Theos-Talk Archives (August 2005 Message tt00180)

By an Unpopular Philosopher

"Theosophists and editors of Theosophical periodicals are constantly warned, by the 
prudent and the faint-hearted, to beware of giving offence to "authorities," whether 
scientific or social. Public Opinion, they urge, is the most dangerous of all foes. Criticism 
of it is fatal, we are told. Criticism can hardly hope to make the person or subject so 
discussed amend or become amended. Yet it gives offence to the many, and makes 
Theosophists hateful. "Judge not, if thou wilt not be judged," is the habitual warning.

It is precisely because Theosophists would themselves be judged and court impartial 
criticism, that they begin by rendering that service to their fellow-men. Mutual criticism is 
a most healthy policy, and helps to establish final and definite rules in life – practical, not 
merely theoretical. We have had enough of theories. The Bible is full of wholesome advice, 
yet few are the Christians who have ever applied any of its ethical injunctions to their daily 
lives. If one criticism is hurtful so is another; so also is every inno vation, or even the 
presentation of some old thing under a new aspect, as both have necessarilyto clash with 
the views of this or another "authority." I maintain, on the contrary, thatcriticism is the 
great benefactor of thought in general; and still more so of those men who never think for 
themselves but rely in everything upon acknowledged "authorities" and social routine.

For what is an "authority" upon any question, after all? No more, really, than a light 
streaming upon a certain object through one single, more or less wide, chink, and 
illuminating it from one side only. Such light, besides being the faithful reflector of the 
personal views of but one man – very often merely that of his special hobby – can never 
help in the examination of a question or a subject from all its aspects andsides. Thus, the 
authority ap pealed to will often prove but of little help, yet the profane, who attempts to 
present the given question or object under another aspect and in a different light, is 
forthwith hooted for his great audacity. Does he not attempt to upset solid"authorities," 
and fly in the face of respectable and time-honoured routine thought?

Friends and foes! Criticism is the sole salvation from intellectual stagnation. It is the 
beneficent goad which stimulates to life and action – hence to healthy changes – the heavy 
ruminants called Routine and Prejudice, in private as in social life. Adverse opinions are 
like conflicting winds which brush from the quiet surface of a lake the green scum that 
tends to settle upon still waters. If every clear stream of independent thought, which runs 
through the field of life outside the old grooves traced by Public Opinion,had to be 
arrested and to come to a standstill, the results would prove very sad. Thestreams would 
no longer feed the common pond called Society, and its waters would become still more 
stagnant than they are. Result: it is the most orthodox "authorities" of the social pond who 
would be the first to get sucked down still deeper into its ooze and slime.

Things, even as they now stand, present no very bright outlook as regards progress and 
social reforms. In this last quarter of the century it is women alone who have achieved any 
visible beneficent progress. Men, in their ferocious egoism and sex-privilege, have fought 
hard, but have been defeated on almost every line. Thus, the younger generations of 
women look hopeful enough. They will hardly swell the future ranks of stiff-necked and 
cruel Mrs. Grundy. Those who to-day lead her no longer invincible battalions on the war-
path, are the older Amazons of respectable society, and her young men, the male "flowers 
of evil," the nocturnal plants that blossom in the hothouses known as clubs. The Brummels 
of our modern day have become worse gossips than the old dowagers ever werein the 
dawn of our century.

To oppose or criticize such foes, or even to find the least fault with them, is to commit 
the one unpardonable social sin. An Un popular Philosopher, however, has little to fear, 
and notes his thoughts, indifferent to the loudest "war-cry" from those quarters. He 
examines his enemies of both sexes with the calm and placid eye of one who has nothing 
to lose, and counts the ugly blotches and wrinkles on the "sacred" face of Mrs. Grundy, as 
he would count the deadly poisonous flowers on the branches of a majestic mancenillier – 
through a telescope from afar. He will never ap proach the tree, or rest under its lethal 
shade. "Thou shalt not set thyself against the Lord's anointed," saith David. But since the 
"authorities," social and scientific, are always the first to break that law, others may 
occasionally follow the good example. Besides, the "anointed" ones are not always those of 
the Lord; many of them being more of the "self-anointed" sort.

Thus, whenever taken to task for disrespect to Science and its "authorities," which the 
Unpopular Philosopher is accused of re jecting, he demurs to the statement.To reject the 
infallibility of a man of Science is not quite the same as to repudiate hislearning. A 
specialist is one, precisely because he has some one specialty, and is therefore less 
reliable in other branches of Science, and even in the general appreciationof his own 
subject. Official school Science is based upon temporary foundations, so far. It will 
advance upon straight lines so long only as it is not compelled to deviate from its old 
grooves, in consequence of fresh and unexpected discoveries in the fathomless mines of 
knowledge.

Science is like a railway train which carries its baggage van from one terminus to the 
other, and with which no one except the rail way officials may interfere. But passengers 
who travel by the same train can hardly be prevented from quitting the direct line at fixed 
stations, to proceed, if they so like, by diverging roads. They should havethis option, 
without being taxed with libelling the chief line. To proceed beyond the terminus on 
horseback, cart or foot, or even to undertake pioneer work, by cutting entirely new paths 
through the great virgin forests and thickets of public ignorance, is theirundoubted 
prerogative. Other explorers are sure to follow; nor less sure are they to criticize the 
newly-cut pathway. They will thus do more good than harm. For truth, according to an old 
Belgian proverb, is always the result of conflicting opinions, like the spark that flies out 
from the shock of two flints struck together.

Why should men of learning be always so inclined to regard Science as their own 
personal property? Is knowledge a kind of indivisible family estate, entailed only on the 
elder sons of Science? Truth belongs to all, or ought so to belong; excepting always those 
few special branches of knowledge which should be preserved ever secret, like those two-
edged weapons that both kill and save. Some philosopher compared knowledge to a 
ladder, the top of which was more easily reached by a man unencumbered by heavy lug 
gage, than by him who has to drag along an enormous bale of old conventionalities, faded 
out and dried. Moreover, such a one must look back every moment, for fear of losing 
some of his fossils. Is it owing to such extra weight that so few of them ever reach the 
summit of the ladder, and that they affirm there is nothing beyond the highest rung they 
have reached? Or is it for the sake of preserving the old dried-up plants of the Past that 
they deny the very possibility of any fresh, living blossoms, on new forms of life, in the 
Future?

Whatever their answer, without such optimistic hope in the ever-becoming, life would 
be little worth living. What between "author ities," their fear of, and wrath at the slightest 
criticism – each and all of them demanding to be regarded as infallible in their respective 
departments – the world threatens to fossilize in its old preju dices androutine. Fogeyism 
grins its skeleton-like sneer at every innovation or new form of thought. In the great battle 
of life for the survival of the fittest, each of these forms becomes in turn the master, and 
then the tyrant, forcing back all new growth as its own was checked. But the true 
Philosopher, however "unpopular," seeks to grasp the actual life, which, springing fresh 
from the inner source of Being, the rock of truth, is ever moving onward. He feels equal 
contempt for all the little puddles that stagnate lazily on the flat and marshy fields of 
social life."

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Perry