INTRODUCTORY THE CREST-WAVE OF EVOLUTION

These lectures will not be concerned with history as a record
of wars and political changes; they will have little to tell
of battles, murders, and sudden deaths. Instead, we shall
try to discover and throw light on the cyclic movements of
the Human Spirit. Back of all phenomena, or the outward show
of things, there is always a noumenon in the unseen. Behind
the phenomena of human history, the noumenon is the Human
Spirit, moving in accordance with its own necessities and
cyclic laws. We may, if we go to it intelligently, gain some
inkling of knowledge as to what those laws are; and I think
that would be, in its way, a real wisdom, and worth getting.
But for the most part historical study seeks knowledge only;
and how it attains its aim, is shown by the falseness of what
passes for history. In most textbooks you shall find, probably,
a round dozen of lies on as many pages. And these in themselves
are fruitful seeds of evil; they by no means end with the
telling, but go on producing harvests of wrong life; which
indeed is only the Lie incarnate on the plane of action. The
Eternal _Right Thing_ is what is called in Sanskrit SAT, the
True; it opposite is the Lie, in one fashion or another, always;
and what we have to do, our mission and _raison d'etre_ as
students of Theosophy, is to put down the Lie at every turn,
and chase it, as far as we may, out of the field of life.

For example, there is the Superior-Race Lie: I do not know
where it shall not be found. Races A, B, C, and D go on
preaching it for centuries; each with an eye to its sublime
self. In all countries, perhaps, history is taught with that
lie for mental background. Then we wonder that there are wars.
But Theosophy is called onto provide a true mental background
for historical study; and it alone can do so. It is the
mission of Point Loma, among many other things, to float a
true philosophy of history on to the currents of world-thought:
and for this end it is our business to be thinkers, using the
divine Manasic light within us to some purpose. H.P. Blavatsky
supplied something much greater than a dogma: she--like Plato
--gave the world a method and a spur to thought: pointed for
it a direction, which following, it might solve all problems
and heal the wounds of the ages.

A false and foolish notion in the western world has been,
tacitly to accept the Greeks and Hebrews of old for the two
fountains of all culture since; the one in secular matter,
the other in religion and morality. Of the Hebrews nothing
need be said here; but that true religion and morality have
their source in the ever-living Human Spirit, not in any sect,
creed, race, age, or bible. I doubt there has been any new
discovery in ethics since man was man; or rather, all discoveries
have been made by individuals for themselves; and each, having
discovered anything, has found that that same principle was
discovered a thousand times before, and written a thousand times.
There is no platitude so platitudinous, but it remains to burst
upon the perceptions of all who have not yet perceived it, as a
new and burning truth; and on the other hand, there is no
startling command to purity or compassion, that has not been
given out by Teachers since the world began.--As for Greece,
there was a brilliant flaming up of the Spirit there in the
Fourth and Fifth Centuries B.C.; and its intensity, like the
lights of an approaching automobile, rather obscures what lies
beyond. It is the first of which we have much knowledge; so we
think it was the first of all. But in fact civilization has been
traveling its cyclic path all the time, all these millions of
years; and there have been hundreds of ancient great empires and
cultural epochs even in Europe of which we know nothing.

Next Page