n the Great White Lodge, differences of opinion
arose as to whether it was desirable or not that what we now call the
Theosophical Society should be founded.

The time came, as most of you know, I suppose, for an effort of some
sort to be made. It had been so since the fourteenth century, for it
was in the thirteenth century that in Tibet a mighty personage then
living in that land, promulgated His order to the Lodge that at the
close of every century an effort should be made to enlighten the
"white barbarians of the West." That order having gone forth, it
became necessary, of course, to obey it; for in those regions
disobedience is unknown. Hence at the close of each century--as you
may verify for yourselves if you choose to go through history
carefully, beginning from the time when Christian Rosenkreuz founded
the Rosicrucian Society late in the fourteenth century--you will find
on every occasion, towards the close of the century, a new ray of
light is shed forth. Towards the close of the last century--I do not
mean the one to which we belong, but the century before, the
eighteenth--a mighty effort was made, of which the burden fell upon
two great personages closely connected with the Lodge, though neither
of them, I believe, at that time was a Master--he who was then known
as the Comte de St. Germain, who is now one of the Masters, and his
colleague in that great task, closely allied to him, of a noble
Austrian family, known to us in later days as H.P.B. When those made
their attempt to change the face of Europe, they failed, the time not
being ripe; the misery and the wretchedness of the epoch, the
degradation of the masses of the population, the horrible poverty, the
shameful starvation, all these were the rocks on which split, and was
broken up into foam, the spiritual wave of which those two personages
were the crest. The karma of that, for the one whom we know of as
H.P.B., was the trying and suffering incarnation that she spent
amongst us, when she founded, under the order of her Master, the
Theosophical Society, and gave her life to it that it might live. And
it was that fact, that the last great spiritual effort had been
drowned in bloodshed, it was that which gave her her marked horror of
mixing up the spiritual movement with a political effort, which made
her realise that before a spiritual movement could be successful in
the outer world it must shape, raise, remodel the conscience of those
who were affect