Why I became a theosophist / by Annie Besant.

  • Besant, Annie, 1847-1933.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Why I became a theosophist / by Annie Besant. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    narrowed his own advocacy, but that gives him no claim to enforce on others a similar narrowness, and to denounce their action as unjustifiable when they carry on the use of the platform which has always been customary. For my own part, I have so used it since I joined the Freethought party: I have lectured on Radicalism and on Socialism, on Science and on Literature, as well as on Theology, and I shall continue to do so. Of course if the National Secular Society should surrender its motto, “ We seek for truth ”, and declare, like any other sect, that it has the whole truth, there are many who would have to reconsider their position as members of it. If the National Secular Society should follow Mr. Foote’s recent departure, and seek to exclude from the platform all non-theological subjects, it has the right to do so, though it ought then to drop the name of Secular and call itself merely the Anti-Theological Society ; but until it does, I shall follow the course I have followed these fifteen years, of using the platform for lecturing on any subject that seems to me to be useful. When the National Secular Society excludes me from its platform I must of course submit, but no one person has a right to dictate to the Society what matters it shall discuss. A few weeks ago a Branch of the National Secular Society wrote asking me to lecture on Theosophy: was I to answer that the subject was not a suitable one for them to consider? Mr. Foote in one breath blames me for not explaining my position to the Freethought party, and in the next warns me off the platform from which the explanation can best be made. I had no paper in which I could give my reasons for becoming a Theosophist, and I am told that to use the platform is unjustifiable! Leaving this, I pass to the special subject of this paper, “Why I became a Theosophist”. Mr. Foote writes, with exceeding bitterness, that “amidst all her changes Mrs. Besant remains quite positive”. What are all these changes ? Like Mr. Foote and most of the rest of us, I passed from Christianity into Atheism. After fifteen years, I have passed into Pantheism. The first change I need not here defend; but I desire to say that in all I have written and said, as Atheist, against supernaturalism, I have nothing to regret, nothing to unsay. On the negative side Atheism seems to me to be unanswerable; its case against supernaturalism is com-