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

THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH
imposed on you by parents, friends, acquaintances, or by the common
belief of the majority of men and women, the problem of life and death
can be satisfact.orily solved only by the voice of your own Spirit, the
Divinity within, beyond which there is no superior court of appeal.
SUPERFLUITY
taste will never tolerate a superfluity of ornament;
but the assertion that all ornament is superfluous may appear
puritanism of the deepest dye dogmatically propounding
heresy. Yet the idea will bear consideration,
not only on its own merits, but also because of its relation by analogy
to other branches of social psychonomy.
The ordinary conception of ornament distinctly contains an ele-
ment of superfluity: for it is generally understood to be a form of em-
bellishment, which is added to something capable of standing alone
in its native simplicity. If ornament were correctly defined in this way
it certainly would be hard to defend it against the charge of superfluity.
For, either the object so adorned was already complete, or it was not.
If not, then its completion would not be of the nature of ornament (under
the suggested definition), but a structural continuation of an incom-
plete work.
It is in this sense that I think true ornament should be considered.
It should be the natural completion of a work that might be self-sufficient
in its incompletion, even as a plant may be beautiful and sufficient with-
out its blossoms, but which is not superfluously adorned by the flowers,
that are the culmination and completion of its growth.
To strip a tree or plant of its blossoms and to arrange the flowers
in a vase may not be an act of vandalism, but may even be considered
as a duty to the plant and an expression of refined taste in domestic
decoration. So, too, it may be legitimate to gather the blossoms of
architecture and the arts and to arrange them in museums and galleries
for the delight and for the education of lovers of the beautiful.
But no lover of nature would tolerate the decoration of plants .
with artificial flowers: that would be indeed a "superfluity of naughti-
ness," as the Bible has it. Yet this is analogous to the practice of decora-
tion as understood !or as misunderstood) in most ages. Obviously it is
a delicate matter to explain where the difference lies between true orna-