[Sozialismus und Theosophie]
Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
Anyone who commits sin is sin’s slave. The knowledge of the truth makes you free.” (John VIII, 32.)
A thunderous cry of freedom roars through all lands, and everyone who has any human feeling in his heart joins in it. In vain, the Philistine tries to close his ears to them; the call for freedom and justice penetrates the feather bed under which he hides. The fear of losing his savings robs him of his calm and conjures up visions of plundering the anarchists before his eyes; the word “socialism” conjures up before his eyes a specter with the words “Mene Tekel Upharsin”[2] written on his chest. He lives leisurely in the past, fears the future he does not know, and desires no change.
But anyone who has looked behind the shimmering curtain with which modern civilization covers the hideous ulcers of our social organism knows how the most abject poverty stands unnoticed next to the swelling wealth, how gnawing hunger lives next to gluttony and gourmet food, like thousands throughout poverty are driven to begging and crime, to prostitution, despair and suicide. Whoever takes hold of all the misery of mankind is seized with horror; he wishes to escape from a world which is hell for millions of people, and he would count it a small thing to give up his possessions, even his life, if thereby he could put an end to this misery.
Doctors are now popping up everywhere, each with their own patented procedure to cure these ailments. They see the external signs of illness and want to drive them away by external means. Being short-sighted in spite of their spectacles, they do not see the underlying cause of all these evils, which is the root of all ailments, and their remedies therefore do not result in any lasting cure. Also, many of these doctors are not to be trusted, because there are many quacks and barkers among them who care much less about the well-being of the patients than about their own earnings. Of these, some wear the mask of religion, others the mask of patriotism, humanity, etc., while greed and ambition are the motive power that moves their tongues. The sign of this class of people is that they make promises to the gullible, the fulfillment of which is an impossibility.
Some things can certainly be patched up here and there by improving legislation and changing state institutions, just as you can give a stunted tree a better appearance by removing dry twigs and parasitic plants, killing caterpillars and insects that destroy leaves and flowers and prune rampant growths; but the tree itself is not ennobled by these actions, nor protected against new growth. This can only happen through one’s own harmonious growth, through life coming from within.
The Bible says: “Freedom is the crown of life.” It cannot be produced artificially by external means, but everyone must win it for themselves within themselves. True freedom does not consist in the dominion of the low over the high, or in the dominion of selfishness above the law, but in obedience to the law of justice and truth, which is the same for all people and is therefore “divine,” which man, however, first can follow rationally once he recognizes it. This realization of the truth, felt in the heart and comprehended by the mind, is called “supreme wisdom” or “Theosophy.” It is the crown of life, for all human life, with all its reincarnations on this planet or on other planets, as it possesses the one highest purpose, that man recognizes the truth through experience and learns to distinguish it from appearances. However, he can only recognize the truth in himself through the fact that it is revealed in him and through him. The school of life is therefore not a school for learning empty theories, but a school of becoming. Man must become true himself if he is to recognize the truth in truth. This knowledge is therefore also called the true “Self-knowledge” or “knowledge of God.” It makes the person free, it makes him a god by destroying the delusion of self-conceit by its nature, and allows him to recognize what is divine in him as his own true and divine Self.
However, these are by no means just views drawn from the Bible, a book which nowadays has no value for modern civilized people because they do not understand it. Indian and Buddhist religious studies teach the same thing.
According to Indian philosophy, all conceivable conditions in human life arise from one of the three basic qualities in nature, namely from ignorance, from passion or from truth.[3] They are comparable to darkness, fire and light. This is also the case with socialism.
There is a socialism which springs from sheer stupidity and rests on the notion that all men, considered as personalities, are equal and have equal personal rights; but a reasonable reflection on this theory shows us that it is false; for not only does evidence prove to us that not all personalities are alike, one being stupid, the other clever, the one virtuous, the other bad, etc.; but neither do they all have the same rights; because everyone is legally only entitled to what he has acquired through his talents and merits. Were it not so, the lazy would live at the expense of the industrious, the scoundrel at the expense of the honest; each would rely on the sharing of each other’s merit and all self-striving, self-reliance would come to an end.
Even if all human beings, considered as earthly beings, have a common mother, nature, as their origin and the corpse of the emperor as well as the beggar come from the earth and both are only one matter. Still, what has determined the personality of the human being, namely those qualities that make up his character, have a completely different origin. Here one is essentially different from the other, and each generates itself; for a deeper study of the laws of nature shows us that the character of every man is the result of his willing, thinking, and acting in the past, both in this life and in the previous life. From the personal point of view, therefore, people are not and cannot all be the same, but rather the struggle for existence to which they are forced produces the greatest differences. The socialism that springs from stupidity, which emphasizes the equality of all persons, could at most suit the inhabitants of the churchyard, where no one needs to work and no one desires anything; for the living it exists only in the imagination.
