London Lectures of 1907 by Annie Besant (little readers TXT) 📕

ever; but if your economic foundation is rotten, no political remedies can build a happy and prosperous nation. But while I agree that behind politics lie economics, there is something that lies also behind economics, and of that I hear little said. Behind economics lies character, and without character you cannot build a free and a happy nation. A nation enormous in power, what do you know of the way in which your power is wielded in many a far-off land? How much do you know about your vast Indian Empire? How many of your voters going to the poll can give an intelligent answer to any question affecting that 300,000,000 of human beings whom you hold in your hand, and deal with as you will? There are responsibilities of Empire as well as pride in it, and pride of Empire is apt to founder when the responsibilities of Empire are ignored. And so the Theosophist is content to go to the root of the matter, and try to build up for you the citizens out of whom your future State is to be made. Education, real education, secular education, is now your cry. They tried secular education in France; they destroyed religious teaching; they tried to give morality without religion. But the moral lessons had no effect: they were too cold and dull, and dead. Is it not a scandal that in a country like this, where the vast majority are religious, you are quarrelling so much about the trifles that separate you, that the only way to peace seems to be to take religion out of the schools altogether, and train the children only in morality, allowing an insignificant minority to have its way? Why! we have done better than that in India, we Theosophists. Hinḍu Theosophists have founded there a College in which, despite all their sects and all their religious quarrels, they have found a common minimum of Hinḍuism on which their children can be trained in religion and morality alike. I grant it was a Theosophical inspiration that began the movement; but the whole mass of Hinḍus have fallen in with it, and are accepting the books as the basis of education. Government has recognised them, and has begun to introduce them for the use of Hinḍus in its own schools. That is the way in which we Theosophists work at politics. We go to the root to build character, and we know that noble characters will make a noble and also a prosperous nation. But you can no more make a nation of free men out of children untrained in duty and in righteousness, than you can build a house that will stand if you use ill-baked bricks and rotten timber. Our keynote in politics is Brotherhood. That worked out into life will give you the nation that you want.

And what does Brotherhood mean? It means that everyone of us, you and I, every man and woman throughout the land, looks on all others as they look on their own brothers, and acts on the same principle which in the family rules. You keep religion out of politics? You cannot, without peril to your State; for unless you teach your people that they are a Brotherhood, whether or not they choose to recognise it, you are building on the sand and not on the rock. And what does Brotherhood mean? It means that the man who gains learning, uses it to teach the ignorant, until none are ignorant. It means that the man who is pure takes his purity to the foul, until all have become clean. It means that the man who is wealthy uses his wealth for the benefit of the poor, until all have become prosperous. It means that everything you gain, you share; everything you achieve, you give its fruit to all. That is the law of Brotherhood, and it is the law of national as well as of individual life. You cannot rise alone. You are bound too strongly each to each. If you use your strength to raise yourself by trampling on your fellows, inevitably you will fail by the weakness that you have wronged.

Do you know who are the greatest enemies of a State? The weak, injured by the strong. For, above all States, rules an Eternal Justice; and the tears of miserable women, and the curses of angry, starving men, sap the foundations of a State that denies Brotherhood, and reach the ears of that Eternal Justice by which alone States live, and Nations continue. It is written in an ancient scripture that a Master of Duty said to a King: "Beware the tears of the weak, for they sap the thrones of Kings." Strength may threaten: weakness undermines. Strength may stand up to fight: weakness cuts away the ground on which the fighters are standing. And the message of Theosophy to the modern political world is: Think less about your outer laws, and more about the lives of the people who have to live under those laws. Remember that government can only live when the people are happy; that States can only flourish where the masses of the population are contented; that all that makes life enjoyable is the right of the lowest and the poorest; that they can do without external happiness far less than you, who have so many means of inner satisfaction, of enjoyment, by the culture that you possess and that they lack. If there is not money enough for everything, spend your money in making happier, healthier, purer, more educated, the lives of the poor; then a happy nation will be an imperial nation; for Brotherhood is the strongest force on earth.


