On the face of things the world is filled with injustice. Who will attempt to deny it? On every hand virtue remains unrewarded while vice goes unpunished; honesty starves while corruption gains the prizes for which civilization struggles; modesty is pushed to the wall while effrontery wins fame and applause, or what is valued higher, money. Is it not so?
How seldom it is that the honest become wealthy! how often the unscrupulous amass millions! These are facts, stern, apparent facts that stare in the face even those who read no weighter literature than the newspaper.
Yet men live on, many smile, some are happy for awhile, and all are heedless for a time. Then an avalanche of woe falls. Suddenly the world is transformed from Paradise to Hell, and the stricken soul cries aloud, stung with a sense of bitter injustice.
Why does this man prosper at the expense of others? Why are the small sins of this one visited so heavily upon him, while the greater sins of another go unavenged? Why is every step this man makes a failure, and every step of that man a success? Why was this man born a cripple, and this man strong and fair? Why was my lot cast in poverty and obscurity, while he was born a prince and ruler? Oh, the injustice of poverty! I must work and toil to gain but a scant living; I who would become a god in wisdom were not all my energies demanded by society in return but for food and clothing! While he has wealth and leisure to squander, and never a care for the morrow! I with the soul of a poet, burning to write, or to paint, or to sing, longing for books and culture and art and knowledge — am doomed to the grindstone of poverty! He who has riches only to waste in idle pleasures or sinful dissipations; time for the pursuit of only things that gratify the lower nature!
What a gulf there is between us! what a world of injustice! And this is life. What a spectacle it is for either the man that thinks or the man that suffers.
With the limited ideas that men and women of today have continually before them, and the narrow, surface view of things their religions and their philosophies of life give them, the wonder is, not that they sometimes rebel against fate or " take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing" seek to "end them." The wonder is, indeed, that the thousands suffer and endure with as little of rebellion as there is.
Here, in truth, is a serious study for the student of human nature: Why do men suffer so tamely all these "arrows" and injustices of what to them must be a purposeless life at best with absolute surety of ignominious failure for millions at the end of it all?
Perhaps it is that at night when our bodies are resting, or perhaps in some quiet moments of deep reflection, our Real Selves stamp upon the atoms of our bodies a sort of sub-consciousness of the ancient and eternal truth that the world is just, that there can be nothing unjust, that justice and law rule supreme in every corner of the universe, or, shall we not say, that Karma is unfailing?
Those who study Theosophy only a little know that this is true; know it consciously and in their waking hours — and, believe me, the knowledge takes much of the bitterness out of life, takes it all out for those who are willing to have it so.
At the outset I said that, upon "the face of things," the world was unjust. Let me scratch the surface just a little and look beneath it. Nothing is real and true from a surface view alone. Perspective is as necessary to science and philosophy and common sense as it is to art.
Let us stand aside for a moment from our own sorrows and troubles and look at life in all the kingdoms below man. See how the grass grows — always the same under the same conditions. Is there not always a sure reason why the grass does not grow when the earth is barren? Is there not always a certain cause for every effect we see in nature? Certain soils will grow certain plants. Certain foods will fatten the cattle. If a tree is stunted we do not call it chance, but we search for the reason. Sometimes the reason, or the cause, is a little difficult to find, but we know that there was a cause, for we have seen the result, and we know that every result must have had a cause.
Look into nature as deeply as you can and tell me if you find anything there that is not under the operation of law. Look to the heavens; the planets and the stars move in their orbits, every one of their countless number according to definite, fixed law. If you put your hand in the fire can you escape the pain? And if an exception to any ordinary rule is noted, do we not at once seek confidently for the cause, knowing well that nothing can happen without a cause? We can neither lift a finger nor think a thought without the operation of this eternal law of cause and effect.
Theosophy calls it Karma, and that is a better name for it, because it is simpler and at the same time more comprehensive. Now this law of Karma, as we have seen, and as no one will care to deny, I take it, operates throughout the universe, the seen and the unseen universes alike. Given a cause, whenever and wherever, on whatever plane we like, an effect always follows, says science and common sense alike. If there was no cause there can be no effect. If there is an effect, there must have been a cause.
This is quite a common sense proposition — or it is nothing. Still if we halted here and sought not to know just a little of the operations of this law outside the realm of physical things, we would be little better off than before. While we could not deny Karma, yet the mysteries of its workings, when viewed only by the common knowledge of today, would leave us doubting still at times. For it is often difficult to trace the effect back to the cause — impossible for us in many cases. Even with Karma for a guide, how can we believe that the world is just?
We do not require to see the cause. We only demand to know how and wherein there could be causes in justice and common sense for such apparent discrepancies. Even in physics we do not always trace back to the first cause, except in reason. But we have come to view reason as the highest of proof, and we are satisfied when we can trace a reasonable connection, say between the brain and the stomach, or between the tiny seed and the giant tree.
But where shall we look for any reasonable cause for the riches and ease and comfort that come to this idle and sinful man; or for the years of suffering and toil that fall to the lot of those who have not sinned, or who have sinned, perhaps, but lightly and whose fate or punishment seems to be out of all proportion with that dealt out to other men? what modern philosophy will answer this problem?
But suppose we have lived in other human bodies before we inhabited these? Suppose we must return to earth again and again, until we have reaped all experiences, aye, until we have righted all wrongs and harvested all the good we have sown? what then?
Suppose life is not made up of seventy years on earth and eternity somewhere else? How could there be justice in such an arrangement? Is it reasonable to suppose that in this just universe of cause and effect man should suffer an eternity for the causes set up in one life; or enjoy eternally for the virtues of so brief a span as seventy years? Suppose that a man suffers in this life for the things left undone, or for the sins committed, in a previous life; or that he enjoys as but the natural effect of causes set up in lives that have gone before? We are, indeed, what we have made ourselves, and we are even now making the conditions and environments of our succeeding physical existence. Upon such a hypothesis it is not so difficult to see the justice of things.
Everyday experience shows us that there is often the lapse of years between the cause and the effect. We see many causes, the effects of which are not reaped for long years to come. So we are not unwilling to seek deeply for the probable or possible cause, if we only know the direction in which to seek. Seek in Karma and Reincarnation for the meaning of life.