Assuredly when we reach a more enlightened state of society people will learn to focus their connected thought upon others for good instead of for ev… - Charles Webster Leadbeater

The Existence of Perfected Men is one of the most important of the many new facts which Theosophy puts before us. It follows logically from the other great Theosophical teachings of karma and evolution by reincarnation. As we look round us we see men obviously at all stages of their evolution—many far below ourselves in development, and others who in one way or another are distinctly in advance of us. Since that is so, there may well be others who are very much further advanced; indeed, if men are steadily growing better and better through a long series of successive lives, tending towards a definite goal, there should certainly be some who have already reached that goal. Some of us in the process of that development have already succeeded in unfolding some of those higher senses which are latent in every man, and will be the heritage of all in the future; and by means of those senses we are enabled to see the ladder of evolution extending far above us as well as far below us, and we can also see that there are men standing upon every rung of that ladder. There is a considerable amount of direct testimony to the existence of these Perfected Men whom we call Masters, but I think that the first step which each one of us should take is to make certain that there must be such men...

Theosophy neither attacks nor opposes any form of religion; on the contrary, it explains and harmonizes all. It holds that all religions alike are attempts to state the same great underlying truths— differing in external form and in nomenclature, because they were delivered by different teachers, at different periods of the world’s history, and to widely different races of men; but always agreeing in fundamentals, and giving identical instruction upon every subject of real importance. We* hold in Theosophy that this truth which lies at the back of all these faiths alike is itself within the reach of man, and indeed it is to that very truth that we give the name Theosophy, or Divine Wisdom, and it is that which we are trying to study.

It is happily true that this noxious weed of materialism no longer - rears its, head in high places with the confidence of yore, for the men whose opinion is worthy of attention have by this time learnt better than that. But there is still an immense mass of blank ignorance in the world, and, worse still, there is much of that most objectionable of all\ forms of ignorance which, having picked up a few scientific catch-words, inflates itself with aggressive self-conceit and believes itself in possession of the wisdom of the ages. Among the unfortunate beings who are suffering under that variety of mental thraldom there is even yet much of the crudest materialism.