Philosophers From England

"Profoundly interesting is this world-tragedy of conflict to those who see in it a necessary preparation, a clearing of the ground, for the coming of the World-Teacher and for the new civilisation... The terrible lesson now being taught, the widespread suffering, the devastation by sword and fire, the poverty caused by the dislocation of trade, the tension, the bankruptcies... But through this Armageddon the world will pass into a realm of peace, of brotherhood, of co-operation, and will forget the darkness and the terrors of the night in the joy that cometh in the morning..."

"Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class."

"Muhammadan law in its relation to women, is a pattern to European law. Look back to the history of Islam, and you will find that women have often taken leading places - on the throne, in the battle-field, in politics, in literature, poetry, etc."

"The true Mystic, realising God, has no need of any Scriptures, for he has touched the source whence all Scriptures flow."

"Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd."

"We find amongst animals, as amongst men, power of feeling pleasure, power of feeling pain; we see them moved by love and by hate; we see them feeling terror and attraction; we recognize in them powers of sensation closely akin to our own, and while we transcend them immensely in intellect, yet, in mere passional characteristics our natures and the animals' are closely allied. We know that when they feel terror, that terror means suffering. We know that when a wound is inflicted, that wound means pain to them. We know that threats bring to them suffering; they have a feeling of shrinking, of fear, of absence of friendly relations, and at once we begin to see that in our relations to the animal kingdom a duty arises which all thoughtful and compassionate minds should recognize - the duty that because we are stronger in mind than the animals, we are or ought to be their guardians and helpers, not their tyrants and oppressors, and we have no right to cause them suffering and terror merely for the gratification of the palate, merely for an added luxury to our own lives."

"No one can eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal without having used the hand of a man as slaughterer. Suppose that we had to kill for ourselves the creatures whose bodies we would fain have upon our table, is there one woman in a hundred who would go to the slaughterhouse to slay the bullock, the calf, the sheep or the pig?... Dare we call ourselves refined if we purchase our refinement by the brutalization of others, and demand that some should be brutal in order that we may eat the results of their brutality? We are not free from the brutalizing results of that trade simply because we take no direct part in it."

"That is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower, ah, then you sin. Where there is no knowledge, sin is not present."

"All my life was turned towards the progress of the people, the helping of man, and it leaped forward to meet the stronger hope, the lofty ideal of social brotherhood, the rendering possible to all of freer life; so long had I been striving thitherward, and here there opened up a path to the yearned-for goal!"

"Empty-brained triflers who have never tried to think, who take their creed as they take their fashions, speak of atheism as the outcome of foul life and vicious desires."

"Hail to thee, Osiris, Lord of Light, dwelling in the mighty abode, in the bosom of the absolute darkness. I come to thee, a purified Soul; my two hands are around thee (xxi. 1)."

"How strong were the feelings surging in my heart may be seen in a brief extract from an article published second week of January, 1885: "Christian charity? We know its work. It gives a hundred-weight of coal and five pounds of beef once a year to a family whose head could earn a hundred such doles if Christian justice allowed him fair wage for the work he performs. It plunders the workers of the wealth they make, and then flings back at them a thousandth part of their own product as 'charity.' It builds hospitals for the poor whom it has poisoned in filthy courts and alleys, and workhouses for the worn-out creatures from whom it has wrung every energy, every hope, every joy. Miss Cobbe summons us to admire Christian civilisation, and we see idlers flaunting in the robes woven by the toilers, a glittering tinselled super-structure founded on the tears, the strugglings, the grey, hopeless misery of the poor." Chapter XIII Socialism"

"Nature gives to each in Devachan the satisfaction of all pure desires, and Manas there exercises that faculty of his innate divinity, that he “never wills in vain”. Will not this suffice?"

