lared that that existence cannot be proved
by argument. "Not by argument," it is written, "not by reasoning, not
by thinking, can the Supreme Self be known." The only proof of Him is
"the conviction in the Spirit, in the Self." And thus Theosophy, then,
historically, as you see, always makes the affirmation that man can
know; and after that supreme affirmation that God may be known, then
there comes the secondary affirmation, implied really in that, and in
the fact of man's identity of nature with the Supreme, that all things
in the universe can be known--things visible and invisible, subtle and
gross. That is, so to speak, a secondary affirmation, drawn out of the
first; for clearly if in man resides the faculty to know God as God,
then every manifestation of God may be known by the faculty which
recognises the identity of the human Spirit with the Supreme Spirit
that permeates the universe at large. So in dictionaries and in
encyclopedias you will sometimes find Theosophy defined as the idea
that God, and angels, and spirits, may hold direct communication with
men; or sometimes, in the reverse form, that men can hold
communication with spirits, and angels, and even with God Himself;
and although that definition be not the best that can be given, it has
its own truth, for that is the result of the knowledge of God, the
inevitable outcome of it, the manifestation of it. The man who knows
God, and knows all things in Him, is evidently able to communicate
with any form of living being, to come into relation with anything in
the universe of which the One Life is God.

In modern days, and among scientific people, the affirmation which is
the reverse of this became at one time popular, widely accepted--not
Gnostic but "Agnostic," "without the Gnosis"; that was the position
taken up by Huxley and by many men of his own time of the same school
of thought. He chose the name because of its precise signification; he
was far too scientific a man to crudely deny, far too scientific to be
willing to speak positively of that of which he knew nothing; and so,
instead of taking up the position that there is nothing beyond man,
and man's reason, and man's senses, he took up the position that man
was without possibility of knowledge of what there might be, that his
only means of knowledge were the senses for the material universe, the
reason for the world of thought. Man, by his reason, could conquer
everything in the realm of thought, m