I am to speak to-night, as you know, on "Spiritual and Temporal Authority," and I have chosen this, with the other subjects, as bearing on questions of immediate interest to the Theosophical Society. But in dealing with each of these, as on the first occasion, I want, if I can, to lift you above any controversy of the moment, and to put before you broad outlines rather than mere details, and to lead you to look at all these questions from the wider standpoint of the experience of the past, trying to apply that experience as far as you can to the questions, the difficulties, of the present. And this question that I have chosen for the subject of our thought to-night is one which carries us back into the very beginnings of human history on our globe, which we may trace downwards through civilisation after civilisation, and we can then study, as it were by contrast, many of our modern civilisations. And out of all this it may be that we shall learn some lesson for our own small affairs of the moment. For local affairs are only really interesting as we see them as manifestations of the great principles which work out in the history of humanity; and we can only rightly, I think, understand the power of the Theosophical Movement, if we see it in its proper place in history, and not as a mere bubble on the water of the present.

Now, far, far back—I suppose some people will say "not in history," for the time I am speaking of is what would be called "prehistoric"—when the great Lords from the planet Venus came to our globe to guide and train the humanity which just then had come to the birth, we find a group of Teachers and Rulers, not belonging to our humanity at all, but, as I said, coming from the planet Venus, from the far more highly evolved humanity living in that world. They came for the specific purpose of making the evolution of the new humanity more rapid than otherwise it would be. For, as you know, at that time humanity was facing a very terrible danger. The bodies had evolved up to a certain point, the brooding Spirit was over each body, but the intellectual evolution had scarcely begun to dawn; mind, as we know it now, had scarcely asserted itself; only mind, as we see it in the animals, had been slowly unfolding its powers in the upward-climbing towards the light. And as it is always true that any force which is poured down into a body must necessarily flow along the channels which that body has prepared for it, in these animal men, as we may call them, when they received a new influx of spiritual life—or, if we prefer the phrase, "as the influx grew stronger and stronger"—that new life, that additional force, inevitably ran into animal channels, lacking the guiding and directing force of the intelligence. Hence the immediate result of any increased down-pouring from the spiritual plane was an increase in animality in the growing man; and his body, growing up out of the animal kingdom, influenced by that—although, as you remember, human from the beginning, yet retracing its ancestry in those early days—was driven by the incoming life into various lines of activity, harmless to the brute, but that would have been destructive to the upward-climbing human being. Hence the need for a swift intervention on the part of the Guardians of all humanities; and our planetary Logos called to His help humanity from a chain older than His own, so that He might have for His infant children guides that would protect them against danger, and would lead them upwards more swiftly than they themselves could have climbed alone. Hence the coming of those Mighty Ones, and it was They who were the first Adepts, Masters, for our humanity. There is no other term for the moment to apply to them, although the term "Master" is really inappropriate: They were far higher in the Occult Hierarchy than Those we speak of as the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion. They became the first Teachers and Kings of our child humanity, and They were of many grades. "Divine Kings" They are called in the old records; Teachers and Kings in one. They established the polities of the infant nations; They gave to those same nations their religions; and in those early days, as in the days that will close our human history, there was no distinction recognised between "sacred" and "profane." It was seen that Spirit, clothing itself in matter, should be regarded in each of its tabernacles as a single individual. Spirit and matter were not regarded, so to speak, as distinguished from each other, save in quality. The two combined into the making of the man. And the man's life was a human life, and the body guided by human consciousness; but the body was not thought of as separate from the Spirit, nor the Spirit from the body; both were combined into a single being. And in all true organisations that is the point which is to be aimed at: that the informing life shall shape and mould the organism which is thus expressing the life on planes of matter; that that organism shall ever be an organism spirit-inspired, life-shaped, so as to become more and more perfectly the expression of the life which it enfolds. We shall see presently that for a time, when Spirit became utterly blinded by matter, that matter, as it were, took the upper hand and claimed to be monarch. But in those far-off days it was still recognised that Spirit was the master of matter, and the Gods walked amongst men and were recognised by men as their Teachers and Kings. And humanity in its infancy clung to These, who were as fathers and mothers of the race, and looked to Them for everything necessary to nourish and develop the young life. So that looking back to those earlier days, the great lawgivers like the Manus were at once Kings and Priests. They gave everything to the humanity that They guarded: literature, science, art, architecture, everything which was necessary to the national life. And under that mighty protection grew up the vast civilisations of the past. You find traces of them, of course, in Egypt; traces of them, in fact, everywhere in the older, the now dying, or dead peoples. And these King-Priests, these King-Prophets, summed up in Their own divine persons all the ruling powers of Spirit and matter alike. The State was a Church, or the Church was a State.

