deliberately moving East than Europe, but even here by degrees also—­and a time will come, whether occult philosophy is given out to take their place or not, when they will no longer afford even such faulty sanctions for moral conduct and right as they have supplied in times gone by.  Therefore it is plain that something must be given out to take their place, and hence the determinations of which this movement in which we are engaged is one of the undulations—­these very words some of the foremost froth upon the advancing wave.

But surely, when something which must be done is yet very dangerous in the doing, the persons who control the operations in progress may be excused for exercising the utmost caution.  Readers of Theosophical literature will be aware how bitterly our adept Brothers have been criticized for choosing to take their own time and methods in the task of partially communicating their knowledge to the world.  Here in India these criticisms have been indignantly resented by the passionate loyalty to the Mahatmas that is so widely spread among Hindus—­resented more by instinct than reason in some cases perhaps, though in others, no doubt, as a consequence of a full appreciation of all that is being now explained, and of other considerations beside.  But in Europe such criticisms will have seemed hard to answer.  The answer is really embodied, however imperfectly, in the views of the situation now set forth.  We ordinary mortals in the world work as men traveling by the light of a lantern in an unknown country.  We see but a little way to the right and left, only a little way behind even.  But the adepts work as men traveling by daylight, with the further advantage of being able at will to get up in a balloon and survey vast expanses of lake and plain and forest.

The choice of time and methods for communicating occult knowledge to the world necessarily includes the choice of intermediary agent.  Hence the double set of misconceptions in India and Europe, each adapted to the land of its origin.  In India, where knowledge of the Brothers’ existence and reverence for their attributes is widely diffused, it is natural that persons who may be chosen for their serviceability rather than for their merits, as the recipients of their direct teaching, should be regarded with a feeling resembling jealousy.  In Europe, the difficulty of getting into any sort of relations with the fountain-head of Eastern philosophy is regarded as due to an exasperating exclusiveness on the part of the adepts in that philosophy, which renders it practically worth no man’s while to devote himself to the task of soliciting their instruction.  But neither feeling is reasonable when considered in the light of the explanations now put forward.  The Brothers can consider none but public interests, in the largest sense of the words, in throwing out the first experimental flashes of occult revelation into the world.  They can only employ agents on whom they can rely for doing