If you can keep that distinction clear in your mind; if you can remember that the only warranted conviction above reason is that conviction of your eternity, then you may go safely into the region of phenomena, into the manifestations and happenings of the objective world, with clear judgment, clear sight, unbiased mind; and knowledge shall reward you in your researches into Nature, for Nature always has a reward for the seeker into her secrets.
Spiritual and Temporal Authority I am to speak to-night, as you know, on "Spiritual and Temporal Authority," and I have chosen this, with the other subjects, as bearing on questions of immediate interest to the Theosophical Society.

But in dealing with each of these, as on the first occasion, I want, if I can, to lift you above any controversy of the moment, and to put before you broad outlines rather than mere details, and to lead you to look at all these questions from the wider standpoint of the experience of the past, trying to apply that experience as far as you can to the questions, the difficulties, of the present.

And this question that I have chosen for the subject of our thought to-night is one which carries us back into the very beginnings of human history on our globe, which we may trace downwards through civilisation after civilisation, and we can then study, as it were by contrast, many of our modern civilisations.

And out of all this it may be that we shall learn some lesson for our own small affairs of the moment.

For local affairs are only really interesting as we see them as manifestations of the great principles which work out in the history of humanity; and we can only rightly, I think, understand the power of the Theosophical Movement, if we see it in its proper place in history, and not as a mere bubble on the water of the present.
Now, far, far back--I suppose some people will say "not in history," for the time I am speaking of is what would be called "prehistoric"-- when the great Lords from the planet Venus came to our globe to guide and train the humanity which just then had come to the birth, we find a group of Teachers and Rulers, not belonging to our humanity at all, but, as I said, coming from the planet Venus, from the far more highly evolved humanity living in that world.