What Should Be the Measure of Our Conduct?

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages excerpted from "Recent Progress in Theosophy," first published in The North American Review for August 1890 and republished in Blavatsky Collected Writings volume XII, pages 295-97. A headnote points to the full text under the title "Theosophical Society – Objects and early accomplishments" in the site's Theosophy and Theosophists Series. *Its first page repeats, word for word, the passage that makes up "Blavatsky on the Theosophical Movement" elsewhere in this same series* — the two files are excerpts of different lengths from the same article, and this is the longer one.

The shared opening claims that the movement was a necessity of the age, spread under its own impulsion, and had neither money, endowment nor patronage from the first; that it appealed to human instincts and to an ideal of perfectibility which the vested interests of society were bound to fight; and that its strongest allies were the yearning for light on the problem of life and for a nobler conception of human destiny. Against materialism on one side and dogmatic religion on the other, theosophy is described as aiming to unite broad religious people for research into the actual basis of religion, adopting the methods and maxims of science, discarding miracle and supernaturalism, and tracing the kinship of the whole family of world-faiths. What this file adds beyond that is its closing paragraph, which is the reply to opponents and gives the file its title. The organs of the disembodied angels are said to have poured out their vials of wrath, mockery and brutal slander as unsuccessfully as ever — and to be unworthy of notice, since the utmost malignity and basest treachery had not managed to controvert the ideas, belittle the objects, disprove the reasonableness of the methods, or fasten a selfish or dishonest motive on anyone. The measure proposed is a plain one: since the declared principles are not merely unobjectionable but calculated to do good to mankind, all the conspirators achieved was to keep a multitude of religiously-inclined people from the happiness of understanding theosophy and making it the guiding rule of their conduct.

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