text:
The Inner Life, v. I/Second Section/II

BUDDHISM In thinking of the Lord BUDDHA we must not forget that He is very much more than merely the founder of a religion. He is a great official of the Occult Hierarchy, the greatest of all save one, and the founder in previous incarnations of many religions before this one which now bears His title. For He was the Vyasa who has done so much for the Indian religion; He was Hermes, the great founder of the Egyptian mysteries; He was the original Zoroaster, from whom came the sun and fire worship; and he was also Orpheus, the great bard of the Greeks. In this last of His many births, when He came as the Lord Gautama, it does not appear that He had originally any intention of founding a new religion. He appeared simply as a reformer of Hinduism — a faith which was already of hoary antiquity, and had therefore departed much from its original form, as all religions have. It had become hardened in many ways, and appears to have been very far less elastic even than it is now. Even now we all know how strictly drawn are the lines between the castes, what an iron rigidity there is as to forms and ceremonies. We know that even now no man can be converted to Hinduism; the only way to enter that faith is to be born into it. Imagine a condition in which all this was even far more rigid, in which the feeling was much more intense, in which all the ideas of life had been very much changed from what they were in the days of the original Aryan immigrants, when it was a religion full of joy, and holding out hope for everybody. A little before the time of the Buddha the general opinion seems to have been that practically no one but a brahman had any chance of salvation at all. Now as the number of the brahmans was always small, and even now is only something like thirteen millions out of the three hundred million inhabitants of India, it was clearly not a very hopeful religion for the majority of the people, since it indicated to them that they had to work on through very many lives, until they could earn admission into the small and exclusive brahman caste, before they could possibly escape from the wheel of birth and death. Then came Lord BUDDHA, and by His teaching flung open wide the gates of the sweet law of justice, for He taught that men had departed entirely from the old form of religion. He repeatedly asserted that a man who, though born a brahman, did not live the life which a brahman should, was neither worthy of respect nor in the way of salvation, and that a man of any other caste who did live the true brahman life, should be treated as a brahman, and had in every way the same possibilities before him as though he had been born into the sacred caste. Naturally enough in the face of teachings which placed all hope of final salvation so indefinitely far away in the future, the ordinary man of the world had become hopeless and consequently careless; on the other hand, the austerity of the brahman, who spent the whole of his life in ceremonies and in meditation, was not to their taste, and indeed was obviously impossible for them. But the BUDDHA preached to them what He called the middle way; He told them that although the life of austerity and of entire devotion to religion was not for them, there was no reason why, because of that, they should relapse into carelessness and evil living. He showed them that a higher life is possible for the man still in the world, and that, though they might not be able to devote themselves to metaphysics and to hairsplitting arguments, they could still obtain sufficient grasp of the great facts of evolution to form a satisfactory guide to them in their lives. He declared that extremes in either direction are equally irrational; that on the one hand the life of the ordinary man of the world, wrapped up entirely in his business, pursuing dreams of wealth and power, is foolish and defective because it leaves out of account all that is really worthy of consideration; but that on the other hand the extreme asceticism that teaches each man to turn his back upon the world altogether, and to devote himself exclusively and selfishly to the endeavour to shut himself away from it and escape from it, is also foolish. He held that the middle path of truth and beauty is the best and safest, and that while certainly the life devoted entirely to spirituality is the highest of all for those who are ready for it, there is also a good and true and spiritual life possible for the man who yet holds his place and does his work in the world. He based His doctrines solely on reason and common-sense; He asked no man to believe anything blindly, but rather told him to open his eyes and look around him. He declared that in spite of all the sorrow and misery of the world, the great scheme of which man is a part is a scheme of eternal justice, and that the law under which we are living is a good law, and needs only that we should understand it and adapt ourselves to it. He taught that all life is suffering, but that man causes his own trouble for himself, because he yields himself perpetually to desire for that which he has not, and He said that happiness and contentment can be gained better by limiting desires than by increasing possessions. To this end He tabulated His teaching in the most marvellous manner, arranging everything under certain headings which could be readily memorized. This constitutes in reality a carefully graded system of mnemonics. It is so simple in its broad outline that any child can remember and understand its four noble truths, its noble eightfold path, and the principles of life which they suggest; yet it is carried out so elaborately that it constitutes a system of philosophy which the wisest man may study all his life through, and yet find in it ever more and more light upon the problems of life. He analyzed everything to an almost incredible extent, as may be seen by a study of the twelve nidanas, or by His enumeration of the steps which intervene between thought and action. Each of His four noble truths is represented by a single word, and yet to any one who has ever heard the exposition of the system each of those words inevitably calls up a great range of ideas. The same thing is true of the words signifying the steps of the noble eightfold path, and of the “great perfections” which are spoken of in The Voice of the Silence. All of these perfections are simply wisdom, power and love appearing in different forms. They are sometimes reckoned as six, but more commonly as ten. The six are given as perfect charity, perfect morality, perfect patience, perfect energy, perfect truth and perfect wisdom; and the other four which are sometimes added are perfect resignation, perfect resolution, perfect kindness and perfect abnegation. The religion of Buddhism has practically disappeared from India, yet it has left behind it lasting results, and the country bears everywhere the strong impress of His teachings. Before His coming blood-sacrifices appear to have been universal; even now they still exist, but are comparatively rare, for He taught that such things were not pleasing to any noble deity, but that the Gods desired rather the sacrifice of a holy life. In looking back upon the record of those times we see that He preached mostly in the open air, and nearly always sitting at the foot of a tree, with the listeners sitting on the ground about Him, or standing leaning against the trees, men and women intermingling, and little children running about and playing upon the outskirts of the crowd. The great teacher had a most wonderful voice, gloriously full and sonorous, and a personality which instantly commanded the attention of all who heard Him, and invariably won their hearts, even in the rare cases where they did not agree with what he said. The audiences were stirred up to great religious fervor, we find them constantly raising cries of “Sadhu, Sadhu,” by way of applause, when anything was said which especially moved them, and at the same time raising their joined hands in an attitude of salutation. Part at least of this influence was due to the tremendously strong vibrations of His aura, which was of very great size, so that the audience were actually sitting within it and being attuned to it while they listened to His discourse. Its magnetic effect was almost indescribable, and while His hearers were within its influence even the most stupid of them could understand to the full whatever He said, though often afterwards when they had passed away from that influence they found it difficult to comprehend it at all in the same way. To this marvellous influence also is due the phenomenon so often described in the Buddhist books — the attainment of the arhat level by such large numbers of His hearers. It is quite a common thing to read in the accounts given in the Buddhist scriptures that after a sermon of the BUDDHA hundreds of men, even thousands, reached the arhat level. Knowing what a very high degree of attainment this means, this seemed to us, when we read it, almost incredible, and we supposed it to be simply a case of oriental exaggeration; but later and closer study has shown us that the accounts are actually true. So remarkable a result seemed to call for further investigation into its causes, and we found that in order to understand all this it was necessary to take into account not this one life only, but the work of many previous incarnations. We must remember that the Lord Gautama is the BUDDHA of the fourth root-race, even though this last incarnation of His was taken in the fifth. He had been born many times in various Atlantean races, and always as a great teacher. In each of those lives He had drawn around Him many pupils, who had gradually been raised to higher levels of thought and of life, and when He came in India for this last culminating birth He arranged that all those whom at many different times and in many different lands He had influenced should be brought together into incarnation at the same time. Thus His audiences were to a large extent composed of fully prepared and, as it were, highly specialized souls, and when these came under the influence of the extraordinarily powerful magnetism of a BUDDHA, they understood and followed every word which He said, and the action upon them as egos was of the most wonderfully stimulating nature. Therefore it was that they so readily responded; therefore it was that so large a number of them could be and were raised so rapidly to such dizzy heights. In the third volume of The Secret Doctrine we shall find an exceedingly interesting and suggestive section called The Mystery of Buddha, which refers to the fact that the BUDDHA prepared His own inner bodies of very high grades of matter, with the fullest development of the spirillae. His buddhic, causal and mental bodies are kept together for other Great Ones to use, because of the exceeding difficulty of producing others equal to them. The Christ used them along with the physical body of Jesus, while the latter waited on higher planes in his own vehicles. Shankaracharya also used these “remains.” Hence arose the incorrect idea that He was a reincarnation of the BUDDHA. The coming Christ will also use these vehicles, wedding them to another physical body which is even now being prepared for Him. Buddhism still claims a larger number of adherents than any other religion in the world, and is a living influence in the lives of millions of our fellow-men. It would be quite unfair to judge it by what is written about it by European orientalists. When I was in Ceylon and Burma I compared these accounts with the interpretation given to the doctrines by the living followers of His religion. Learned monks in these countries approach the subject with an accuracy of knowledge at least equal to that of the most advanced orientalists, but their interpretation of the doctrines is very far less wooden and lifeless. By far the best book in English to give one a real idea of the religion as it is held by living men is The Light of Asia, by Sir Edwin Arnold; and another book, which makes a good second to it, is The Soul of a People, by H. Fielding Hall. Some critics have said that Sir Edwin Arnold has gone a little beyond the bare literal meaning of the words of the text, and is trying to read Christian ideas into them. I do not think this is so, and I have certainly found that he expresses far more closely the feeling and attitude of the Buddhists than any other writer. Buddhism is now divided into two great Churches, the Northern and the Southern, and both of them have departed to some extent from the original teaching of the BUDDHA, though in different directions. The religion is so plain and straightforward, and so obviously common-sense that almost any person may readily adapt himself to it, without necessarily giving up the beliefs and practices of other faiths. As a consequence of this in the Northern Church we have a form of Buddhism with an immense amount of accretion. It seems to have absorbed into itself many ceremonies and beliefs of the aboriginal faith which it supplanted; so that in Tibet, for example, we find it including a whole hierarchy of minor deities, devas and demons which were entirely unknown to the original scheme of the BUDDHA. The Southern Church, on the other hand, instead of adding to the teaching of the BUDDHA, has lost something from it. It has intensified the material and the abstract sides of the philosophy. It teaches that nothing but Karma passes over from life to life — that there is no permanent ego in man, but that in his next birth he is in effect a new man, who is the result of the karma of the previous life, and they quote various sayings of the BUDDHA in support of this. It is true that He often spoke very strongly against the persistence of the personality, and that He assured His hearers again and again that nothing whatever which they knew in connection with a man could pass over to another birth. But He nowhere denied the individuality; in fact many of His sayings absolutely affirm it. Take for example a text which occurs in the Samannaphalasutta of the Digha-Nikaya. When first mentioning the condition and training of the mind that are necessary for success in spiritual progress, the BUDDHA describes how he sees all the scenes in which he was in any way concerned passing in succession before his mind' s eye. He illustrates it by saying: “If a man goes out from his own village to another and thence to another, and from there comes back again to his own village, he may think thus: `I indeed went from my own village to that other. There I stood thus; I sat in this manner; thus I spoke, and thus I remained silent. From that village again I went to another, and I did the same there. The same `I am' returned from that village to my own village.' In the very same way, O King, the ascetic, when his mind is pure, knows his former births. He thinks: `In such a place I had such a name. I was born in such a family, such was my caste, such was my food, and in such and such a way I experienced pleasure and pain, and my life extended through in some other place, and there also I had such and such conditions. Thence removed, the same `I' am now born here.'”

