These lectures will not be concerned with history as a record of wars and political changes; they will have little to tell of battles, murders, and sudden deaths. Instead, we shall try to discover and throw light on the cyclic movements of the Human Spirit. Back of all phenomena, or the outward show of things, there is always a noumenon in the unseen. Behind the phenomena of human history, the noumenon is the Human Spirit, moving in accordance with its own necessities and cyclic laws.
We may, if we go to it intelligently, gain some inkling of knowledge as to what those laws are; and I think that would be, in its way, a real wisdom, and worth getting. But for the most part historical study seeks knowledge only; and how it attains its aim, is shown by the falseness of what passes for history.
In most textbooks you shall find, probably, a round dozen of lies on as many pages. The Eternal Right Thing is what is called in Sanskrit SAT, the True; it opposite is the Lie, in one fashion or another, always; and what we have to do, our mission and raison d'etre as students of Theosophy, is to put down the Lie at every turn, and chase it, as far as we may, out of the field of life.
