Imprisoned in the Narrow Vase of Dogmatism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Living the Life Series · 7 pages

First published in The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 11 (47), Supplement to August 1883, pages 1–2, and reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings V pages 118–21 under the heading “A Final Answer.” The frontispiece is by Georges Croegaert.

The piece is an editorial about editing, and it begins with a rueful general observation: that it is impossible for an editor to please everybody, that whoever has tried it has been set down as a fool, and that the discomfiture of the unhappy pacificator is generally voted the righteous punishment of audacity or ignorance. From this comes the working principle — that a journal must represent some distinct idea and express some defined policy to command the least influence — and the consequence, that since no two human beings think exactly alike, only the wildest dreamer could expect to avoid reproaches when probing puzzling subjects to the bottom in a journal devoted to philosophy, science and religion. The Society's own position is then stated evenhandedly: that there is some truth in every religion, though in some it is so covered up by externals as to be very hard to dissect out. Christianity is placed among those, with the characterisation that it has a gentle soul but a body grotesque, hard and cruel. The defence offered for the treatment it has received is that the journal's lance is couched against all shams in religion and has pricked the shields of all the dark champions of popular creeds — Christianity having come in for more attention only because it was nearer to hand.

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