idea, than enthusiasts. They are ready to sacrifice utterly all which is dear to them, even their life and honor; in actions they may go farther than enthusiasts. But strength is not so important as the wise direction and the harmonious development of that strength. Waters which take a wrong direction may, if the bed be deepened and narrowed, become a terrible force of destruction instead of a life-creating force. Uncontrolled passions, when serving an idea, may distort truth, and instead of light bring to thirsty hearts disharmony and suffering. Everywhere where harmony is broken, healthy growth and beneficent influences are broken too. The tender flowers of love need a pure atmosphere, which nothing must darken and poison. Fanaticism is a manifestation of a passionate inner life, whose unfoldment is not harmonious, for it is accompained by dark companions, intolerance and separateness. In this unhealthy atmosphere the flower of love perishes, union with brothers becomes impossible, and devotion to an idea manifests in life as hate to its adversaries.

The essence of enthusiasm is fiery love; the essence of fanaticism fiery animosity, so fierce that love perishes and the tortures of the Inquisition become possible.

The force of feeling and the force of self-sacrifice are utterly the same with the enthusiast and the fanatic; but their attitudes and methods of work are as different as is different the source in which they find their inspiration.

"Love hopes all, has faith in all, and never ceases;" such is the cry of enthusiasm.

"May the world perish, but my idea be victorious!" such is the cry of fanaticism.

Enthusiasm and fanaticism may be compared with purified and non-purified love. Just as in unpurified personal love a man may, with passionate tenderness to the beloved, feel jealousy, envy and mad ambition, so that any obstacle in his way provokes irritation and hate, so the non-purified love of an idea will be accompanied by an impure mixture of akin feelings although they seem impersonal. There is nothing more terrible than when-having outgrown family and national egoism-a man who ceases to say: "My family, my nation, is the best in the world", begins to say: "My Master is higher. My God is better."

"Judge the tree by the fruits," said Jesus. If a person mixes in his love something of passionate exclusiveness, he clearly shows that his love is mixed with Kāma, its source is astral. Where, in truth, the man has come into contact with the higher realms of Buddhi, his attitude and activity are filled with the fire of unity, which is the main attribute of that plane. Therefore all teachings which have a future are filled with the spirit of brotherhood. Where there is no brotherhood, there is no divine fire descending from the higher plane, and there is no future. The future is with that which is in harmony with the law of evolution; by this law a new principle is unfolding in mankind ; this unfolding will begin in the race and the nation where the fire of enthusiasm burns fiercest, where capacity for disinterested service is greatest. If Russia has a share in this great future, if this unfoldment should come through us, how great our responsibility; how cautious must we be not to allow the dark and poisonous stream of fanaticism to appear amidst us. Around us is the noise of powder, cannons, and party-hate. The fire of hate and despair has enveloped our motherland, and the dark fire of fanaticism has seared many a heart which sincerely seeks truth. Theosophy and the young theosophical movement are the lights by which the work of purification and resurrection will be achieved, for the mission of Theosophy is a mission of light and of peace. It remains with us, the first pioneers of this great movement in Russia, to help and to direct it. Not allowing animosity and misunderstanding to appear amidst us, we must learn to recognise in other movements the same rays of truth. And if our ideas are welcome under other names, let us not be sad that Theosophy as a name is not known; but let us rejoice that Theosophy, whatever the name given to her, lives in Russia, and brings everywhere with her the light and the force of resurrection.

ALBA.

MY DEAR A-,

LETTER TO A YOUNG PAINTER.

Benares, May, 1908.

I was indeed glad to hear from you, and that you are at least succeeding outwardly, even if you are not happy in your work. I can well understand how "demoralising and horribly depressing" it must be to paint these fashionable portraits. Like playing worthless music to amuse the crowd, it is calculated to make one feel that there is no more beauty in the world-that the struggle is hopeless. But when this outer coarse work seems to be stifling the inner life, go on struggling and aspiring, and your efforts will work out their own true end. Do not put your best into this artificial work. So to do would be prostitution of the worst kind. But of course you feel it so, and I do not doubt but that if you only feel strongly enough, you will bore a channel through these rubbishy canvasses to finer regions. You may have to lose your life in so doing, but you have to lose it, if you want to do great work. That is the law of progress in every realm of nature; and when one realises it as an intellectual fact, it is easier to co-operate. But even so, the soul cannot joyfully expand, when, according to the notion of-shall I call them "the lesser "?-evolutionists, there is to be no sharing, on our part, in the earthly fruits of our labors. This relegates the entire reward of the artist to the heavenly state, which of course precludes the possibility of making a heaven on earth, for which every true artist is bound to labor. The basic note of joy is the belief in immortality; but unless that belief can be put into our work, unless our connexion with these things of beauty that we love is a continuing one, coming from the past, and stretching into the future, we are cut off from the source of artistic, as of all, inspiration. Look at the condition of the arts all around you. Is it not the absence of religion, of intelligent belief, which accounts for the present topsy-turvydom of things in the art world? Yet, on the other hand, in these days of scientific knowledge, a narrow religion fails to inspire the artist in the way it did of old.

