

Further, Mr. More suggests that the demoralizing effect of Pater may have largely affected that brilliant apostle of decadence, Oscar Wilde, whose tragic collapse in the hour of his literary success drew attention to an evil whose ravages have ruined multitudes of lives and wrecked every civilization that has become tainted with the poison of perversion. For this man exalted perversion into a cult, his wit was entirely based upon it, his ethics steeped in it, and his own life wrecked by it. He himself shows that he was not unaware of the truth, at times, for he wrote:

Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God;
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance--
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?

And later, in that awful page of the tragedy of a fallen soul, _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_, there is a sort of blind recognition of the justice of Karma, which tolerates no perversion of Nature's order on any plane, coupled with a noble and generous plea for the removal of the unnecessary horrors of the prisons, in which we grind out the last vestige of man's inherent love of virtue, and crush the last buds of growth that the fallen soul may yet be able to put forth.

Here again was one, who exalted the beauty of the senses above the beauty of the soul, and so soiled the whole nature and so perverted the mind, which is the mirror of the man, that he produced a vortex of vice, in which all who entered were bewildered and lost their guiding star; in which many were utterly wrecked, and all defiled.

Professor Henderson in his critical interpretation of five authors, points out so much of the evil that one can only regret that his grasp of true psychology was not deep enough to enable him to make more clear the distinction between the spiritual soul and the animal soul (not to go further into the complex nature of the Soul), the great duality in man that is the clue to all these mysteries. With this key one feels that his study of Maeterlinck's philosophy would have become more luminous, for surely this is a case, in which an author continually confuses his audience, and perhaps also himself, by exalting the sensuous joys of the animal soul, and the emotions of the imagination, above the pure joy of true beauty, which is, as all poets, not only Keats, have seen, the same as truth. Keats himself may have known the difference, but his readers certainly must in most instances have been misled and may have found in his lines a justification of their own indulgence of morbid tastes, for however morbid may be a man's condition he will still see beauty in pleasure of any kind, no matter how vile may be its source. We may endorse the axiom in the first line

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

but must protest against the fallacy in the next line

... that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

No! we need to know what we mean by beauty, and we need to know that the word conceals pitfalls innumerable for him who has no knowledge of the true nature of man, for one who thinks he is his body, and who believes his passions are the voices of his soul and who mistakes the intoxication of sensuality for spiritual illumination, lust for love, and perversion for genius. We need the teaching so clearly given in "The Two Paths" translated by H. P. Blavatsky from _The Book of the Golden Precepts_. We need to know that there is a chasm deep as hell between these two souls in man, and that when the higher nature is the slave of the lower then the man is in hell indeed; for as said by H. P. Blavatsky, there is no other hell than that of a man-bearing planet. Those who have stood on the brink of this hell with even partially opened eyes, know that the terrors of hell invented by churchmen are but as a comic interlude to the reality of horrors that life on earth holds for masses of humanity, and from which there is no escape except by the path of right living, based upon right perception of our own true nature, and discrimination between the higher and the lower nature in man, which is so often veiled by the false teachings of perverted minds. We need the truth to discriminate the spiritual beauty that is pure joy from the sensual beauty that intoxicates, blinds, and destroys the life--and we need the guiding power of pure altruism to make our writings useful to others and a full recognition of the responsibility of those who now so lightly use "those living messengers we call words."

IS EDUCATION WASTED? by H. T. Edge, B. A. (Cantab.)

No question is agitating us more than that of how to educate our young people. We know there is something wrong about our achievements in education, but we are often mistaken as to where the fault lies. The commonest mistake is to confound principles with practice and to blame the former where perhaps it is the latter which is at fault. We fail to carry out certain plans, and we blame the plans and want to make a clean sweep of them; when perhaps inefficiency in applying them is what is really the matter. In fact, it is probably inefficiency, rather than wrong principles, that is the matter with our educational doings, as it is in the case of so many others of our doings. Before we condemn a method, we should ask whether that method is being given a fair trial. If we sweep away the system, without removing the general inefficiency, then the same failure will attend our efforts to apply any new system that may be devised. We shall have exchanged one evil for another.