The other kind of socialism is the one which springs from passion, and passion springs from desire. To this class belong all those who desire an overthrow of existing conditions, hoping to gain something for themselves. Among these there are again different grades of people: Those who only have their own advantage in mind, and others who also have the welfare of the whole in mind. In the latter, passion is mixed with knowledge, and such is probably the majority of socialists.
True socialism, however, and the only one that has a chance of lasting success, is that which springs from true knowledge, i.e., the correct knowledge of the real nature of man and the position which he occupies in relation to the whole. The knowledge of the true man cannot be perfect as long as it consists only in theoretical knowledge in relation to this whole. It must be obtained practically and achieved by each individual himself. It is the self-knowledge of what is absolutely true in oneself, which only occurs when all illusions have disappeared and man has become true within himself through the revelation of his own true nature and recognizes himself in truth. This self-knowledge, which cannot be learned from books but is gained through inward and outward experience, is the knowledge of God, or “Theosophy.”
The basis of this knowledge, however, is the feeling and the consciousness — in other words the belief — that all human beings, are not considered as personalities, but have their origin in spirit from a single divine source and therefore in their innermost being are one single being. When this knowledge occurs, the human being recognizes himself as a whole in the whole; he recognizes himself as the whole and the whole in himself and also the laws of the whole. Then he becomes able to look at the world with completely different eyes than before, when his field of vision was still limited by his egoism or self-delusion. Stepping out of his appearance and outgrowing his personality, he sees that his own person and the personalities of all are only temporary appearances, whose temporary weal and woe depend on the laws that govern the whole, and that what concerns the individual, is an outflow of the prevailing conditions as a whole. From this it follows that, in order to bring about a lasting improvement, it is not enough to bring special advantages to this or that class, but that only a general recognition and implementation of the law of justice can bring about help to his understanding.
Socialism therefore, needs above all, a religious basis. This does not mean, however, that this basis is the upholding of any ecclesiastical system or superstition, or the observance of certain ceremonies and customs. The word “religion” in its true meaning denotes that which brings man to God, i.e., binds back to his divine origin [The Monad]. That cement is a force, and that force is faith, the inward conviction which springs from the heart’s sense of the existence of the divine law of justice and love. From this faith grows the knowledge of the divine unity in everything, “Theosophy,” which is to be distinguished from theological fantasies. Theology can be taught; theosophy is the spiritual-divine life in man himself.
But even if Theosophy itself, cannot be taught theoretically, because of course “wisdom” existing only in theory is no wisdom at all, and it must therefore also be regarded as nonsense if one describes the belief in certain theosophical teachings as “theosophy,” yet the teachings arising from the self-knowledge of enlightened people are worthy of the greatest attention. Their purpose is not to be regarded as dogmas to be content to accept and go to sleep imagining that they are probably true, but rather to serve to present to the thinking man a higher, logical and scientifically based world view in order to make it easier for him to eliminate his erroneous views. Learning these teachings is not the end in itself, but their final purpose is to serve as a guide for people on the way to their own knowledge. They are to be regarded as a travel guide. Those who made the journey describe what they saw; whoever reads it has not experienced it himself, as long as he has not made the journey himself. The study of religions or philosophy of religions consists of these teachings. Whoever wanted to reject these teachings because they do not yet agree with his own experiences, he would act just as foolishly as someone who would reject all science, all inventions and discoveries of mankind and first discover all the laws of nature himself and without tools, invent and discover everything himself without being prepared for it.
The “Travellers” who wrote these “Travel Guides” are the great sages, philosophers and founders of the religions of all nations: Buddha, Confucius, Sankaracharya, Pythagoras, Plato and many others. They all made the same journey and saw the same things, and each describes the same thing along his own way. When it comes to things beyond objective perception, they resort to illustration, and embellish their guidebooks with figurative descriptions, allegories, parables, and symbols, but taking it literally is as foolish as taking a painting for the thing it represents. How could things beyond all human conception and intellectual conception be represented other than in symbols? How could you, for example, give to one who does not know what love and justice, etc. are, and feel none of it, give him satisfactory scientific proof of the nature of these principles? A single picture often expresses much more than can be scientifically described in a whole folio. But this requires the ability to see not only the wood in a carving, but also the meaning of the carving.
If we compare the allegories and images of the various major systems of religion, and if we understand their deeper meaning, we find that they all refer to basic truths, and that the teachings arising from them are the same for all systems. The evolutionary history of the world is described not only in the Vedas of the Indians, but also in the Bible, and in the Buddhist and Chinese scriptures, albeit symbolically represented in various forms and symbols. The same is the case with the teachings of reincarnation and of the law of karma, that is, from the law of cause and effect, etc. If these teachings were common knowledge, there would be a much better understanding of social relationships among men in general.