Gradually, as these Great Ones withdrew, as Those who only lived for service saw that humanity had begun to take its first steps, and needed less physical guidance and visible helping, others still great, but not as superhuman as the earlier ones, took up the royal and priestly rank. Still the two ran together: the temporal and spiritual power in one pair of hands; and so on and on, from Atlantis downwards. Some traces of it still survive, as in the Indian civilisation, where the ideal of the monarch is always that of the Divine representative upon earth. But in India, after the earliest days, you see the beginning division, and the offices of the King and of the Teacher gradually diverged the one from the other. And as time went on, and man grew a little older in his childhood, those who ruled over the State gave away out of their hands the teaching of the religion. Rightly and well; for it was necessary that humanity should learn to guide itself. It was on the downward arc still, not yet beginning its upward climbing, and it had to plunge deeper and deeper into matter. The eyes of the Spirit had to be blinded in order that the eyes of the intellect might open, and so gradually prepare humanity for a loftier manifestation of the spiritual life.

And then we find that with the dividing of the two offices, the Kings grew less and less fathers of their peoples, and became more and more tyrants over the nations. In the elder days the principle that was taught was clear and simple: the greater the power, the greater the sacrifice; the greater the power, the greater the duty. And on that principle of the Law of Sacrifice the old civilisations were built up; to that they owed their splendor; to that the long ages through which they lived and flourished; to sacrifice, as the very basis of the national and religious polity, they owed the vigor, the young vigor, of humanity. Their literature was grandiose; their architecture magnificent; their art sublime. The traces of divinity ran through the whole of it. But, beautiful as it was, it would not have been well that it should have lasted, for had it been so, mankind would have grown to depend too much upon the manifested Divine life walking incarnate side by side with it. And it was necessary that the growing child should prove his own limbs, and the growing intelligence should learn to depend upon itself. Then we come to a long period when the tyranny of the King brought out more and more strongly the usefulness of the Teacher, and when the Teacher was continually standing between the power of the tyrant and the helplessness of the people; when religion became a shield for the weak, a strong check for the violence of power. And we pass thus through all that long period of human history where the oppressed found their only refuge in the priests of the religions, and found them a sure protection against the sword of the secular power. So went on for hundreds, nay, for thousands of years, the growth of humanity; and the two powers went further and further apart, coming more and more the one into opposition with the other. And the people, the nations, gradually grew in power, grew in intelligence, to a considerable extent. The priest was still the teacher, and still the schools and the temples were united. Unfortunately, after a while the religions became corrupted as well as the royalties, and priests began to share the worldliness that had already degraded the Kings; and then, with the failure of the priesthood, practically ceased the education of the people for many and many a long century, and intelligence was not developed, and the power of the mind was not assisted to manifest itself.

And so onward and onward till we come to Middle Age Europe, and we find a down-trodden proletariat, an indifferent and luxurious kingship and priesthood, allied now to oppress, not to raise. Therefore, contest between the Church and the State, until the Pontiff of Rome remained the only representative of the union of the spiritual and temporal authority—his spiritual authority enormous, his temporal authority growing smaller, and badly used, so that in the States of the Church in Italy there was almost the acme of bad temporal government; and there was little to choose, really, between the States of the Church and the odious tyranny of Naples. In the States of the Church the old ideal of the Priest-King was degraded to its lowest point, and neither on the side of Pontiff, nor on the side of King, was the ruler of Rome the father, the shepherd of his people, but often only a devouring wolf. Hence the last degradation of a once magnificent office.