There is more than one side to every question; but many of the utterances on the educational difficulty give only one side. The result is views that are extreme and ill-considered. Let us take a case.

Much of education is considered by some critics to be superfluous and wasted, for the reason that it seems to bear no immediate and visible fruit. Hence they wish to abolish it. Yet it is always possible that it may bear fruit after all, but not of the kind they are able to see. Take, for instance, the case of a girl of ordinary type, without any definite characteristics whether good or bad. She is sent to school and college. She is taught algebra and geometry, Latin and Greek, music and painting, with many other subjects. She is reasonably clever and absorbs all this with interest and ease. She leaves college--and never again opens a book. The whole is quietly forgotten with as much nonchalance as it was acquired. Is all the time and money and effort, on the part of pupil and teachers, wasted?

Or let it be a boy, who has been taught similar subjects, but takes up a calling in which they are not used. Is the instruction wasted? The question arises in various forms, of which these two cases may be taken as typical examples.

If it is true that the education thus given is really wasted, what folly could be greater than that of continuing to impart it! Yet we know that somehow the view taken is too extreme; that it is not in accordance with the fitness of things that work involving so much zeal, enthusiasm, and other good qualities should fall fruitless; that people would not go on doing it if they did not have some intuition that the labor is not really in vain.

In short, may it not be possible that this is one of those cases in which a dilemma has arisen through the limitation of our knowledge of human nature and the laws of life; a dilemma resolvable by the wider knowledge shed by Theosophy? A knowledge of Reincarnation, the dual nature of man, and other related matters, clears up many of the enigmas of life, as for instance what becomes of all the abilities and experience which a man has garnered during life, when he dies. May not a similar knowledge shed light on the present problem also? If so, then our beliefs would be reconciled with our intuitions, and practices which logic has seemed to condemn might be vindicated in the light of fuller knowledge.

For one thing, a conviction of the continuity of individual existence beyond the grave, in other earth-lives, more or less similar to the present life, affects the whole question profoundly. For we may at once infer that knowledge accumulated now, but not immediately used, may be used later on. And indeed this idea quite agrees with what many analogies from Nature suggest. Youth is the time for study; maturer age brings other duties. Let us compare a lifetime with a day. In the morning a man studies many subjects; but after noon he shuts his books, never thinks of them again, and spends the remainder of the day in other occupations, followed by recreation and ending in sleep. Has his labor been wasted? Nay, for he will resume it next morning. Can we not apply this analogy to the case of the young person whose education has had, or seemed to have, no immediate practical result?

We thus see how limited views as regards the duration of life may influence the question. But there are other limitations in our views; let us see how these in turn may affect the question.

We are accustomed to pay too much attention to a man's capacity as a separate individual, and not enough to his capacity as a part of a whole. No being in the universe is entirely separate from other beings however much he may try to make himself so or imagine himself to be so. This is especially applicable to Mind. How much of our mind is our own? It has been argued that Mind is a kind of common atmosphere, in which all partake, and that thoughts are interchanged freely, the notion that they belong particularly to oneself being chiefly an illusion. The more this is true, the more it must be true that in teaching one person we are in reality teaching many persons, teaching mankind in general. Does a teacher teach persons or minds? To him it often seems as if he were developing Mind, and the distinction of personalities is apt to disappear. Yet this attitude on his part may not be mere carelessness and indifference to the interests of his pupils; it may be founded on an intuitive perception of the fact that personality does not count for so much and that his pupils also have a collective capacity, an aggregate value, which counts for a great deal.

Another way in which we limit our outlook, and thus obtain a false perspective, is in regarding too intently the immediate (and, as we say, "practical") outcome of education. There is such a thing as a general education, an education not directed to any immediate or definite end, but having in view the general culture and refinement of the pupils. It is true, of course, that this argument can be used, and is used, to justify kinds of teaching which really are undesirable; it is true that in aiming at a general education, we may overdo the process; it is true that such overdoing puts a weapon into the hands of our opponents and goes some way towards justifying their arguments. But aside from these abuses, the principle itself remains true. There must be a certain amount of general culture, culture of a kind that has no immediate practical end in view.

