I pass from that to my last world, the world of political thought. Now Theosophy takes no part in party politics. It lays down the great principle of human Brotherhood, and bids its followers go out into the world and work on it--using their intelligence, their power of thought, to judge the value of every method which is proposed. And our general criticism on the politics of the moment would be that they are remedies, not preventions, and leave untouched the root out of which all the miseries grow. Looking sometimes at your party politics, it seems to me as though you were as children plucking flowers and sticking them into the sand and saying: "See what a beautiful garden I have made." And when you wake the next morning the flowers are dead, for there were no roots, but only rootless flowers. I know you must make remedies, but you should not stop at that. When you send out your Red Cross doctors and nurses to pick up the mutilated bodies that your science of war has maimed, they are doing noble work, and deserve our love and gratitude, for the wounded must be nursed; but the man who works for peace does more for the good of humanity than the Red Cross doctors and nurses. And so also in the political world. You cannot safely live "hand-to-mouth" in politics any more than in any other department of human life. But how many are there in the political parties who care for causes and not only for effects? That is the criticism we should make. We see everywhere Democracy spreading; but Democracy is on its trial, and unless it can evolve some method by which the wise shall rule, and not merely the weight of ignorant numbers, it will dig its own grave. So long as you leave your people ignorant they are not fit to rule. The schools should come before the vote, and knowledge before power. You are proud of your liberty; you boast of a practically universal suffrage--leaving out, of course, one half of humanity!--but taking your male suffrage as you have it, how many of the voters who go to the poll know the principles of political history, know anything of economics, know anything of all the knowledge which is wanted for the guiding of the ship of the State through troubled waters? You do not choose your captains out of people who know nothing of navigation; but you choose the makers of your rulers out of those who have not studied and do not know. That is not wise. I do not deny it is a necessary stage in the evolution of man. I know that the Spirit acts wisely, and guides the nations along roads in which lessons are to be learned; and I hope that out of the blunders, and the errors, and the crudities of present politics there will evolve a saner method, in which the wise of the nation will have power and guide its councils, and wisdom, not numbers, shall speak the decisive word.