"But leaving aside disputes as to what may be to us “happiness” in a future separated from our present by millions of years, so that we are no more fitted now to formulate its conditions than is a child, playing with its dolls, to formulate the deeper joys and interests of its maturity, let us understand that, according to the teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, the Devachanī is surrounded by all he loved on earth, with pure affection, and the union being on the plane of the Ego, not on the physical plane, it is free from all the sufferings which would be inevitable were the Devachanī present in consciousness on the physical plane with all its illusory and transitory joys and sorrows. It is surrounded by its beloved in the higher consciousness, but is not agonised by the knowledge of what they are suffering in the lower consciousness, held in the bonds of the flesh."

"Only let them not desire to impose their own form of bliss on everybody else, nor insist that the kind of happiness which seems to them at this stage the only one desirable and satisfying, must be stereotyped to all eternity, through all the millions of years that lie before us."

"Not to multiply to weariness quotations from a book that is wholly composed of the doings and sayings of the disembodied man, let it suffice to give the final judgment on the victorious Soul: The defunct shall be deified among the Gods in the lower divine region, he shall never be rejected. … He shall drink from the current of the celestial river. … His Soul shall not be imprisoned, since it is a Soul that brings salvation to those near it. The worms shall not devour it (clxiv. 14-16)."

"The general belief in Reincarnation is enough to prove that the religions of which it formed a central doctrine believed in the survival of the Soul after Death; but one may quote as an example a passage from the Ordinances of Manu, following on a disquisition on metempsychosis, and answering the question of deliverance from rebirths."

"Amid all these holy acts, the knowledge of self (should be translated, knowledge of the Self, Ātmā) is said (to be) the highest; this indeed is the foremost of all sciences, since from it immortality is obtained.* [* xii. 85. Trans. of Burnell and Hopkins.]"

"I open heaven; I do what was commanded in Memphis. I have knowledge of my heart; I am in possession of my heart, I am in possession of my arms, [4] I am in possession of my legs, at the will of myself. My Soul is not imprisoned in my body at the gates of Amenti (xxvi. 5, 6)."

"The testimony of the great Zarathustrean Religion is clear, as is shown by the following, translated from the Avesta, in which, the journey of the Soul after [5] death having been described, the ancient Scripture proceeds: The soul of the pure man goes the first step and arrives at (the Paradise) Humata; the soul of the pure man takes the second step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hukhta; it goes the third step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hvarst; the soul of the pure man takes the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal Lights. To it speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it: How art thou, O pure deceased, come away from the fleshly dwellings, from the earthly possessions, from the corporeal world hither to the invisible, from the perishable world hither to the imperishable, as it happened to thee – to whom hail!Then speaks Ahura-Mazda: Ask not him whom thou asketh, (for) he is come on the fearful, terrible, trembling way, the separation of body and soul.* [* From the translation of Dhunjeebhoy Jamsetjee Medhora, Zoroastrian and some other Ancient Systems, xxvii.]"

"Now in some people a sense of repulsion arises at the idea that the ties they form on earth in one life are not to be permanent in eternity. But let us look at the question calmly for a moment. When a mother first clasps her baby-son in her arms, that one relationship seems perfect, and if the child should die, her longing would be to repossess him as her babe; but as he lives on through youth to manhood the tie changes, and the protective love of the mother and the clinging obedience of the child merge into a different love of friends and comrades, richer than ordinary friendship from the old recollections; yet later, when the mother is aged and the son in the prime of middle life, their positions are reversed and the son protects while the mother depends on him for guidance. Would the relation have been more perfect had it ceased in infancy with only the one tie, or is it not the richer and the sweeter from the different strands of which the tie is woven?"

"The rule is that a person who dies a natural death will remain from “a few hours to several short years” within the earth’s attraction – i. e., the Kāmaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those who die a violent death in general. Hence, one... who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years – but who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let us suppose at the age of twenty – would have to pass in the Kāmaloka not “a few years”, but in this case sixty or seventy years... Premature death brought on by vicious courses, by over-study, or by voluntary sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay in Kāmaloka, but the state of the disembodied entity will depend on the motive that cut short the life."

