LETTER XXIV
THE
SCALES OF JUSTICE
Lest
anyone should think that in working for brotherhood I am either knowingly or
inadvertently striving to bring about a state of lax acquiescence in the
wrongs committed by my fellowmen, by my brothers, I want to talk about
justice.
As one who has been a so-called Judge in a court of justice, I
have had some little experience in the practical working out of a balance
between mercy and severity. Justice is one of the gods that I have always
placed high in my personal pantheon, and never in handing down a decision
did I, through weakness or sentimentality, hamper the right of the good in
order to pander to the wrong of evil. I have given mild judgments when most
good seemed to be promised that way; I have given severe judgments when it
seemed to me that evil would be best curbed that way.
Much nonsense has been talked and written
about universal brotherhood, as about most of the other ideals of mankind.
Universal brotherhood is not universal acquiescence in evil; it is universal
acceptance of the ideal of good. And you will never have a brotherhood
worthy of the name until you raise, not lower, the standard of justice.
Justice is balance, justice is equilibrium between forces,
justice is poise. It is because I hope to see a more poised humanity that I
am urging men to concentrate upon love instead of upon hate.
Since I have been stationed in Europe and in the immediate
neighborhood of the western battlefields, I have helped hundreds of souls to
help themselves through the terrible astral conditions into which a sudden
and premature dropping of their physical bodies has precipitated them; but
in no case have I tried to upset the balance between cause and effect by
helping a soul to a freedom for which it was not prepared. I have let men
suffer when I could have shortened their suffering; I have let many
souls work out in the astral world the slow battle with their lower desires,
because I knew that if they were plucked from the tree of pain before they
were ripe, they would have to go through it all anyway and battle harder in
another life with those very forces which now by their suffering they were
severing in the region where—from the very limitation of
satisfactions—elementary desires are more easily starved out than on the
earth.
There was in one of the armies a very cruel
officer who was hated by his men. He came out here and many of the men came
out here, and I made no attempt to protect him from their reproaches,
because he needed to learn that injustice deserves reproach. On earth
their mouths had been stopped by army discipline, but out here he had to
realize how much he had wronged them. He could never have realized it in any
other way. Had I preached to him he would have told me to mind my own
business. The law of justice does not preach. It demonstrates. He had to
endure the demonstration of his own injustice through the dark and
reproachful shadows by which he was long surrounded. And I may say in
passing that he is still surrounded by them. I have made no effort to help
him. Perhaps I could have done so; but such determined opposition on my part
to the law of justice might have let him go forward into his own selfish
heaven with such a load of injustice on his soul that in his next earthly
life he would have been crushed by it. The resentment of these men was very
deep, and while I might have softened it for their sake—not his—I let it
work itself out.
Had there been no one else needing my help
and deserving it more, I might have spent a long time with these men and yet
made little impression. I did exactly as I should have done on earth had
such a case come before me, and I believe that I did it right.
Whenever I see a soul afflicted by the unjust judgments of
others I seek to set the balance true, as I should have done on earth; but I
am not here to upset the law of cause and effect. When I can help, I help;
but I am more useful in preventing the setting up of evil causes than I
could ever be in deflecting the legitimate course of effects.
When I urge men to help the Masters in holding back the awful
karma of Germany, I am not talking sentimentally. I am talking as a just
judge. The German people have been deceived by their leaders and have
followed blindly a course they have not understood. Collectively they are
responsible to the other races, but individually they are not responsible in
the same degree; for they have been themselves deceived, and they do not
know that their cause of national aggression is unjust and of satanic
origin.
It is the hope of those Teachers who can
watch from the outside and above, that the docile German people should not
be forever hated by the world because the arrogant war-party has hurled them
at their neighbors. I am not condoning the unlovely traits in the German
character, or in the character of any other people; but of all the races
engaged in this gigantic struggle, the German race knows least about the
causes that hurled it forward. A spoon-fed press and the penalties of
lèse majesté have kept them from knowing anything which could have made
them less flexible instruments in the hands of their leaders.
The karma of those whose headstrong and arrogant policy
precipitated this war is an individual karma, and it will have to be worked
out by individual suffering and so-called punishment; but the karma of the
great mass of the German people is a race karma. They have let themselves be
led on to their own defeat. Think how the very law of reaction will throw
the light of popular and democratic investigation into the darkest nooks and
crannies of the German nation and government after this war. Those
who have been deceived to their hurt will demand to be deceived no more. In
twenty years the life of the German government will be as open as that of
the United States. The so-called “muck-raker” will arise with a lantern on
his hat.
Also by the law of reaction England will be
shaken out of her sluggishness that has filled her shops with the wares of
other countries because she was too slack to make her own.
By that same law a demand will arise for an uncorrupt political
machine in France. One or two things have happened in France which she
prefers for the moment to keep to herself.
The great shock of this war will cause each nation to examine
itself more closely, to look into its own motives, to see wherein it fails
to come up to the very exigeant standard demanded by the New Time.
Look also for changes in Russia, and Austria will be but another
name for change.
Justice will advance many paces by reason of the great injustice
of this war. The Law of Opposites again! Most things can be explained by
that law.
In writing about the reign of brotherhood
which I hope to see established in the world, I am not laboring under the
delusion that an impossible Utopia is about to be ushered in with a blare of
trumpets. I am not recording a prophecy that the Kingdom of Heaven is
immediately at hand. The human race is not ready for the Kingdom of Heaven,
and will not be ready for a long time; but if one person in ten can be made
to realize that brotherhood is an ideal to be striven for, they can leaven
the other nine-tenths and make the loaf of human society much lighter and
more palatable than it is at present. The loaf will not become fruit-cake
all at once. That is too much to expect of the next race; but if you
can carry the memory of this prophecy through a sufficient number of births
and deaths, you may see a very sweet loaf come from the planetary oven when
the second race following, the Seventh, is brought forth into the light of
the sun.
April 17.
Letter XXV
|
