The changing world, and lectures to theosophical students. / Fifteen lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July, 1909

The Changing World and Lectures to Theosophical Students
Fifteen Lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July 1909
by Annie Besant President of the Theosophical Society
Chicago, Ill. The Theosophical Book Concern Room 426, 26 Van Buren Street
London, Eng.: The Theosophical Publishing Society 1910
The Changing World

Friends: if you stand on the seashore when the tide is flowing inwards, and if you watch the waves as they ripple up, one after another, each coming a little further than its predecessor, each in turn breaking and making way for its follower—in the inflowing tide you have a picture of the evolving races of mankind. And if you watch the method of the flow, you will notice that that which is the most prominent at the moment is not the one which creeps furthest up the sands. The wave which is breaking into foam, which is rippling over the pebbles, which throws up the broken water, which falls back on to the land and makes music, sound, melody as it breaks—that is the wave which is nearly over; it is the wave whose course is run. But if you watch you will notice that while your attention was caught by the noise of the breaking wave, by the foam of the billow that was almost over, silently, imperceptibly almost, visible only to the eye that watches, another wave is rising behind it, silently, without break, without noise, without attracting attention; but the wave that is rising silently behind the breaker—that is the wave which will follow on the billow that has broken, and will run further up the sands than the breaking wave had gone.
In that familiar picture, which every child who has gone to the seaside knows so well, is a figure of the great tide of evolution, in which races are waves and the ocean humanity itself. And each great wave—the great wave that comes at intervals—is a race, and the smaller waves that come between are the sub-races which the race bears. Just as with the water, so with humanity: as one sub-wave is breaking, having reached its highest point, another is rising silently behind it, which shall rule the world when the breaking wave has spent its force. Then, from time to time, to those who have eyes to see, on the crest of the breaking wave appears the mighty angel that we call the Spirit of the Age, and his feet are on the wave, and his locks mingle with the rays of the sun, and he cries out in a voice of thunder: Behold I make a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness shall dwell.