Let us try to imagine the results of applying some of the wrongly called "practical" methods to an extreme degree. This boy is to be a shoemaker: teach him shoemaking and nothing else. This girl is to sew or cook: teach her sewing and cooking, but nothing else. At that rate society would become a world of machines, and general culture and love of knowledge would disappear.

Finally, to name a fourth limitation in our outlook, there is the error of mistaking the principle itself for its application, the system for the way in which it is carried out, the institution for the use that is made of it. Thus we often lay the blame in the wrong place. Before we sweep away a system, let us find out whether it is the system that is at fault or the application of it; otherwise we may find equally faulty results proceeding from any new system which we may adopt. Is it inefficiency which is at the root of the evil? If so, let us remedy the inefficiency and then it will be time to see about changing the system.

The education question, like so many other questions, is in a state of chaos. Something is the matter, but people do not know just what it is. The suggested cures are many. Rash experiments are made. The remedies threaten to be worse than the disease. One thing seems generally agreed upon--that our education does not confer perfect efficiency. What we really need is a general education that will give efficiency in reading, writing, speaking, ciphering; in power of attention, memory, concentration; in adaptability, readiness of resource; obedience, order, self-command. No need to enumerate all the requirements; everybody knows what they are and what is needed. Efficient people are needed everywhere; but, above all, people with self-command and free from weaknesses. If we could but turn out this kind of product, much less in the way of technical schools would be needed; for such pupils would be so apt and teachable that they could readily master anything. The difficulties as to the nature of the curriculum, whether it should include Greek and Latin, and, if so, how much; what history should be taught, and how it should be taught; whether theoretical grammar should be taught, or whether the pupil should acquire grammar unconsciously from his reading--all these and many more problems would settle themselves, or at least our point of view concerning them would be altogether altered. As it is, most of these problems resolve themselves into the one problem of how to produce good fruit from a neglected tree. So long as the pupils have not been trained in the control of their faculties, moral and mental, it is difficult to teach them anything, no matter which method you adopt. And if they have been properly trained in their early years, the question of what to teach them sinks into comparative unimportance, because they will be able to make use of all their opportunities.

The root of the whole difficulty, therefore, is this: that people have no definite philosophy of life to serve as a foundation for efforts. With religious beliefs all undermined and mixed up, and nothing to take their place but various theories wrongly labeled "scientific," it is no wonder if folk should find themselves incompetent to solve the educational problem. We need to understand first what a man is and what is his destiny; we need to think of the Soul as having existed before it entered its present body, and as being destined to exist again after it has left that body. We need to know the difference between the higher and the lower nature in a person, and how the two are interblended. Then we should not have rash schemes which ignore this distinction and propose to let the lower nature run wild. We should then know how to give the higher nature its freedom without letting the lower nature run wild.

It all comes to this: that tools are not of use without men to handle them; and that in our scheming we are trying to devise tools which will turn unskilled workmen into skilled. The primary factor in education is the man itself. The question begins at birth--even before birth. When the time comes, as come it must, when people will find themselves compelled by necessity to recognize the efficacy of Theosophy, then many problems will be solved. Theosophy means a getting back to simple yet profound truths--such simple truths as can be applied to any circumstances. These alone can grapple successfully with the problems.

THE TEMPLE OF THESEUS, ATHENS: by R.

The Theseion, the so-called Temple of Theseus, in Athens, belongs to the second period of classical Greek architecture, which may be considered to have flourished between B. C. 470 and 338, the dates of the Persian war and the Macedonian supremacy. It is one of the most beautiful examples of the Doric order, and is more perfect than any other building we have of ancient Greece. It probably owes its excellent preservation to the fact that it was turned into a Christian church during the Middle Ages. It is made of the famous white Pentelic marble, which has changed, by lapse of time, to a lovely golden yellow hue. It greatly resembles the Parthenon, but covers a little less than half the area, and is not so exquisitely proportioned. The Theseion was erected a few years before the Parthenon, probably about B. C. 460. It is one hundred and four feet long by forty-five wide, and the columns are nineteen feet high. Like most of the finest Grecian buildings it does not depend upon mere size for impressiveness. From the remains of sculpture still existing the following subjects have been ascertained: The achievements of Theseus (whence the name); The Labors of Hercules; and the battle of the Athenians, the Lapithae, and the Centaurs. Fifty of the _metopes_ (the squares into which the frieze is divided) were never adorned with sculpture, but were probably painted, for the Doric Temples are now known to have been painted both externally and internally. The groups in the pediments (the uppermost triangular portions) are entirely lost.

