o the
reality of my Master whom for eighteen years I have served, without
being attacked vehemently by those who deny my experience. I know
whereof I speak. I ask you not to believe; that is your own choice. I
ask you not to accept; that is for you to decide. But you have no
right to try to stop my lips, nor to say that the assertion of my
belief is outside the liberty allowed in the Theosophical Society. I,
as President, will defend to the utmost the right of each to speak his
thought--believers and non-believers of every type; but I will not
recognise the right of any to impose upon the Society a dogma of
unbelief, any more than a dogma of belief. Only by that liberty of all
can we live and grow; only by the perfect freedom, and the recognition
of every man's right to speak, no matter what he says, can the health
of the Society be secured. For in the years that lie before us there
is much new knowledge to be gained, many new facts to be discovered,
many new experiences to go through, and we must not discourage the
seekers and investigators by making it difficult for them to speak
amongst us. We need every fact that any human being can bring to us.
We have the right to challenge the fact and investigate it, and either
to say: "It is fact"; or: "To me it is not fact"; but we have no right
to say to any human being: "You shall not search nor speak," for that
would be the death-knell of our liberty, that the denial of the
foundation on which we stand.

And so let us go forward to a future, I hope, fairer than anything we
have in our past. Let us welcome all thought, all refusal of thought,
all investigation, all speech, however different it may be from our
own speech and thought, and doing this with full respect of each for
each, full recognition that minds are different, and that each mind
has its own sphere in which it can do useful work for all, let us
encourage in our Society every school of thought, every form of
opinion, every expression of thought which is in a man's mind. And out
of all that clash of opinion, out of all that discussion, Truth should
come out stronger, richer, larger than ever. And never mind if
sometimes falsehoods are spoken; never mind if sometimes mistakes are
made. An old scripture says: "Truth conquers, not falsehood"; for God
is Truth, and nothing that is not drawn from His Life can live,
nothing that is drawn from His life can die; and realising that, we
can go forward fearlessly into the