The subject of Theosophy is so vast, and the tools of language are so inadequate, that any popular exposition of its doctrines must fall short of conveying to the ordinary reader, for whom it is written, a complete and satisfactory answer. This is not because the writer is unable to express himself, but in consequence of the newness of the subject to the mind of the day. This strangeness throws around the subject a mystery that is not inherent, a vagueness and remoteness which invade even the use of ordinary words. For as Theosophy opens up a new and vast vista for the thoughts to roam through, and reveals a scheme of cosmic and human evolution including the smallest detail, the language of the Anglo-Saxon has to be used in a double sense nearly all the time. But the new and wider scope that words thus acquire will reveal itself to those who read this book.

It brings forward no new scheme of either religion or science. No claims are made to original discovery, nor even to new arrangement. This is simply a new attempt to tell again of that which the never-dying Brotherhood -- the elder brothers of the "Great Orphan Humanity" -- have preserved till now: the system which furnishes the key to every religion wherein is buried the truth about our nature and our destiny. And as a young servant of that great band of Silent Workers, the author has only followed in the steps of others who, like him, would wish the western nations to know themselves and to some extent the plan of that small portion of Cosmos in which this little globe swings round the sun.

So, with whatever faults, many or few, this book may have, both the author and I are glad of its appearance, for we firmly believe that this is but once more sounding the same call to our fellows that we helped to sound before in prior lives on this poor globe, the least significant of the seven. For if through this volume but three immortal pilgrims shall be turned to the light held out by the great Brothers, they will be three more gained for the Army of the Future.

The hope of the author of this work -- shared by many other earnest members of the Theosophical Society -- is in the future, and in a brotherhood which includes within its bonds many living men, who, though unseen by the ordinary man, are powerful and wise enough to affect the progress of the race. They are the elder brothers of the great Human Brotherhood. They do not seek the applause of men nor a vindication for their policy. Many people do not believe that such beings exist at all, but there are those members of the Theosophical Society, among them the author and myself, who hold firmly to the conviction that the highest examples of human development are not alone among the schools of Science, or Art, or Medicine, or Literature, or Statecraft, but indeed among the Unseen Brotherhood, and we have the courage to wait for the visible appearance in a higher and better civilization of some of these glorious Adepts. And that consummation we are approaching. The outer materialistic prophets of a civilization based on selfishness scoff at such a theory, but we, being firmly convinced of progress from within by repeated incarnations of the immortal Ego, must be preparing for a new Day. This book then is by way of such a preparation.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
New York, June, 1892