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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, ITS MEANING, PURPOSE, AND FUNCTIONS Lecture IV Friends: I ask you now to turn your thought from the Theosophy that I have been expounding for the last three afternoons, to the Society, the Theosophical Society, with which I am to deal tonight. The Theosophical Society exists for the sake of studying and spreading Theosophy--to spread the thought that the direct knowledge of God is obtainable by man; to point to that open road to the Masters of the Wisdom which they may tread who will; to go about among the religions of the world pointing out their common basis and trying to evoke mutual tolerance by understanding. In those three subjects, as it were, you may see what we mean when we speak of Theosophy. Now, it strikes some people as strange that a Society that exists for the sake of studying and spreading Theosophy should not make the acceptance of Theosophy a condition for admission into its ranks. Among the many queer things that people put to the credit of Theosophy, many, I think, regard this as one of the queerest and most eccentric: You are a Society for spread 71 ing certain ideas, and yet you do not make acceptance of the ideas a condition of coming into your Society. How then do you expect that your members will spread them? What guarantee have you that your Society will succeed in the work for which it exists? And the question is a very natural question. We are so accustomed to the imposition of creeds, we are told so often that we ought to believe this, or ought not to believe that, that when we come across a body of presumably sane people who are gathered together for a particular object, for the gathering, the studying, and the spreading of certain ideas, we might naturally say: Well, you must make...

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