Meanwhile the Democracy was growing, and numbers were beginning to claim their power, until the people, having seen how badly Kings and priests could rule, thought that they could not, after all, do very much worse themselves, if they seized authority by the power of numbers, and took the helm of the States, of the Nations, into their own rough and untrained grip. And so has risen in the modern life of Europe the power, as it is called, of the Democracy. Practically, at the present time, Democracy may be said to be on its trial. It cannot claim so far to be a very splendid success, but its trial is not yet over, and many a year may yet lie before it, in order that the world may have an object-lesson to show that the only true authority is the authority of Wisdom, and not the authority of numbers; and that it is not possible for humanity to take its next step onwards until it has managed to draw out of the lessons of the past and of the present some way of blending, some way of uniting, the different experiences through which it has passed. For all who study the world's unfolding and believe that this world is not alone, but is a part linked with other worlds, and that other beings above humanity take their share in humanity's evolution—all who thus look at history and see the powers that lie behind the veil and that pull the strings of those whom we call kings, and statesmen, and generals, and the mighty ones of earth, they know that no great human experiment can be void of its value, and no great human experiment but has some fruit of wisdom to be gathered from it. So that no wise man, no thoughtful Theosophist, should look with a feeling of repulsion and anger on the experiments that are being made all over the world to-day in the effort of the nations to rule themselves by numbers rather than by wisdom. For it is a necessary experience. Only in this fashion can the lower mind complete its evolution and be ready to give up its sceptre to that Pure Reason which is to be the mark of the Sixth Race, which is to find its expression in the polity of that coming Race. Out of all these experiments we are to learn, out of all successes and all failures we are to spell out, the lesson whereon the next civilisation will be built, whereby its foundation will gradually be laid. For if one sees the Theosophical Society aright, it is as one of the builders of that coming time, one of the builders of the civilisation that has not yet really dawned on earth, the civilisation of the Sixth Root Race, with the experiments that will go before it in the Sixth and Seventh sub-races of the Fifth. For these experiments take long in the making, and, as a great teacher once said: "Time is no object with us." There is plenty of time for all the experiments, and all the blunders, and all the failures; and all the successes of the future will grow out of these, because every failure rightly seen is the seed of a coming success, and only by the failures that we make in our ignorance may the plant of wisdom be sown, and presently flower and bear fruit for the feeding of the nations. So that there is time enough, and no need for impatience, when we see the blunders of our various democratic governments. But there is much need that thoughtful people should take care so to see the signs of the time, and so to understand the forces at work, that the same blunder be not made in the days of the present as was made at the close of the eighteenth century in France; for there also was a time when an effort was made for a great step forward, a step too big, apparently, to be possible of being then taken, a step which only caused the drowning of the forward movement in blood, and has thrown France backward, and not forward as some people suppose; for ever since that time she has had a cancer at the heart of her, and no effort that has been made has borne due fruit. Nay, it is even possible that that was her opportunity in which she failed, and that the opportunity will have to pass to other peoples, to be worked out by other hands.

