ed by it, that it must not dare to put its hand as a
whole to any great political or social movement before it was strong
enough to control the forces which it evoked. Hence her shrinking
from all idea of this Society plunging, as a Society, into political
work or social reform. Not that individuals of the Society might not
do it, not that members of it might not use their best thought and
energy in order to bring forward and strengthen any movement which was
really for the benefit of mankind; but that the Society as a Society,
as the vehicle of this great torrent of life, must not pour that
torrent into any physical and earthly vessel, lest again it should
break the vessel into pieces, lest again it should put the hands of
the clock back, instead of forward, as was done in France. So for this
time it was to be a spiritual movement, and the work was to be
spiritual, intellectual, and ethical. Those were to be its special
marks, this its special work; and when the two great Teachers who were
identified with the movement--her own Master and His closest co-worker
in the Great White Lodge, the two who over and over again in centuries
gone by had stood side by side as fellow-workers in the civilisations
of the past--when They volunteered for this great emprise, doubt, as I
said, arose among Their peers. The lesson of the eighteenth century
was not forgotten; the question inevitably arose: "Is the West ready
for a movement of this sort again? Can it be carried on in such an
environment without doing, perhaps, more harm than the good which it
is capable of accomplishing?" And so, much discussion arose--strange
as that may sound to some, in connection with a body of workers so
sublime--and most were against it, and declared the time was not ripe;
but these two offered to take the risk and bear the burden, offered to
bear the karma of the effort, and to throw their lives into the
shaping, guiding, and uplifting. And as the question of time is always
one of the most complicated and difficult questions for Those who have
to deal with the great law of cycles and the evolution of man, it was
felt that it was possible that the effort might succeed, even although
the time was not quite ripe, the clock had not quite struck the hour.
And so permission was given, and the two assumed the responsibility.
How the earlier stages were made is familiar to you all; how they
chose that noble worker Their disciple, known to us as H.P.B., and
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