The word "fad" is defined by Webster as "a hobby, a trifling pursuit!" Truly this age may be described as an age of pettiness and trifling pursuits, and it is fortunate indeed that it has been able to bring forth one or two great men like Carlyle and Ruskin to remind the "mostly fools" of their own pettiness.
Regarding Man as a God descending into the world of Matter in order to inform it and raise it up to the divine perfection to which it is destined, we shall see that human history has consisted of a descent into materialism and darkness, to be followed by a re-ascent to spirituality and enlightenment. Starting as a grand and noble being, Man has gradually pursued the path of independent self-will and invention, relying ever more and more upon his cunning and the fire of his passions, until he has lost touch with the divine spirit within him and become the highly complex and self-reliant individual we find him today. Then, having reached the acme of materialism and selfishness, he will strive once more towards the spiritual and divine.
As he recedes from the light Man grows smaller and smaller, pettier and pettier; his life leaves the centre of his being and shrinks into the circumference. His aims cease to be concerned with the interests of the Soul and are confined to those of the body and its needs and desires. He forgets that he is an immortal being, enduring throughout the ages, and laying aside one body merely for a rest before taking on another; and he lives and acts as if the life of his present body were the only life. He loses the sense of his oneness with all creation and confines his interests to the sphere of his own trumpery personality.
Is it then to be wondered at that Man has become trifling and faddy in his aims and pursuits, when we consider how far his ideals have receded from what they once were and what they ought to be now?
How did the great men of old achieve their mighty works, whose remains last even unto this day in the monuments of antiquity?
First, they knew that Man's life on earth is as enduring as the stars, abiding as the time-worn rocks; that, as day yields to night and night again to day, so the brief life of the body is succeeded by the greater sleep wherein the weary Soul regains vigor for the new earth-life that will dawn upon it. They knew this, nor needed to learn it, since Man had not as yet succeeded in unlearning it. They witnessed the same law of ebb and flow, of successive birth and death, in all creation; nor had it yet dawned upon any philosopher that Man alone could be exempt from such a law. To them the single earth-life was but as a day, in which a man may accomplish a little of his allotted task. The mighty purpose of human existence could not be accomplished without aeons of time. They did not mistake the act for the whole drama, nor imagine that Man existed for any such trumpery end as personal pleasure or sensual gratification, or that he was here only as a kind of passing probationer for some distant and alien paradise or inferno. They realized that Man was the greatest manifestation of the divine universal wisdom and power, and that his purpose is to bring the glories of heaven down upon earth and make a paradise out of his material surroundings.
Second, the great men of old knew that no being is separate from any other being, and that there is ONE great life throughout the universe, in which all creatures share and partake. They FELT this oneness, and so had no need of altruistic theories to restrain them from acting selfishly. They acted, thought, and felt as a unit and lived as Man — not as men.
But with us works are done for the moment, because we have lost the sense of our immortality and live for the present. We cater for our bodily existence, which is the only one about which we feel tolerably certain. We no longer have the sense of oneness with all that lives; we shut ourselves up in our own little prison-house of self, and try to live in the dim, airless space within. Is it wonderful that our works are small, and that we are faddists?
Fads are the paltry makeshifts wherewith the hungry spirit tries to satisfy itself, in the absence of any worthy object for its ambition. For the great God-given Fire within our breast cannot be wholly quenched and stifled out by our narrow ideals, but gnaws at our vitals like a worm, sooner than let us petrify altogether. Take the divine-breath and confine it within the mental sphere of an up-to-date skeptic or fashionable ignoramus, and it will breed fads, just as surely as any other form of life-force will, if denied sun, air, and space, breed fungi and pestilential ferments.
