of Theosophy is not only to popularise still more its knowledge of the unseen worlds, but to put that knowledge in a form in which the scientist may take it up if he will, and use it as a reasonable hypothesis. For I do not suggest to the psychologist that he should swallow our theory of consciousness and its veils of matter; but I do suggest to him that as that theory is coherent, as it explains problems he cannot solve, that he might use our theories as hypotheses on which to experiment and so, perhaps, shorten the path of investigation which he treads so patiently.
Turn from Science to Art. What has Theosophy to say to Art? Theosophy declares that Art ought not to be the mere presentment of what is called the real, the objective, but the representation to us of the unseen, the ideal. There is much Art that is greatly admired which simply gives us Nature back on a canvas, often very beautiful as a reproduction of Nature, but still, I think, not the highest type that Art ought to be able to reach; for surely the artist, who is the man of genius, should make real to us the unseen behind the veil, should be able to show the hidden and make it manifest for the instruction of all men. And I see in Art that tendency is coming; I see in Art the ideal is being searched for more than it has been since religion dropped the pencil and the brush, and I look for a day in which again a mighty faith in the invisible will make an Art worthy to be called an Art. Only, instead of pictures of Madonnas and children, we shall have some of the secrets of the world invisible throwing themselves on the canvas of the painter, or living in the music of the musician. The progress of Art must be towards the ideal, to see more as beautiful and not less, and to show that even in things that people think unbeautiful there lies a true beauty for the eye that can see.[Page 14] For we want the poet that can sing the modern world as well as the ancient, and see the true fairy tale under the veil of the present as well as in the mirage of the past. We want the painter, the musician, the poet, who will see the ideal below the objective in every work of Art.
Let us glance at Literature. Literature was sinking more and more towards the materialistic, and it was said that only the materialistic was the natural. The great school of French literature identified with the name of Zola claimed the world " natural" to represent its efforts. Never was a word more misapplied. It is not natural to go and grub in the mud and mire of human nature, and to put that on the literary canvas. It is not thus that Nature works. Nature is ever striving to turn the foul into the pure, and the ugly into the beautiful. Leave her to do her work and what is the result. A corpse falls on the ground and slowly rots. Is it natural only to trace the slow progress of decay and to paint in dark and hideous colours every stage of that gradual disintegration, and then to stop, as though, having traced decay, you had exhausted the possibilities of Nature ? Ah, no. Nature takes that rotting corpse and throws over it her earth and falling leaves, until she has covered it, and then, by her wondrous alchemy, out of pollution, out of disintegration, she brings new life, new colour, and new form, until a fair field of flowers covers the graveyard where the rotted corpses lie. Is it natural to describe the collecting of the manure into the dung-heap, and to fill our nostrils with the fetid stenches of the rotting filth, to rake it over to disgust our eyes and turn us sick? Nature covers that dung-heap with her creepers and hides it away from sight, while she changes it into the wholesome fertility of her fruitful earth, and gives us instead of this hideousness and fetor the crimson splendour and sweet fragrance of the rose. Such is Nature's working; and the true artist, the artist who is really natural, is the one who, like Nature, hides the hideous and transmutes it into beauty; who, looking into the life of the miserable, the poor, and the degraded, does [Page 15] not only draw the miserable form