on the ground of military necessity! I do not mean that any single case of outrage was admitted by the German Government; but the sum and substance of its reply was-'Whatever truth there may be in any of these charges is easily understood for the reason that the women and children did so-and-so'!

"Now here again is an absolute parting of the ways between civilization and barbarism. There can be no justification for such outrages. The German Government, and presumably the German people, or most of them, think otherwise.

"What salvation can there be for Germany until the elect of her people see it, deplore it, and, for the whole nation, confess it to God with heart-broken remorse? And that would be but a beginning, for the nation itself must repent, must be converted, must be brought to its knees not only outwardly but in its heart, if, as a nation, it is to escape destruction.

"That is why so much depends upon the German members of the Theosophical Society. Do they realize the extent to which the fate of their country is in their hands? If pride and racial prejudice were to blind them, I should regard Germany as irretrievably lost."

THE UNITED STATES AND THE WAR

"Before we adjourn," said the Orientalist, "I really think that the Philosopher ought to explain what he meant when referring, earlier in the conversation, to the agony of shame which we have experienced during the past fourteen months, because of things which the United States has done or has left undone. I know, of course, what you meant" (turning to him), "but I should not like others to misunderstand.”

THE VERDICT OF HISTORY

"When history comes to be written," answered the Philosopher, "I think it will be recognized that to mind one's own business means to mind it, not to shirk minding it; and if I, having children, live on a street where another family of children is unmannerly and rough to the point of throwing stones at neighbors, it becomes part of my business to protest by every means in my power against such misconduct. New York and Paris are closer today than were Paris and Berlin in the time of George Washington. In fact, all nations now live on the same street.

NEUTRALITY

"It may be that those of us who have travelled a great deal in Europe, and who hope to travel there again, feel our present situation more keenly than others. I can imagine myself in France, in England. I am from New York. 'Oh, an American!' It would be entirely polite. The contempt would be of the heart; not of manner or voice. On the international 'street,' I should have come from a house which had kept up 'cordial and friendly relations' with the house which had violated every

canon of decency, every code of honor, every principle of neighborly behaviour; which had attacked and injured other people on the street, so that nearly every house that counted, except my house, had risen in protest, had risen in arms—for the sake of the street as well as for its own sake. My house had remained ‘neutral.'

"Neutral-'not yet ascended into Hell.' It is where Dante placed them. Heaven and Hell alike reject them-Heaven, to keep itself free from stain; Hell, 'lest the damned should gain some glory from them.' Naked; stung by hornets and wasps so that their faces streamed with blood, in perpetual pursuit of a flying banner 'unworthy of all pause'; crushed with the misery of their utter worthlessness-souls that refused to judge, that never gave themselves to anyone or anything, that feared the risk of failure, that neither a good cause nor a bad could ever force into the open! Neutral, as Pilate was neutral! The bitter shame

of it!

A MORE HOPEFUL VIEW

The Gael half laughed, half groaned. But he is optimistic. "Remember," he said, "what a French officer said recently to Rudyard Kipling: that Germany is saving the world by showing us what evil is. Even we may learn to hate it—and may learn thereby to love righteousness more than we love ourselves."

FROM AN OCCULT DIARY

That was the end of our talk. . . And now for what may seem to some people like a violent change of subject, but which actually is the same subject—the one subject: "Thy Kingdom come;' the everlasting struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, God and Satan.

The Recorder has come across an old entry in one of the diaries of Mrs. S., whose inner experience was made the subject of several Screens a year or two ago.

"I was feeling dreadfully dry and unresponsive," her entry begins. "In fact, my mind was thoroughly tired, and I had to use my will to read even St. Teresa—an unusual experience for me. What I read was a reminder of the Master's supreme power. So I turned to him, saying in my heart: 'Yes, what she says is true, and it follows that thou couldst give me all that I ask, all that I desire. My desire is to love thee passionately and completely, and to love others with the same love, because of thee and in union with thee. I ask thee, therefore, to take my heart and to make it wholly thine.'

"Actually I did not say as much as that, and before I had finished it seemed that the Master hurried to reply-almost impatiently, but perhaps that impression was due to his desire to use instantly, and before my mind wandered to some other topic, the opening I had given him. His words I do not clearly remember, but this is the sense of them: 'My child, what else do I want? For what else am I laboring? Do I not long to give you what you ask? Yet you know that I cannot over

rule your free will. It is by small acts of self-denial that you must give me the material-the clay-with which to work. Then I can do all things.'

"At once I said to him: 'Thy grace is sufficient, dear Master.'

"But if thou wert not to use the grace I gave thee, what injury to thee! And I would be compelled to recover it, for what I give is my life, and I am answerable and must not lose it' (He said this in about ten words, in place of my forty).

"There was no answer to that, so I changed my tactics. I told him how tired my mind was, and how difficult I found it to galvanize my will to the point of making these small yet constant acts of selfsurrender, which I well knew, as he said, were necessary if he were to do for me what he wanted and what I, in my real self, also most fervently desired. How could I galvanize my will?

