magnificent eighteenth-century railing in wrought iron and gilt. On
this side lie the Salle des Pas Perdus and the Sainte-Chapelle. The
fine square tower known as the Clock Tower stands at the corner formed
by the Quai du Mord and the Boulevard du Palais; and on the north side
lies the Conciergerie prison with the dungeon once occupied by Marie
Antoinette.--_Gaston Meissas_
OLD BRYNHYFRYD GARDEN
by Kenneth Morris
There's a quiet old enchantment of the heart that's calling, calling
From when Myrddin wielded magic powers, and Gwydion wove his tales;
And you'll hear it any April morn, when the apple-bloom is falling
In old Brynhyfryd Garden, in White, Wild Wales.
There's an Ousel in the Orchard there, and dear knows what he's
telling;
But I think there's Welsh comes welling from his throat when no
one's nigh,
And it's he that in Cilgwri in the olden days was dwelling,
And he saw the Quest of Cilhwch, and the old worlds die.
There's a lonely, lofty spirit that will fire your soul with craving
For the kind and haughty glory of the old, Heroic Kings,
Where the foxglove and sweet-william on the turf-topped walls are
waving
In old Brynhyfryd Garden, when the West Wind sings.
There's a ruin filled with nettles, where I think Ceridwen lingers
When she's out to gather herbage for the Wisdom Broth she brews:
And maybe you'll close your eyes there, and you'll feel the touch of
fingers,
Or the dropping down of healing with the cool June dews.
Ancient Magic of the World, it's the fires of you are burning
When the Wind is in the pine tops, and the moon is o'er the vales;
It's a rumor of immortal hopes, Immortal Hearts returning
That's in old Brynhyfryd Garden in the white West of Wales.
International Theosophical Headquarters,
Point Loma, California
MISUSED POWERS: by R. W. Machell
"Use with care those living messengers we call words." So said William
Q. Judge, a very wise man.
The misuse of words seems a trifling matter to those who habitually
misuse every function of mind and body; but the results of perversion
are disastrous to body, mind, and soul. The misuse of terms, when
not due to ignorance of their legitimate meaning, is in itself an
indication of a perverted mind diseased by habitual misuse of the
functions of both body and mind, which two are so intimately related as
to share inevitably the consequences of right or wrong living.
The words we use and the way we use them are not mere accidents but
are sure indications of our mental condition, and the mind and body
are so mutually responsive that it is hard to say which affects the
other and which is the affected one, for habits of body are induced
by habits of mind and the mind in turn is influenced by the bodily
condition resulting from those habits. With self-indulgence as the
unfortunate rule of life, and with the ignorance of our own nature
and of our relation to others, which is almost universal, it is not
surprising that wrong living should be the general rule, and that
misuse of the powers of mind and body should be so common; nor is it
at all strange that there should be so much unhappiness in the world,
nor need we marvel if people in these conditions should think that
their sufferings, mental and physical, are due to everything except
their own misconduct. And if men can not see that they are indeed the
makers of their own sufferings, how shall they be able to realize their
responsibility to others? With selfishness as the rule of life, and
with ignorance of our interdependence, and of our intimate union one
with another throughout the whole world, it is quite natural that we
should feel little responsibility to others for the effects we produce
in the world by the use or misuse of words: a responsibility that is
increased by the spread of education and by the increase in the number
of persons who read without thinking, and who take thoughts from
books as they take water from a tap, unquestioning as to its quality.
Pure water is now recognized as essential to health and is supplied
in all civilized communities, but pure language and pure thought are
left to chance; and while the supply of literature is as plentiful as
the supply of water, the quality of our literature is not subject to
the same scrutiny as is our water-supply, and the stream of thought
that flows through the channels of our publications is frequently
contaminated by unhealthy and unwholesome matters. Purity of thought
and purity of words are essential values, for words are embodied
thoughts, and from thoughts spring deeds, and the deeds of man are his
life.
The responsibility of writers and speakers has hardly yet been
recognized; though illustrations of the dangers of trifling with
essential values, or of misusing talents, or indeed of perverting
from its right use any function, are actually supplied by some of
our brilliant writers, who have recklessly and often ignorantly
become apostles of mere degeneracy and powerful instruments for the
demoralization of the people. Even those who see the evils scarcely
seem to appreciate either the causes or the consequences of the
corruption of literature and the confusion of language.
Some recent reviewers, however, have begun to question more closely the
character of the influence exercised upon the world by some writers,
whose works have excited general or special admiration, even calling
some of them defaulters, for that, holding great talents, they have
used the light they held to dazzle the eyes and to confuse the minds of
others, so as to make them blind to the path of right living, which is
virtue or morality.
