The next thing you must remember is that the flowering of the Fifth Root-Race will go on long, long after the beginning of the sixth sub-race is seen. For these Races and sub-races overlap each other; and just as at the present time the majority of mankind belongs to the Fourth Root-Race and not to the Fifth, but the Fifth Root-Race dominates the evolution of the world, although still in a minority, so is it of sub-races also. The sixth sub-race will be at first in an almost inappreciable minority, but coloring the whole; then multiplying more and more, until it becomes an appreciable minority. Then, as it grows more and more numerous, and nations are born of it, it will begin to dominate and lead the civilisation of the then world. But even then the Fifth Race will be in an enormous majority for ages and ages yet to come. The fifth sub-race has not yet touched its highest point, has not yet asserted itself to the point to which its evolution will reach in the centuries that lie immediately before us. It is nearing its highest point; it is climbing rapidly now to its zenith; but still many years of mortal time intervene between the present day and the day when it will rule in the height of its power. It is climbing fast in these days; but still, compare it with the corresponding point in the Atlantean civilisation, and you will realise that it has not yet climbed to its highest point. For every Race must overtop the Race that has gone before it, and we have not yet reached even the level of the old Atlantis in knowledge, and therefore in power over the lower nature, although, as I said, the climbing now is rapid, and will become more and more rapid with every ten years that pass over our heads. For there is that speciality in evolution, that it ever goes forward at an increasing rate. The more it develops its powers, the more swiftly do those powers multiply themselves; so that, to quote a well-known phrase of a great Teacher, "it grows not by additions but by powers." And this civilisation of ours will rush forward more and more rapidly with every decade that passes. Still, the very fact that it has not reached the highest levels of the Fourth tells you that time lies before us in the building of the sixth sub-race, and that is our immediate work. We need not trouble now any further about the Sixth Root-Race; for whatever builds the sixth sub-race amongst us is contributing to the building of that Root-Race of the future. The same faculties are demanded, although then at a higher level, and we can come down to our humbler level and consider what the sixth sub-race is to be. And in that we shall realise the work and the future of the Theosophical Society.
The great characteristic of that Race is to be union, and all that tends to union is a force which is working for the coming of that sub-race, no matter whether very often the force looked at from without is often repellent. It is not the outer manifestation of the moment, but the tendency, the direction of the force which is important. There may be many things, more beautiful on the surface, which have accomplished their aim, and are on the downward path towards decay, whilst the things that are rising, still below the horizon, have, as all germinal things have, much about them that is repellent and that will be used up in the growth of the coming creature, before it really manifests upon earth. It has been said by a Master that if we could see with the eye of the Spirit the generation of the human being, his ante-natal life, we should understand the generation of worlds, the generation of universes. And that, again, is a general principle. Let us see one or two lessons that we may draw from it at the moment.
Take the evolution of a seed into a plant, and what do you find? A tiny germ surrounded by a mass of nutrient matter; and before that tiny germ will show itself in root, and stem, and leaf above the ground and become visible to the eye of the observer on the earth, that nutrient material must be absorbed by the growing germ, and changed into the exquisite tissues of the plant that is to be. And so, if you take the growing germ, animal or human, how unlike is that budding creature from the animal or the man that shall be! How lacking in beauty in many of the methods of its growth, of its nutrition, of its gradual shaping! And by what marvellous alchemy of inspiring life does the living germ gather into itself all the nutrient matter that surrounds it, and shapes it into organ after organ, until the perfect creature is ready to be born into the world. And as in these cases, so with the growth of a sub-race, of which the germ is planted now. How much has to be done before it is ready for the birth-hour, that yet is at a measurable distance from the moment that the germ is planted in the womb of time. Try to realise the analogy by means of the image that I have suggested, and it will not then seem so unlikely to you, that which is true, that in our own times again many messengers have come out from the Manu of the future, in order that those messengers may strike certain keynotes, which mark the chief characteristic of the child that is to be. That note is well known at the present time: we call it Brotherhood.