Looking at the democracies of to-day, we see that both the great powers are rejected, King and priest alike, royalty reduced to a mere puppet, priesthood looked on with suspicion and with hatred; and in both cases one is bound to admit that there is much justification, for they are the result of the harm that unbridled power in Church and in State alike have wrought to the people, who are now revolting against both. But the revolt is only a passing thing. Humanity does not really change; only passing manifestations of it change; and though the passing manifestations be counted by centuries, what is that in the length of a day counted by myriads of years, and to peoples who are spiritual intelligences unfolding their powers in humanity? Kingship and priesthood are mighty powers, and the need for them deep-rooted in the nature of humanity. Only on the upward path they are different from what they were on the path of descent, and the way in which those are to be shaped and moulded and again made mighty, that will be the answer of human experience after it has proved the rule of ignorance to be a mistake and a failure. Gradually, in some way that as yet we do not see, a way will be found of discovering the wise, who alone have the right to rule. For there is no authority for the intelligence, there is no authority for the free intellect of man, save the authority of Wisdom, to which the intellect bows because it is itself in flower. And those who develop the intelligence of men, as humanity is beginning to evolve its intelligence, they will only find their Kings and Priests where they see a wisdom greater than their own, a knowledge which transcends theirs, but is the promise of what they themselves in the future should become. And out of all the birth-throes of the present, and the ugly shapes which humanity takes on, will come the fairer birth of Wisdom, when again it shall sit on the combined throne of King and Priest. For it is necessary that human life should regain its unity, and that again the Spirit shall be known to be master, and the body its instrument, its tool, its expression. And on the upward-climbing arc we have again to come to the same levels that we passed in our downward-going arc of the ages of the past. In the half circle we had first the Priest-King; and then the two side by side, co-operators; and then the separation and the rivalry; and, finally, an evil junction to oppress the ignorant and the poor. And slowly we shall have to climb on the path where Spirit is manifesting more and more, and matter is becoming more and more obedient, until each of those stages is again seen in the history of humanity, and until, at the end, Spirit shall be lord unchallenged, and matter obedient servant, carrying out his will. And in the humanity of the great Sixth Race in which Buḍḍhi, or Pure Reason, is to be the mark, in which Wisdom will be the shaper of humanity's plans, and the strength of matter will be used in order to carry them out, in those days there will be the building-up of the dual authority once more, and the shaping of it to diviner ends than even in those early days of the infant humanity. And in those days, again, ruler and priest shall be one, until at last the unity shall be realised in the life of those who are to accomplish their human evolution upon earth; until finally in each spiritual individual these two characteristics are unfolded, and each man is King and Priest, uniting the two phases in his own individuality, and learning, in that dual power, to become the servant of those who are less evolved than himself. You see a touch of that when the Christian religion was sent out into the world, a glimpse of the splendid ideal when the Apostle, writing to his infant Church, spoke of them as "Kings and priests unto God"; in each individual this identity is to be at last achieved, so that no outer rule is any longer necessary, the inner rule being enough. That unity will mark the closing scenes of life on earth in each of those whose human evolution will be finished, who will have to pass on into other worlds when they shall have united again each of these in their own persons, and shall use that twofold power for the training of the humanity below them, ascending towards the point which they shall have gained and shall occupy.

Such the vast sweep of humanity's evolution: from Spirit, through densest matter, upward-climbing again to Spirit, bearing with it all the powers that by the experience in matter it has gained. Such the great sweep, and the great history. What relation has that to our little Society and our little movement? Some would be inclined to say: "None; no relation at all. You cannot bring down into so small a microcosm those great principles shown out in their working in a macrocosm." And yet if you and I, in our tiny personalities, repeat in miniature the life of the Logos in the vast sweep of His creative activity, who shall say that in a movement such as ours there is not similarly a retracing of the lines along which humanity at large has to grow? And who shall say whether we may not understand our movement better, and guide it more wisely, if we recognise these correspondences of the great growth of the world to the small growth of our Movement—a world-reflection in a tiny mirror? For it is no true humility to lessen too much the varied operations of the Great White Lodge in the world of men, any more than it is a true humility for the individual to be ashamed to claim his divine inheritance, and look upon himself as a "mere worm of earth." The men or women who only feel themselves to be of the earth, and not of Deity, their lives become more vulgar and common than they ought to be; for it is a great thing to realise possibilities and to see correspondences, and to take out of them their inspiring value, their invigorating force. And just as you and I have the right to say that we are Gods in the making, and that there is nothing in the great power of the Logos that does not lie hidden in germ within ourselves, just as we have the right to say that, as man best understands himself when he knows himself divine and realises the possibilities within him, and sees the road to Deity which he is to tread, so is every spiritual movement great in proportion to the realisation of its one-ness with the great world-movement, and small and petty when the men and women who compose it can only keep their eyes on the muck of the earth instead of looking up to the crown of stars that the angel holds over their head. So that I do not fear to provoke a false pride, but rather to get rid of a false humility, when I ask you to see in this Movement, which belongs to the Great Lodge and is its child, to see in it the same forces at work that you see working in the world-history, and to realise that here also correspondences exist, and that we may guide our Movement most worthily by seeing those correspondences and utilising them for the common good.