So it is shown to us, for example, in the doctrine of reincarnation, that the immortal spirit of man appears again and again in new, personal, mortal appearances. This is comparable to an actor who plays different roles on successive evenings and yet always remains the same individual; and the doctrine of karma shows that the role which a man plays in his present life depends on what role he acquired the capacity for when he last appeared on earth. If he has played well, he gets a better one; if he has played badly, he must make do with a worse one. The distribution of the roles is also not arbitrary, but the character that the person has acquired through his play determines the character of his next appearance.
If everything were to end with this one life, the most sensible thing to do would be to strive to make life as comfortable and pleasant as possible, without regard, for others. But whoever knows the law knows that everyone reaps what he sows, and that in this present life we are preparing for ourselves the situation that we will assume next time.
Seen from the standpoint of the Eternal, however, our own personal sufferings and joys also appear to us as passing states in the long chain of phenomena, which do not permanently or even not at all affect our real being. This view makes it easier to endure the evils on earth. We recognize that we are not “fools of destiny,” but masters of our own destiny. There is no question of blind chance, nor of a supernatural tyrant assigning us a place according to his whim, but only that Law of justice, which is also the law of necessity. Considered in this light, our evils appear to us as blessings in disguise, and the Law of justice appears as the law of love, for man, in his ignorance, continues to cause evils, until he has experienced in himself the evil that he created. He will be punished or rewarded for what he has done by what he himself has become as a result. It can happen that a person, who is a beggar in this life will be born a prince in his next, or that a Croesus [Lydian king who was renowned for his great wealth], to whom the world erected a monument after his death, sits in his present life as a despised beggar on the steps of his own monument.
Man in his short-sightedness sees only the immediate causes of things; but the theosophical worldview broadens the horizon and lets us see the root causes of things. One often fails to understand how it is that a bad man has much happiness and a good man much unhappiness; but if one knew the law of karma, one would see that every effect is the result of a corresponding cause, that what seems as great happiness can result in great misfortune, when misused, and that misfortune brings incomparable benefits to those who endure it steadfastly.
The greatest of all teachers of religious studies, Gautama Buddha, the Enlightened One, says: “The root of all evils is ignorance of the truth.” — From this root springs the tree of error with its thousandfold fruits of suffering. There is no other remedy against ignorance other than knowledge. The only salvation from ignorance is knowledge; but true knowledge is only attained through one’s own becoming. Consequently, a thorough improvement in social ills can only be achieved if people attain a higher world view, higher knowledge and become better themselves by acting in accordance with their attained higher knowledge.The human world consists of people and it is useless if people want to make the world better until they themselves become better; the betterment of individuals is the surest means to the betterment of the whole.
But how could man become better than through love for true good? Real good, however, consists in what is not only good for the individual, but what is best for all. Therefore he who loves the highest good acts selflessly and unselfishly, and by acting unselfishly he also transcends the limitations of his selfhood and becomes inwardly a superhuman, divine being. But the love of true good is also the knowledge of good by feeling, for one cannot love that which one does not feel is present and does not know. A “love of God” [one’s Spirit or Monad] without feeling, is only an infatuation of the imagination.
What our present inquisitive generation needs is not so much theological sophistication and scientific metaphysical subtlety, but proper religious sentiment, which is the love of the common good. But where should this feeling come from, as long as man is occupied only with his brain activity and his heart remains empty, or as long as his soul is filled with hate, envy, jealousy, greed for personal gain, greed and revenge, and he turns his thoughts towards gaining, bossing and quarreling over others? Without this love of the good, even all study of the wisdom doctrine is actually useless, serving not for the edification but only for the gratification of scientific curiosity about useless things.
This love is called “divine love” because it is supreme, infinite and free from all desires. It is not limited to any particular object, supernatural being, or person; it is the absolute love of good, which extends to the good in all things and all creatures. Anyone who feels it feels love for the good in every being and recognizes the good in every human being, and this recognition of the good is the basis of general human brotherhood, which is the condition for a lasting improvement in social conditions. The teachings of Theosophy serve to give this knowledge rational support.
Notes:
[1] Socialism and Theosophy. [Socialismus und Theosophie. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 11, no. 66 (March 1898), 193-211] Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025
[2] {R.H.—Hebrew = Mene mene tekel upharsin: “it is written on the wall.” See Daniel 5:26-28.}
[3] {R.H.—In Hinduism, these are the three guṇas or qualities of matter.}