Esoteric Buddhism

the seen and the unseen worlds may be broadly
comprehended. The higher culture of the East
has been concerned with the investigation, in
its own congenial retirement, of that side of Na-
ture, while we in the West have been pushing
forward our physical civilization to its present
great height. Different races in the world ad-
vance in this way along different lines of prog-
ress ; or, rather, — to state the idea more sci-
entifically in the light of the occult doctrine,
— all races have their cyclic progress to accom-
plish, at one period of which they are concerned
with physical and at another with spiritual cul-
ture. We of the white race in Europe and
America — embodying within the last few cen-
turies one phase of the progress of our sub-
section of humanity — have been concerned al-
most entirely, during the historic period, with
the development of our material civilization.
Our religions, meanwhile, have had to do rather
with the maintenance of spiritual aspirations in
a potential state, than with the keen investiga-
tion of the facts of Nature in the spiritual re-
gion. We have keenly investigated these facts
on the physical plane, for that was the proper
function of our age ; but all earnestness of ef-
fort on the part of Oriental races, in the mean-
while, has been turned in another direction.
There, physical civilization has been stagnant,