If fads are to disappear, we must enlarge our ideals — enlarge and ennoble the mental sphere in which we dwell. The bringing back of the grand knowledge of Reincarnation will do this, for it will remind us that we are Souls, engaged in an age-long pilgrimage, of which our present life is but a short stage. Then we shall have the comforting sense of plenty of time and no hurry, and it will seem worth while to begin great works. Brotherhood — the realization that all life is one and not separate — will do it; for then we shall escape from the prison-house of self and live in the free air and sunshine of the common life. We shall be able to entertain thoughts that no single human breast can entertain, and feel joys that can resound only in an orchestra of hearts. Our self-absorption prevents us from experiencing these greater joys, these grander harmonies; for it likens us to an orchestra of instruments all playing different tunes. Ye Gods! what a Babel of noise must ascend to the firmament; and if God is deaf, as some complain, it's not ourselves that should be blaming him.
And now a few words on Theosophical faddism will not be out of place, for faddism has not been absent from the ranks of Theosophical and Universal Brotherhood members. The children of this generation have gotten their souls so encrusted with private and personal growths that the spirit of light and life cannot find room to grow straight in them. When it enters, it sets in motion some rusty crank and the mechanism creaks round and grinds out some old familiar tune with enhanced volume and dissonance. We are all faddists, for we retain old habits of thought that were planted in us as children and have become second nature. They seem to us to be eternal and inevitable truths, though they are really quite personal and exclusive. It is not easy to transcend these limits, and, getting outside ourselves, to look down upon those ideas and memories which we have come to regard as our very selves. It is not easy to tolerate the fads of some one else, yet this difficulty may help us to realize bow unreasonable are our own.
Our movement has from time to time witnessed the secession of those whose fads were too strong to let them keep pace with the exigencies of the work. The work could not stay for them; it was not tied to those fads; and so the people were left behind. Every day we feel some of our fads injured by the broad and ever-widening sweep of the work. Our Leader follows the path laid down by the Law she serves, and, when that path leads her uncomfortably far from our familiar moorings, we are apt to shrink back and fear that we are being led astray. Yet these same fads that we deem eternal truths may have been instilled into us by our nurse when we were in short frocks. What have they to do with the eternal activities and energies of the Soul? If we could remember our past incarnations, think how many different sets of incompatible fads we should have!
A fad is just like any other besetting demon or elemental force, in being so small yet so persuasive for its size. It darkens our whole horizon, holds us in iron chains of habit, colors our every thought, takes the chair in all our mental councils; and yet, in turning over the leaves of an old picture-book, we are startled to discover its absurd origin in the nursery. Did we not exist before this life? Have we not, perhaps, been one of those mighty ancients whose works we contemplate with awe? Then let us get back to the Soul that is ourself, and slough off this suit of clothes that has grown into our flesh. It is just about as hard to do as getting up in the morning; and, when it is done, the old state will seem as undesirable as bed seems after breakfast.
Fads, when persisted in, become ingrained in the substance of the physical body, and so harden into habits. Diet fads and other health-fads are good instances of this. Some cannot eat this, others dare not drink that; some must have all the windows open, to others a draught is fatal. Some swear by phosphate of soda, some by hot water, some by onions. Our mental fads are just as trifling and cumbersome, compelling us always to think in certain grooves and to color every new idea with our own preconceptions.
When we have an able Leader, like our present one, who is anxious to extricate us from our fads and so leave us free to do the work we have undertaken under her guidance, we are apt to get our fads interfered with; especially when we chance to be in the near neighborhood of that Leader. It is often fear that hinders us from letting go a fad or habit, and striking out boldly upon untrodden paths; fear, like that which besets a would-be swimmer when he lets go his supports. We are afraid the waters will not support us, and not until we have mastered that fear shall we learn how free and joyous is the movement and how buoyant the new element to which we have intrusted ourselves.
Let us study the fads of ourselves and our friends, till we see how ridiculous yet how irksome they are; and then let us determine to rid ourselves of such a toilsome servitude, and become free to move, adaptable, and "free from anxiety about the event of things." Let us try to realise that we are immortal and age-long Souls, not to be tyrannized over and held down by the mushroom growths of a single earth-life. Let us remember how infinitesimal is our own paltry personality in the vast ocean of being, and how little the world recks of even our most magnificent foibles. If we could but realize that our habits and fads are bits put into our teeth by the little monkeys that sit on our backs and drive us, we should not be so proud of them.