"Now, I had been dreaming dreams of work elsewhere of other and more stimulating kinds, and the Master, smiling but not unreproachful, brought those dreams back to my mind. Then, without words, he made a sort of picture of a man grinding corn-and so tired of it; so deadly sick of it! The man would enlist-would do anything, rather than forever grind and grind that corn. And the Master asked me what I would say to that man? I knew! How foolish that man! Would it be weeks or months before he grew as tired of his drill or of his marches as he now was of his grinding?

"He is tired of himself and of working for himself: and he need not and should not do either. He could grind God's enemies to powder; he could provide me with endless force for the victory of God on earth; he could support armies; could uphold the hands of their leaders—just by grinding with that intention, selflessly and for love's sake. Are you capable of less? Realize that those small acts of self-surrender are all contained in one, the surrender of this foolish thought that they are small.'

"That is what I want, O Master: to think no longer of my happiness but of thy happiness; to think no longer of my comfort but of thy comfort; no longer of my fate but of thy fate; no longer of my interests but of thy interests; no longer of my pains but of thy pains. I want so to be filled with love of thee that there is no room in me for love of myself. To know thee is to love thee; to think constantly of thee and about thee leads to knowledge of thee and so to love of thee. Therefore give me thy grace that, whatever I do or see or hear, I may act as for thy hands, may see as with thine eyes, may hear as with thine ears.”

T.

T

VIII

STANDARDS OF CONDUCT

HE subject of self-will is so important that I want to give some illustrations of its more subtle ramifications, and in particular of the part which it plays in our connection with the Religious Life. People may be divided, roughly, into three classes: the immense majority who are frankly materialistic in their aims and desires. Most of them know of religion. They may even observe its outer forms and attend its ceremonies. But when the teaching of religion runs counter to their desires, which it does at once and completely, in nearly every direction, they thrust its appeal aside, preferring not to think of the rather unpleasant subject at all; or at the best, they make an unstable and uneasy compromise between what it demands and what they are willing to give. When circumstances arise which call for sacrifice or self-abnegation, it is an instinctive code of what is proper that influences them, rather than a conscious religious appeal. The world, as a whole, inherits from its own past a certain standard of conduct, which has little or nothing directly to do with religion. People are expected to maintain this standard, and anyone who falls short of it conspicuously is likely to be conspicuously blamed. A man who saves his life in a public accident when women and children perish is looked at askance unless he has a satisfactory explanation forthcoming.

Of course, the world's standard of conduct varies according to peoples and classes. We do not expect an African negro to act in all circumstances as we would expect a peasant to act; and the world demands a much higher level of performance from a gentleman than from a peasant. The point is that people do, as a very general rule, act according to their world standard. We expect and usually get a definite type of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation from the savages. If not, we are genuinely surprised. We expect and usually get a higher and less ignoble standard from the European peasant. If not, we are surprised and shocked. We expect the gentleman of any race to react in definite ways to circumstances, and if he does not we are very properly grieved and disgusted.

It is sufficiently obvious that this overwhelming majority of the

earth's inhabitants, who react to an instinctive world standard of conduct, have as yet very little to do with religion. Religion holds but a small place in one corner of the code of the best of them, and has no place at all in the lives of the rest. One can safely say that self-will is completely triumphant in this whole class.

It must also, I think, be obvious that this class includes a large number of "Church-goers," and of those who, from the standpoint of the statistician, rank as "religious." But there is another class, very, very much smaller, which emerges gradually out of the higher ranks of the first, and which does not in its lower levels differ essentially from the first. It is the class of people who really make some effort to shape their conduct by the ideals and precepts of religion as well as by the world's instinctive code. One might be inclined at first glance to believe them to be more numerous than they are. But this is an error, for the ordinary good person, even if he attend church service and listen to sermons, follows the world's code on six days in the week and finds that sufficiently difficult and onerous. He has to suppress his selfwill many, many times a day to comply with that code, and the higher and greater demands of religion he regards as quite impracticable for business and the ordinary activities of every-day life.

There is, however, this second class of people. They recognize the higher standard and make tentative, repeated, sometimes almost vigorous efforts to live up to it. In moments of enthusiasm, when under some strong external stimulus, such as a revival meeting, they become, for a short time, quite fervent. For days they may maintain a distinctly higher level of attainment. But the impulse wears out, and the life settles back to ordinary levels and ordinary standards, until the smothering soul makes another desperate effort to rouse the will; or until the circumstances of life, usually in the form of pain or misery, spur the flagging energies to renewed effort.

Such lives are a perpetual oscillation, and such people are almost invariably unhappy. I shall come back to them, for this is the class which includes many readers of the QUARTERLY; but first I want to touch briefly on the third class-those fervent souls who have earned the privilege of loving, of feeling, and who, through love, through the intensity of their interest, no longer compromise with life, but, like St. Paul, keep the natural man in subjection, and press toward the mark of their high calling. They may still be full of faults, but they never waver in their effort to conquer them. They may still stumble and fall, but no matter how bruised or bleeding, they never hesitate to continue climbing. Fatigue does not daunt them; discouragement no longer shackles them; self-indulgence no longer ensnares them. All the common pitfalls of the struggling soul yawn fruitlessly in the face of the ardour of their love, which, burning always at white heat, carries them over every obstacle and past every obstruction. Oh! for some of their white fire to invigorate the flickering flame which is the best we can