humanity's evolution--all who thus look at history and see the powers
that lie behind the veil and that pull the strings of those whom we
call kings, and statesmen, and generals, and the mighty ones of earth,
they know that no great human experiment can be void of its value, and
no great human experiment but has some fruit of wisdom to be gathered
from it. So that no wise man, no thoughtful Theosophist, should look
with a feeling of repulsion and anger on the experiments that are
being made all over the world to-day in the effort of the nations to
rule themselves by numbers rather than by wisdom. For it is a
necessary experience. Only in this fashion can the lower mind complete
its evolution and be ready to give up its sceptre to that Pure Reason
which is to be the mark of the Sixth Race, which is to find its
expression in the polity of that coming Race. Out of all these
experiments we are to learn, out of all successes and all failures we
are to spell out, the lesson whereon the next civilisation will be
built, whereby its foundation will gradually be laid. For if one sees
the Theosophical Society aright, it is as one of the builders of that
coming time, one of the builders of the civilisation that has not yet
really dawned on earth, the civilisation of the Sixth Root Race, with
the experiments that will go before it in the Sixth and Seventh
sub-races of the Fifth. For these experiments take long in the making,
and, as a great teacher once said: "Time is no object with us." There
is plenty of time for all the experiments, and all the blunders, and
all the failures; and all the successes of the future will grow out of
these, because every failure rightly seen is the seed of a coming
success, and only by the failures that we make in our ignorance may
the plant of wisdom be sown, and presently flower and bear fruit for
the feeding of the nations. So that there is time enough, and no need
for impatience, when we see the blunders of our various democratic
governments. But there is much need that thoughtful people should take
care so to see the signs of the time, and so to understand the forces
at work, that the same blunder be not made in the days of the present
as was made at the close of the eighteenth century in France; for
there also was a time when an effort was made for a great step
forward, a step too big, apparently, to be possible of being then
taken, a step which only caused the drowning of the forward movement
in