complex. Those who try to escape the
difficulties in which our deeper understanding of the world order and
our own personalities involve us, by taking refuge in Eastern occultism
are on the wrong line.

_The Difficulties of Reincarnation_

The same criticism holds true of Reincarnation. It is involved in
hopeless difficulties. There are apparent injustices and inequalities in
life--so much is beyond debate--but we have in general, if we are honest
enough to follow it through, the clue to even these. We are all parts
of a struggling and, we trust, ascending order, an order which on the
whole is not so greatly concerned for the individual as we are concerned
for ourselves. We are hampered by our ignorance and we are deeply
involved one with the other. The orthodox theology which blames
everything upon sin as an abstraction is not convincing, but sin as the
projection of wrong desires, through self-will, into the field of human
action is a fact to be constantly reckoned with. The individual and
social consequences of it are enormous, nor can they be confined either
to one individual or one generation. Heredity continues weakness as well
as strength. A vast deal of our bitter reaping is due to the wrong or
foolish sowing of others, though fortunately we share the good as well
as the bad. The laws of heredity will account for a vast deal in any one
generation; the laws of social action and reaction for a great deal of
the rest, and there is finally not a little for which we ourselves are
responsible. A good many of our problems ought to be approached from the
point of view of the well-being of humanity generally and not our own
individual destiny.

We may safely trust our individual destiny to brave and unselfish
living. I ought not to test what I do or leave undone by its effect upon
me in some future reincarnation; I ought to test it by the effect which
it has now upon the world of which I am a part, upon the generation
which is to follow me and upon the quality of my own present life. True
enough, the theosophist and myself find ourselves here in substantial
agreement as to many of the things which a man ought practically to do
to secure a happier future, but I maintain that the motives just named
are far more solid and worthy motives than the camouflaged selfishness
of Theosophy, and they are certainly in far deeper accord with the
ascertained facts of life. If we recognize that the more shadowed side
of life is pa