Now notice at the present time how many such messengers are found scattered throughout the world, and how the varied organisations of men of every kind are tending in that direction, and are more and more recognising that as the keynote of their progress and their evolution. There are, so far as I know, only two great organisations at the present time that have deliberately taken Universal Brotherhood as their motto, their cry, in the world: the one is Masonry, the other is the Theosophical Society. Those are the only two which proclaim Universal Brotherhood. For although many religions declare Brotherhood, they do not make it universal; it is a Brotherhood within the limits of their own creed, and a man to become a brother must come within the limits of the religion. See how clearly that is declared in the great and universal baptismal ceremony which marks the entrance of the child into the Christian Church. In that sacrament he is "made a child of God." He was not a child of God before, from the Church standpoint. He was born under the wrath of God, in the kingdom of Satan. In the ceremony of baptism he is made a child of God, an heir of the kingdom of heaven; and that is the keynote of the Churches everywhere: those outside are not children of God. And you must remember that it is that Fatherhood of God which connotes the Brotherhood of man. Only by the rooting in the Father-Life is the Brother-Life intelligible. And because the Theosophical Society knows no limit of creed, no limit of religion, and declares that every human being is, in his own essential nature, one with the Supreme Life and the Supreme God, because of that its Brotherhood is universal, and knows none as outside its pale. Every man, no matter what he is, is recognised as brother. He comes not into the Brotherhood, nor can he be cast out from it. His Spirit, his Life, places him in it: it is a fact beyond us, above us. We have no power either to create it or to destroy. We recognise the great fact, and we do not call ourselves the Universal Brotherhood, but only a nucleus in it—a very different thing; the Brotherhood is as universal as humanity, that is our fundamental doctrine, and it implies that Brotherhood is as universal as Life. So also with Masonry, where it is rightly seen and understood—no barriers of creed, all men equally welcome within the Masonic Lodge. I say "where rightly understood," for there are lands where Masonry has spread, where the Lodge has become exclusive as the creed has become exclusive; and among American Masons, I believe, the negro, as negro, is not admitted into the Masonic Lodge. But that is the denial of Masonry, a disgrace to it, and not a triumph. And although it be true that Masonry has lost widely its knowledge, it still for the most part remains a Brotherhood, and in that it has in it the link of a life that will not die, and that has every possibility of revival throughout the earth.
Quite outside these two, limited brotherhoods are proclaimed in every direction now. The Church asserts it within its own limits. All religions assert it within their respective limitations. Outside religions and churches the same cry is heard. Socialism declares it, and tries to build its policy upon it. Everywhere this cry of Brotherhood is heard, although it has not yet been lived, and that is one of the signs of the coming birth of the sub-race, in which Brotherhood shall be the dominant note of its every civilisation, and in which a civilisation that is not brotherly, in which there are ignorant people, and poor people, and starving people, and diseased people, will be looked at as barbarous, and not really as civilisation at all. Its note is Brotherhood, the dominant note of the coming day. And because we have taken that as our first object, we have a right to call ourselves a nucleus thereof; and because we definitely recognise it, we can consciously co-operate with nature. That is the real strength of our Movement—not our numbers, they are comparatively small, but our conscious working with the forces that make for the future. The Theosophical Society is a fragment of the vast Theosophical Movement which is surging upon every side around us; but this we have that enables us to be on the crest of that great wave, that we know for what we are working, we understand the tendencies which make for the future. Hence in our Theosophical Society we must above all else hold up this word, and work for it in every phase of human activity. That word marks out for your Theosophical Lodges what movements you should help, and what movements you should not help. It is no use to pour water into a broken vessel, and every vessel that has not on it the name or the principle of Brotherhood is a broken vessel that will not hold water for the coming time. But every movement, however mingled with ignorance, with folly, with temporary mischief, which seeks after Brotherhood and strives to realise it, is a living vessel, into which the Water of Life may be poured; and with those movements you should work, trying to inspire and to purify, to get rid of that which comes from ignorance, and to replace it with the wisdom which it is your sacred duty to spread abroad among the children of men. So that in your public work you have this great keynote.
And that leads me to pause for a moment on that spreading Socialist Movement that you see around you on every side. Now, it is making one tremendous blunder that I need not dwell on here, but that I shall dwell on to-morrow night in addressing a Socialist Society. They are forgetting the very root of progress, they are forgetting the building of brothers, out of which to build a Brotherhood hereafter. They think that the future depends on economic conditions, on who holds land, and who holds capital. These conditions are conditions to be discussed carefully, to be worked out intellectually. But whatever ownership you have of any of the means of life, if the life is poisoned, it cannot be healthy in the midst even of a well-arranged society. For society grows out of men, and not men out of society, and until that is realised all schemes must fail, for they are founded on sand, and not on rock. You who have studied and understand, to some small extent at least, the powers which are working in the world of the present, you ought to be able to help to eliminate the evil and to strengthen the good. And the Theosophical Society, among these movements of the day, must hold up firmly a true ideal. It is the function of the prophet, of the spiritual teacher, to hold up the ideal, and point ever towards it, so that individuals may have it ever before their eyes and choose the roads which lead in the right direction.
