For an exhaustive disquisition upon Adepts, MahÂtmas and NirmÂnakÂyas, more than a volume would be needed. The development illustrated by them is so strange to modern minds and so extraordinary in these days of general mediocrity, that the average reader fails to grasp with ease the views advanced in a condensed article; and nearly everything one would say about Adepts—to say nothing of the NirmÂnakÂyas—requiring full explanation of recondite laws and abstruse questions, is liable to be misunderstood, even if volumes should be written upon them. The development, conditions, powers, and function of these beings carry with them the whole scheme of evolution; for, as said by the mystics, the MahÂtma is the efflorescence of an age. The Adepts may be dimly understood to-day, the NirmÂnakÂyas have as yet been only passingly mentioned, and the MahÂtmas are misconceived by believers and deniers alike.

But one law governing them is easy to state and ought not to be difficult for the understanding. They do not, will not, and must not interfere with Karma; that is, however apparently deserving of help an individual may be, they will not extend it in the manner desired if his Karma does not permit it; and they would not step into the field of human thought for the purpose of bewildering humanity by an exercise of power which on all sides would be looked upon as miraculous. Some have said that if the Theosophical Adepts were to perform a few of their feats before the eyes of Europe, an immense following for them would at once arise; but such would not be the result. Instead of it there would be dogmatism and idolatry worse than have ever been, with a reaction of an injurious nature impossible to counteract.

Hypnotism—though by another name—has long been known to them. The hypnotic condition has often aided the schemes of priests and churches. To compel recognition of true doctrine is not the way of these sages, for compulsion is hypnotism. To feed a multitude with only five loaves would be easy for them; but as they never act upon sentiment but continually under the great cosmic laws, they do not advance with present material aid for the poor in their hands. But, by using their natural powers, they every day influence the world, not only among the rich and poor of Europe and America, but in every other land, so that what does come about in our lives is better than it would have been had they not had part therein.

The other class referred to—NirmÂnakÂyas—constantly engage in this work deemed by them greater than earthly enterprises: the betterment of the soul of man, and any other good that they can accomplish through human agents. Around them the long-disputed question of NirvÂna revolves, for all that they have not been distinctly considered in it. For, if Max MÜller's view of NirvÂna, that it is annihilation, be correct, than a NirmÂnakÂya is an impossibility. Paradoxically speaking, they are in and out of that state at one and the same time. They are owners of NirvÂna who refuse to accept it in order that they may help the suffering orphan, Humanity. They have followed the injunction of the Book of the Golden Precepts: "Step out from sunlight into shade, to make more room for others."

A greater part is taken in the history of nations by the NirmÂnakÂyas than anyone supposes. Some of them have under their care certain men in every nation who from their birth are destined to be great factors in the future. These they guide and guard until the appointed time. And such protÉgÉs but seldom know that such influence is about them, especially in the nineteenth century. Acknowledgment and appreciation of such great assistance are not required by the NirmÂnakÂyas, who work behind the veil and prepare the material for a definite end. At the same time, too, one NirmÂnakÂya may have many different men—or women—whom he directs. As Patanjali puts it, "In all these bodies one mind is the moving cause."

Strange, too, as it may seem, often such men as Napoleon Buonaparte are from time to time helped by them. Such a being as Napoleon could not come upon the scene fortuitously. His birth and strange powers must be in the order of nature. The far-reaching consequences going with a nature like his, unmeasurable by us, must in the eastern Theosophical philosophy be watched and provided for. If he was a wicked man, so much the worse for him; but that could never deter a NirmÂnakÂya from turning him to his uses. That might be by swerving him, perchance, from a path that would have plunged the world into depths of woe and been made to bring about results in after years which Napoleon never dreamed of. The fear of what the world might think of encouraging a monster at a certain point never can deter a sage who sees the end that is best. And in the life of Napoleon there are many things going to show at times an influence more powerful than he could grapple. His foolhardy march to Moscow was perhaps engineered by these silent campaigners, and also his sudden and disastrous retreat. What he could have done had he remained in France, no present historian is competent to say. The oft-doubted story of the red letter from the Red Man just when Napoleon was in a hesitating mood, may have been an encouragement at a particular juncture. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." Nor will the defeat at Waterloo be ever understood until the NirmÂnakÂyas give their records up.

As a change in the thought of a people who have been tending to gross atheism is one always desired by the Sages of the Wisdom Religion, it may be supposed that the wave of spiritualistic phenomena resulting now quite clearly in a tendency back to a universal acknowledgment of the soul, has been aided by the NirmÂnakÂyas. They are in it and of it; they push on the progress of a psychic deluge over great masses of people. The result is seen in the literature, the religion and the drama of to-day. Slowly but surely the tide creeps up and covers the once dry shore of Materialism, and, though priests may howl, demanding "the suppression of Theosophy with a firm hand," and a venal press may try to help them, they have neither the power nor the knowledge to produce one backward ripple, for the Master hand is guided by omniscient intelligence propelled by a gigantic force, and—works behind the scene.