THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13209, 16 February 1905, Page 9

THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

A public meeting was held in the rooms •of the Theosophical Society, Liverpool street, last evening, when Mr A. W. Maurais delivered an address entitled "Concerning Morality." Tho speaker argued that morality could not be embraced by any schedule of prescribed action and prohibition, though sueh lists wero necessary at present for tho protection of society. Perfect morality consisted in obeying the Divine law, which ruled-the cosmos in all departments-material, mental, and spiritual; but an ordinary man did not know the Divine law, and therefore could not obey it, excopt in a partial manner, ns guided by his conscience. Every.personality had its own place in the Divine' scheme—there was not one that could be spared^—and the relation of each to the Great Law was called his

"Dharma." "Dharma," said tho lecturer, was duty in the widest Bense, comprising a man's interaction with other men and with tho law in all relations of life. When mankind was younger, coded lists of tho duties of various castes had been prepared, and had Bcrvcd a useful purpose; but to-day, when caste was apparent not by birth or wealth, but by quality, consciouce was tho true guide. Conscience was memory—tho recollection "by the ego of his past births and what had befallen him therein. Every transgression had its punishment—or, rather, every action had its reaction,—nnd tho moral man had been gradually beaten into his morality, whatever his moral stature might be, by the club of the law. The ego could not transmit to tho brainmind tho details. of the past lives, but impressed tho personality, in all ordinary cases, with a sense of right and wrong. Tho speaker endeavoured to show that this theory was notso dangerous and unworkable as it appeared to the casual glance, inasmuch as out of tho mass of individual wills and consciences there evolved a national conscience which expressed the moral standing of the whole people. By this national sense of right, laws were made which, though they did not express the altruism of the highest members of society, nevertheless suppressed more or less eilcctually the distorted moral 'notions of tho least advanced. Tho speaker concluded with a description of tho virtues enjoined by the Budd? hist canon. There was a good attendance, and Mr G. Richardson occupied tho chair.