And again, the principles that I have put to you may explain to you why this Theosophical Society, so weak, is yet so strong—weak in its numbers, weak in the qualifications of its members, not numbering amongst its adherents the most learned and the most mighty of the earth, made up of very mediocre, average people, not the great leaders of the civilisation of the day; but in them all, else would they not be members of the Theosophical Society, is the dawning aspiration after a nobler condition, and some willingness to sacrifice themselves in order that the coming of that condition may be quickened upon earth. That is the justification of our Society now. We are like the nutrient material that surrounds the germ, and the germ grows out of the love, and the aspiration, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, which are found in our movement, however little developed to-day. And the fact that we recognise it as duty, as ideal, is the promise for the future. We are what our past has made us; we shall be what our present is creating; and if within your heart and mine the longing for the nobler state is found, that marks our place in the future, and our right to be among the earlier members of the sub-race that is now preparing to be born. For our thoughts now are what we shall be in our next life; our aspirations now mark our capacities then. You know how the intermediate life is spent, between the death that will close your present lives and the birth that will open the portal of your next lives. You know that in the heavenly places you will be weaving into faculty, into capacity, every thought and every aspiration towards the higher life which in these days of your weakness you are generating, and are trying to cherish and cultivate. It is not you as you are who will make the future, but you as you shall be, self-created from your aspirations now. And just in proportion as each of you nourishes those aspirations, and cherishes those ideals, and tries, however feebly, to work them out amid the limitations of your past which cramps your present life, just so far will you, in the interval between death and birth, make the nobler faculties which shall qualify you to be born in the sixth sub-race upon earth. That should be your keynote in your lives now, that the inspiring motive, the controlling power. And if you want to assure yourselves that that sub-race is on the threshold, as I said, then look at the world around you, and measure the change which is coming over it. I said we were weak in numbers, that we are only average and mediocre people; but what about the spread of our ideas? What about the way in which, during the last thirty years, these Theosophical ideas have spread through this Fifth Race civilisation, have permeated its literature, are beginning to guide its science, are beginning to inspire its art? That is the proof of the strength of the force, despite the feebleness of the vehicles in which that force is playing. Very clearly not to you nor to me is the spread of these ideas due, but to the Mighty Ones behind the Society, who give the forces in which we are lacking. For the whole Movement is Theirs; They are working outside as well as within. And Their outside working shows itself in the innumerable movements which are all tending in the same direction. It is not we who have spread the ideas. The ideas are scattered in the mental atmosphere around us, and our only merit is that we caught them up a little more quickly than other people, and realise that they are a part of the Eternal Wisdom. That is our only claim, our only prerogative—consciously, deliberately we choose these ideas, and however weakly we carry them out, none the less the choice has been made and registered in the books of Destiny. For whether you will or not, you must grow in the direction of your thought; and you cannot be part of this Movement without your thought being more or less colored by the Theosophical ideal.
People often say: "Why should I come into the Theosophical Society? You give us your books. You spread your knowledge broadcast everywhere. I can buy it in the book-shops. I can hear it in the lectures. Why should I come in?" And I always say: "There is no reason why you should come in, if you do not wish to come. Take everything we can give, and take it freely. You are more than welcome to it. We are only trustees for you. And if you do not care to be among the pioneers, by all means stay outside, and walk along the smoother paths which others have carved out for you." But there is one reason that I may say to you—I do not say it to those outside—there is a reason why you should be within it. You are more in touch with the forces that make the future. You are surrounded, bathed, in the atmosphere in which the future shall grow. All that is good in you is nourished by those forces. All that is harmonious with them is strengthened by their overmastering might. You cannot be amongst us without sharing that inspiration; you cannot be a member without sharing the life which is poured out unstinted through all the vessels of the Theosophical Society. Outside it is not worth while to say this, for that is not a reason for inducing people to come in; but you may rejoice that good karma in the past has brought you into the Society in the present. It has given you the right to have this opportunity of a nobler birth in the coming time, has given you the opportunity of taking part in that great work which is beginning to be wrought among humanity. It gives you, from your life in the heavenly places, touch with powers and opportunities that belong to these ideals in the world of men, and it gives you the possibility there of touch with the Mighty Ones whom here, however unworthily, we strive to follow. So that it is a great thing to be within it, and it means much for the future of you, if you can keep in it. For the immediate future of the Theosophical Society is the work of building that next sub-race which is to come. That is the work for which consciously it ought to be working now. In proportion as you realise it, so will be the strength of your labor; in proportion as you understand it, so should be your share in the gladder work of that happier time. For the future of the Theosophical Society is to be the mother, and even the educator, of the child sixth sub-race which already is going through its ante-natal life. That is its future, secure, inevitable; yours the choice if you will share that future or not.