Perspective enables us to look back over the history of the Theosophical Society and to determine some of the causes of its relative failure. For it is a relative failure that we have to face. Intended to be a wedge driven deep into the roots of human selfishness, the Society has dissipated its energy by divisions, and weakened its force by differences of effort and of aim. Today there are half a dozen Theosophical societies with a basis for common action so attenuated as almost to be negligible. There are Theosophists all over the world who could hardly find a Theosophical topic free from the danger of disagreement. There are Theosophical antagonisms none the less real, general, and disruptive because they are silent. And this discredit has overtaken a movement wherein unity of aim, purpose and teaching was once acknowledged as the one essential to success, was once striven for as the one thing needful, and to which all other things would be added. To impute the blame except to ourselves individually would be alike profitless and untheosophical, but no sincere effort to revise our ideals in the light of Dharma can fail of a benediction from the Law and from its Teachers.
The duties assigned to us were not difficult of comprehension. They were the same duties upon a small scale as those undertaken on a large scale by H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge. The ancient axiom, “As above, so below,” holds good here as elsewhere. We were invited to co-operate with them in making known to the world such parts of the ancient wisdom as would tend to establish fraternity as the law of life, and we were equipped with the accuracy of vision that comes from distance and perspective, and the knowledge necessary to that end. We were invited to cultivate a compassion for humanity and to give to that compassion a practical expression. Our mission as received from the Teachers was concerned only with our accepted duties; not at all with our rights, privileges, attainments. If we aspired to knowledge, it was only that we might in turn give that knowledge to others, and we were warned a hundred times that the only path to knowledge was through service. Our ideal was to become “beneficent forces in nature,” not aristocrats in knowledge. In short we were invited to play upon a small stage the part that the Teachers played upon a large one, and it would surely take some hardihood to imagine H. P. B. as yearning for some advancement, ecstasized by some personal expectation, or thrilled by the hope of messages or recognition. Every effort of her life was to give with both hands, her every thought was for humanity, her every ambition to spend and to be spent. With a somewhat stern self-judgment we may determine how far we have followed that example, how far we have even tried to follow it.
But in the dead past we have no interest. Let it bury its dead, although its Karma, unexpiated, must remain alive. It is only the present that concerns us, and the future that will be the child of the present. No error has passed wholly beyond the reach of remedy, and even our failure may be forced into the service of our efforts. If now, and at the eleventh hour, we would make our paths straight, and reject all activities that are not along the line of a precise Theosophic duty, we shall know that such matters as precedence in external organization, succession to this or to that position, the supposed revelations of fellow students, even the pinning of our hopes to expected events that at least are beyond our control, form no part of that duty. It lies before us clear, unequivocal, undisguised. It is to make known to the world the unity of life, the law of reincarnation with its precise balance of cause and effect, and the perfect and periodic harmonies of evolution. It is, in other words, to give the world those Theosophic truths that would operate directly to dignify life, to lessen hatreds, to induce brotherhood in its practical and most beneficent forms. To those who are doing this work there come no doubts or hesitations as to succession, or leadership, as to revelations, or the events that are still unborn. In the light of duty all things become orderly, all perplexities translucent, all policies frictionless. By that light we see the guidance of world-old spiritual forces as real now as when it was said that those who led the life should know the doctrine. It is that same light, the light that comes from an undeviating work for humanity, that still asks for recognition, and more recognition, and still more recognition by every Theosophist who is strong enough to put away foolish things and to give freely as he has received freely. And so, waving upon one side all dissensions, all digressions, all ambitions, crowding them from the field by unselfish aspiration, denying them the sustenance of our thought and action—Let the Work go on