Excerpt from Theosophical Quarterly, Vol. 13: July; October, 1915, January; April, 1916 But this, perhaps, is abstract, and therefore unconvincing. Let us try to make it more objective. What will be the practical working-out of the refusal to defend? One meets, in our complex social life, many professors of non-resistance, who say that they themselves would on no account use violence, and who, at the same time, are profiting, day by day, hour by hour, in their persons, in their professions, in their homes, by the organized preparation for violence which is embodied in the police power. What would these professional non-resisters do if the police power were suddenly withdrawn? What would happen, we can easily realize. Even in spite of the v easeless vigilance of the police-power - and in this we include the whole machinery of the law and of the courts - the forces of greed and hate and lust are perpetually alert, seeking whom they may devour. The contriving of fraud is also ceaselessly active, - as witness the thousand and one trials for misuse of the mails, which show that hundreds of millions are stolen by means of such frauds every year. We need say little of the vast extent of fraud carried on just within the fringe of the law except this: that, if the police-power were withdrawn, the im pulse behind this mass of fraud would express itself more simply. The present perpetrators of fraud would then take by force what they now take by guile. It is not the willingness that is lacking. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.