“There remains a great stumblingblock in the minds of many Freethinkers which is certain to prejudice them against Theosophy, and which offers to opponents a cheap subject for sarcasm—­the assertion that there exist other living beings than the men and animals found on our own globe.  It may be well for people who at once turn away when such an assertion is made to stop and ask themselves whether they really and seriously believe that throughout this mighty universe, in which our little planet is but as a tiny speck of sand in the Sahara, this one planet only is inhabited by living things?  Is all the universe dumb save for our voices? eyeless save for our vision? dead save for our life?  Such a preposterous belief was well enough in the days when Christianity regarded our world as the centre of the universe, the human race as the one for which the Creator had deigned to die.  But now that we are placed in our proper position, one among countless myriads of worlds, what ground is there for the preposterous conceit which arrogates as ours all sentient existence?  Earth, air, water, all are teeming with living things suited to their environment; our globe is overflowing with life.  But the moment we pass in thought beyond our atmosphere everything is to be changed.  Neither reason nor analogy support such a supposition.  It was one of Bruno’s crimes that he dared to teach that other worlds than ours were inhabited; but he was wiser than the monks who burned him.  All the Theosophists aver is that each phase of matter has living things suited to it, and that all the universe is pulsing with life.  ‘Superstition!’ shriek the bigoted.  It is no more superstition than the belief in Bacteria, or in any other living thing invisible to the ordinary human eye.  ‘Spirit’ is a misleading word, for, historically, it connotes immateriality and a supernatural kind of existence, and the Theosophist believes neither in the one nor the other.  With him all living things act in and through a material basis, and ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’ are not found dissociated.  But he alleges that matter exists in states other than those at present known to science.  To deny this is to be about as sensible as was the Hindu prince who denied the existence of ice because water, in his experience, never became solid.  Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

“One last word to my Secularist friends.  If you say to me, ’Leave our ranks,’ I will leave them; I force myself on no party, and the moment I feel myself unwelcome I will go.[29] It has cost me pain enough and to spare to admit that the Materialism from which I hoped all has failed me, and by such admission to bring on myself the disapproval of some of my nearest friends.  But here, as at other times in my life, I dare not purchase peace with a lie.  An imperious necessity forces me to speak the truth, as I see it, whether the speech please or displease, whether it bring praise or blame.  That one loyalty to Truth I must keep stainless, whatever friendships fail me or human ties be broken.  She may lead me into the wilderness, yet I must follow her; she may strip me of all love, yet I must pursue her; though she slay me, yet will I trust in her; and I ask no other epitaph on my tomb but