The March issue of Theosophy contained the reprint of an article by H. P. Blavatsky which was based on a contribution of M. Emile Burnouf to the Revue des Deux Mondes. In that contribution the learned orientalist reviewed the purpose and progress of the Theosophical Society and advanced various recommendations as to its policy. The Theosophical Society, he said, was one of the “most interesting, if not the most unexpected, phenomena of our day.” Its place in the modern world was assured if it could succeed in persuading men of thought that the law of sacrifice must take the place of the struggle for life, that the empire of reason must assume the upper hand in human affairs. Already there were men of heart who were weary and terrified at the egoism and corruption “which tend to engulf our civilization and to replace it by a learned barbarism.”
M. Burnouf’s words were well chosen, and they received from H. P. Blavatsky the applause that they deserved. It is precisely a state of “learned barbarism” toward which our civilization is hastening, and from which nothing can save it but the resolution of the few who are prepared to sacrifice themselves as pioneers on the ascending arc of the spiritual cycle.
It is no mere figure of speech to say that the present moment is one of momentous choice for nations and for individuals. Although humanity has reached that point in the great cycle when spirit should begin to ascend from the depths of matter, there is none the less a continuing downward impetus that must be counteracted by conscious effort toward altruism if the individual and collective ascent is ever to be accomplished at all. And in the absence of that conscious effort there can be nothing in front of civilization but the “learned barbarism” that is a prelude to revolution and destruction.
Now let it be said that Theosophy makes no appeal to the placid self-satisfaction of the age, not because it would withhold its message from any member of the human race but rather because there are no words that can pierce the hide of modern complacency. Theosophy makes no appeal to those who resolutely place their faith in an aggressive human intellect unguided and unrestrained by morality, nor to those fatuous ones who join in the delirious cry of human progress at every fresh mechanical invention, at every new triumph over material nature.
If there are actually those who believe that humanity is upon the right track, that materialistic science is pushing open the gates of the earthly paradise, and that we need do no more than continue our inventions, continue our legislation, and continue our discoveries, then such must be left, like all other fools, to their folly. Even the gods fight in vain against stupidity, and when stupidity is allied to self-conceit it is the part of wisdom to stand upon one side and to await the educational forces of disaster. And yet the portents of today might well still the paeans of praise for what, with an almost inconceivable blindness, we still hail as human progress. At the present moment there is not a country in Europe that is not on the giddy brink of war or revolution. A military struggle is being waged in the old world almost without a parallel in the annals of ferocity and massacre. Civilization everywhere is holding its breath, not knowing what a day may bring forth. Europe is one vast armed camp ready at any moment to explode volcanically in a lava-flood of destruction and death. And in domestic affairs our situation is no less perilous. We are the witness of disclosures as to the commercial life of our great cities that would have been received with horrified incredulity in those middle ages that it flatters our vanity to describe as dark. Everywhere there is the seething of a discontent that it would be madness to ignore or to minimize. The rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer. Reform is only another name for hypocritical greed, and there is no recognition for any moral law unless sustained by the power of the policeman. And yet in the presence of portents almost without their like in history we can indulge in ecstatic enthusiasms at the identification of a new disease germ. Threatened by the very extinction of altruism we can exult as though this “learned barbarism” were the goal and the destination, heaven appointed, of the marching ages.
Therefore Theosophy has nothing to say to those who are satisfied, to those who believe that “all’s right with the world,” to those who wish for nothing better than a continuation of civilization upon its present path, however unillumined that path may be by any other light than that of an intellectual selfishness. And such complacency as this is always noisy. It is the empty human head, like the empty brass vessel that resounds most loudly to every external impact. And so everywhere we hear the chorus of congratulation at each fresh proof of our reliance upon intellect alone, of our scorn for spirituality, of our ignorance of the “law that makes for righteousness,” and that is indifferent to a vaunted material progress that only multiplies human sorrows.
But M. Burnouf is eminently right when he says that men of heart everywhere—and they are many—are weary of a “progress” that is downward instead of upward, a “progress” that enslaves instead of liberates, and of the egoism and the corruption that threaten to engulf civilization under a cataclysmic torrent of learned barbarism. And it is to these men of heart that Theosophy appeals. It is to them that the moment of choice is presented with insistent force. Before them are the two paths. The one follows the line of material impetus which will carry them past the point where spiritual ascension is possible, and so onward and downward to utter negation and futility. It is the path of least resistance. It is the path of the unthinking majority. It is the path of comfortable acquiescence in the gods of materiality, and of things as they are. And the other path is the path of conscious spiritual effort. It demands the strength to resist the downward impetus, to remodel the life, to choose new ideals, to set the face resolutely toward a light that may be now unseen but that becomes the whole world’s light.
It was said by a Master of Wisdom that they who lead the life shall know of the doctrine. Evidently the doctrine was not one of intellect alone. Evidently it was a process not so much of acquiring something as of becoming something. It is that same doctrine that Theosophy offers to the men of Heart of whom M. Burnouf speaks. It cannot be learned by the mind, but the mind can help us to apprehend some of its benefactions. Even though accepted only in theory it can suggest something of the “peace that passes all understanding” that must follow its full realization. The life that must be lived is one based upon a recognition of the Unity, the universality and the perpetuity of existence. It brings with it the conviction of a human individual consciousness that is not spanned by any measure of years but that goes backward, and forward, into the infinities. It is a consciousness that knows no break, no death, and that never for the space of an instant can become unconsciousness. It is a consciousness that passes on from form to form under an eternal law of rebirth, and that stores within its mighty memory the experiences of immeasurable time until the mind shall be caught up into the radiance of its wisdom. It is a consciousness that becomes ours by service, and to which we attain only by that altruism which rends the veil of the temple and uncovers holy things.
And so Theosophy invites the “men of heart” everywhere to try this Philosopher’s Stone upon the base metals of human life, to put this doctrine to the test if only for a single day. For one day only let every event and every thought be gauged by this new standard of “life for evermore,” a life governed by that law of inexorable justice that in its own time shall build the temple of individual character four-square and reaching from earth to heaven. How many ambitions, how many greeds, how many fears, could stand that test? Where is the unworthiness that must not soon wither into nothingness before the vastness of that life, and before the knowledge of the law that governs it? Not until then shall we know that our progress, our evolution, our discoveries, and our inventions, are but as a tale that is told unless the human soul sits supreme above them all, and that without that human soul they are no more than “learned barbarism.”