d Hierarchy,
so that final failure even for the tiniest of its units is of all
impossibilities the most impossible. A glimpse of the working of that
Hierarchy inevitably engenders the desire to co-operate with it, to serve
under it, in however humble a capacity, and some time in the far-distant
future to be worthy to join the outer fringes of its ranks.

This brings us to that aspect of Theosophy which we have called religious.
Those who come to know and to understand these things are dissatisfied with
the slow aeons of evolution; they yearn to become more immediately useful,
and so they demand and obtain knowledge of the shorter but steeper Path.
There is no possibility of escaping the amount of work that has to be done.
It is like carrying a load up a mountain; whether one carries it straight
up a steep path or more gradually by a road of gentle slope, precisely the
same number of foot-pounds must be exerted. Therefore to do the same work
in a small fraction of the time means determined effort. It can be done,
however, for it has been done; and those who have done it agree that it far
more than repays the trouble. The limitations of the various vehicles are
thereby gradually transcended, and the liberated man becomes an intelligent
co-worker in the mighty plan for the evolution of all beings.

In its capacity as a religion, too, Theosophy gives its followers a rule of
life, based not on alleged commands delivered at some remote period of the
past, but on plain common sense as indicated by observed facts. The
attitude of the student of Theosophy towards the rules which it prescribes
resembles rather that which we adopt to hygienic regulations than obedience
to religious commandments. We may say, if we wish, that this thing or that
is in accordance with the divine Will, for the divine Will is expressed in
what we know as the laws of Nature. Because that Will wisely ordereth all
things, to infringe its laws means to disturb the smooth working of the
scheme, to hold back for a moment that fragment or tiny part of evolution,
and consequently to bring discomfort upon ourselves and others. It is for
that reason that the wise man avoids infringing them--not to escape the
imaginary wrath of some offended deity.

But if from a certain point of view we may think of Theosophy as a
religion, we must note two great points of difference between it and what
is ordinarily called religion in the West. First, it neither demands belief