This question shows very clearly the doctrine of the BUDDHA with regard to the reincarnating ego. He gives illustrations also in the same Sutta of the manner in which an ascetic can know the past births of others — how he can see them die in one place, and after the sorrows and joys of hell and heaven the same men are born again somewhere else. It is true that in the Brahmajala Sutta He mentions all the various aspects of the soul, and says that they do not absolutely exist, because their existence depends upon “contact,” that is to say upon relation. But in thus denying the absolute reality of the soul He agrees with the other great Indian teachers, for the existence not only of the soul but even of the LOGOS Himself is true only relatively. Untrained minds frequently misunderstand these ideas, but the careful student of oriental thought will not fail to grasp exactly what is meant, and to realize that the teaching of the BUDDHA in this respect is exactly that now given by Theosophy. It is not difficult to see how various texts might be so emphasized or distorted as to seem to contradict one another, and the Southern Church has chosen to cling rather to the denial of the permanence of the personality than to the assertion of the continuity of the individuality, just as in Christianity some people have acquired the habit of laying stress on particular texts, and ignoring others which contradict them. Another point as to which there is a very similar misunderstanding is the constantly repeated assertion that nirvana is equivalent to annihilation. Even Max Muller, the great Oxford Sanskritist, was under this delusion for many years, but later in his life with furthers and deeper study he came to understand that in this he had been mistaken. The description which the Lord BUDDHA Himself gives to nirvana is so far above the comprehension of any man who is trained only in ordinary and worldly methods of thought that it is little wonder that it should have been misunderstood at first sight by the European orientalists; but no one who has lived in the East among the Buddhists can for a moment suppose that they regard annihilation as the end which they are striving to reach. It is quite true that the attaining of nirvana does involve the utter annihilation of that lower side of man which is in truth all that we know of him at the present time. The personality, like everything connected with the lower vehicles, is impermanent and will disappear. If we endeavour to realize what man would be when deprived of all which is included under these terms we shall see that for us at our present stage it would be difficult to comprehend that anything remained, and yet the truth is that everything remains — that in the glorified spirit which then exists, all the essence of all the qualities which have been developed through the centuries of strife and stress in earthly incarnation will inhere to the fullest possible degree. The man has become more than man, since he is now on the threshold of Divinity; yet he is still himself, even though it be a so much wider self. Many definitions have been given of nirvana, and naturally none of them can possibly be satisfactory; perhaps the best on the whole is that of peace in omniscience. Many years ago when I was preparing a simple introductory catechism of their religion for Buddhist children, the chief Abbot Sumangala himself gave me as the best definition of nirvana to put before them that it was a condition of peace and blessedness so high above our present state that it was impossible for us to understand it. Surely that is far removed from the idea of annihilation. Truly all that we now call the man has disappeared, but that is not because the individuality is annihilated, but because it is lost in divinity. The BUDDHA Himself once said: “Nirvana is not being, but also it is not non-being.” Another difference between the Northern Church of Buddhism and the Southern is that they adopt different version of the scriptures. It is usually stated that the Northern Church adopts the Mahayana and the Southern the Hinayana, but whether even this much may be safely said depends upon the shade of meaning which we attach to a much-disputed word. Yana means vehicle, and it is agreed that it is to be applied to the dhamma or law, as the vessel which conveys us across the sea of life to nirvana, but there are at least five theories as to the exact sense in which it is to be taken. 1. That it refers simply to the language in which the law is written, the greater vehicle being by this hypothesis Sanskrit, and the lesser vehicle Pali — a theory which seems to me untenable. It is true that the Northern Church uses the Sanskrit translation, while the Southern scriptures are in Pali, the language which the Lord BUDDHA spoke when on earth. It is stated that the Pali scriptures which we now possess are not in the original form, but that all the originals existing (in Ceylon at least) were carefully destroyed by the Tamil invaders, so that the Pali scriptures which we now have are a retranslation made from a copy in Elu, then the Vernacular language of Ceylon. 2. Hina may apparently be taken as signifying mean or easy, as well as small. One interpretation therefore considers that the Hinayana is the meaner or easier road to liberation — the irreducible minimum of knowledge and conduct required to attain it, while the Mahayana is the fuller and more philosophical doctrine, which includes much traditional knowledge about higher realms of nature. Needless to say, this interpretation comes from a Mahayana source. 3. That Buddhism, in its unfailing courtesy towards other religions, accepts them all as ways to liberation, though it regards the method taught by its founder as offering the shortest and surest route. According to this view Buddhism is the Mahayana, and the Hinayana includes Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, and any other religions which were existing at the time when the definition was formulated. 4. That the two doctrines are simply two stages of one doctrine — the Hinayana for the Sravakas or hearers, and the Mahayana for more advanced students. 5. That the word Yana is to be understood not exactly in its primary sense of `vehicle,' but rather in its secondary sense, nearly equivalent to the English word `career.' According to this interpretation the Mahayana puts before the man the `grand career' of becoming a Bodhisattva and devoting himself to the welfare of the world, while the Hinayana shows him only the smaller `career' of so living as to attain nirvana for himself. There has also been much discussion as to the exact meaning of the terms Adi-Buddha and Avalokiteshwara. I have made no special study of these things from the philosophical standpoint, but so far as I have been able to gather ideas from discussion of the matter with the living exponents of the religion, Adi-Buddha seems to be the culmination of one of the great lines of superhuman development — what might be called the abstract principle of all the Buddhas. Avalokiteshwara is a term belonging to the Northern Church, and seems to be the Buddhists' name for their conception of the LOGOS. European scholars have translated it: “The Lord who looks down from on high,” but this seems to have in it a somewhat inaccurate implication, for it is clearly always the manifested LOGOS; sometimes the LOGOS of a solar system and sometimes higher than that, but always manifest. We must not forget that while the founders of the great religions see and know the things which They name, Their followers usually do not see; they have only the names, and they juggle with them as intellectual counters, and build up much which is incorrect and inconsistent. The Buddhism of the Southern Church, which includes Ceylon, Burma, Siam and Cambodia, has on the whole kept its religion free from the accretions which have become so prominent in the Northern division of Japan, China and Tibet. In Burma no image appears in the temples except that of the BUDDHA, though of Him there are in some cases hundreds of image, of different material, in different positions, presented by various worshippers. In Ceylon a certain concession seems to have been made to popular feeling, or perhaps to a foreign government during the time of the Tamil kings, for the images of certain Hindu deities are often to be seen in the temples, though they are always placed in a subordinate position and considered as a kind of attendants upon the BUDDHA. We need not however blame the Tibetans very much for the fact that certain superstitions have crept into their Buddhism. The same thing happens in all countries and with all religions, as time goes on. In Italy, for example, numbers of the peasants in the hills still follow what they call the old religion, and continue even in the present day the worship of Bacchus, under an Etruscan name which antedates even the time of the Roman Empire. The Catholic priests quite recognize the existence of this older faith, and set themselves against it, but without avail. In Southern Buddhism there is remarkably little ceremony of any kind — practically nothing indeed that in any way corresponds to the Christian service. When the people pay their morning visit to the temple they usually call upon the monks to recite for them the three guides and the five precepts, which they then repeat after him, but even this can hardly be called a public service, for it is recited not once at a set time, but for each group of people as they happen to arrive. There is another ceremony called Paritta or Pirit (which means `blessings') but this is not performed in the temple itself nor at any stated times, but it is considered a good work on the part of the laity to celebrate any special occasion by giving a Pirit ceremony — that is to say by erecting and elaborately decorating a temporary building in which the ceremony is held. It consists of the chanting of benedictory verses from the sacred scriptures, and is carried on for a certain number of days, usually a fortnight, by relays of monks who relieve one another every two hours. Sometimes when a man falls ill one of these Pirit ceremonies is arranged for him, with the idea that it will promote his recovery. It is in reality a mesmeric ceremony, for the monks sit in a circle and hold in their hands a rope which runs round the circle, and they are instructed to recite their texts, keeping clearly in their minds all the time the will to bless. Naturally this rope becomes very strongly magnetized as the ceremony progresses, and strings run from it to a huge pot of water, which of course also becomes highly charged with magnetism. At the conclusion of the ceremony this water is distributed among the people, and the sick man often holds a thread which is connected with the rope. The Southern Buddhists give a list of five psychic powers which may be gained by the man who is making progress on the Path. (1) The ability to pass through the air and through solid objects, and to visit the heaven-world while still alive. It is however possible that this may mean nothing more than ability to function freely in the astral body, because it is quite likely that in speaking of the heaven-world they do not really mean the mental plane, but only the higher levels of the astral. (2) Divinely clear hearing — which is evidently merely the astral faculty of clairaudience. (3) The ability to comprehend and sympathize with all that is in the minds of others — which appears to be thought-reading, or perhaps telepathy. (4) The Power to remember former births. (5) Divinely clear vision — that is to say, clairvoyance. To this is added in some lists the attainment of deliverance by wisdom. This must of course mean the attainment of freedom from the necessity of rebirth, but it does not seem to be of the same nature as the other powers, and perhaps should hardly appear in the same category. Ananda is said to have been the favourite disciple of the Lord BUDDHA, just as John is spoken of as the beloved disciple of the Christ, and no doubt in both cases the special intimacy was the result of relationship in previous lives. Ananda was certainly not so chosen because he was the most advanced, for even after the death of the BUDDHA we hear that when the first great council was held in a cave within the living rock, and the condition of taking part in it was that none should enter who could not pass through the rock, Ananda found himself shut out from it because he had not yet attained this power. But it is said that his grief at this exclusion from a grand opportunity of serving his departed Master was so great that by a supreme effort of will he then and there developed the power which had been lacking, and passed in triumphantly to take his place among his brothers, though a little late. This shows us that even those who are the most highly advanced of all humanity have still their special friendships, and that therefore to love one person more than another cannot be improper. It is true that such affection as you now feel for your nearest and dearest you will feel later on for the whole world, but at that time you will feel a thousand times more affection for those who are nearest to you. Your love will never be the same for all, although all will be included within it. It is impossible that we should feel towards another as we do towards our Master, for when He becomes a LOGOS we shall be part of His system, and even when far later on we ourselves become LOGOI we shall still be part of Him, for He will represent some far greater system. Although there will always be greater love for some than others, we shall help those whom we love less just as fully as those whom we love more. We shall always do our best for all, just as a doctor equally helps his patient whether he be a friend or not, for anything like dislike or hatred will have ceased aeons before. At the time of the Lord BUDDHA many other spiritual teachers were sent forth to the world. We find for example Lao-tse, Confucius and Pythagoras, all working in their different spheres. Advantage was taken of the stupendous outpouring of spiritual force at the time to send forth teachers into many parts of the world.