So let us pause now, after these high flights, in the little valley in which we live, and see whether in the Theosophical Society any such process of events may be seen as has been played on the great world theatre, in the drama of evolving humanity. For mind! we have no meaning unless we are related to that, and our Movement has no sense unless it retraces the steps of the great world drama, as every great spiritual movement does, from the time of its birth to the time of its passing away, and its incarnation in some other form. I do not claim it for our Society only, but for all great spiritual movements—churches, religions, call them what you will.

Now, we began our Movement as humanity began its education. There was no difference between spiritual and temporal. The whole Society was regarded as a spiritual movement; and if you go back to those early days, and read the earliest statements, you will find it said that this Society existed in what then were called three Sections: First, Second, and Third. The First Section was the Brotherhood, the Elder Brothers of Humanity; the Second, those who were striving to lead the higher, the more spiritual life, and were in training for the purpose; and the Third Section made up the bulk of the Society. Those three Sections were the Theosophical Society. So that it began on a very lofty level; and its First Section, the Elder Brothers, Those whom we speak of as Masters, They were regarded as forming the First Section of the Society, and as part of it; and the Society has linked closely the Second and Third Sections under the First, as in the days when the Gods walked with men, in the early story of humanity. And They came and went far more freely then than later, and mingled more with the Society, taking a more active part in this work; and it is wonderful to read some of the old letters of the time, and the close and intimate knowledge shown by those great Teachers of the details of the work of the Society, even of what was written about it in an Indian newspaper, and what ought to be answered, and so on. And the Society grew, became more numerous, and spread in many lands; and naturally as it spread, many of these ties somewhat weakened so far as the Society, as a whole, was concerned—not weakened with individuals, but somewhat weakened with the Body at large. And so things went on and on, until the Society passed through the same stage through which humanity had passed when the Priest-Kings entirely disappeared, and when those words were spoken by one of the Great Ones: "The Society has liberated itself from our grasp and influence, and we have let it go; we make no unwilling slaves.... Out of the three Objects the second alone is attended to; it is no longer either a Brotherhood, nor a body over the face of which broods the Spirit from beyond the Great Range." And when that time was well established a change was made in the organisation of the Society. It was no longer, so to speak, one and indivisible, but two parts were made—Exoteric and Esoteric; and, as you know, for some time the Colonel fought against that, thinking it meant an unwise and dangerous division of authority in the Society, until, as he was coming over here with his mind in opposition to the proposal that H.P.B. should form the Esoteric Section, he received, on board the steamer on which he travelled, a letter from his Master telling him to carry out what H.P.B. wished; and, ever obedient as he was, for when his Master spoke he knew no hesitation, when he arrived here in England he did what he had been told, and authorised the formation of what was then called the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society. You can read all this for yourselves; it is all in print. Then came that distinct cleavage of Exoteric and Esoteric—the two heads, H. S. Olcott and H.P.B., one wielding the temporal and the other the spiritual authority in the Society. It meant that the Society had ceased to be the spiritual vehicle it was in the earlier days. It meant, as was printed at that time, that some of the members wished to carry on the Society on its original lines, and so they formed themselves into this Section under her, on the original lines. So it went on, like that time in the history of humanity, in order that certain faculties might grow and become strong, and that the spiritual side for a time might seem apart, and the other might go its own way unruled. Many difficulties grew out of it, but still they were not insuperable—a certain clashing of authorities from time to time, and certain jealousy between the one and the other. These things were the inevitable concomitants of the separation, of the differences between the spiritual and temporal sides, the Spirit and the body, as it were. So things went on until the President passed away. When H.P.B. left us, she left me in charge of her work, as her colleague did in Aḍyar lately, thus uniting again the two powers, the two authorities, in a single person.

