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From a photograph
by H.S. Mendelssohn, 27, Cathcart Road, South Kensington, London
ANNIE BESANT, 1885
Preface
It is a difficult
thing to tell the story of a life, and yet more difficult when that life
is one's own. At the best, the telling has a savour of vanity, and the
only excuse for the proceeding is that the life, being an average one,
reflects many others, and in troublous times like ours may give the
experience of many rather than of one. And so the autobiographer does
his work because he thinks that, at the cost of some unpleasantness to
himself, he may throw light on some of the typical problems that are
vexing the souls of his contemporaries, and perchance may stretch out a
helping hand to some brother who is struggling in the darkness, and so
bring him cheer when despair has him in its grip. Since all of us, men
and women of this restless and eager generation -- surrounded by forces
we dimly see but cannot as yet understand, discontented with old ideas
and half afraid of new, greedy for the material results of the knowledge
brought us by Science but looking askance at her agnosticism as regards
the soul, fearful of superstition but still more fearful of atheism,
turning from the husks of outgrown creeds but filled with desperate
hunger for spiritual ideals -- since all of us have the same anxieties,
the same griefs, the same yearning hopes, the same passionate desire for
knowledge, it may well be that the story of one may help all, and that
the tale of one soul that went out alone into the darkness and on the
other side found light, that struggled through the Storm and on the
other side found Peace, may bring some ray of light and of peace into
the darkness and the storm of other lives.
ANNIE BESANT.
The Theosophical
Society, 17 & 19, Avenue Road, Regent's Park, London.
August 1893.
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