title: The Inner Life, v. I/Second Section/II


text:
The Inner Life, v. I/Second Section/III

CHRISTIANITY There is nothing in the principles of Theosophy which is at all in opposition to the true primitive Christianity, though there may be statements which cannot be reconciled with some of the mistakes of modern popular theology. This modern theology attaches immense importance to texts; in fact it appears to me to be based upon one or two texts almost entirely. It takes these and gives to them a particular interpretation, often in direct opposition to the plain meaning of other texts from the same bible. Of course there are contradictions in the Christian scripture just as there must necessarily be in any book of that size, the various parts of which were written at such widely separated periods of the world's history, and by people so unequal in knowledge and in civilization. It is impossible that all the statements made in it can be literally true, but we can go back behind them all, and try to find out what the original teacher did lay before His pupils. Since there are many contradictions and many interpretations it is obviously the duty of a thinking Christian to weigh carefully the different versions of his faith which exist in the world, and decide between them according to his own reason and common-sense. Every Christian does, as a matter of fact, decide for himself now; he chooses to be a Roman Catholic, or a member of the Church of England, or a Methodist, or a Salvationist, though each of these sects professes to have the only genuine brand of Christianity, and justifies its claim by the quotation of texts. How then does the ordinary layman decide between their rival claims? Either he accepts blindly the faith which his father held, and does not examine the matter at all, or else he does examine it, and then he decides by the exercise of his own judgment. If he is already doing that, it would be absurd and inconsistent for him to refuse to examine all texts, instead of basing his belief only upon one or two. If he does impartially examine all texts, he will certainly find many which support Theosophical truth. He will find also that the creeds can be rationally interpreted only by Theosophy. Of course in order to make an intelligent comparison between these different systems it will be necessary for him to make some enquiries into the history of his own religion, and to see how the Christian doctrine came to be what it now is. He will find that in the early Christian Church there were three principal divisions or parties. There were first of all the Gnostic Doctors or teachers, wise and cultured men who held that the Christian Church had its system of philosophy of the same nature as the great Greek and Roman systems which existed at that time. They said that this system, while thoroughly comprehensive and very beautiful, was difficult to understand, and therefore they did not recommend its study to the ignorant. They spoke of it as the Gnosis or knowledge — the knowledge which was possessed by those who were full members of the church, but was not given out to the world at large, and not even told to the more ignorant members of the church while they were in that preliminary stage when they could not receive the sacraments. Then there was the second division, a body of respectable middle-class people, who troubled themselves not at all about the philosophy, but simply were content to take the words of the Christ as their guide in life. They used as a sacred book a collection of His sayings, some leaves of which have recently been discovered by antiquarians. Then there was unfortunately a great mass of ignorant and turbulent people who never had any grasp whatever of Christian doctrine, but became members of the church merely because of the prophecies, given by the Christ, of a good time to come. He was very much moved by the sufferings of the poor, and full of compassion and pity for them. He told them constantly, in His teachings, to take comfort, because the poor man who endures the struggle bravely and well will in the future have a better position and greater advancement than the rich man who misuses his opportunities. One can readily see how that doctrine preached to an exceedingly ignorant people might be taken in a one-sided manner. They would take the promises and not the conditions, and their idea of that good time might easily be that they in turn would be the oppressors and would take advantage of the rich man — something which of course the Christ never preached. So it came to pass that He attracted to himself a great crowd of men who for various reasons were against the existing government; and when these ignorant people in turn preached what they called Christianity to others, they naturally intensified and exaggerated their own misconceptions of it. This great mass of the common people, who called themselves “the poor men,” speedily became a vast majority of the infant church, and gained so much power that they were eventually able to throw out the Gnostic Doctors as heretics; for the “poor men” resented the idea that any knowledge which they did not possess could be regarded as an essential part of Christianity. There is yet another point of view from which the Christian may find Theosophy of the greatest use to him. Just now the minds of many orthodox Christians are much exercised with regard to what they call the higher criticism — that is, the attempt to apply ordinary common-sense and scientific methods to the examination of the religious teaching — the endeavour to understand religion instead of blindly believing it. For many ages the world has been told that ecclesiastical dogmas must be swallowed like pills, and that to attempt to reason about them is impious. There are many men in the world, and they are among the most intellectual of its citizens, who simply cannot accept doctrines thus blindly and uncomprehendingly. Before they can believe they must to some extent understand, and a statement does not become a living fact to them until they can relate it rationally to other facts, and regard it as part of a more or less comprehensive scheme of things. It is ridiculous to say (as some of the orthodox do) that these people are inherently wicked and that their attitude is inspired by the devil. On the contrary they are precisely the men who truly appreciate God's great gift of reason, and are determined to employ it in the highest of all possible directions — for the elucidation of the truth about religion. The truth is that the critics are of the greatest possible service to religion; they are clearing up points in it which heretofore have been vague; they are stating with accuracy matters in connection with it which were previously very partially understood; they are trying to make a reasonable system out of what has until now been nothing but a mass of meaningless confusion. If any of our members have orthodox friends who are disturbed by these efforts, who fear lest this liberalizing and rationalizing of their faith should refine it altogether out of existence, let them recommend to them the teachings of Theosophy, for that is the very thing which they need. It will teach them to pause before throwing aside ancestral belief, and it will show them that when properly understood that belief has a real meaning and a real foundation, and that, while some of the vagaries of mediaeval ecclesiastical dogma may be incomprehensible and incredible, the original teaching of the Christ was a magnificent presentment of universal truth. If they have somewhat outgrown the outer form of their religion, if they have broken through the chrysalis of blind faith, and mounted on the wings of reason and intuition to the freer, nobler mental life of more exalted levels, Theosophy will show them that in all this there has been no loss, but a great and glorious gain. For it tells them that the glow of devotion which has meant so much to them in their spiritual life is more than justified, that the splendour and beauty and poetry of religious thought exist in fuller measure than they have ever hoped before — no longer as mere pleasant dreams from which the cold light of common-sense may at any time rudely awaken them, but as truths of nature which will bear investigation, which become only brighter and more perfect as they are more accurately understood. Certainly the Christian Bible ought not to be taken literally, for many of its statements are symbolical, and others are simply not true. When we examine clairvoyantly the life of the Founder of Christianity, for example, we can find no trace of the alleged twelve apostles, it would seem that as men they never existed, but that they were introduced into the story for some reason — possibly to typify the twelve signs of the zodiac. The disciple Jesus, whose body was taken by the Christ, was not an illegitimate son, as is implied in the gospel, nor was his father a carpenter. He was in reality of the highest aristocracy of the Jews, a descendant of their own old royal line. He may however have had a tinge of Aryan blood in him, which would be quite enough to cause the exclusive Jews to say that he was not legitimately of the seed of David, and that statement might very easily be taken to mean such an irregular birth as is suggested by the narrative. The truth is that the four gospels at any rate were never intended to be taken as in any sense historical. They are all founded upon a much shorter document written in Hebrew by a monk named Matthaeus, who lived in a monastery in a desert to the south of Palestine. He seems to have conceived the idea of casting some of the great facts of initiation into a narrative form and mingling with it some points out of the life of the real Jesus who was born 105 B. C., and some from the life of another quite obscure fanatical preacher, who had been condemned to death and executed in Jerusalem about 30 A. D. He sent this document to a great friend of his who was the chief abbot of a huge monastery at Alexandria, and suggested to him that he, or some of his assistants, might perhaps recast it, and issue it in the Greek language. The Alexandrian abbot seems to have employed a number of his young monks upon this work, allowing each of them to try the task for himself, and to treat it in his own way. A number of documents of very varying merit were thus produced, each incorporating in his story more or less of the original manuscript of Matthaeus, but each also adding to it such legends as he happened to know, or as his taste and fancy dictated. Four of these still survive to us, and to them are attached the names of the monks who wrote them, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The splendid passage with which the gospel of St. John opens was not original but quoted, for we found it in existence many years before the time of the Christ in a manuscript which was even then of hoary antiquity. It was associated in that manuscript with a quotation from the Stanzas of Dzyan, this latter also being translated into Greek.