Now, what does it mean to the Society? That is the question for us. What is it to bring forth in our Movement? Ill or well? It is only possible, at this beginning of the road, to point out the two things that may happen. For the Society and its President together will have to settle which of the two shall come. It may be that They, who from behind look on, may foresee what is coming; or it may be, as it often is, that They also are not able completely to say what shall come out of the clashing wills of men, differing views, possible antagonisms. Two possibilities there clearly are before us, either of which, I suggest, may come. For you and for me it is to decide which shall come. And I can only tell you how it seems to me, and you must judge and act as you think right. For at last our Society, like humanity, has reached the point when the individual must do his duty, and must no longer be a child guided entirely from without, but a man with the God within co-operating with the God without. Hence it is not a question for any to decide for us: we have to decide it for ourselves. And as I say, I can only put to you what seem to me the two possibilities. Let me take the bad possibility first. It may be that I, in whose hands these two powers now are placed, shall prove too weak to bear that burden, too blind to walk along that difficult path. It may be that I shall err on the one side or on the other, either making the Society too exoteric and empty, a material thing, or, on the other hand, pressing too far the spiritual side, with all that that means. It may be that the task is too great, and that the time has not come. I recognise that as possible; for in all questions of peoples, persons, and times, experiments may be made which it is known will fail, in order that out of the failure fresh wisdom may be gathered, and it may be that this shall be a failure. And if so it matters not, for out of that failure some higher good will spring. That is the conviction of those who know that the Self is ever in us, and that the Self can never perish; so that it matters not what catastrophe may come, provided faith in the Self remains secure with His endless possibilities of recovery, and greater powers of manifestation. And it may quite well be that, in hands as weak and knowledge as limited as mine, failure will meet this great experiment which the Masters are making, and that we shall find that neither President nor Society is fit to take that step forward, are both still too childish, not sufficiently mature, and therefore not able to tread the path which is the path upwards to the spiritual life, when the organisation shall again become but the mere outside veiling of the spiritual life, carrying the message of regeneration to the world, and the birth of a new civilisation. That is one possibility that should be faced. And the other?

The other is that we may permit the Great Ones to be sufficiently in touch with our little selves to send Their forces through us, and that Their life shall become the life of the Society; that out of this rejoining of spiritual and temporal a greater spirituality shall circulate in every vein and vessel of the Society, and it shall become again truly a vehicle of the Masters of the Wisdom. It may be that it is preparing for a greater and a nobler life, making the place ready for some greater one to come, who shall worthily and strongly wield the power that I am bound to wield too weakly, but yet, perhaps, strongly enough to make that preparation possible. Perhaps you and I together are strong enough and wise enough to till the field, where another shall sow the seed that shall grow up into a greater civilisation and mark a step forward in the history of humanity. That is our great opportunity, that the possibility that I see opening before us in this policy now changed for the second time. It may be that we have learned enough in the last eighteen years to tread this path rightly, to tread it sufficiently to prepare a field for a greater one to come; and that is the hope in which I live at the present time. I believe that it is possible, if only we can rise to the height of our great opportunity, that someone will come from the far-off land where greater than we are living, and take this instrument and make it fit to be a tool in a Master's hand—some Disciple greater and mightier than I, someone belonging to the same company, but far wiser and far stronger than I. And that such a one will take this Movement and make it a little more what the heart of the Masters desires—more truly a Brotherhood, more full of knowledge, more really linked to the higher worlds by a centre of wise Occultism—that seems to me the great possibility which is opening before us. But, as I said, I know not if we are great enough to take it, or are still too small; but it is to that great work that I would invite your co-operation; it is to that mighty task that I would ask you to address yourselves. At least believe in the possibility of it; at least raise your eyes to that great stature to which it may be our Society shall attain. For if we can rise to it, then it means that we shall be builders of the next civilisation, that our hands shall take part in the making of the foundation of the humanity that is still to be born; it means that we shall be its forerunners, its heralds, that we shall be the messengers whose feet shall be fair upon the mountains, telling of the coming of a greater man, of the birth of a more spiritual humanity. And even supposing that, accepting that ideal, we fail, supposing that we are not strong enough, and wise enough, and unselfish enough, to do it, then, then—if I may quote the words of Giordano Bruno—"It is better to see the Great and fail in trying to achieve it, than never to see it, nor try to achieve it at all."