"In the victim’s case the natural hour of death was anticipated accidentally, while in that of the suicide death is brought on voluntarily and with a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate consequences. Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of temporary insanity is not a felo de se, to the great grief and often trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor is he left a prey to the temptations of the Kāmaloka, but falls asleep like any other victim... The population of Kāmaloka is thus recruited with a peculiarly dangerous element by all the acts of violence, legal and illegal, which wrench the physical body from the soul and send the latter into Kāmaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of hatred, passion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, with un-satiated lusts."

"According to the orthodox Christian view, Death is a separation, and the “spirits of the dead” wait for reunion until those they love also pass through Death’s gateway, or – according to some – until after the judgment-day is over. As against this the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that Death cannot touch the higher consciousness of man, and that it can only separate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated from those who have passed onwards, but the Devachanī, says H. P. Blavatsky, has a complete conviction “that there is no such thing as Death at all”, having left behind it all those vehicles “over which Death has power”. Therefore, to its less blinded eyes, its beloved are still with it; for it, the veil of matter that separates has been torn away."

"And we must remember that thoughts and motives are material, and at times marvelously potent material, forces, an we may then begin to comprehend why the [98] hero, sacrificing his life on pure altruistic grounds, sinks as his life-blood ebbs way into a sweet dream, wherein All that he wishes and all that he loves Come smiling round his sunny way, only to wake into active or objective consciousness when reborn in the Region of Happiness, while the poor unhappy and misguided mortal who, seeking to elude fate, selfishly loosens the silver string and breaks the golden bowl, finds himself terribly alive and awake, instinct with all the evil cravings and desires that embittered his world-life, without a body in which to gratify these, and capable of only such partial alleviation as is possible by more or less vicarious gratification, and this only at the cost of the ultimate complete rupture with his sixth and seventh principles, and consequent ultimate annihilation after, alas! prolonged periods of suffering."

"To me it seems that this very variety of experiences makes the tie stronger, not weaker, and that it is a rather thin and poor thing to know oneself and another in only one little aspect of many-sided humanity for endless ages of years; a thousand or so years of one person in one character would, to me, be ample, and I should prefer to know him or her in some new aspect of his nature. But those who object to this view need not feel distressed, for they will enjoy the presence of their beloved in the one personal aspect held by him or her in the one incarnation they are conscious of for as long as the desire for that presence remains."

"There is an illumination of the "Spera secundum fratrem J. de Pecham archiepiscopum," executed not long after the archbishop's death. In the centre is the Mouth of Hell, inscribed "Infernus." Round it are concentric circles, and on the top God sitting in an attitude of benediction. The circles are thus named Spera terre, coloured green, Spera aque, blue with white waves, Spera aerie, yellow Spera ignis, red, Celum Lune, Celum Mercurii, Celum Veneris, Celum Solis, Celum Martie, Celum Jovis, Celum Saturni, Celum Sidereum, sive Stellarum, Celum Crystallinum, sive Applanes, Celum Medium inter empireum et cristallinum motum motu simplicissimo, Celum empireum fixum et in motum, in quo est tronus Salomonis et locus Dei et Spirituum ...The Celum Medium is white. The Celum Empireum of a purplish colour, wider than the others, with 10 circles on it alternately red and yellow. The cusped circle, in which is placed the throne of God, cuts into this sphere and rests on the Celum Medium. The Deity has long hair and beard... The throne is ornamented with round headed apertures like windows. The background is blue. The description, whether written by the archbishop or not, no doubt contains his views on astronomy in a few words."

"Prospectiva communis domini Johannis Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis, . . Fratris ordinis minorum dicti psau ♃ ad unguem castigata per eximium artium et medicine ac juris utriusque doctorem ac mathematicum peritissimum D. Facium Cardanum Mediolanensem in venerabili colegio juris peritorum Mediolani residentem. The subject of the treatise is not what is now called perspective... but it is principally concerned with elementary propositions of optics, such as the incidence of rays of light, reflexion and refraction, the non-existence of colour without light, the construction of the eye, the appearance of objects at a distance (viz., spheres as planes, and squares as oblongs); and spherical, cylindrical, and concave mirrors, whose property of conveying heat is described. The work is divided into three parts... The third treats of the stars, the rainbow, and the milky way."

