And at least in the Theosophical Society, where we try to study tendencies, and to understand something of the forces which are working around us in life, we ought to avoid this popular blunder of the time, we ought to try to see the goal towards which we are moving, and to choose our immediate methods with reference to that goal.

Of course, when I speak of a goal and an end, I am using the terms in a relative, not in an absolute sense--the goal, the end which is within a measurable distance, and so may be taken as a point towards which the roads on which we travel should tend.

Let us, then, look first on that goal, and see its nature and the kind of methods which will help to realise it upon earth.
You are all familiar in the Theosophical Society with the theory of cycles, so that you are accustomed to look upon events as tending to repeat themselves on higher and higher levels of what has been called the "spiral of evolution." For while it is true that history does not repeat itself upon the same level, it is also true that it does repeat itself upon successively higher levels, and that anyone who is studying Theosophical teaching as to the evolution of man, the evolution of globes, the evolution of systems, the evolution of universes, may very much facilitate his study by grasping the main truths which underlie each of these in turn.

We are continually repeating on a higher plane that which we have done upon a lower.

Our terms are a constant series of repetitions, so that if we understand their meaning in one series we are able to argue to their meaning in another.