Study in Karma

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 95

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A STUDY IN KARMA
with him, and this can be largely affected by his environment, and developed healthily or unhealthily. These facts were on the side of Robert Owen's theory, and they explain the successes gained by sưch philanthropic institutions as Dr. Barnardo's Homes, wherein germs of good are cultured and germs of evil are starved out. But the congenital criminal, and beings of that ilk, none may redeem in a single life, and these, of various grades, are the non-successes of the benevolent rescuer.
Equally true is it, as the opposite school affirmed, that inborn character is a force with which every educationalist must reckon ; he cannot create faculties which are not there ; he cannot wholly eradicate evil tendencies which, below the surface, throw out roots, seeking appropriate nourishment; some nourishment reaches them from the thought-atmosphere around, from