Broad views - 1906 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: with the privations of the humbler classes is the predominant passion, to be tainted in some way with the class prejudice represented by some form of political b... more »elief that has no touch with occultism at all. In illustration of the injustice of this view, it is amusing to turn to some recently published utterances by an occultist, no one, however democratic in his sympathy, will suspect of having been corrupted by early conservative influence. Few writers who have commanded any public attention have ever started in politics as more definitely representative of ultra-democratic sympathy than Mrs. Besant. And yet in some recent lectures of hers, printed as a little book under the title, " Theosophy and Human Life," she avows herself in the light of her later knowledge a heretic in politics as compared with the popular view. " I am afraid that here I am a terrible heretic. I have seen so much of voting that I do not value it very much; and have seen and heard so much of the chatter of Parliament, that I am weary of it; and so, in truth, are thousands of thoughtful and educated people, who see Parliaments, year by year, pouring out ever increasing floods of talk and less and less effective work, because members have to catch the votes of ignorant constituents, instead of serving the true interests of the nation. . . . When it comes to voting, then the most ignorant man, who is absolutely innocent of any knowledge of politics, may give his vote, and it counts as much as the vote of the most learned. He may mark his cross, if he cannot write; his voting paper is worth as much as one signed by a Gladstone or a Balfour. If you are travelling in a ship, will you take the handling of it out of the hands of the captain, who is trained in the science of navigation, and place it in the hands of...« less