Who Can Mend the Broken Society?

Franz Hartmann, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 9 pages

Nine pages carrying a fable, first published in The Theosophist volume VII number 78, March 1886, under the title "A Theosophical Tale", and republished in the Collected Writings volume VII. The frontispiece is by Reina Cottier Art. *It is the companion piece to "Hartmann on the Harmonical Society"* earlier in this section, and an editorial note records that in Blavatsky's published letters to Sinnett the fable is attributed to Franz Hartmann, with a supporting note by Boris de Zirkoff.

It begins in the proper manner. Once upon a time, in a country far across the Indian ocean, there was a society of people who wanted to hear and investigate the music of the spheres. They called their society Harmony — and, as the tale immediately admits, there was very little harmony among them; on the contrary they quarrelled a great deal, since the society was made up of men and women of different nationalities, different characters and different opinions. What follows is a gently satirical account of what such a body does with the thing it is given, and the satire is aimed squarely at the Theosophical Society itself: nobody reading it in 1886 could have missed which society was meant. Its value in this collection is that it is criticism from inside, made in a form nobody could take personal offence at — which is what fables are for. Read beside the resignation letters and the constitutional quarrels elsewhere in this section, it is the same complaint told as a story, and it is a good deal easier to read than any of them.

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