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title: The Inner Life, v. I/Second Section/III


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The Inner Life, v. I/Second Section/IV

SIN You ask what is the real meaning of sin. In the sense in which the word is ordinarily employed, at least by Christian preachers, I think sin may be defined as a figment of the theological imagination. It is popularly supposed to indicate a defiance of divine law — the performance of some action which the actor knows to be wrong. It is exceedingly doubtful whether this phenomenon ever occurs. In almost every conceivable case man breaks the law through ignorance or heedlessness, and not of deliberate intention. When once a man really knows and sees the divine intention he inevitably comes into harmony with it, for two reasons: at an earlier stage because he sees the utter futility of doing otherwise, and later because, seeing the glory and beauty of the design, he cannot but throw himself into its execution with all the powers of his heart and soul. One of the most serious of the many misconceptions which we have inherited from the dark ages is that what is called “sin” is a perversity to be met with punishment and savage persecution, instead of what it really is, the result of a condition of ignorance that can only be dealt with by enlightenment and education. It may be objected that in daily life we constantly see people doing what they must know to be wrong, but this is a misstatement of the case. They are doing what they have been told is wrong, which is quite a different matter. If a man really knows that an action is wrong, and that it will inevitably be followed by evil consequences, he is careful to avoid it. A man really knows that fire will burn him; therefore he does not put his hand into it. He has been told that the fire of hell will burn him as the result of a certain action — say playing cards on a Sunday — but he does not really know this, and therefore when he fells the inclination to play cards he does so in spite of the threatened consequences. It will be found that every one who does wrong justifies the wrong action to himself at the time of its commission, whatever he may think about it afterwards in cold blood. So I say that sin as ordinarily understood is a figment of the theological imagination; what really exists is an unfortunate condition of ignorance which often leads to infraction of the divine Law. This ignorance it is our duty to endeavour to dispel by the light of Theosophy.

title: The Inner Life, v. I/Second Section/IV


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Reagan's Remarks Before the United Nations General Assembly

Remarks in New York, New York, Before the United Nations General Assembly Special Session Devoted to Disarmament

June 17, 1982

Mr. Secretary-General, Mr. President, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen:

I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.

Dag Hammarskjold said 24 years ago this month, "We meet in a time of peace, which is no peace." His words are as true today as they were then. More than a hundred disputes have disturbed the peace among nations since World War II, and today the threat of nuclear disaster hangs over the lives of all our people. The Bible tells us there will be a time for peace, but so far this century mankind has failed to find it.

The United Nations is dedicated to world peace, and its charter clearly prohibits the international use of force. Yet the tide of belligerence continues to rise. The charter's influence has weakened even in the 4 years since the first special session on disarmament. We must not only condemn aggression; we must enforce the dictates of our charter and resume the struggle for peace.

The record of history is clear: Citizens of the United States resort to force reluctantly and only when they must. Our foreign policy, as President Eisenhower once said, "is not difficult to state. We are for peace first, last, and always for very simple reasons." We know that only in a peaceful atmosphere, a peace with justice, one in which we can be confident, can America prosper as we have known prosperity in the past, he said.

He said to those who challenge the truth of those words, let me point out, at the end of World War II, we were the only undamaged industrial power in the world. Our military supremacy was unquestioned. We had harnessed the atom and had the ability to unleash its destructive force anywhere in the world. In short, we could have achieved world domination, but that was contrary to the character of our people. Instead, we wrote a new chapter in the history of mankind.

We used our power and wealth to rebuild the war-ravaged economies of the world, both East and West, including those nations who had been our enemies. We took the initiative in creating such international institutions as this United Nations, where leaders of good will could come together to build bridges for peace and prosperity.

America has no territorial ambitions. We occupy no countries, and we have built no walls to lock our people in. Our commitment to self-determination, freedom, and peace is the very soul of America. That commitment is as strong today as it ever was.

The United States has fought four wars in my lifetime. In each, we struggled to defend freedom and democracy. We were never the aggressors. America's strength and, yes, her military power have been a force for peace, not conquest; for democracy, not despotism; for freedom, not tyranny. Watching, as I have, succeeding generations of American youth bleed their lives onto far-flung battlefields to protect our ideals and secure the rule of law, I have known how important it is to deter conflict. But since coming to the Presidency, the enormity of the responsibility of this office has made my commitment even deeper. I believe that responsibility is shared by all of us here today.

On our recent trip to Europe, my wife, Nancy, told me of a bronze statue, 22 feet high, that she saw on a cliff on the coast of France. The beach at the base of the cliff is called Saint Laurent, but countless American family Bibles have written it in on the flyleaf and know it as Omaha Beach. The pastoral quiet of that French countryside is in marked contrast to the bloody violence that took place there on a June day 38 years ago when the Allies stormed the Continent. At the end of just one day of battle, 10,500 Americans were wounded, missing, or killed in what became known as the Normandy landing.

The statue atop that cliff is called "The Spirit of American Youth Rising From the Waves." Its image of sacrifice is almost too powerful to describe.

The pain of war is still vivid in our national memory. It sends me to this special session of the United Nations eager to comply with the plea of Pope Paul VI when he spoke in this chamber nearly 17 years ago. "If you want to be brothers," His Holiness said, "let the arms fall from your hands." Well, we Americans yearn to let them go. But we need more than mere words, more than empty promises before we can proceed.

We look around the world and see rampant conflict and aggression. There are many sources of this conflict -- expansionist ambitions, local rivalries, the striving to obtain justice and security. We must all work to resolve such discords by peaceful means and to prevent them from escalation.

In the nuclear era, the major powers bear a special responsibility to ease these sources of conflict and to refrain from aggression. And that's why we're so deeply concerned by Soviet conduct. Since World War II, the record of tyranny has included Soviet violation of the Yalta agreements leading to domination of Eastern Europe, symbolized by the Berlin Wall -- a grim, gray monument to repression that I visited just a week ago. It includes the takeovers of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Afghanistan; and the ruthless repression of the proud people of Poland. Soviet-sponsored guerrillas and terrorists are at work in Central and South America, in Africa, the Middle East, in the Caribbean, and in Europe, violating human rights and unnerving the world with violence. Communist atrocities in Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere continue to shock the free world as refugees escape to tell of their horror.

The decade of so-called detente witnessed the most massive Soviet buildup of military power in history. They increased their defense spending by 40 percent while American defense actually declined in the same real terms. Soviet aggression and support for violence around the world have eroded the confidence needed for arms negotiations. While we exercised unilateral restraint, they forged ahead and today possess nuclear and conventional forces far in excess of an adequate deterrent capability.

Soviet oppression is not limited to the countries they invade. At the very time the Soviet Union is trying to manipulate the peace movement in the West, it is stifling a budding peace movement at home. In Moscow, banners are scuttled, buttons are snatched, and demonstrators are arrested when even a few people dare to speak about their fears.

