Evolution of Life and Form: Four lectures delivered at the twenty-third anniversary meeting of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, 1898Besant, Annie
Religion
Evolution of Life and Form: Four lectures delivered at the twenty-third anniversary meeting of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Madras, 1898
Besant, Annie
Evolution; Life -- Origin; Theosophy
Dealing first with ancient and modern science in this broad and general
way, and taking that as my subject for this morning, I shall pass on
to-morrow to speak on the "Functions of the Gods," meaning by that
phrase the activities of that invisible side of nature on which the
whole of the visible depends. Whether we use here the name "Devas" to
represent those developed spiritual intelligences, or whether with the
child of Islâm, with the Hebrew or the Christian, we speak of the
"Angels" and "Archangels," the name matters nothing; the conception is
common to every faith of man. We shall study their functions in the
universe, and try to understand how they act as the ministers of the
Divine Will. Then we shall pass on to treat of that "Evolution of Life"
which lies underneath the evolution of forms. Finally, we shall treat
the "Evolution of Forms," and see how, in that evolution, is the promise
of final perfection, how all is working to a perfect ending, how the
best that we can dream of is less than the performance of God.
That is the outline of our work. Let us at once begin the first section
of the subject--Ancient and Modern Science.
Now, in the olden times, in those times to which in this land our thought
turns back most fondly with reverence and with pride, in those times,
here, as in every other ancient land, Religion and Science were wedded
together, and there was no discord between the intelligence and the
spirit. It matters not whither you wander amid the ancient nations of the
world: you may travel through the whole of Chaldea; you may study the
remains of ancient Egypt; you may go through Persia and search amid her
monuments; you may cross the Atlantic to America, and unbury the cities
that were lost ere yet the Aztecs had made the mighty State which fell
under the blows of the Spaniards; you may go into China and, in the vast
recesses of that well-nigh unknown land, you may search for what has been
left there from ancient days; or without going outside the limits of your
own land, you may take the literature that is our pride, the mighty books
written by the Ṛishis of the past; and everywhere antiquity speaks with a
single tongue. Religion reveals the spirit, the spiritual truth which is
one. Intelligence studies that truth in its manifold manifestations, and
its work; science, studying the phenomena which are images of aspects of
the Divine, is the handmaid, is the sister, of religion, and between them
discord is unnatural and fatal to progress. That is the ancient view; but
when we come to our own century a new phenomenon presents itself to our
gaze--religion on the one side suspicious of science in its progress,
science on the other hand apt to be proudly contemptuous of religious
claims. How has the divorce arisen? Why this discord between two of the
great helpers of human evolution? The reason is not far to seek. In the
western world the science of the elder time, the science of antiquity,
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