Universal Brotherhood Is a Fact in Nature

William Quan Judge · Living the Life Series · 9 pages

From The Theosophical Congress, pages 70–74, reprinted in Dara Eklund's Echoes of the Orient, second edition, Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, Vol. II, 2009, pages 143–48, under the title “Universal Brotherhood, a Fact in Nature.” The frontispiece, Of Kindness and Berries, is by Troll Girl. It is an address rather than an essay, and reads as one.

Judge states his brief exactly and then narrows it three times: he has been asked to speak on universal brotherhood as a fact in nature — not as a theory, not as a utopian dream that can never be realised, not as a fact in society, not as a fact in government, but as a fact in nature. The distinction he is drawing is between something to be brought about and something already the case: universal brotherhood, on his account, is an actual thing whether it is recognised or not, so that failing to act on it is a mistake about the world rather than a failure of aspiration. The second half of the passage is historical and corrective. Christian priests have claimed for some years, he says without right, that Christianity introduced the idea; the reason, he supposes, is that those making the claim did not know other religions had held the same doctrine at other times. He finds it in the Buddhist scriptures, in the Chinese books, in the Parsī books, and everywhere in the history of the world long before the Christian era began. Every nation and civilization has brought the doctrine forward — and, he adds pointedly, the facts of history show the last eighteen hundred years to have violated it more than any other period.

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