Theosophical Correspondence.
Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
Question: — Is it right to take away people’s idols or destroy them?
Answer: — This question is almost equivalent to asking, “Should we take away children’s toys?” If they can harm themselves with them, we take them away, and if not, we let them have them. When they come to their senses, they throw them away of their own accord. It is not difficult to destroy something, be it a toy or faith in some spiritual leader, but it is difficult to replace it with something better. We have never seen a person who has no sense of his own talk out of a superstition without him immediately falling into an even more stupid superstition. The main thing is that man has an ideal; a man without an ideal is like a tree without sap. It is not at all necessary that the properties of the ideal correspond completely to the ideas he has of it. What elevates man is not empty knowledge, but complete love. One can love the sun without knowing the composition of the solar body; one can practice personality cult and believe that one’s ideal is embodied in a person and love them, even if the characteristics of that person do not correspond to one’s ideas of them. As long as a person looks for his ideal in externals, he will always be disappointed in the end, and it remains pretty much indifferent to which nail he hangs his faith, his love and his hope. The true ideal of all people is only one, but not everyone is mature enough to recognize it. This is why the Bhagavad-Gītā teaches: “Do not confuse the minds of fools!” Offer everyone only as much food as is appropriate to their nature, and only what they can absorb!
Note
[1] Theosophical Correspondence. Is it right to take away or destroy people’s idols? By Dr. Franz Hartmann. [Theosophische Korrespondenz. Ist es recht, wenn man den Menschen ihre Idole nimmt oder zerstört? Von Dr. Franz Hartmann. Theosophischer Wegweiser 8, no, 7 (April 1907), 219] {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than minor typos, translation from German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}