One of these critics, Paul Elmer More, literary editor of the New York
_Evening Post_, in a study of the influence of Walter Pater, distinctly
suggests that the author confused the truth and in fact misrepresented
history, reading his own desires and inclinations into the teachings of
Plato in one case, and in another of doing the same for Christianity,
making them appear to exalt sensuous beauty above spiritual beauty
which is the soul of virtue; whereas Plato himself exclaims: "When
anyone prefers beauty to virtue, what is this but the real and utter
dishonor of the soul?" Mr. More suggests that Christianity is equally
misrepresented by this brilliant writer, but in his perversion of the
real meaning and purpose of true Christianity he is simply drifting
with the tide of so-called Christian civilization, which has been,
almost from its first appearance as a politically established religion,
a clear departure from those teachings concerning the Christos in man,
attributed to Jesus, the supposed founder of the system, and which in
their original purity are identical with Universal Theosophy of which
they are a part and upon which they are drawn.
Further, Mr. More suggests that the demoralizing effect of Pater
may have largely affected that brilliant apostle of decadence, Oscar
Wilde, whose tragic collapse in the hour of his literary success drew
attention to an evil whose ravages have ruined multitudes of lives and
wrecked every civilization that has become tainted with the poison of
perversion. For this man exalted perversion into a cult, his wit was
entirely based upon it, his ethics steeped in it, and his own life
wrecked by it. He himself shows that he was not unaware of the truth,
at times, for he wrote:
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance
Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God;
Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance--
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?
And later, in that awful page of the tragedy of a fallen soul, _The
Ballad of Reading Gaol_, there is a sort of blind recognition of the
justice of Karma, which tolerates no perversion of Nature's order on
any plane, coupled with a noble and generous plea for the removal of
the unnecessary horrors of the prisons, in which we grind out the last
vestige of man's inherent love of virtue, and crush the last buds of
growth that the fallen soul may yet be able to put forth.
Here again was one, who exalted the beauty of the senses above the
beauty of the soul, and so soiled the whole nature and so perverted
the mind, which is the mirror of the man, that he produced a vortex of
vice, in which all who entered were bewildered and lost their guiding
star; in which many were utterly wrecked, and all defiled.
Professor Henderson in his critical interpretation of five authors,
points out so much of the evil that one can only regret that his grasp
of true psychology was not deep enough to enable him to make more clear
the distinction between the spiritual soul and the animal soul (not to
go further into the complex nature of the Soul), the great duality in
man that is the clue to all these mysteries. With this key one feels
that his study of Maeterlinck's philosophy would have become more
luminous, for surely this is a case, in which an author continually
confuses his audience, and perhaps also himself, by exalting the
sensuous joys of the animal soul, and the emotions of the imagination,
above the pure joy of true beauty, which is, as all poets, not only
Keats, have seen, the same as truth. Keats himself may have known the
difference, but his readers certainly must in most instances have
been misled and may have found in his lines a justification of their
own indulgence of morbid tastes, for however morbid may be a man's
condition he will still see beauty in pleasure of any kind, no matter
how vile may be its source. We may endorse the axiom in the first line
Beauty is truth, truth beauty
but must protest against the fallacy in the next line
... that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
No! we need to know what we mean by beauty, and we need to know that
the word conceals pitfalls innumerable for him who has no knowledge
of the true nature of man, for one who thinks he is his body, and who
believes his passions are the voices of his soul and who mistakes the
intoxication of sensuality for spiritual illumination, lust for love,
and perversion for genius. We need the teaching so clearly given in
"The Two Paths" translated by H. P. Blavatsky from _The Book of the
Golden Precepts_. We need to know that there is a chasm deep as hell
between these two souls in man, and that when the higher nature is the
slave of the lower then the man is in hell indeed; for as said by H. P.
Blavatsky, there is no other hell than that of a man-bearing planet.
Those who have stood on the brink of this hell with even partially
opened eyes, know that the terrors of hell invented by churchmen are
but as a comic interlude to the reality of horrors that life on earth
holds for masses of humanity, and from which there is no escape except
by the path of right living, based upon right perception of our own
true nature, and discrimination between the higher and the lower nature
in man, which is so often veiled by the false teachings of perverted
minds. We need the truth to discriminate the spiritual beauty that is
pure joy from the sensual beauty that intoxicates, blinds, and destroys
the life--and we need the guiding power of pure altruism to make our
writings useful to others and a full recognition of the responsibility
of those who now so lightly use "those living messengers we call
words."
IS EDUCATION WASTED? by H. T. Edge, B. A. (Cantab.)
No question is agitating us more than that of how to educate our young
people. We know there is something wrong about our achievements in
education, but we are often mistaken as to where the fault lies. The
commonest mistake is to confound principles with practice and to blame
the former where perhaps it is the latter which is at fault. We fail
to carry out certain plans, and we blame the plans and want to make a
clean sweep of them; when perhaps inefficiency in applying them is what
is really the matter. In fact, it is probably inefficiency, rather than
wrong principles, that is the matter with our educational doings, as
it is in the case of so many others of our doings. Before we condemn a
method, we should ask whether that method is being given a fair trial.
