Without the Revival of Aryan Philosophy, the West Will Fall to Even Grosser Materialism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 7 pages

Seven pages explaining a policy rather than a doctrine, and worth reading for that reason. The Theosophist had been printing extracts from European and American journals on the misbehaviour of Christian clergy, and this piece sets out why. The purpose, she writes, is neither to gratify the prejudices of heathens nor to strengthen the scepticism of infidels — she counts herself in both classes — but to perform a plain duty to the Eastern public into which the Society had become incorporated.

The argument put to the missionaries is conditional and, on its own terms, fair. If conversion made Indians better, wiser and happier; if the new religion were more conducive to public or private good; if the chapters of Western history showed that the ethical code ascribed to Jesus had actually elevated the nations professing it; if in Britain, Russia, France, Spain, Germany, Italy or the United States there were fewer crimes and those of a more venial kind than in lands where the heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone — then, she says, we might at least hold our peace. The hymn is quoted precisely so the comparison can be made. The claim in the title follows: that without a revival of the older philosophy the West has nothing to fall back on but a grosser materialism.

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