not really as civilisation
at all. Its note is Brotherhood, the dominant note of the coming day.
And because we have taken that as our first object, we have a right to
call ourselves a nucleus thereof; and because we definitely recognise
it, we can consciously co-operate with nature. That is the real
strength of our Movement--not our numbers, they are comparatively
small, but our conscious working with the forces that make for the
future. The Theosophical Society is a fragment of the vast
Theosophical Movement which is surging upon every side around us; but
this we have that enables us to be on the crest of that great wave,
that we know for what we are working, we understand the tendencies
which make for the future. Hence in our Theosophical Society we must
above all else hold up this word, and work for it in every phase of
human activity. That word marks out for your Theosophical Lodges what
movements you should help, and what movements you should not help. It
is no use to pour water into a broken vessel, and every vessel that
has not on it the name or the principle of Brotherhood is a broken
vessel that will not hold water for the coming time. But every
movement, however mingled with ignorance, with folly, with temporary
mischief, which seeks after Brotherhood and strives to realise it, is
a living vessel, into which the Water of Life may be poured; and with
those movements you should work, trying to inspire and to purify, to
get rid of that which comes from ignorance, and to replace it with the
wisdom which it is your sacred duty to spread abroad among the
children of men. So that in your public work you have this great
keynote.

And that leads me to pause for a moment on that spreading Socialist
Movement that you see around you on every side. Now, it is making one
tremendous blunder that I need not dwell on here, but that I shall
dwell on to-morrow night in addressing a Socialist Society. They are
forgetting the very root of progress, they are forgetting the building
of brothers, out of which to build a Brotherhood hereafter. They think
that the future depends on economic conditions, on who holds land, and
who holds capital. These conditions are conditions to be discussed
carefully, to be worked out intellectually. But whatever ownership you
have of any of the means of life, if the life is poisoned, it cannot
be healthy in the midst even of a well-arranged society. For society
grows out of men, and not men out of