If we sweep away the system, without removing the general inefficiency,
then the same failure will attend our efforts to apply any new system
that may be devised. We shall have exchanged one evil for another.
There is more than one side to every question; but many of the
utterances on the educational difficulty give only one side. The result
is views that are extreme and ill-considered. Let us take a case.
Much of education is considered by some critics to be superfluous and
wasted, for the reason that it seems to bear no immediate and visible
fruit. Hence they wish to abolish it. Yet it is always possible that
it may bear fruit after all, but not of the kind they are able to see.
Take, for instance, the case of a girl of ordinary type, without any
definite characteristics whether good or bad. She is sent to school
and college. She is taught algebra and geometry, Latin and Greek,
music and painting, with many other subjects. She is reasonably clever
and absorbs all this with interest and ease. She leaves college--and
never again opens a book. The whole is quietly forgotten with as much
nonchalance as it was acquired. Is all the time and money and effort,
on the part of pupil and teachers, wasted?
Or let it be a boy, who has been taught similar subjects, but takes up
a calling in which they are not used. Is the instruction wasted? The
question arises in various forms, of which these two cases may be taken
as typical examples.
If it is true that the education thus given is really wasted, what
folly could be greater than that of continuing to impart it! Yet we
know that somehow the view taken is too extreme; that it is not in
accordance with the fitness of things that work involving so much
zeal, enthusiasm, and other good qualities should fall fruitless; that
people would not go on doing it if they did not have some intuition
that the labor is not really in vain.
In short, may it not be possible that this is one of those cases in
which a dilemma has arisen through the limitation of our knowledge
of human nature and the laws of life; a dilemma resolvable by the
wider knowledge shed by Theosophy? A knowledge of Reincarnation, the
dual nature of man, and other related matters, clears up many of the
enigmas of life, as for instance what becomes of all the abilities and
experience which a man has garnered during life, when he dies. May not
a similar knowledge shed light on the present problem also? If so, then
our beliefs would be reconciled with our intuitions, and practices
which logic has seemed to condemn might be vindicated in the light of
fuller knowledge.
For one thing, a conviction of the continuity of individual existence
beyond the grave, in other earth-lives, more or less similar to the
present life, affects the whole question profoundly. For we may at
once infer that knowledge accumulated now, but not immediately used,
may be used later on. And indeed this idea quite agrees with what many
analogies from Nature suggest. Youth is the time for study; maturer
age brings other duties. Let us compare a lifetime with a day. In the
morning a man studies many subjects; but after noon he shuts his books,
never thinks of them again, and spends the remainder of the day in
other occupations, followed by recreation and ending in sleep. Has his
labor been wasted? Nay, for he will resume it next morning. Can we not
apply this analogy to the case of the young person whose education has
had, or seemed to have, no immediate practical result?
We thus see how limited views as regards the duration of life may
influence the question. But there are other limitations in our views;
let us see how these in turn may affect the question.
We are accustomed to pay too much attention to a man's capacity as a
separate individual, and not enough to his capacity as a part of a
whole. No being in the universe is entirely separate from other beings
however much he may try to make himself so or imagine himself to be so.
This is especially applicable to Mind. How much of our mind is our own?
It has been argued that Mind is a kind of common atmosphere, in which
all partake, and that thoughts are interchanged freely, the notion that
they belong particularly to oneself being chiefly an illusion. The
more this is true, the more it must be true that in teaching one person
we are in reality teaching many persons, teaching mankind in general.
Does a teacher teach persons or minds? To him it often seems as if he
were developing Mind, and the distinction of personalities is apt to
disappear. Yet this attitude on his part may not be mere carelessness
and indifference to the interests of his pupils; it may be founded on
an intuitive perception of the fact that personality does not count
for so much and that his pupils also have a collective capacity, an
aggregate value, which counts for a great deal.
Another way in which we limit our outlook, and thus obtain a false
perspective, is in regarding too intently the immediate (and, as we
say, "practical") outcome of education. There is such a thing as a
general education, an education not directed to any immediate or
definite end, but having in view the general culture and refinement of
the pupils. It is true, of course, that this argument can be used, and
is used, to justify kinds of teaching which really are undesirable;
it is true that in aiming at a general education, we may overdo the
process; it is true that such overdoing puts a weapon into the hands of
our opponents and goes some way towards justifying their arguments. But
aside from these abuses, the principle itself remains true. There must
be a certain amount of general culture, culture of a kind that has no
immediate practical end in view.
