by which infinitely more good can be done than without them. When these
are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive....

Giving the practical instructions for that purpose, the same paper
continues:--

The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the
mental man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more
self-denying and philosophical.

Losing sight of the above important considerations, the following
passage is entirely misunderstood:--

And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for
people to ask the Theosophist "to procure for them communication with
the highest Adepts." It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two
can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own
progress by meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will
say: "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." ....But
let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world,
would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the
result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently
encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?

Now, in condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness,
superficial critics neglect many profound truths. In the first place,
they forget the other extracts already quoted which impose self-denial
as a necessary condition of success, and which say that, with progress,
new senses and new powers are acquired with which infinitely more good
can be done than without them. The more spiritual the Adept becomes the