Why I became a theosophist / by Annie Besant.

  • Besant, Annie, 1847-1933.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Why I became a theosophist / by Annie Besant. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    time to acquire in the ordinary way. “ Genius ”, we say, with our fashion of pretending to explain by using a word; but how can Materialism, which will have matter give birth to thought, find in the newly-made brain of this child the cerebral modifications necessary for pro¬ ducing his melodies ? And when a servant in a farmhouse, ignorant in her waking hours, talks Hebrew in her sleep, how are we to regard her brain from the Materialist standpoint ? Or when the calculating boy answers a com¬ plex calculation when the words are barely out of the questioner’s mouth, how have the cells performed their duties ? a problem that becomes the more puzzling when we find that the increase of circulation, etc., which normally accompany brain activity, have not, in his case, occurred. These are only a few riddles out of many, but they are samples of the bulk. To some of us they are of over¬ powering interest, because they seem to suggest dimly new fields of thought, new possibilities of development, new heights which Humanity shall hereafter scale. We do not believe that the forces of Evolution are exhausted. We do not believe that the chapter of Progress is closed. When a new sense was developing in the past its reports at first must have been very blundering, often very mis¬ leading, doubtless very ridiculous at times, but none the less had it the promise of the future, and was the germ of a higher capacity. May not some new sense be developing to-day, of which the many abnormal manifestations around us are the outcome ? Who, with the past behind him, shall dare to say, “ It cannot be ” ? and who shall dare to blame those whose longing to knoiv may be but the yearn¬ ing of the Spirit of Humanity to rise to some higher plane ? The Theosophical Society. Before showing the method suggested in Theosophical teachings for obtaining light on the above questions, or sketching the view of the universe given by occult science, it may be well to remove some misconceptions concerning the Theosophical Society, my adhesion to which has brought on my devoted head such voluminous upbraiding. I fear that the objects of the Society will come somewhat as an