Eleanor Roosevelt, one of our first ambassadors to this body, reminded us that the high-sounding words of tyrants stand in bleak contradiction to their deeds. "Their promises," she said, "are in deep contrast to their performances."

My country learned a bitter lesson in this century: The scourge of tyranny cannot be stopped with words alone. So, we have embarked on an effort to renew our strength that had fallen dangerously low. We refuse to become weaker while potential adversaries remain committed to their imperialist adventures.

My people have sent me here today to speak for them as citizens of the world, which they truly are, for we Americans are drawn from every nationality represented in this chamber today. We understand that men and women of every race and creed can and must work together for peace. We stand ready to take the next steps down the road of cooperation through verifiable arms reduction.

Agreements on arms control and disarmament can be useful in reinforcing peace; but they're not magic. We should not confuse the signing of agreements with the solving of problems. Simply collecting agreements will not bring peace. Agreements genuinely reinforce peace only when they are kept. Otherwise we're building a paper castle that will be blown away by the winds of war.

Let me repeat, we need deeds, not words, to convince us of Soviet sincerity, should they choose to join us on this path.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has been the leader in serious disarmament and arms control proposals. In 1946, in what became known as the Baruch plan, the United States submitted a proposal for control of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy by an international authority. The Soviets rejected this plan. In 1955 President Eisenhower made his "Open Skies" proposal, under which the United States and the Soviet Union would have exchanged blueprints of military establishments and provided for aerial reconnaissance. The Soviets rejected this plan.

In 1963 the Limited Test Ban Treaty came into force. This treaty ended nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space, or under water by participating nations. In 1970 the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons took effect. The United States played a major role in this key effort to prevent the spread of nuclear explosives and to provide for international safeguards on civil nuclear activities.

My country remains deeply committed to those objectives today, and to strengthening the nonproliferation framework. This is essential to international security. In the early 1970's, again at United States urging, agreements were reached between the United States and the U.S.S.R. providing for ceilings on some categories of weapons. They could have been more meaningful if Soviet actions had shown restraint and commitment to stability at lower levels of force.

The United Nations designated the 1970's as the First Disarmament Decade. But good intentions were not enough. In reality that 10-year period included an unprecedented buildup in military weapons and the flaring of aggression and use of force in almost every region of the world. We are now in the Second Disarmament Decade. The task at hand is to assure civilized behavior among nations, to unite behind an agenda of peace.

Over the past 7 months, the United States has put forward a broad-based, comprehensive series of proposals to reduce the risk of war. We have proposed four major points as an agenda for peace: elimination of land-based, intermediate-range missiles; a one-third reduction in strategic ballistic missile warheads; a substantial reduction in NATO and Warsaw Pact ground and air forces; and new safeguards to reduce the risk of accidental war. We urge the Soviet Union today to join with us in this quest. We must act not for ourselves alone, but for all mankind.

On November 18th of last year, I announced United States objectives in arms control agreements. They must be equitable and militarily significant. They must stabilize forces at lower levels, and they must be verifiable. The United States and its allies have made specific, reasonable, and equitable proposals.

In February, our negotiating team in Geneva offered the Soviet Union a draft treaty on intermediate-range nuclear forces. We offered to cancel deployment of our Pershing II ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles in exchange for Soviet elimination of the SS - 20, SS - 4, and SS - 5 missiles. This proposal would eliminate with one stroke those systems about which both sides have expressed the greatest concern.

The United States is also looking forward to beginning negotiations on strategic arms reductions with the Soviet Union in less than 2 weeks. We will work hard to make these talks an opportunity for real progress in our quest for peace.

On May 9th I announced a phased approach to the reduction of strategic arms. In a first phase, the number of ballistic missile warheads on each side would be reduced to about 5,000. No more than half the remaining warheads would be on land-based missiles. All ballistic missiles would be reduced to an equal level, at about one-half the current United States number. In the second phase, we would reduce each side's overall destructive power to equal levels, including a mutual ceiling on ballistic missile throw-weight below the current U.S. level. We are also prepared to discuss other elements of the strategic balance.

Before I returned from Europe last week, I met in Bonn with the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We agreed to introduce a major new Western initiative for the Vienna negotiations on Mutual Balanced Force Reductions. Our approach calls for common, collective ceilings for both NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization. After 7 years, there would be a total of 700,000 ground forces and 900,000 ground and air force personnel combined. It also includes a package of associated measures to encourage cooperation and verify compliance.

We urge the Soviet Union and members of the Warsaw Pact to view our Western proposal as a means to reach agreement in Vienna after 9 long years of inconclusive talks. We also urge them to implement the 1975 Helsinki agreement on security and cooperation in Europe.

Let me stress that for agreements to work, both sides must be able to verify compliance. The building of mutual confidence in compliance can only be achieved through greater openness. I encourage the special session on disarmament to endorse the importance of these principles in arms control agreements. I have instructed our representatives at the 40-nation Committee on Disarmament to renew emphasis on verification and compliance. Based on a U.S. proposal, a committee has been formed to examine these issues as they relate to restrictions on nuclear testing.

We are also pressing the need for effective verification provisions in agreements banning chemical weapons. The use of chemical and biological weapons has long been viewed with revulsion by civilized nations. No peacemaking institution can ignore the use of those dread weapons and still live up to its mission. The need for a truly effective and verifiable chemical weapons agreement has been highlighted by recent events. The Soviet Union and their allies are violating the Geneva Protocol of 1925, related rules of international law, and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. There is conclusive evidence that the Soviet Government has provided toxins for use in Laos and Kampuchea, and are themselves using chemical weapons against freedom-fighters in Afghanistan.

We have repeatedly protested to the Soviet Government, as well as to the Governments of Laos and Vietnam, their use of chemical and toxin weapons. We call upon them now to grant full and free access to their countries or to territories they control so that United Nations experts can conduct an effective, independent investigation to verify cessation of these horrors.

Evidence of noncompliance with existing arms control agreements underscores the need to approach negotiation of any new agreements with care. The democracies of the West are open societies. Information on our defenses is available to our citizens, our elected officials, and the world. We do not hesitate to inform potential adversaries of our military forces and ask in return for the same information concerning theirs.

The amount and type of military spending by a country is important for the world to know, as a measure of its intentions and the threat that country may pose to its neighbors. The Soviet Union and other closed societies go to extraordinary lengths to hide their true military spending, not only from other nations but from their own people. This practice contributes to distrust and fear about their intentions.

Today, the United States proposes an international conference on military expenditures to build on the work of this body in developing a common system for accounting and reporting. We urge the Soviet Union, in particular, to join this effort in good faith, to revise the universally discredited official figures it publishes, and to join with us in giving the world a true account of the resources we allocate to our armed forces.

Last Friday in Berlin, I said that I would leave no stone unturned in the effort to reinforce peace and lessen the risk of war. It's been clear to me steps should be taken to improve mutual communication, confidence, and lessen the likelihood of misinterpretation. I have, therefore, directed the exploration of ways to increase understanding and communication between the United States and the Soviet Union in times of peace and of crisis.

We will approach the Soviet Union with proposals for reciprocal exchanges in such areas as advance notification of major strategic exercises that otherwise might be misinterpreted; advance notification of ICBM launches within, as well as beyond, national boundaries; and an expanded exchange of strategic forces data.

While substantial information on U.S. activities and forces in these areas already is provided, I believe that jointly and regularly sharing information would represent a qualitative improvement in the strategic nuclear environment and would help reduce the chance of misunderstandings. I call upon the Soviet Union to join the United States in exploring these possibilities to build confidence, and I ask for your support of our efforts.

One of the major items before this conference is the development of a comprehensive program of disarmament. We support the effort to chart a course of realistic and effective measures in the quest for peace.

I have come to this hall to call for international recommitment to the basic tenet of the United Nations Charter -- that all members practice tolerance and live together in peace as good neighbors under the rule of law, forsaking armed force as a means of settling disputes between nations. America urges you to support the agenda for peace that I have outlined today. We ask you to reinforce the bilateral and multilateral arms control negotiations between members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and to rededicate yourselves to maintaining international peace and security, and removing threats to peace.

We, who have signed the U.N. Charter, have pledged to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territory or independence of any state. In these times when more and more lawless acts are going unpunished -- as some members of this very body show a growing disregard for the U.N. Charter -- the peace-loving nations of the world must condemn aggression and pledge again to act in a way that is worthy of the ideals that we have endorsed. Let us finally make the charter live.

In late spring, 37 years ago, representatives of 50 nations gathered on the other side of this continent, in the San Francisco Opera House. The League of Nations had crumbled, and World War II still raged. But those men and nations were determined to find peace. The result was this charter for peace that is the framework of the United Nations.

President Harry Truman spoke of the revival of an old faith. He said the everlasting moral force of justice prompting that United Nations Conference -- such a force remains strong in America and in other countries where speech is free and citizens have the right to gather and make their opinions known. And President Truman said, "If we should pay merely lip service to inspiring ideals, and later do violence to simple justice, we would draw down upon us the bitter wrath of generations yet unborn." Those words of Harry Truman have special meaning for us today as we live with the potential to destroy civilization.

