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

THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH
for the general health of the whole physical organism, the body of man.
But are we much or any wiser than the ancients for all our 'scien-
tific' knowledge? How do we know they did not possess scientific know-
ledge which may not have come down to us as such, or which may not
yet have been rediscovered? Fables and folk-tales live on in the common
consciousness of the race; but the very fact that so many of them are
true to science, are simple popular expressions of scientific truths, surely
is evidence that scientific knowledge, as such, and beyond a doubt scien-
tifically expressed, was possessed by the wise ones in those days.
And perhaps many of the great truths concerning man and Nature
were put in the form of fable, or folk-tale, or fairy-story, not so much in
order to teach the people, though perhaps that was one of their purposes,
but to prevent the people from forgetting and losing sight of these truths.
Today we have rediscovered some of them. VTe have learned again
through physiology the scientific fact of the interdependence of the
organs of the human body, but we have not profited therefrom in the
application of our knowledge to the human race as an organism.
The teaching of Paul, "now are ye members one of another,"
which was but the expression of a far, far older teaching which we shall
quote later, is today little more than a dead letter, and men and nations
think, in spite of all the spiritual teachings to the contrary, and in spite
of all practical experience demonstrating the opposite, that one can
benefit by and from the misfortunes of another.
But Nature's law is not to be so cheated - Nature's law of Brother-
hood, Brotherhood as a fact in Nature! And if this holds good from the
consideration of man as a physical being, still more does it hold from a
consideration of him as a thinking spiritual being. The ties on those
inner planes of thought and spirituality are immeasurably closer, and the
interaction more potent for the weal or woe of all humanity.
And from the standpoint of Brotherhood what shall we say of war?
For war, some will say, is the negation of Brotherhood. Aye, but in the
end Brotherhood exists and is manifested even in spite of it; for when
war is over, they who have fought one against another shall find they
are brothers still, and have been fighting but against their brothers.
And oh! the horror, the despair, the remorse, when they shall awake,
as awake they must, sometime, to the realization that they have been
slaughtering their brothers, making homeless their own kith and kin. ,
May the Divine Law bring to pass that, out of that horror, that despair,
when the warring nations realize the hurt they have done to the soul
of Humanity, to their own soul, may be born the sense of brotherliness, a
recognition of the need of one another, mutual service, co-operation.