And what shall Theosophy do in the coming civilisation for society?—society as we see it to-day, which is a battle, not a social order; which is an anarchy, not an organism. I know it is often thought that changes will only be brought about by the menace of the starving, by the dread of revolution. Oh, it is not thus that Theosophy looks on man, in whom it sees the growth of a spiritual, a divine nature. You will think me a dreamer, perhaps; and yet I tell you a truth when I say that not by the uprising of the miserable, but by the self-sacrifice of the comfortable will the future society be realised on earth. I know that that is not the idea of to-day. I know that, amongst those who suffer, such a sentiment would be met with ridicule and scoff; but it is not those who suffer misery who can build a wise and happy social system. It wants the best brains and the best hearts; it wants leisure to think out and to plan, and love to carry into effect. You can make a riot, you can make a revolution by starving desperate people, but there is no stability in that which follows revolution. You cannot take, but you can give; and the spirit lives by giving, and knows the joy of sacrifice. Do you imagine that sacrifice is painful, that sacrifice means sadness and gloom? I tell you there is no joy on earth like the sacrifice of the lower nature to the higher, and the giving to others of the higher, that asks nothing for itself. Along those lines our Social Redemption will come, along the lines of those who are willing to give and willing to sacrifice, for the gift that is compelled by law or force is always resented, and is resisted as much as possible. Outer compulsion is met by violent resistance, but the inner compulsion that is the compulsion of love, that meets with no violence in resistance; it pours itself out in joy. And there lies the future, there the basis of the coming civilisation.
I said, in the beginning, it would be built on self-sacrifice, and that was the thought that lay behind the words. I see, spreading through the comfortable, through the rich, those who are well dowered with the goods of earth, a spirit of noble discontent, not for themselves but for others, not for themselves but for the poor. I come across the rich and highly-placed who ask, “What can we do to relieve the misery we see?”—who suffer by sympathy, not by compulsion; and it is from them the redemption of society will come. It seems, perhaps, to-day a far-off dream, but man grows faster than we are apt to realise. There is nothing too noble, nothing too beautiful, nothing too divine for man to achieve; for man is growing godlike, however slowly, and the seed of Deity within him is beginning to flower in some hearts. Wherever one who does not suffer is unhappy for those who do; wherever a human brain that might amuse itself finds joy in labour for the helping of the nation; wherever a human heart which has all that love can give it cannot be happy, but goes out in love to the outcast—there lies the promise of the future. Such brains and hearts were counted by units, perhaps, even a century ago, by tens a little later; they are beginning to be counted by hundreds now, and to be found in places where none may dream that there are those who are longing to give and strive for a better social state. In those who are growing into the spiritual life; in those who cannot be happy while others are miserable; in those whose meals are rendered bitter by the starvation of the poor; in those whose luxury is a burden because of the want of the miserable—in those will you find the builders of the new civilisation, those who shall sacrifice that others may be happy. That is the future to which we look, that the future for which we labour, proclaiming everywhere the ancient words that “joy lives in giving, and not in taking”; repeating again the old message, “It is more blessed to give than to receive”; saying once again the old truth, that only where self-sacrifice is found, there is also found a religion and a civilisation that can endure.