"We must learn to live together in peace," he said. "We must build a new world -- a far better world." What a better world it would be if the guns were silent, if neighbor no longer encroached on neighbor, and all peoples were free to reap the rewards of their toil and determine their own destiny and system of government, whatever their choice.

During my recent audience with His Holiness Pope John Paul II, I gave him the pledge of the American people to do everything possible for peace and arms reduction. The American people believe forging real and lasting peace to be their sacred trust. Let us never forget that such a peace would be a terrible hoax if the world were no longer blessed with freedom and respect for human rights.

"The United Nations," Hammarskjold said,"was born out of the cataclysms of war. It should justify the sacrifices of all those who have died for freedom and justice. It is our duty to the past." Hammarskjold said, "And it is our duty to the future so to serve both our nations and the world."

As both patriots of our nations and the hope of all the world, let those of us assembled here in the name of peace deepen our understandings, renew our commitment to the rule of law, and take new and bolder steps to calm an uneasy world. Can any delegate here deny that in so doing he would be doing what the people, the rank and file of his own country or her own country want him or her to do? Isn't it time for us to really represent the deepest most heartfelt yearnings of all of our people?

Let no nation abuse this common longing to be free of fear. We must not manipulate our people by playing upon their nightmares. We must serve mankind through genuine disarmament. With God's help we can secure life and freedom for generations to come.

Thank you very much.


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188 LIV

RODERIC

down and rest, the fight is done,

Thy comrades to the camp retire;

Gaze not so earnestly upon

The far gleam of the beacon fire.

O list not to the wind-born sounds,

Of music and of soldiers' cheer;

Thou canst not go—remember wounds

Exhaust thy life and hold thee here.

Had that hand power to raise the sword

Which since this morn laid many low;

Had that tongue strength to speak the word,

That urged thy followers on the foe;

Were that warm blood within thy veins

Which now upon the earth is flowing,

Splashing its sod with crimson stains,

Redding the pale heath round thee growing;

Then Roderic, thou mightst still be turning

With eager eye and anxious breast

To where those signal lights are burning,

To where thy war-worn comrades rest.


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Rh But never more—look up and see

The twilight fading from the skies,

That last dim beam that sets for thee,

Roderic, for thee shall never rise!


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 About June 12th, 1875.

I have not seen anything of you for many years, nor heard anything of you lately; but, when I was thinking over the names of people resident at Wimbledon, who might possibly care to help with a party of four hundred of my tenants whom I am going to bring down there on Wednesday, yours naturally suggested itself, as I have some impression that you are still living there. I do not know that I should have ventured to write, having no special claim for these my people on you; but, your name having once occurred to me in relation to the question, I could not help feeling a wish to ask you just to walk over and see us, if you could without trouble, some time in the afternoon or evening at or near Cæsar's Camp, where we expect to be. I have vivid memories of tailors' "bean-feasts" long ago, with which those with whom you were working were associated; perhaps there I then first learned both the great good which grew out of such association with the people in their joys, and also how much was needed to make such gatherings more refined in tone, and gentler and quieter. If, as a child, I learned all this from what I saw, it was years before it became possible to me to realise what I saw to be needed. Though the thought of these my present excursions and winter parties was untraced by me to its germ so long ago, though now my people are quite unconnected with the Associations and founders of Associations, it yet remains true that it was the early connection with that body of "Christian Socialists," to which much of my present work must owe its spirit. It had to find its own form, according to the needs and possibilities of


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 circumstances; but its spirit must have been influenced deeply by the deeds and words of all that group of men, among whom it pleased God to lead me, when life was just first presenting its puzzles to me. The form of much of your work has changed, died down, and withered, as forms often must; but the principles you were all teaching do not change; and now that many of them are understood by the younger generations, now that they who belong to those younger generations are coming forward so earnestly to work, grateful as I am for their help, and glad of their sympathy, there always remains to my mind a peculiar silent, more solemn, link with all who are associated with the earlier more difficult and lonely efforts of the past. It has pleased God to alter much since then. The voices that taught us are silent; but His voice still speaks; and, if He has made of the child who learned so much of the people (just from being one among them) now the leader of 3,000 tenants, He doesn't forbid that she should still be a child again, in thinking over the old days, and better still, in listening to His teaching.

re Swiss Cottage Fields? July 19th, 1875.

Thank you very much for your letter about the city. I saw Mr. Bond yesterday, and again had a long talk with him about the best way of proceeding; and we decided that, for the moment, we would let the big-monied people alone, till we are better worth their notice, and work among those who cannot give more at the utmost than £25 and £50. I believe (thank God!) more in nobodies than in "somebodies."


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104 and quite unreasonably left Rome upon the discovery that his fiancée was possessed of a large personal fortune. By the good agency of friends all was eventually reconciled. Patmore returned to England to prepare his little family for the new mother, and on 18 July, 1864, the couple were married by Cardinal Manning at the church of Saint Mary of the Angels, Bayswater.

Of course, neither the second marriage nor the religious change was welcome news to our poet's English friends. Yet, in the home-circle at least, Mary Patmore's victory was complete. The few letters of hers which have been preserved evince the most gentle, even scrupulous, tenderness toward Patmore's children, a fastidious interest in his literary work, and a certain sweet austerity which must have been distinctly piquante to her outspoken and imperious husband. There is something deliciously daring in her shy comments upon the Angel: "It is a shame for you to have been initiated into a thing or two quite solely feminine," she writes to Coventry; and yet again she refers to the "Wedding Sermon" as "not so high in some parts as Thomas à Kempis, than whom nobody ought to be lower, to my thinking." It sounds just a little bit formidable! Yet that uncompromising elevation of soul, and the vestal reserve of manner which few friends were able to pierce, were in reality the best possible foil for Patmore's passionately sensuous yet mystical nature. All of his most searching work—the Odes, perhaps the lost "Sponsa Del," and the complete finding of his own soul—were accomplished during his life with her.

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Rh Mary Patmore's life they resided first at "Heron's Ghyl" (an extensive Sussex estate which Coventry spent several healthful years in supervising and improving) and later at old Hastings by the sea. The circumstances of the family were, of course, vastly more felicitous than during the early days; and now for the first time in his life Patmore found leisure for continuous concentrated study, as well as for that quiet meditation which is the seed-time of creative thought. His preoccupation with theology proved more absorbing than ever; so that he often spent four hours a day upon the works of the more mystical saints—Bernard and John of the Cross, St. Teresa's Road to Perfection, and always the monumental Summa. In the symbolic teaching of Emanuel Swedenborg, also, he found many points of agreement, being wont to declare that the latter's "Catholic doctrine without Catholic authority" would deceive, if possible, the very elect.

A slender volume of nine Odes, printed for private distribution in 1868, inaugurated Coventry Patmore's second and greatest poetic period. Superficially, there may seem but slight continuity between these searching and paradoxical poems and the domestic Angel—yet in essence they are close akin. For the master-passion of Patmore's life and the abiding inspiration of his poetry were identical: his work was one long Praise of Love. And so it was to an artistic and mystical development rather than to any temperamental breach that these odes bore witness. Our poet spoke, indeed, a language little intelligible to his countrymen; and the white heat of his passion, his seemingly esoteric psychology, and his uneven but arresting metres inspired dismay rather than any other emotion. Few of those men (poets, for the most part) to whom the

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106 precious volumes had been sent showed the slightest realisation of this "grey secret of the east"; and only the most perfunctory acknowledgments reached the author. So, with characteristic disdain, Patmore consigned all of the edition remaining to his own log fire. "Tired Memory" was one of the collection; so also was the brief and beautiful "Beata"; "Faint Yet Pursuing," an exquisite piece with what we now know as the true Patmorean flavour; and the resurgent loveliness of "Deliciæ Sapientiæ de Amore." With these were two or three ironic Jeremiads of political and philosophic nature, and "Pain"—which no other modern English poet, except perhaps Francis Thompson, could have written. The poet's brooding and scornful reflections as he watched the flames consume these first fruits of his richest thought scarcely tended to commute the pessimistic opinion he had already formed upon latter-day tastes and institutions.

The genuine significance of these Odes, both metrically and philosophically, can scarcely be overstated. To discerning readers, even the extracts already quoted must reveal a divine intensity, a subtlety of poetic feeling, beside which all of Patmore's early work seems tentative and imperfect. Their verse form (which the poet somewhat vaguely described as based upon catalexis) has successfully defied all but the broadest critical analysis, and its effect would seem to depend almost wholly upon some intuition, alike musical and emotional, of pause and rhythm.

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Rh Yet it provides an ideally perfect vehicle for the intermittent stress and reticence, the amazing passional surge, the mystic and often scholastic reasoning of the poems themselves. Always fascinating and usually dangerous has it proved as a model to younger poets; but at its best and in the master's hand, there is an impetuous freshness about this ode form which is the next thing to a new-blown wind flower. And this spontaneity was no mere illusion. Patmore spent months, even years, in maturing the matter of his greatest odes, but their actual form was often the work of two or three hours.