"There are engravings of the [tomb] monument in Parker's De Antiquitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ and Dart's History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, the latter of which was published in 1726. Both are apparently from the same plate. ...There are more recent engravings in Blore's Monumental Remains of Noble and Eminent Persons, 1826, and in Britton's Cathedral Antiquities vol. i., p. xviii. The tomb must have been expensive, and funeral magnificent, for archbishop Parker tells us that Peckham left 5,305l. 17s. 2¼d., and when his executors rendered their accounts... 5s. 6d. was all the surplus they could show."

"According to Weever, Funeral Mon. 221, his heart was buried in Christchurch, London, behind the high altar."

"Where the rights of the Welsh church did not interfere with his own authority, Peckham was not severe. He begged the king to respect their ancient rights and privileges, and protested against the suppression of customs which differed from those in use in England, reminding the king how easily an embittered clergy might rouse the people to rebellion."

"For some years the discipline at Christchurch had been in a very bad state, and some of the obedientiaries had been guilty of "Converting public trusts "To very private uses," and thus incurred the penalty of excommunication. The convent indeed was almost in a state of mutiny. In order to escape from claustral discipline, the monks were in the habit of staying at the convent manors, on the pretext of looking after the tenants, and while there ventured to keep purses of their own and live like ordinary men of the world. At the last election of a prior, the convent had forced Ringmer to take an oath which hampered his action as a reformer. When the archbishop tried to put down these abuses, some of the monks, "certain sons of Belial," tried to make a bargain and drew up articles on which they insisted for a time. But the majority was too strong. They were obliged to renounce them, and the paper was publicly burnt by the archbishop. Some monks who were opposed to the prior fled, but were recaptured about the end of 1284. The king, why we know not, was angry about this..."

"The book which Peckham wrote in the defence of his order against William of St. Amour was probably written before he became archbishop... but the unpopularity of the friars among the clergy had extended to England, and he was obliged to defend them... They are accused by one of our chroniclers of gaining a temporary shelter on the lands of an abbey, just to rest... then, hastily building a wooden altar and covering it with the consecrated stone they carried, they celebrated mass, and it was impossible to eject them. He complains too of their poaching... by hearing the confessions of those who were ashamed to confess to the parson whom they saw every day, or who scorned to do so because he was as vicious as themselves or were afraid of his blabbing their secrets when drunk. The clergy of England... attempted to stop this abuse... and asserted that it was an unlawful... In this they were technically wrong, for pope Martin IV... had confirmed... the power of committing to "friars of the said order... the office of preaching, of hearing confessions and absolving penitents..." with a strict prohibition of any interference. The pope, however, stipulated that the faithful must confess to their parish priest once a year. But this was not observed... for the theological faculty at the university of Paris in the same year gave it as their opinion that no one was bound to confess the same sins specifically to two persons. This would be, says Peckham, to straiten the way of eternal life which the Holy Father intended by this privilege to widen."

"Peckham's 'Register' is the oldest of the Canterbury Registers now preserved at Lambeth. The earlier records of the see were removed by Archbishop Kilwardby."

"Peckham's health, both bodily, and mental, began to fail some time before his death. On 20 March 1292 the bishop of Hereford had license to confer orders in his place. Peckham died at Mortlake, after a long illness, on 8 Dec. 1292. In the previous September Henry of Eastry had written to the archbishop, reminding him of his promise to be buried in the cathedral, and Peckham was buried accordingly on 19 Dec. in the north cross aisle near the place of Becket's martyrdom. ...Peckham's heart was buried in the choir behind the high altar at the Grey Friars of London."

"Trivet well describes him [ in Annales sex Regum Angliæ] as 'a zealous promoter of the interests of his order, an excellent writer of poetry, pompous in manner and speech, but kind and thoroughly liberal at heart.'"

