Dr Franz Hartmann, as a learned and able writer, a psychic, and a brother Theosophist, deserves the best wishes of every member of the Theosophical Society in any earnest endeavour to promote the cause of Theosophy. His last effort is to establish what he calls a “Lay Convent” in Europe, the prospectus of which we append. It must not be supposed that this establishment will be the headquarters of the Theosophical Society either officially or unofficially. It is a Society in itself, by itself, and for itself, founded upon a financial basis, whose shareholders can, strictly speaking, be called members only by courtesy, as in the case of a cooperative factory.

If Dr Hartmann’s undertaking is successful, it will doubtless do much to spread an interest in mysticism among the more sensitive and refined classes and afford a welcome shelter to those who shrink from the rude and cruel elbowings of life, but, like all spiritual hot-houses for the forcing of individual development, in indifference to the struggles and sorrows of the world at large, it will have two dangers to encounter—internal dissensions, and attacks from without. Hitherto every isolated community established for a similar purpose has sooner or later succumbed from one or other of these causes. The best hope for the stability of the institution seems to lie in the club or model-lodging-house element in it—each shareholder being the proprietor of a separate as well as an undivided interest in it since he has the exclusive right to a room of his own in the establishment. It is needless to say that the convent is not intended to make money but merely to be self-supporting and cooperative. The name “Lay Convent” is, we think, not a happy one, since it is somewhat misleading

[1] The Theosophist, 1888, v. 10, n. 110, Supplement to The Theosophist, November 1888, p. 23.