A Collection of Lectures on Theosophy and Archaic Religions, Delivered in India and Ceylon (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1883. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... THE CIVILIZATION THAT INDIA NEEDS. Delivered at Tuticorin on the 22 nd of October, 1881. In reflecting upon a choice of subjects upon which to address you, it seemed tome that our time would be most profitably spent in examining the modern dogma that "the true test of the civilization of a nation must be measured by its progress in science." I shall consider it in its relation to Asiatic, especially Indian, needs and standards. My discourse will not be exhaustive, not even approximately'so. I am not going to attempt an oration or an exegesis. I shall only say a few words upon a subject so profound and exhaustless that one would scarcely be able to consider its lengths and breadths without writing a volume, or even a score of volumes. For, to know what progress really is, and what are the absolute canons of civilization, one must trace back the intellectual achievements of mankind to the remotest past; and that, too, with a clue that only the Asiatic people can place in our possession. If Europe really wishes to estimate the rush of civilization, she must not take her da'um line from the mental, spiritual and moral degradation of her own Middle Ages, but from the epochs of Indian and Mongolian greatness. The advancement Europe has experienced in popular intelligence, in religious enfranchisement, and in the multiplication of aids to physical comfort; and the phenomenal leap made by my own country of America within one contury to the topmost rank of national power-- these are well calculated to make her accept the above-stated scientific tlogma without a thought of protest. The quoted words are those of Sir John Lubbock, and I take them from the report (in Nature, No. t>18, vol. 24) of his presidential address to the members of the British Association for the A...