Part IV


The Field of Work of the Theosophical Society

The Presidential Address delivered to the Convention of the British Section of the Theosophical Society, held in Essex Hall, London, 7th July 1907

The Field of Work of the Theosophical Society.

It is my duty now to bring to a close this Convention, and to bid you all farewell, to scatter to your various places and to do, let us hope, with fresh courage and deeper knowledge, the varied works which you are called upon to perform. And let me, before I take up the subject upon which I am to speak--"The Field of Work of the Theosophical Society"--let me, ere beginning that subject, say one word of gratitude to her without whom the Theosophical Society could not till any field, nor sow any seed--to H.P.B., our Teacher and our Helper, let us offer our heart's gratitude; for without her we could not have met together, without her we could not have learned the Theosophical teaching. It may be that many of us have learned much since she first taught us, but she was the first Teacher, and the Bringer of the Light. It may be that some, since they met her, have known their Master face to face; but it was she who led them to His presence, she to whom the possibility in this life was due. It may well be that had she not come some other might have come to do the work, but that matters not to us; that she did it is her claim to our homage, and we, who live in the light she brought, may well pay tribute of gratitude to her.

What is the Field of our Society's work? It is sketched in our Three Objects; and those of you who have looked upon the Objects with care, in the various recensions through which they have passed, may have noticed that each one of them covers one of the aspects of human consciousness. In the first, that which declares the truth of the Universal Brotherhood, we have the field of work of the Activity aspect, the active principle of the consciousness, of the Spirit, which seeks expression in service to the race. In the second, the study of the religions and the philosophies of the world, we have the field of work for the Cognition aspect of consciousness, that which gathers together the fruit of knowledge; it is the Knower gathering the food by which he unfolds his powers. And in the third we have the field of work of the Will, the Power aspect of the consciousness, the deepest root of our being, that by which the worlds exist, as they are supported by the Wisdom, as they are created by the Activity. So that when we thus look at the objects of the Society and realise the relation that they bear to our conscious selves, we see that the field of the work of the Theosophical Society is wide as the world, and knows no limit where Will and Knowledge and Activity can make their way. And it is true, now and always, that everything which helps and benefits man is Theosophical work, and that nothing can be excluded from the sphere of our work which includes every aspect of consciousness. So let us take this natural, this scientific division of our work, and see what we may do in each field which offers itself to the appropriate power in our nature.

The first will naturally cover all active working for humanity, all service which one can offer to another; and it will be well, in the days that lie before us, if we realise that there is no scheme for human helping, no possible effort for human uplifting, which is outside the field of work of the First Object of our Society. Every Lodge of the Society should make it one of its activities to serve humanity in the place where the Lodge is founded; and the value of the Lodge should be in the knowledge that is there gathered with the object of spreading it. For Theosophy should be your touch-stone as to the value of every scheme, as to the tendency of every proposition. In all the countless schemes around us in these active times, some work only for the moment; others, based on sound principle, are preparing the world for a better and happier future. By your Theosophical knowledge you can judge the value of every such scheme, and throw yourselves into those alone which work on lines beneficial to the future, which are laying the foundations of a civilisation greater than our own. For among the many schemes and many methods there are ways in which each man inspired by the Spirit of Brotherhood may find work that satisfies his reason and is justified by his conscience. And there is no one particular method, no one special road, along which the Society, as Society, can go. It lays down the principle of Brotherhood as an active working spirit in the life of every member, and then it leaves the member free to use his own judgment and his own conscience as to which among the many methods recommends itself most to him as an individual. So that in speaking of that field of work, it is not for me to say: "This plan, that method, the other means, that is what you ought to follow"; but only that you are not carrying out the First Object of the Society, unless you are engaging your activity in some task which in your intelligence and conscience is working for the benefit of your fellow-men. That is a point I want to put to your Lodges; for when I see questions discussed as to giving new life to Lodges, vivifying Lodges, and so on, I know well that the only cause for the need of such discussion is because men allow the life to stagnate within the Lodge, instead of sending it forth a living stream to fertilise the place in which the Lodge is built. There would be no lack of life were it not that