ENQ. But how can this be applied practically?
THEO. The Theosophical ideas of charity mean _personal_ exertion for others; _personal_ mercy and kindness; _personal_ interest in the welfare of those who suffer; _personal_ sympathy, forethought and assistance in their troubles or needs. We Theosophists do not believe in giving money (N.B., if we had it) through other people’s hands or organizations. We believe in giving to the money a thousandfold greater power and effectiveness by our personal contact and sympathy with those who need it. We believe in relieving the starvation of the soul, as much if not more than the emptiness of the stomach; for gratitude does more good to the man who feels it, than to him for whom it is felt. Where’s the gratitude which your “millions of pounds” should have called forth, or the good feelings provoked by them? Is it shown in the hatred of the East-End poor for the rich? in the growth of the party of anarchy and disorder? or by those thousands of unfortunate working girls, victims to the “sweating” system, driven daily to eke out a living by going on the streets? Do your helpless old men and women thank you for the workhouses; or your poor for the poisonously unhealthy dwellings in which they are allowed to breed new generations of diseased, scrofulous and rickety children, only to put money into the pockets of the insatiable Shylocks who own houses? Therefore it is that every sovereign of all those “millions,” contributed by good and would-be charitable people, falls like a burning curse instead of a blessing on the poor whom it should relieve. We call this _generating national Karma_, and terrible will be its results on the day of reckoning.
ENQ. And you think that Theosophy would, by stepping in, help to remove these evils, under the practical and adverse conditions of our modern life?
THEO. Had we more money, and had not most of the Theosophists to work for their daily bread, I firmly believe we could.
ENQ. How? Do you expect that your doctrines could ever take hold of the uneducated masses, when they are so abstruse and difficult that well-educated people can hardly understand them?
THEO. You forget one thing, which is that your much-boasted modern education is precisely that which makes it difficult for you to understand Theosophy. Your mind is so full of intellectual subtleties and preconceptions that your natural intuition and perception of the truth cannot act. It does not require metaphysics or education to make a man understand the broad truths of Karma and Re-incarnation. Look at the millions of poor and uneducated Buddhists and Hindoos, to whom Karma and re-incarnation are solid realities, simply because their minds have never been cramped and distorted by being forced into an unnatural groove. They have never had the innate human sense of justice perverted in them by being told to believe that their sins would be forgiven because another man had been put to death for their sakes. And the Buddhists, note well, live up to their beliefs without a murmur against Karma, or what they regard as a just punishment, whereas, the Christian populace neither lives up it to its moral ideal, nor accepts its lot contentedly. Hence murmuring and dissatisfaction, and the intensity of the struggle for existence in Western lands.