"I have hit upon the finest metre that ever was invented, and on the finest mine of wholly unworked material that ever fell to the lot of an English poet," Coventry Patmore wrote exultantly when the Unknown Eros was in preparation. This mine was mystic Catholic theology, in particular the nuptial relations of the soul to its God, and in general that essential and passionate humanity which is at the core of nearly every doctrine of the Church. But here was a task to stagger Orpheus himself had Orpheus turned Christian! For how translate the secrets of the saints to a gaping multitude? How teach men what love meant, and what the Word made Flesh implied? How draw back the veil of mystery and symbol and allegory without breaking in upon the "Divine Silence"? In an agony of concentration, in prayer and fasting, the poet toiled on, still falling short of that infinite "beauty and freedom" which the work demanded, were it to be done at all. Patmore reached at length his own explanation of this failure: not until these things should become controlling realities in his own spiritual life could he sing of them worthily! No shade of religious doubt had crossed his

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108 understanding or his conscience from the moment of his reception into the Catholic Church. Yet, with his brave, resolute candour, he has confessed that the quiet and absolute regnancy of faith before which his soul longed to bow was denied for many a weary year. More particularly was he conscious of something perfunctory in his service of the Most Blessed Virgin—of an imperfect harmony with the mind of the Church in this immemorial devotion. So he resolved upon a curious and conspicuous act, half votive, half penitential, very humble and popular and un-Patmorean—namely, a pilgrimage to Lourdes! The poet set out toward the grotto of Bernadette's vision with a beautiful crushing of personal repugnance, asking much of the good God, giving what in him lay. The result is best told in his own words:

"On the fourteenth of October, 1877, I knelt at the Shrine by the River Gave, and rose without any emotion or enthusiasm or unusual sense of devotion, but with a tranquil sense that the prayers of thirty-five years had been granted. I paid two visits of thanksgiving to Lourdes in the two succeeding Octobers, for the gift which was then received and which has never since for a single hour been withdrawn."

One more dogma was thus revealed to Coventry Patmore; not merely as a convenient "form of sound words" but as a fact with vital bearing upon the rest of life. Mary of Nazareth became to him thenceforth the essential womanhood—the symbol and prototype of humanity, nature, the body. In her littleness and sweetness was found the perfect complement to God's infinitude: she was Regina Mundi as well as Regina Cœli, foreshadowing the triumph of every faithful soul. A great epic upon the Marriage of the Virgin was to have celebrated

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Rh this theme, but it never saw completion. However, in that extraordinary surge of creative energy which peace brought to our poet, the nucleus of it all stole into one exquisite ode, "The Child's Purchase." This poem, written late in 1877, stands in a true sense as the crown and flower of the Unknown Eros, the consummation of Patmore's poetic career. Opening with the parable of a little child who receives from his mother a golden coin—which at first he plans to spend, "or on a horse, a bride-cake, or a crown," but which, at the last, he brings back wearily as guerdon for her own sweet kiss—the poet dedicates his gift of precious speech to this most gracious Lady. Then follows the glorious invocation:

Ah, Lady Elect, Whom the Time's scorn has saved from its respect, Would I had art For uttering that which sings within my heart! But, lo, Thee to admire is all the art I know. My Mother and God's; Fountain of miracle! Give me thereby some praise of thee to tell In such a song As may my Guide severe and glad not wrong, Who never spake till thou'dst on him conferr'd The right, convincing word! Grant me the steady heat Of thought wise, splendid, sweet, Urged by the great, rejoicing wind that rings With draught of unseen wings, Making each phrase, for love and for delight, Twinkle like Sirius on a frosty night! Aid thou thine own dear fame, thou only Fair, At whose petition meek The Heavens themselves decree that, as it were, They will be weak! Thou Speaker of all wisdom in a Word, Thy Lord!

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Speaker who thus couldst well afford Thence to be silent—ah, what silence that Which had for prologue thy "Magnificat!"—

Ora pro me! Sweet Girlhood without guile, The extreme of God's creative energy; Sunshiny Peak of human personality; The world's sad aspirations' one Success; Bright Blush, that sav'st our shame from shamelessness; Chief Stone of stumbling; Sign built in the way To set the foolish everywhere a-bray; Hem of God's robe, which all who touch are heal'd;

Peace-beaming Star, by which shall come enticed, Though nought thereof as yet they weet, Unto thy Babe's small feet, The mighty, wand'ring disemparadised, Like Lucifer, because to thee They will not bend the knee; Ora pro me! Desire of Him whom all things else desire! Blush aye with Him as He with thee on fire! Neither in his great Deed nor on His throne— O, folly of Love, the intense Last culmination of Intelligence,— Him seem'd it good that God should be alone! Basking in unborn laughter of thy lips, Ere the world was, with absolute delight His Infinite reposed in thy Finite; Well-matched: He, universal being's Spring, And thou, in whom are gather'd up the ends of everything! Ora pro me!

Throughout that supreme series to the Unknown

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Rh Eros, Patmore leads his reader into a realm of palpitating beauty, truth and love. The sensuous nature, by no means annihilated in this new life of the spirit, is glorified and inconceivably satisfied. The capacity of the soul for good (which our poet always contended was "in proportion to the strength of its passions") is infinite, because these passions are marshalled into the orderly service of God. Here, at last, the Body receives its meet salutation, not as "our Brother the Ass," but as the

and human love becomes a ladder leading up to mystic visions of Christ as the Love, the Bride-groom of the soul. Pre-eminently in the old exquisite myth of Eros and Psyche, but scarcely less in the experience of every loving and suffering life, Patmore found this all-but-unspeakable truth prefigured, and he played upon the motif in ode after ode of marvellous beauty and tenderness.

The exceeding intimacy with which our poet clothed (or shall one say—unclothed?) his transcendent theme has proved distasteful to many a devout but colder mind; to Aubrey de Vere, who begged the suppression of the Psyche odes, to Cardinal Newman, who never became quite reconciled to thus "mixing up amorousness with religion." The same exception, obviously, might be taken to the Canticle of Canticles and to much subsequent mystical writing. For love, as Coventry Patmore understood it, was "the highest of virtues as well as the sweetest of emotions . . . being in the brain confession of good; in the heart, love for, and desire to sacrifice everything for the good of its object; in the senses, peace, purity and ardour." In this most elemental of

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112 human passions he found the one perfect and consistent symbol of the Divine Desire and the Divine Espousals.

And without this rare ability to translate spiritual truth into the terms of a vibrating humanity—this impassioned and mystic sensuousness (which some, doubtless, will label a "divine sensuality")—Patmore could scarcely have escaped the snares which yawn before every poet conscious of a message. In point of fact, he was never more supremely the poet than when he was most radically the seer. Never, save possibly in one or two political arraignments, does the personal note derogate from the permanence of his poetry; never once, for all his vehemence of belief, does he descend into didacticism. Nor does his symbolic analysis of human emotion even for a moment lessen the intense reality of pain and of love throughout his song. Here is one little "Farewell," scarcely surpassed in its quiet heartbreak:

With all my will, but much against my heart, We two now part. My Very Dear, Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear. It needs no art, With faint, averted feet And many a tear, In our opposéd paths to persevere. Go thou to East, I West. We will not say There's any hope, it is so far away. But, O, my Best, When the one darling of our widowhead, The nursling Grief, Is dead, And no dews blur our eyes To see the peach-bloom come in evening skies, Perchance we may, Where now this night is day,

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The New International Encyclopædia/Marshall, John

MARSHALL, (1755-1835). The most famous of American jurists, for thirty-four years Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was born September 24, 1755, in Fauquier County, Va.; studied under a private tutor; then attended an academy in Westmoreland County, and studied law until the outbreak of the Revolution, when he entered the army as a volunteer. He soon rose to the rank of first

and by 1777 was a captain. His first fight was near Norfolk; he afterwards served in the New Jersey campaign, was at Valley Forge during the memorable winter of 1777-78, and participated in the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, and in the capture of Stony Point. During most of 1780, while without a command, he attended the law lectures delivered by the famous Chancellor George Wythe at William and Mary College. The following year he was admitted to the bar of Fauquier County, where he practiced for two years. In 1782 he was elected to a seat in the Virginia Legislature and soon became a member of the Executive Council. In the meantime he had removed to Richmond. In 1784 he was again elected to represent Fauquier County in the Legislature. In 1787 he was chosen to represent Henrico, the county in which he had lately taken up his residence, and in the following year was a delegate to the State convention which was called to ratify the Federal Constitution. The distinction of securing the adoption of the Constitution by Virginia belongs to Marshall and Madison perhaps more than to any others. Marshall's refutations of Patrick Henry's arguments against adoption were particularly effective. In the meantime his law practice was rapidly increasing, and he declined a reëlection to the Legislature in 1792 in order to devote his whole time to his growing practice, but in 1795 he was again persuaded to stand for reëlection and was successful. It was about this time that Marshall appeared before the Supreme Court in the famous case of Ware vs. Hilton, in which the validity of the Virginia Sequestration Act was involved, and his able argument added greatly to his growing reputation. He declined to accept the post of Attorney-General or the French mission tendered him by President Washington, but finally consented to go to Paris in 1797 with Gen. C. Pinckney and Elbridge Gerry to induce the Directory to remove the restrictions which it had laid on American commerce. Although the negotiations proved fruitless, Marshall's conduct seems to have been more satisfactory to the Government than that of either of his colleagues. In 1795 he declined to accept a seat on the bench of the United States Supreme Court as the successor of James Wilson, but in the same year at the solicitation of Washington became a candidate for Congress and was elected, although his constituency was decidedly Anti-Federalist in politics. In Congress he supported the Administration in particular and Federalist measures generally, although he voted for the repeal of the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts. His most notable effort in Congress was a speech in support of the conduct of the President in surrendering Jonathan Robbins, the murderer of a man on a British frigate, who had escaped to the United States and had been delivered up to the British Government by the President. Marshall showed conclusively that the surrender of Robbins was clearly within the President's constitutional power. In May, 1800, he was asked by President Adams to take the office of Secretary of War, but declined. However, he was induced to accept the position of Secretary of State, which he held for a short time. On January 31, 1801, he was commissioned Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The accession of Marshall to the bench of the United States

