Strange, too, as it may seem, often such men as Napoleon Buonaparte are from time to time helped by them. Such a being as Napoleon could not come upon the scene fortuitously. His birth and strange powers must be in the order of nature. The far-reaching consequences going with a nature like his, unmeasurable by us, must in the eastern Theosophical philosophy be watched and provided for. If he was a wicked man, so much the worse for him; but that could never deter a Nirmânakâya from turning him to his uses. That might be by swerving him, perchance, from a path that would have plunged the world into depths of woe and been made to bring about results in after years which Napoleon never dreamed of. The fear of what the world might think of encouraging a monster at a certain point never can deter a sage who sees the end that is best. And in the life of Napoleon there are many things going to show at times an influence more powerful than he could grapple. His foolhardy march to Moscow was perhaps engineered by these silent campaigners, and also his sudden and disastrous retreat. What he could have done had he remained in France, no present historian is competent to say. The oft-doubted story of the red letter from the Red Man just when Napoleon was in a hesitating mood, may have been an encouragement at a particular juncture. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." Nor will the defeat at Waterloo be ever understood until the Nirmânakâyas give their records up. As a change in the thought of a people who have been tending to gross atheism is one always desired by the Sages of the Wisdom Religion, it may be supposed that the wave of spiritualistic phenomena resulting now quite clearly in a tendency back to a universal acknowledgment of the soul, has been aided by the Nirmânakâyas. They are in it and of it; they push on the progress of a psychic deluge over great masses of people. The result is seen in the literature, the religion and the drama of to-day. Slowly but surely the tide creeps up and covers the once dry shore of Materialism, and, though priests may howl, demanding "the suppression of Theosophy with a firm hand," and a venal press may try to help them, they have neither the power nor the knowledge to produce one backward ripple, for the Master hand is guided by omniscient intelligence propelled by a gigantic force, and--_works behind the scene_. XII. There have been so many secret societies during the Christian era, by whom claims were made to knowledge of nature's secret laws, that a natural question arises: "In what do the Theosophic Eastern Sages differ from the many Rosicrucians and others so often heard of?" The old bookshelves of Germany are full of publications upon Rosicrucianism, or by pretended and genuine members of that order, and to-day it is not uncommon to find those who have temerity enough to dub themselves "Rosicrucians."