PHILOSOPHY AND THEOSOPHY 281 



grow and become manifest to you ; but if your faith is 

 not in your heart, but in forms and ceremonies, and if 

 you cling to these forms you may know that your heart 

 is evil ; because, although the forms and the ceremonies 

 cause you to weep and to sigh, this sighing and weeping 

 is worthless, because your sentiment comes from those 

 images, and to those images will it return. All things 

 return finally to the place from whence they took their 

 origin, and as these things are perishable, the sentiments 

 which they excite will perish with them. God only de- 

 sires the heart and not the ceremonies. If you do not 

 require the ceremonies, they will be useless in matters 

 of faith as well as in the art of magic." 



It is foolish to refuse to be guided by the church as 

 long as one is not able to find one's own way ; but to be 

 thus guided is not the object of existence ; we should 

 strive to learn how to govern ourselves, instead of 

 being continually dependent upon the help of another. 



" I do not say that images should not be made, and 

 that the suffering of Christ should not be represented in 

 pictures. Such things are good to move the mind of 

 man to the practice of piety, virtue, and veneration, and 

 to those who are unable to read they are very useful and 

 better than many a sermon. I am not speaking against 

 the use of a thing, but against its misuses. Such things 

 are useful if we know their true meaning and under- 

 stand their effects " {De Imaginihus, iii.). ^ 



" The saints are in heaven, and not in the wood out 

 of which an image is carved. Each man is himself 

 nearest to his own god. I contradict your old fathers 

 because they wrote for the body and not for the soul ; 

 they wrote poetry, but not theosophy ; they spoke flat- 

 teries instead of telling the truth. They were teachers 

 of fashions and usages, not teachers of eternal life. The 



1 Thus it would also be better for oar modem would-be theosophists if, 

 instead of running after external *' Mahatnuis" and seeking salvation frona 

 them, each one were to strive after knowing the real Mahatma exidting 

 within his own soul. 



