260 Khdparde the Theosophist [ IO /°9 



as a young man, and he explained, better than I have ever heard it 

 treated, their teaching of the relation between mind and matter. He 

 is an admirable expounder, expressing himself slowly in English, but 

 with extreme clearness and logical exactness, seizing at once the mean- 

 ing of each question put to him, and evading nothing in reply. By 

 birth he is a Mahratta Brahmin who has broken his caste. His father 

 was a Yogi, and he gave us an excellent account of him and the high- 

 minded simple life he led ; how he passed his days sitting for the most 

 part in the shade of trees in contemplation during his later life, though 

 earlier he had been in Government service as Deputy Collector, or 

 something of the sort. His grandfather had been a banker and rich, 

 but dying his wealth had been lost, and the father had to reconstruct 

 it and revive the bank. Khdparde himself was brought up in good 

 circumstances, living on lands of his father's own, with horses to ride, 

 and a herd of cows. He had made his education in the Government 

 College in Bombay, and while there had joined the Theosophists. He 

 is now fifty-six. He reverences Mme. Blavatsky and highly esteems 

 Mrs. Besant, though the latter, he says, has gone wrong lately on the 

 political question. Under these ladies' influence he learned to eat meat 

 and drink wine, but later returned to his vegetarian food. His philoso- 

 phy is extremely interesting, but it always surprises me that the doc- 

 trine of the eternity of the soul renewing itself by passing from body 

 to body should be so absolutely believed as it is by men so enlightened 

 in science. In reply to his exposition I set before him my own philoso- 

 phy of the nothingness of man, a mere scum on the surface of our 

 little earth. He acknowledges the truth of this, but supposes that in 

 other worlds of the vast universe a higher kind of animal body exists 

 into which our souls may transmigrate before they come to perfection. 

 ' Only a few souls, such as Jesus Christ or Buddha,' he said, ' can have 

 attained to perfection on this Earth.' Arguing on these lines he had 

 a great success with our house party, his discourse having become a 

 regular lecture, including Miss Lawrence and Miss Butcher and my 

 grandchildren, who listened with open eyes fixed on his dark face and 

 crimson turban. In the course of it his exposition between soul and 

 body were so closely the same as those I had put into verse fifty years 

 ago that I recited a stanza of it to him : 



I am but by your union. 



With either soul or body lost 

 All perisheth. Then work ye on 



Together, friends not corpse and ghost. 

 To live and be is my sole boast. 



Learn this, alone ye nothing can. 

 Yet both together ye make Man. 