"Peckham jealously watched over any encroachment of his rights on the part of the temporal power, and was especially careful not to allow clerks to be tried by secular judges. We find him interfering in this way in the case of a murder which shocked the city of London even in that age of violence."

"Even when archbishop, he confined to style himself 'frater Johannes humilis,' was assiduous in prayer and fasting, and wore only the poorest clothing. When, as provincial prior, he attended a general council at Padua, he travelled all the way on foot rather than break the rule which forbade friars to ride. When... he visited Lewes priory, he showed his affection for the monks and his own humility by sharing their simple fare in the refectory. The Franciscans styled him moon of their order, Pope Nicholas IV being the sun; both died in the same year, and the Worcester chronicler commemorates the event in verses: Sol obscuratur, sub terra luna moratur, Ordo turbatur, stellarum lux hebetatur. The sun darkens, below earth moon abides judgement, The order is disturbed, starlight dims."

"Peckham's visitation of Lincoln diocese brought him to Oxford on 30 Oct, 1284, when he condemned certain erroneous opinions in grammar, logic, and natural philosophy, which, though censured by his Dominican predecessor, Kilwardby, had now [been] revived. ...Chief among them was the vexed question of the 'form' of the body of Christ, which involved the received doctrine of the Eucharist. The doctrines in question were maintained by the Dominican rivals of Peckham's own order, and their condemnation appeared to impugn the reputation of the Dominican doctor St. Thomas Aquinas. ...The prior [of the Dominicans], he said, had misrepresented him; he was actuated by no hostility to the Dominicans, nor to the honoured memory of St. Thomas; he had no intention to unduly favour his own order, and his censure was supported by the action of his predecessor."

"While he sometimes associated the Dominicans in advantages sought for his own order, he denied their claim to superiority, and asserted that the Franciscans, following the example of the apostles in their poverty, led a holier life than any other order in the church."

"Peckham was especially anxious to check the abuses of plurality, and his zeal involved him in several sharp disputes. ...A more serious case was that of Richard de la More, whose election as bishop of Winchester in 1281 Peckham refused to confirm, on the ground that he held two benefices with cure of souls without dispensation. The bishop-elect appealed to Rome, but, despite the opposition of some cardinals... Peckham won his case."

"Peckham's visitations naturally included the monastic houses, and his 'Register' contains a considerable number of injunctions and ordinances for the correction of abuses. ...The charge that he was actuated by enmity to the monks had perhaps no better ground than the fact that he was a friar."

"Peckham's other relations with Oxford were friendly. ...he wrote to the chancellor confirming the privileges of the university. ...he remonstrated with the bishop of Lincoln on his interference with the of the privileges of the university, but he was unable to support the masters entirely, and on 27 Jan. 1281 advised them to submit. As archbishop, Peckham was patron of Merton College, and on several occasions intervened in matters concerning its government."

"One of the latest documents of a personal nature is the licence to the bishop of Hereford to confer orders at Wye in March 1292, in place of the archbishop, whose health, both bodily and mental gave way some time before his death. In September this event was so soon expected that prior Henry of Eastry wrote him a letter to remind him that he had promised to be buried in the cathedral and had chosen a place of rest there. All his predecessors, said the prior, reposed in the cathedral, and it would be a great scandal and a bad precedent if he did not do the like. As to the disposal of the archbishop's body the Prior had his wish. The archbishop was buried on the 19th December in the north cross aisle, near the spot where his predecessor Becket was murdered. On the tomb is an oak figure in fairly good preservation... The figure is not fixed, and it has been suggested that it did not originally belong to this tomb... but the face appears to be rather individual than conventional. It bears some resemblance in features to the figure on the archbishop's seal, of which there is a good specimen among the archives in the cathedral."

