Charity Empties Her Purse with an Invisible Hand

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Living the Life Series · 25 pages

A twenty-five page compilation opened by an abstract and train of thoughts with page references. The running head states the claim: charity is the scope of all theosophical teachings.

The opening defends a silence that is often mistaken for selfishness. Prometheus is presented not as a criminal but as a god and the real philanthropist, revealer of the great mysteries; and those who think it is selfishness that erects a Chinese wall between the custodians of nature's secrets and the common man are called wrong and unjust — the more so for making no distinction between the curious profane and the ardent seeker of truth. The silence of those who, in the phrase used, damned themselves forever in order to save man from himself, is said to be prompted by a far-seeing universal philanthropy. The argument then turns to charity proper. Good works may exist without saving principles, but saving principles never existed without good works; the churches are charged with failing to supply the intellectual light needed to make practical philanthropy real. A question is put bluntly and answered bluntly — can works of charity known among men be accomplished without money? Certainly not. The distinction the whole file rests on comes last: practical charity is not one of the declared objects of the Society, yet Theosophy creates the charity which afterwards, and of its own accord, makes itself manifest in good works. The same formulation appears in “Let every man prove his own works,” elsewhere in this batch, which takes the argument further.

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