ANNIE BESANT

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Illustrated

LONDON

SECOND EDITION

Annie Besant. 1885.

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 moredifficult when that life is one's own. At the best, the telling has asavour of vanity, and the only excuse for the proceeding is that thelife, being an average one, reflects many others, and in troubloustimes like ours may give the experience of many rather than of one.And so the autobiographer does his work because he thinks that, at thecost of some unpleasantness to himself, he may throw light on some ofthe typical problems that are vexing the souls of his contemporaries,and perchance may stretch out a helping hand to some brother who isstruggling in the darkness, and so bring him cheer when despair hashim in its grip. Since all of us, men and women of this restless andeager generation—surrounded by forces we dimly see but cannot as yetunderstand, discontented with old ideas and half afraid of new, greedyfor the material results of the knowledge brought us by Science butlooking askance at her agnosticism as regards the soul, fearful ofsuperstition but still more fearful of atheism, turning from the husksof outgrown creeds but filled with desperate hunger for spiritualideals--since all of us have the same anxieties, the same griefs, thesame yearning hopes, the same passionate desire for knowledge, it maywell be that the story of one may help all, and that the tale of oneshould that went out alone into the darkness and on the other sidefound light, that struggled through the Storm and on the other sidefound Peace, may bring some ray of light and of peace into thedarkness and the storm of other lives.

ANNIE BESANT.
The Theosophical Society,
17 & 19, Avenue Road, Regent's Park, London.
August, 1893.

CHAP.