RECENT ADMISSIONS BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS: by a Student

A good summary of some of the changes wrought in our views of history by recent archaeological research is afforded by an article on ancient history in the new edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. The article is written by Professor J. B. Bury, Regius Professor of Modern History in Cambridge University, and is contributed to _The Sphere_, the well-known London illustrated weekly.

During the past thirty years our knowledge of the beginnings of Greek history has undergone a transformation, which is associated with the now familiar names of Mycenae and Cnossus. Nearly all that was written on early Greece by Grote and the other brave men before Agamemnon--who is Schliemann--may now be safely left unread. The striking discoveries of Schliemann, however, at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Troy, did not revolutionize our view of pre-Homeric Greece, though they suggested a new perspective. It is the startling facts revealed by the Cretan exploration of Mr. Arthur Evans that have opened the door into a new world full of surprises--an unsuspected civilization reaching back through a period measured not by centuries but by millennia. The prolegomena to Greek history now consist of an entirely new set of facts and a new set of problems. At the same time we have been learning a great deal more about the old civilizations in the near East contemporary with this Aegean civilization which has sprung upon our vision like a magic castle built in a night. Our knowledge of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria has become not only more extensive but clearer and more precise; and the importance of the Hittites in Asia Minor and Syria, though their own documents are still a sealed book, is emerging from obscurity.

One of the first thoughts that occur in connexion with the above is that we must still be careful about the statements of historians, whenever they tend to minimize or restrict; for, as they have altered their views before, so they may alter them again. We are bidden to throw our Grote into the waste-basket; but many will say that the claims made on behalf of that now despised scholarship were not lacking in positiveness. The views founded on this older scholarship have been made the basis for attacks on the views put forward and advocated by Theosophists; but now we find the opinions of scholarship revised, and altered more into conformity with some of the Theosophical views. Naturally, therefore, Theosophists infer that another thirty years will have witnessed yet further concessions on the part of scholarship; and they look forward to seeing all the statements of H. P. Blavatsky verified one by one as time goes on. They likewise conceded the apparent necessity, due to certain traits of human nature which we all have, of assuming a positive and dogmatic attitude with each new step in discovery, regardless of the logic of the case which would bid one apply to the future the lesson of the past, and put forward with due modesty views that are liable to change.

Said H. P. Blavatsky, in the Introduction to _The Secret Doctrine_, published in 1888:

No one styling himself a "scholar," in whatever department of exact science, will be permitted to regard these teachings seriously. They will be derided and rejected _a priori_ in this century; but only in this one. For in the twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the _Secret Doctrine_ has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but, on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally, that its teachings antedate the Vedas.

Other writers before H. P. Blavatsky, and from whom she quotes, had shown that the accessible facts of history, tradition, and archaeology, if interpreted in the light of a logic unbiased by preconceived opinion, demonstrate the extreme antiquity of civilization. But such writers have been regarded by the body of orthodox scholarship as cranks and paradoxists. In _The Secret Doctrine_, H. P. Blavatsky gathers together the evidence referred to by these writers, adds much more collected by herself, and throws upon the whole the light of Theosophy. By means of the clues thus afforded, a consistent pattern is seen to pervade the apparently tangled skein, and the harmony between the Theosophical truths and the facts thus adduced strikes home to the unprejudiced mind with the force of conviction. To clinch the matter, living Theosophists can now point in triumph, as above said, to the admissions made by scholars since _The Secret Doctrine_ was written--admissions which agree better with what H. P. Blavatsky said a quarter of a century ago than with their own utterances at that time.