Court as Chief Justice marks a turning point in his life and an epoch in the legal and constitutional history of the United States. For thirty-four years he dominated the court by his great learning and masterful power of analysis and clearness of statement. Perhaps no judge ever excelled him in the capacity to hold a legal proposition before the eyes of others in such various forms and colors. He resolved every argument by the most subtle analysis into its ultimate principles, and then applied them to the decision of the case in question. His service on the bench, which continued until his death, was effective and conspicuous not only in securing for the court the recognition and profound respect for which hitherto there had been no especial occasion, but also in so expounding the Constitution as to make clear for the first time the nature of the National Government and to forecast the lines along which, in actual development as well as in judicial interpretation, the nation was to proceed. In the period of Marshall's predominance the court upheld the Federalist theories, as in the national bank case of McCulloch vs. Maryland, and gave a clear definition of the relations of the State and National governments. On the subject of the constitutional prohibition against the impairment of contracts, noteworthy opinions were presented, culminating in the famous Dartmouth College Case, the exact accuracy of which has more recently been questioned. Particularly in the field of constitutional law the work of Marshall forms the greatest contribution to American jurisprudence made by any judge, and his interpretations of the Constitution have long been recognized as an important and permanent feature of American public law. He died on July 6, 1835, in his eightieth year, at Philadelphia, whither he had gone for medical treatment. Aside from his judicial labors Marshall, at the request of Bushrod Washington, a nephew of George Washington, wrote a Life of George Washington (5 vols., 1804-07; 2d ed., 2 vols., 1832). Consult: Magruder, John Marshall (Boston, 1885), in the “American Statesman Series;” Thayer, John Marshall (Boston, 1901), one of the “Beacon Biographies;” and a chapter, “Constitutional Development in the United States, as influenced by Chief Justice Marshall,” in Cooley, Constitutional History of the United States (New York, 1889).


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Rh And even through faith of still averted feet, Making full circle of our banishment, Amazéd meet; The bitter journey to the bourne so sweet Seasoning the termless feast of our content With tears of recognition never dry.

In "Amelia" (Patmore's favourite poem, but scarcely his readers') we find this ode-form combined with the simpler narrative theme of his earlier days. And once again we are forced to feel how dangerous and difficult a thing truth to the letter of life may become. Yet there are perfect touches in the poem; suggestions of Patmore's really great sea music, and Nature-flashes like that

"St. Valentine's Day" and many another lyric bear witness to this poet's searching observation of natural beauty, yet this was less an object in itself to him than a sensitive mise en scène for the human drama. To the core he was a symbolist; and of natural phenotnena he seems to have felt what he somewhere declared of natural science—that its only real use was "to supply similes and parables" to the spiritually elect.

The year 1880 brought sorrow back into Patmore's life in the sudden death of his wife Mary. Her loss proved the first of a bitter trilogy. Scarcely two years later, his well-loved daughter Emily (Sister Mary Christina, as she had become, of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus) died in her near-by convent. The passing of this rare and understanding spirit, from childhood so deeply in sympathy with his own—a poet herself, and one of the best critics of her father's work—can

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114 scarcely have been less than a sundering of the poet's very life. And then there was Henry, Patmore's third son, whose brief novitiate of pain and promise came to a close in 1883. His little bark had never been very seaworthy, yet in spite of serious illness he left poetic fragments of decided beauty and originality. "At twenty years of age, his spiritual and imaginative insight were far beyond those of any man I ever met," Coventry declared; and it was his belief that had the boy lived to maturity his poetic achievement might have surpassed his own.

The decade commencing in 1884 Patmore devoted to a series of varied and stimulating prose essays, contributed mainly to the St.James's Gazette. Politics, religion, economics, art, literature, architecture, were in turn touched upon with powerful and trenchant originality. The most significant of these critiques were subsequently collected, partially in Principle in Art, 1889, partially in that precious volume, Religio Poetæ, 1893. A little book of pregnant aphorisms and brief, unequal essays, The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, closed this prose sequence in 1895.

Meanwhile the Twilight of the Gods was drawing apace upon this inspired and imperious spirit. Flashes of comfort there were, indeed—the devoted companionship of Harriet Robson, who became our poet's third wife, and that little late-born son, Epiphanius. In the friendship of Mrs. Meynell, too, Patmore found throughout these latter years one of God's best gifts, an exquisite community of ideals. One of his latest essays was an appreciation of her own work both in prose and verse; and through her he came into close touch with her friend Francis Thompson, helping on the critical world to a recognition of his genius.

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Rh During all this time the poet's heart was growing intermittently weaker, and his lungs, long undermined, caused increasing anxiety. At Lymington, whither he had removed, there were repeated attacks and convalescences; and at last, in the November of 1906, a congestion set in. "What about going to Heaven this time?" Patmore asked his physician, with weary but irrepressible humour. The next day, after receiving the last Sacraments, his agony began. His words were broken prayers and thoughts for those about him. "I love you, dear," he whispered to his wife when the end was very near, "but the Lord is my Life and my Light." Into this larger life he passed painlessly on 26 November, 1906; and in the humble habit of St. Francis' tertiary, his body was borne to its long rest in the little sea-coast cemetery.

Coventry Patmore's career as poet had closed full twenty years earlier, with the "collected" edition of 1886: consequently his place in our literature has long passed the first tentative stage. The waxings and wanings of contemporary taste—the flood-tide of the Angel, the ebb-tide of the earlier odes, the ominous calm of the final years—no longer any whit affect his reputation. It has attained a solid and certain degree of permanence. He has, quite indisputably, survived: as a name indeed to the "general reader," but as a fact in the great confraternity of song. Francis Thompson was eager in acknowledging his debt to "this strong, sad soul of sovereign song"; while others not so eager have gathered the riches of his vineyard. It is even possible to say that the chances of any just appreciation of his work are greater to-day than they were yesterday, and that probably they will be greater to-morrow than they are to-day. For in the literary world, as in the

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116 , mysticism—the symbolic interpretation of life—is once again becoming a potent factor. At the same time, a certain analytical brutality has accustomed latter-day readers to face reality, even to crave reality. Each of these tendencies is favourable to Patmore, creating an audience (larger, though never large!) which his poetry may in time both delight and dominate.

"I have written little, but it is all my best," he wrote in one of his Prefaces; "I have never spoken when I had nothing to say, nor spared time or labour to make my words true. I have respected posterity; and should there be a posterity which cares for letters, I dare to hope that it will respect me." He did, in fact, write little, and not one of the great works he planned was ever completed. Neither can all of this little be rightly termed his best. His style was nervous and unequal; capable of the most breathless perfection both of passion and of music, but capable also of perversity and a curious commonplaceness. Yet the most fastidious posterity shall respect him. He was, in his great moments, one of our supreme lyric artists. He sounded the heart-beats with poignant and unforgettable truthfulness. He may be said to have created a verse-form of powerful originality. And then, his was that fusing imagination (the crowning gift of genius!) which transmutes reason and emotion with equal facility into one "agile bead of boiling gold."

But it is not merely with Patmore's poetry—nor, for that matter, with his prose—that the critical world must one day reckon. It is pre-eminently with his poetic philosophy. Teaching in his verse only by suggestions of rare beauty, but throughout the essays with increasing definition and completeness, he formulated a very consistent

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Rh rationale of life, love, and God. It was a mystical superstructure reared upon the foundation of Christian dogma, an interpretation of the "corollaries of belief." In another sense it may be called the psychology of sex, since in the mysteries of manhood and womanhood Patmore found the heavens above and the earth beneath explained. God he apprehended as the great positive, masculine magnet of the universe—the soul as the feminine or receptive force; and in this conjunction of first and last lay the source of all life and joy. These sexual characteristics he detected in literature and art, as intellectual strength or sensible beauty was found to pre-dominate; while in the workings of conscience there was a similar duality, the rational and the sensitive soul. But as the poems have shown, it was the great sacrament of nuptial love which most clearly manifested the mystery.

his Psyche cries out to her immortal lover: and even so did Patmore conceive of the life-giving God. Originally, he declared, there were three sexes (which in the Holy Trinity, Truth, Love and Life, found their divine prototype), and it was mainly in order to achieve this complete, but forgotten, homo that "nuptial knowledge" became the one thing needful. Woman, he writes in that daring and suggestive essay, Dieu et Ma Dame, "is 'homo' as well as the man, though one element, the male, is suppressed and quiescent in her, as the other, the female, is in him; and thus he becomes the Priest and representative to her of the original Fatherhood, while she is made to him the Priestess and representative of that original Beauty which is 'the express image

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