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Taking Theosophical
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A Review of The Secret Doctrine
By
William Q. Judge
The Secret
Doctrine, by Blavatsky, is a work whose aim is stated as follows: "To show
that Nature is not a fortuitous concurrence of atoms, and to assign to man his
rightful place in the scheme of the Universe; to rescue from degradation the
archaic
truths which are the basis of all religions; and to uncover, to some extent,
the fundamental unity from which they all spring; finally, to show that the
occult side of Nature has never been approached by the Science of modern civilization."
This is a
high aim, a great claim to advance. Whether both are fully sustained must be
left, not alone to the judgment of individual readers, but to that large verdict
of "humanity and the future generations," to which the author
appeals.
Meantime,
the just critic recognizes that these claims are ably put forth, in a work of
great erudition and power. The publication of a book like this has, in itself,
an emphatic significance.
The
attention of thinkers has in late years been directed to the evolution of
thought, its laws and its results. Of these last The Secret Doctrine is a
tremendous one. It marks the acme of the
theosophical
movement; that movement which urges a search after truth in every
department
of life, while predicting the final and essential unity of the whole.
It shows
the most advanced phase of religious development and points out its future
course; not alone concerned with the beliefs of the present; refusing indeed to
recognize that present as a separate fact, but showing past and future
interwoven
into one eternal now, and all religions, all sciences, proceeding from one
primeval belief, which afterwards became differentiated, along the path of
evolutionary progress, into forms which are various facets of the one truth.
The
writing of this work is sufficient evidence for a demand for it, and however we
may take issue with some of its teachings, we must recognize the breadth and beauty
of its aim; also three facts concerning it:
First, it
is a great event in literature per se.
Second, it
is not the outcome of the mental or other experience of any one person. No
human brain could singly conceive a scheme so vast, so complex in details, so
simple of base. It is evidently an aggregation beginning far back in archaic
times.
Third, it
is thrown into the arena where science and religion, where matter versus
spirit, are warring, as the sceptre of the king was thrown into the lists to
bid contention cease. It logically reconciles the combatants in proving their
basic unity, in saying to the materialist: All issues from the one substance
which is eternal, -- and to the [believers in] spirit: That one substance is
vivified by the co-eternal undetermined potency called Spirit, of which our
word "will" is the nearest expression.
A work
which can do us this service in a rational manner, while bringing the testimony
of all recorded time to sustain its teachings, certainly deserves careful
attention. The need of unity is the great tendency of our time.
It is displayed
in art, literature, religion, mechanics, industrial enterprise and
international
law, by efforts towards co-operation, arbitration, in a word -- unity. To find
this need met in the religious field without empiricism or
dogmatism,
without attempt at scientific limitations or theological form, attacks our
innate sense of justice, and inclines us to weigh before we reject.
The basis
of this remarkable work is the "Book of Dzyan," an archaic Ms.
unknown to the western world and secretly preserved in the
explanations.
The whole is supplemented by addenda showing the respective positions of modern
scientists and occultists, their agreements and their differences. To persons
wishing to be well informed on such questions without the need of reading many
books, these last are invaluable as giving a bird's-eye view of the modern
situation by well selected quotations from writers of established reputation.
Vol. I treats of Cosmogenesis; Vol. II of
Anthropogenesis.
The stanzas are weird, magnificent. They have the grand calm of classics,
joined to that subtle, soul-stirring quality which is of all time and conveys
the aroma of the orientalist, to the student, from their own inherent literary
quality, quite apart from that deeper interest with which their teachings
invest them for the bold explorer into the mysteries of Being.
Altogether
the book is a fascinating one. The style is abrupt and full of variations which
show the work of different minds and sustain the author's claim to the aid of
Tibetan adepts. For all these reasons it is sure to be much read, much abused
and hotly defended.
[From the
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