The Hawaiian gazette., 1896-01-10
Extracts from a Lecture by
? Mrs. Annie Besant.
MIND THE CONNECTING THREAD.
Man an Immortal Being Clad in Garb
of Flesh and Vivified-Underlying
Beliefs as Taught by Theosophists.
Life Away from Hurry and BustIe.

The appended extracts are taken
from a recent lecture by Mrs
Annie Besant, the well known
theosophist leader, entitled "The
Place of Peace" copied from 'The
Path" and published at the request
OF q lady resident of this city.
The rush, the turmoil, the hurry OF
modern life are in everybody's mouth
as matter of complaint. 81 have no
time" is the commonest OF excuses.
Reviews serve for books; leading arti-
cles for political treatises; lectures for
investigation. More and more the at
tention of men and women is fastened
on the superficial things of life; small
prizes of business success, petty crowns
of social supremacy, momentary no.
toriety in the world OF politics and of
letters-for these things men and
women toll, intrigue and strive.
Their work must show immediate re-
suits, else it is regarded as failure; the
winning post must always be in sight,
to be passed by swift brief effort with
the roar of the applauding crowd hail
ing the winner. The solid reputation
built up by years of strenuous work I;
the patient toll that lsbors for a life
time in a field wherein the harvest
can only ripen long after the sower
has passed out of sight; the deliberate
choice Of lofty ideal, too high to at
tract the average man, too great to be
comprised in a lifetime; all these
things are passed by with q shrug of
good Datured contempt or q scowl OF
suspicion. The spirit of the age is
summed up by the words OF the caus-
tic Chinese cage of yore: "He looks
at an egg and expects to hear it crow"
Nature is too slow for us, and We for.
get that what we gain in speed we
lose in depth. But there are some in
whose eyes this whirling dance of
gnats in the sunlight is not to be all
and end all OF human life. Some in
whose hearts a whisper sometimes
sounds softly, saying that all the
seeming clash aud rush is but as the
struggle of shadows thrown upou a
screen; that social success, bust
ness triumph, public admiration,
are but trivial things at best,
bubbles floating down a stream
let, and unworthy the riv.lries, the
jealOusies, the bitterness their chase
eugenders Has life no secret that
does not lie on the surface? no prob
lem that is not solved in the stating?
no treasury that is not scattered GU
the highway? An answer may be
found without straying beyouu tue
experience of every mau aud woman,
and that answer hides within 1t
suggestion OF the deeper truth that
uDderlies it. After a week or month
of hurried town life, of small excite
ments, of striving for the little hi
umphs of social life, of the eagerHe-s
of petty hopes, the pain of petty dis
appointments, of the friction arising
from the jarring OF our selfish selves
with other selves equ ally selfish; aftei
this, il We go tar away from this hum
and hustle OF life iuio silent mouutsiU
solitudes where are sounding only the
natural harmonies that seem TO 0leno
with rather than to break the silence
the rushing OF the waterfall swollen
by last nights rain, the rustic of the
leaves under the timid feet of the
hare, the whisper of the stream TO the
water hen as sne slips out Of the reeds,
the murmur Of the eddy where it laps
against the pebbles gu the bank, the
hum of the insects as they brush
through the tangle Of the grasses, the
suck of the fish as they hang in the
pool beneath the shade-there, where
the mind sinks into a calm, soothed |
10y the touch Of nature far from man,
what aspect have the follies, the ex
ASPIRATIONS, of the social world OF
work aud play, seen through that at.
mosphere surcharged with peace?
What does it matter il in some small
strife we failed or We succeeded? |
What does il matter that we were
sighted by one, praised by another? |
We regain perspective by our distance |
from tue whirlpool. by our isolation |
from its tossing waters, and we see
how small q part these outer things |
should play in the true life Of man.
So distance 10 time as well as dis |
lance in space gives balanced judy |
ment on the goods and ills of life. |
We look back, after ten years has
slipped away, at the trials, the |
joys, the hopes, the disappoint- |
ments Of the time that there was,
and we marvel why we spent so
much OF our life euergy on things so
little worth. Even life's sharpest
pains seem strangely unreal thus con.
templated by personality that has
greatly changed. Our whole life was
bound up in the life Of another, and
all Of worth that it held for us seemed
to dwell in the one blood. We
thought that our lie was laid waste,
our heart broken, when that one
trust was betrayed. But ss time
went GU the wound healed and new
flowers spraDg up along our pathway,
till today we can look back without a
CULVER on an agony that then we'll
nigh shattered life. Or we broke with
d friend for better word; how fool
ish seem our anger and excitement,
looking back over the ten years gulf.
DRIVE were madIy delighted with a
hardly won success; how trivial il
looks, aud how exaggerated our tri-
umEh, when we see it now in due
in the picture Of our life
then it filled our sky, now it is but a
point. But our philosophic calm, as
we contemplate the victories and de-
feats of our past across the interval of
81 ace or time, suffers an ignominious
breach when we return to our daily
life and find it not. All the old trivi-
alities, ia new dresses, eugross US;