It is seldom, indeed, whatever be the reason, that Theosophists have the pleasure of seeing H. P. Blavatsky's name and work mentioned in this connexion; though, as her works are still being issued and are readily available, it might seem strange that no mention should be made of them in connexion with matters so intimately related to the subjects of which they treat. The question as to whether scholars have read these works or not is debatable; but in either case Theosophists may find a source of gratification. For if scholars have read them, that at least is a tribute of respect, even though the indebtedness be unacknowledged. While if they have not read them, the inference is that the teachings of Theosophy have been confirmed from an independent source.

In assuming the duties of a pioneer, H. P. Blavatsky was doubtless aware of the drawbacks incidental to such a rôle in the present age; but she seems to have been so wrapped up in the enthusiasm of her purpose as to have been somewhat reckless of the consequences to herself. This however is quite consistent with the known character of pioneers. But, though too much interested in their work to seek renown or even recognition, they doubtless achieve this unsought boon eventually; for the law of rebirth may bring them back to earth in time to see their own monuments and to realize that now their all-too-inconvenient personality has been removed by Time to a distance, their harmless name may be safely honored. H. P. Blavatsky was much derided; then ignored; her generosity was not appreciated; she was accused of the most impossible motives. But now many of her teachings are found to be true--not in archaeology alone, but in comparative religion, science, and several other fields. Shall we then expect amends? Ask the shades of Mesmer and Elliotson, the persecuted advocates of a since rediscovered treatment; of Dr. B. W. Richardson, who suffered for his ideas on "nervous ether," now being rehabilitated, but without amends to the author; or the shades of many another pioneer. We dare not expect too much of humanity in this age; few will be those whose generosity will allow them to make such amends; and even of these, fewer still will be those who will break the rule of silence that seems to bind the tongues of the well-disposed.

There are always some, however, who are more interested in knowing the truth than in vindicating any personal or orthodox point of view; people whose vision, thus unblinded, sees further and clearer; and to these it may occur that the teachings of _The Secret Doctrine_, thus far vindicated, may be worthy of attention in view of the natural inference that the rest of them will likewise be vindicated. The Theosophical teachings, reintroduced to Western civilization by H. P. Blavatsky, have been neglected by some and grotesquely travestied by others; but they contain the science and scholarship of the future--if that future but remain loyal to truth. Loyalty to truth can only result in its establishment--in the vindication of Theosophy. And the particular truths to be established in the present case--the antiquity of civilization, the greatness of past humanity--are important in no mere academic sense. Medieval theology, much of whose spirit was inherited by scientific theorists, has belittled man and weakened his confidence in himself. The recognition of man's past achievements gives renewed hope for his future possibilities. Closely interwoven with the Theosophical teachings about the antiquity of civilization are the teachings about the Divine nature of Man. The Theosophical teachings are a consistent whole. Hence these wider views in archaeology, science, and religion, must tend to the widening of views concerning the nature of man and the destruction of old superstitions about his being born in sin or descended from the beasts.

While archaeology will naturally endeavor to go as slow as it can and to keep its discoveries well in hand, so to say, digesting them and incorporating them with the body of orthodox academic opinion, it is nevertheless true that it will be obliged to give way and expand its borders. For one thing, there are many explorers investigating in different fields; and these, in their theories, do not exhibit such uniformity and conformity as might be desired. One archaeologist will make admissions which others are not willing to make, because these particular admissions do not damage his own particular theory. Thus, taking all together, many admissions are made; the errors tend to cancel one another; the truth tends to add itself up. Another factor is what may be called "newspaper archaeology." The Sunday editions and the popular illustrated magazines familiarize the public with the latest discoveries and most advanced theories; and they frequently go a little too fast for the authorities. But what these popular accounts lack in accuracy they make up in freedom from prejudice.

GREAT NAMES IN ART. SCULPTURES FROM THE ALBERT MEMORIAL: by an Art Student

The first illustration represents a group of architects of modern, or comparatively modern times; the majority are British. This, and the four other groups which follow, are from the high-relief or frieze on the pedestal of the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, London, and were executed by J. B. Philip, about forty years ago.