Let us try to imagine the results of applying some of the wrongly
called "practical" methods to an extreme degree. This boy is to be a
shoemaker: teach him shoemaking and nothing else. This girl is to sew
or cook: teach her sewing and cooking, but nothing else. At that rate
society would become a world of machines, and general culture and love
of knowledge would disappear.
Finally, to name a fourth limitation in our outlook, there is the error
of mistaking the principle itself for its application, the system for
the way in which it is carried out, the institution for the use that
is made of it. Thus we often lay the blame in the wrong place. Before
we sweep away a system, let us find out whether it is the system that
is at fault or the application of it; otherwise we may find equally
faulty results proceeding from any new system which we may adopt. Is it
inefficiency which is at the root of the evil? If so, let us remedy the
inefficiency and then it will be time to see about changing the system.
The education question, like so many other questions, is in a state of
chaos. Something is the matter, but people do not know just what it is.
The suggested cures are many. Rash experiments are made. The remedies
threaten to be worse than the disease. One thing seems generally agreed
upon--that our education does not confer perfect efficiency. What
we really need is a general education that will give efficiency in
reading, writing, speaking, ciphering; in power of attention, memory,
concentration; in adaptability, readiness of resource; obedience,
order, self-command. No need to enumerate all the requirements;
everybody knows what they are and what is needed. Efficient people
are needed everywhere; but, above all, people with self-command and
free from weaknesses. If we could but turn out this kind of product,
much less in the way of technical schools would be needed; for such
pupils would be so apt and teachable that they could readily master
anything. The difficulties as to the nature of the curriculum, whether
it should include Greek and Latin, and, if so, how much; what history
should be taught, and how it should be taught; whether theoretical
grammar should be taught, or whether the pupil should acquire grammar
unconsciously from his reading--all these and many more problems would
settle themselves, or at least our point of view concerning them
would be altogether altered. As it is, most of these problems resolve
themselves into the one problem of how to produce good fruit from a
neglected tree. So long as the pupils have not been trained in the
control of their faculties, moral and mental, it is difficult to teach
them anything, no matter which method you adopt. And if they have been
properly trained in their early years, the question of what to teach
them sinks into comparative unimportance, because they will be able to
make use of all their opportunities.
The root of the whole difficulty, therefore, is this: that people have
no definite philosophy of life to serve as a foundation for efforts.
With religious beliefs all undermined and mixed up, and nothing to
take their place but various theories wrongly labeled "scientific," it
is no wonder if folk should find themselves incompetent to solve the
educational problem. We need to understand first what a man is and what
is his destiny; we need to think of the Soul as having existed before
it entered its present body, and as being destined to exist again
after it has left that body. We need to know the difference between
the higher and the lower nature in a person, and how the two are
interblended. Then we should not have rash schemes which ignore this
distinction and propose to let the lower nature run wild. We should
then know how to give the higher nature its freedom without letting the
lower nature run wild.
It all comes to this: that tools are not of use without men to handle
them; and that in our scheming we are trying to devise tools which will
turn unskilled workmen into skilled. The primary factor in education
is the man itself. The question begins at birth--even before birth.
When the time comes, as come it must, when people will find themselves
compelled by necessity to recognize the efficacy of Theosophy, then
many problems will be solved. Theosophy means a getting back to simple
yet profound truths--such simple truths as can be applied to any
circumstances. These alone can grapple successfully with the problems.
THE TEMPLE OF THESEUS, ATHENS: by R.
The Theseion, the so-called Temple of Theseus, in Athens, belongs
to the second period of classical Greek architecture, which may be
considered to have flourished between B. C. 470 and 338, the dates
of the Persian war and the Macedonian supremacy. It is one of the
most beautiful examples of the Doric order, and is more perfect than
any other building we have of ancient Greece. It probably owes its
excellent preservation to the fact that it was turned into a Christian
church during the Middle Ages. It is made of the famous white Pentelic
marble, which has changed, by lapse of time, to a lovely golden yellow
hue. It greatly resembles the Parthenon, but covers a little less than
half the area, and is not so exquisitely proportioned. The Theseion was
erected a few years before the Parthenon, probably about B. C. 460. It
is one hundred and four feet long by forty-five wide, and the columns
are nineteen feet high. Like most of the finest Grecian buildings it
does not depend upon mere size for impressiveness. From the remains of
sculpture still existing the following subjects have been ascertained:
The achievements of Theseus (whence the name); The Labors of Hercules;
and the battle of the Athenians, the Lapithae, and the Centaurs.
Fifty of the _metopes_ (the squares into which the frieze is divided)
were never adorned with sculpture, but were probably painted, for the
Doric Temples are now known to have been painted both externally and
internally. The groups in the pediments (the uppermost triangular
portions) are entirely lost.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. TEMPLE OF THESEUS,
ATHENS, GREECE]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. STOA, GYMNASIUM OF
HADRIAN, ATHENS]
RECENT ADMISSIONS BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS: by a Student