Who, then, was to transmit his doctrine? he wrote nothing of it down; in the truest sense it never can be written down:  had never had time to teach it; from any writings whatsoever each student can only gain the nexus of what he is to learn from life; for teaching does not mean giving dissertations, arguments, proofs; enunciating principles, and explaining them, or the like.  It means, so far as one dare try to express it, bringing such experiences to bear on the lives of those who are to be taught, as shall awaken their own inner perceptions to truth.  So this Man’s doctrine was never transmitted. His disciples, good and earnest men, as we may imagine, had not the weapons spiritual wherewith to wage effective warfare for the Light.  Supposing H.P.  Blavatsky had died in 1879....?

The next step was, the inevitable materialization of the whole movement.  It followed the course all such movements must follow, that are without spiritual leadership at the head, spiritual wisdom at the core.  It reacted against the exclusiveness of Judaism,—­and at the same time inherited it.  Feelings of that sort lie far deeper than the articles of belief; a change of creed will not remove them; it needs special, defined, and herculean efforts to remove them.  You might, for example, react from a bigoted creed to one whose sole proclaimed article was universal toleration, and become a fierce bigot in that,—­for the creed, not the idea; because creeds always obscure ideas:  when a creed is formulated, it means that ideas are shelved.  So now Chrisitianity inherited the Chosen People dogma, but transferred it from a racial-ecclesiastical to a wholly ecclesiastical basis; and, since every Teacher comes upon a cyclic impusle outward, took on a missionary spirit.  The Chosen People now were the members of the church, who might belong to any race.  Within that churchly pale you were saved; you were a special protege of the Maker of Sirius and Canopus and the far limits of the galaxy; who had—­for a dogma had to be invented to explain the untimely disastrous death of the Teacher,—­incarnated and been crucified in Judea.  Outside that pale you were damned,—­from Caesar on his throne to the smallest newsboy yelling false news in the Forum.  While such a spirit had been confined to the Jews, it had been comparatively harmless; now it was spreading broadcast through the Roman world, an entirely new thing, and the darkest and most ominous yet.

Whom, then, shall we blame?  These sectarians?—­No:  to understand is to forgo the imagined right apportioning blame.  It was that humanity had entered on a dark region in time:  a region whose terrors had not been forefended; to be entered perforce by a humanity, or section of humanity, that had no Center of Light established in its midst.  Had Croton of Pythagoras survived; or the Mysteries at Gaulish Bibracte:  had there been but one firm foothold for the Lodge in the world of men;—­I think