Let Every Man Prove His Own Works

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Living the Life Series · 17 pages

First published in Lucifer, Vol. I, No. 3, November 1887, pages 161–69, and reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings VIII pages 159–71. The frontispiece is Murillo's The Little Fruit-Seller of 1670–75, in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. The title is that of a letter received by the editors, which Blavatsky judged serious enough to make the subject of the month's editorial.

Three propositions are set out before the article begins, and they define the ground. The religious philanthropist holds a position that cannot concern the Theosophist, because he does not do good merely for the sake of doing good but also as a means towards his own salvation. The secular philanthropist is described as at heart a socialist and nothing else, hoping to make men happy and good by bettering their physical position. Against both, the third proposition states what Theosophy is said to do instead: that the direct effect of an appreciation of it is to make charitable those who were not so before, and that it creates the charity which afterwards, of its own accord, manifests in works. The editorial then takes up the correspondent's challenge, opening under the motto Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum and undertaking to do justice to both sides of the dispute — Theosophists and members of the Society on the one hand, the followers of the Divine Word on the other. Reprinting a critical letter and answering it at length in the editorial columns is the characteristic method of these files, and the same argument about charity appears in shorter form in “Charity empties her purse with an invisible hand,” elsewhere in this batch.

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