"On the 4th of April, 1292, died Pope Nicolas IV.; and shortly after, brother John was released by death from the anomalous position, in which he had endeavoured to reconcile the poverty of the mendicant with the splendour of the primacy; his oath of allegiance to the King of England, with his vow of subservience to the will of the Roman pontiff. John Peckham died on the 8th of December, 1292. Matthew of Westminster remarks, that the sun of the Minorite brothers being obscured by the death of Nicolas, the moon soon suffered an eclipse. We gather from this author, that, before his death, Peckham had sunk into dotage; and he asserts that, having in his prosperity insulted many of his superiors, especially the Benedictines, he died unlamented,—at least by the monks."

"As a friar Peckham was naturally inclined to favour the pretensions of the papal see, and his tenure of office was marked by several bold though ineffectual attempts to magnify ecclesiastical authority at the expense of the temporal power. Almost his first act on landing [in England as the new Archbishop] was to summon a council to meet at Reading on 29 July [1279]. Among other acts at this council Peckham ordered his clergy to explain the sentences of excommunication against the impugners of Magna Charta, against those who obtained royal writs to obstruct ecclesiastical suits, and against all, whether royal officers or not, who neglected to carry out the sentences of the royal courts. Edward took offence at Peckham's attitude and... not only compelled him to withdraw the objectionable articles, but also made the archbishop's action the occasion for passing Statute of Mortmain or De Religiosis."

"The chief political question in which Peckham was concerned was the Welsh war. The archbishop was anxious to put down the abuses in the Welsh church, and to bring it into greater harmony with English customs. ...he wrote to Llywelyn rebuking him for his infringements of the liberties of the church. In July 1280 he visited Wales, and made a friendly arrangement with Llywelyn... But a month later a letter of Peckham's, in which he asserted the reasonableness of Edward's claim to settle disputes on the marches by English customs, roused Llywelvn's wrath. The archbishop's ill-considered action led to the trouble which precipitated the end of Llywelyn's power. By the spring of 1282 the Welsh had broken out into open rebellion, and on 1 April Peckham ordered their excommunication. Towards the end of October Peckham joined the king at Rhuddlan, with the intention of endeavouring to mediate in person. On 31 Oct. he set out, against Edward's will, to meet Llywelyn... But prolonged discussion and negotiations between the archbishop and the Welsh prince failed to produce any terms to which Edward could give his consent."

"When the General of the Franciscans [ Nicolas IV ] ascended the papal throne, one of the first things he did, was to name as cardinal, Matthew Aquasparta, General of the Dominicans. No advantage of a personal character accrued to brother John from this event. But Matthew of Westminster sarcastically remarked, that the brothers of the Franciscan or Minorite order, regarded the pope as the sun, and the Archbishop of Canterbury as their moon. They thus set up their horn on high, and spared no order or rank in the Church of England."

"We have a more pleasant scene presented to us, when the archbishop revisited the place of his early education, and showed his affectionate respect to the aged men, once his superiors, now placed under his jurisdiction. The archbishop arrived at Lewes. The chapter of the priory went out to meet him. They experienced the strange feeling, which old men often experience, when they pay obeisance to one, whom they have whipped when a boy. The Archbishop of Canterbury, arrayed in his pontificals, and in great state, joined the procession as it perambulated the town of Lewes. He preached in the great church; he granted indulgences; he sang the mass at the high altar. Having thus done all that he could do for the honour of the priory; having kept a high festival and feasted the poor; Brother John, as he is called in the "Diary," put off his splendid attire, and in his grey coat, rope-girdle, bare of foot, he entered the refectory, and partook, with his usual moderation, of the simple fare of the delighted monks. To receive such a mark of respect from a friar, usually the opponent of the monks, was an honour highly appreciated."

"A heavy charge may be brought against Friar John himself, in so far that he did not oppose, though we have no reason to believe that he instigated, the severe measures which were adopted in this reign against the Jews. ...Occasionally a prelate would take part against them, urged, by religious motives, to act against those who, in their unbelief, crucified the Son of God afresh. Such was the case with Peckham, and even with the more enlightened Stephen Langton. But the prelates, who were statesmen and lawyers, were generally on the side of Government, whose policy it was to extend protection to that great class, which formed a considerable part of the monied interest of the country."