We need an art which will express cosmic ideals, without losing the central types upon which the older arts were built. Do you not think that, unconsciously to themselves, the devout but generally

narrow-minded painters of the great Madonnas and Babes, limned profounder, more universal, ideas, than the purely-and perhaps doubtfully-historical subjects which they set out to paint? Even in the most restricted ecclesiastical atmosphere, the contemplation of Mother and Child loosened the chain of narrow concepts, and gave a divine one, that of Woman the Mother, the vehicle of God-incarnations, to the world. If modern art would live, it is these central ideals upon which it must build; not upon the mere accidents of local coloring, or upon the orthodox concepts, which gave to the masterpieces this or that form, and framed their basic inspirations in this or that environment. The President of the Theosophical Society has pointed out in some of her recent lectures, that the artists of to-day are more often copyists than creators. That is true. We are killing inspiration by tying ourselves down to the forms which have been long since outgrown in our religious experience. Mrs. Besant says well that the artists of to-day lack ideals; and that remark applies equally to all the arts. Artists have to learn to discriminate between the eternal truths portrayed in the masterpieces, and the associations of circumstances which lent them passing grace. By this I do not imply that the modern world has no need of its Madonnas; nor to commend a certain realistic type of picture that possesses neither the symbolic authority of ecclesiasticism, nor the anticipatory-almost prophetic-spirit of modernism. More than ever the world has need of pure woman, and pure types generally, to draw it upwards; it needs her, and them, today. But if pictures of the modern Madonna are to inspire the masses as they did of old—and not just hang in secluded rows for the delectation of the cultured few-you painters must catch and fix upon canvas the ideal of modern Motherhood. You must fix it, so that it may form a lasting type for the education of the masses. The enormous growth of intellectual power has enabled our ideals to become correspondingly universal. Motherhood is now more and more the conscious participation in a racial function; not the giving birth to one child of one mother, but to one hope of the parent-race. And so it is with all other aspects of life. Therefore should painters define cosmic ideals, just as musicians should catch the deeper harmonies of the cosmogonic order; for true art is ever ahead of its time, albeit clothed in the conditions thereof-and humanity has reached

a stage where it can respond to the suggestions of a vaster life, presented to it in the idealised types of its present one.

All this, to one who, like yourself, is struggling with the immediate problems of the art-world, may seem like a far-off dream. In reality, the remote becomes the near.

It is not unreasonable to predict, therefore, that the art of the future will be as different from the best pictorial art extant, as this is, in its turn, from that of the savage. Which does not mean, of course, that we are to "kick down the ladder by which we have climbed." We have gained—I say "we," for "art" includes more than that of color-so many powers of life and consequent means of expression, using them each to the ends we could discern. May there not be other, or allied, purposes, and might not our present powers be used for these? Why should the devotee of beauty not set out to find and express the transcendental purposes of art? and would not the artist then again become the inspired exemplar of men, as he was in the far heroic past?

Artists are natural leaders. By becoming leaders, I do not mean that they should combat social evils. You cannot fight with art, excepting the fight of the strategist. To search for the true and the good, and to follow it, is the strength of the artist. The other must be starved out. However they may for the moment howl it down, people in their hearts love purity in art, because it gives them life; and when a work is wrought with devotion and faith on the part of the artist, it never fails to touch humanity, for it evokes the best, the God-sense, and that must triumph.

You need, then, to be a real hero, bearing the pain caused by the ignorance and the indifference always encountered by a pioneer; transmuting darkness everywhere to joy, and sordid motives to exalted ideals. There are certain rules of life which every pioneer should write upon his heart. If a man is to uplift his fellows, he must first train himself to be incapable of dismay in the face of sinfulness; to be immune to disturbance in the midst of inharmoniousness; to be unresenting under provocation; aware of his faults, however harshly critics may remind him of them, and quick to repair them in speech and acts, as well as in thought; pitiful to the transgressor, and forgiving; and in the conduct of his whole life, utterly regardless of the opinions of others, and of the effects of his work