vol. xxx, no. 4 april 1926 universal brotherhood - a fact in nature

THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH
The onslaught of cold, benumbing to a sheltered body, is routed by
this new-found warmth within him.
The Duke, freed from the swaddling-bands of circumstance, is
persuaded by the 'liberating counsellors' of adversity that he is some-
thing more than a mere favorite child of Fortune. As the Real Man is
driven in upon himself, the strain of true nobility in his blood arouses
the hidden resources of human nature. Outwardly poor, his heart beats
with more royal currents of outgoing thought and impulse, radiating a
glow of buoyant good-will. He sees the false colors of 'painted pomp'
revealed by contrast with Nature's fidelity to simple truth and beauty.
This is the outspread form of the sound sweetness at the very heart of
human nature. Finding himself, gives the clue to the less conscious
world of things around him. An aroused humanity within argues the
native rights of four-footed denizens of the woods. Still more, he ex-
pands into a larger selfhood, that breathes a unity of feeling for "co-
mates and brothers in exile."
Shakespeare puts so much simple natural humanity into the play
that the selfish characters are made to serve as useful shadows and back-
ground for the bright, living pictures. Duke Frederick's harshness with
his niece quarrels with his vain affection for his daughter. His con-
flicting feelings make his authority too lame and incomplete to with-
stand the whole-hearted devotion between the two cousins. There is a
generous sweetness in Celia's giving of first place to Rosalind's beauty
and popularity and plans that shows the large unselfishness in the little
woman. Her self-forgetting heart turned exile into freedom, with the
thought - "Now go we in content
To liberty and not to banishment."
Rosalind and Orlando take you into their confidence with naive
candor in their delightful by-play of finding each other. You quite
forget that it is not your own romance, and you play both parts with
them, feeling it is all just as it should be, for you loved them both at
'first sight.'
You trust the lovers to round out the future together. Rosalind's
tender heart and rare womanliness will temper her sparkling wit and
joyous spirit of banter and frolic. Nor will she pall upon the pure man-
hood and noble strength of devoted Orlando. His gentleness and grati-
tude toward old Adam argue for a loyalty to this closer tie that will
enrich, inspire, and comfort, will charm and elude and awe him without
end. He will want more than one life to understand the Rosalind woman-
hood that unites, the hummingbird's dazzling flights on invisible wings
with the demurest ideal of stedfast devotion to the home-nest.