or even hours. This is the secret of somnambulism and certain kinds of mediumism. But in the second case it is merely an animal soul. In it there is no clairvoyance, not even any glimpse of prescience; yet mediumism is by no means an indication of a man's holiness. It is merely a physiological phenomenon. Usually, the better the medium, the more delicate he is; yet it is not disease that comes as a result of mediumism, but the latter as the result of bodily weakness, of shattered nerves. The walls of the prison being down, the soul will find it easier to tear itself away and go forth into free space. A man may be a blackguard, like H―, and be the greatest of mediums; but in this case his soul Hwill be obsessed by other souls, more or less sinful, in accord with the quality of his own; as is the pastor, so is the parish. But there are thousands of shades of mediumism, and they cannot all be enumerated in a letter. All the ancient philosophers knew this, and shunned mediumism to such an extent that it was strictly forbidden to admit mediums to the Eleusinian and other Mysteries: those who had a "familiar spirit." Socrates was higher and purer than Plato; yet the latter was initiated into the Mysteries, while Socrates was rejected, and in the course of time he was even doomed to die, because, though not initiated into the Mysteries, he revealed a part of them to the world through the agency of his daimonion, of which he himself was not consciously aware.

The Egyptians also divided man in the same way, and gave the name of Nut to the one Spirit of God. It would seem that Anaxagoras was the first to borrow this name from them, and gave to the omnipotent spirit (Archê tês Kenêseôs) the name of Nous, or as he puts it, Nous Autokrates: "At the beginning of Creation," he says, "everything was in chaos; then appeared Nous and introduced order into this chaos." In his idea, Nous was the Spirit of God. The Logos was man, an emanation of Nous. The exterior senses could cognize phenomena, but Nous alone was capable of a mental contemplation of noumena, or subjective objects.

But you are probably tired of all this. I do not know how to write. Russian, and cannot express everything I should like to, but, dear soul, please do not imagine that I have become even worse than I used to be in regard to religious matters. Now there is more religion in me than ever before. Master is teaching me, and I am irresistibly drawn to study, to know, to learn.

I'

T will be best to treat my theme historically; and I may be pardoned, perhaps, if I speak of my own observation of the Theosophical Movement, as it has been the most important thing in my life for the last two and twenty years.

When I first came to know of the movement, much had already been accomplished since the foundation of the Theosophical Society at New York in 1875. While Mme. Blavatsky was still in America, her first great work, Isis Unveiled, appeared, and even as early as 1878, the Theosophical Society, of which she was the tireless Corresponding Secretary, had carried its organization and work to England, India, Australia and other lands. Colonel Olcott's lectures on Theosophy, Religion and Occult Science had also been published, with their very interesting views of psychic force, and the comparative study of religions. Certain other books had also been written, of which more in a moment.

For some little time before we came in touch with the Theosophical Movement, some of us had been unconsciously preparing the way for it by other studies. We had gone pretty deeply into astronomy, geology, physics and natural history, paying special heed to the doctrine of Darwin and the large laws of Evolution, which play so great a part in the life and growth of the world. We had also applied ourselves to the study of Christianity, trying to get a firm grasp of the teachings of Jesus, in theory and practice alike, and also gaining some knowledge of the modern criticism of religious documents. Our natural and spiritual studies were in complete harmony. In Henry Drummond's phrase, we were able to recognize "natural law in the spiritual world.”

Thus prepared, we came across Mr. Sinnett's book, The Occult World. This was toward the close of 1884. For my own part, when I first read this admirable little book, the occult phenomena there described seemed to me wholly credible, and I found no difficulty at all in believing that powers commonly called miraculous should be possessed by men who had come to their full spiritual heritage. But far greater than the occult phenomena were the personalities that shone through the narrative: the clear outlines of those great men whom we call Masters, revealed in their letters and acts throughout the book. The full significance of the subject came home to me just before Easter, 1885, when I read Mr. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism. After that reading, Theosophy was no longer an open question. The entire reasonableness of the account there given of the life and growth of the soul, interwoven with the

*An address delivered at the Convention of the T. S. A., April, 1907.

Quarterly

Vol-5

July

long history of the world, came home with convincing force, and has remained with me ever since.

Meanwhile clouds had been gathering. During 1884, the recently founded "Society for Psychical Research" had become deeply interested in the phenomena described in The Occult World and in Mme. Blavatsky's magazine, The Theosophist, and had appointed a Committee to investigate these phenomena. A very favorable preliminary report had been issued, which shows that the members of the Committee saturated themselves with the ideas of the Theosophical Movement. It was decided to supplement this preliminary work by further investigation in India, and a young student of psychic phenomena, Mr. Richard Hodgson, was asked to go to India, to carry this out.

During this period, events had been happening at Adyar, near Madras, the headquarters of the Theosophical Society. While Mme. Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott were absent in Europe, two members of the Society, M. and Mme. Coulomb, who had for years been sheltered at the headquarters at Bombay and Madras, were asked to withdraw. There were charges of misappropriation of funds, evil speaking and trickery, which made it inexpedient for them to remain at the central office of the Society in a position of trust. These two persons presently retaliated by making an attack on Mme. Blavatsky, to which publicity was given by a Madras missionary organ, and in which it was asserted that the phenomena described in The Occult World and elsewhere were tricks, and that many of them had been produced by these two members, who now repented of their misdeeds. Letters were published by them, which they said had been written by Mme. Blavatsky, and which gave color to the charge of fraud; but the originals of these letters were never available for impartial examination, and the alleged copies were full of mistakes, vulgarity and puerility, and bore little resemblance to the genuine letters of the great Theosophical writer. Mr. Richard Hodgson arrived in India shortly after this attack was made. He found something congenial in the thought and methods of these two retired members who accused themselves of fraud, and he practically adopted their views and pretensions as to the whole of the phenomena he had been sent to investigate. He spent a short time in India, and returned to England early in 1885. Toward the end of June, 1885, he read a part of his Report on the phenomena before a meeting of the "Society for Psychical Research."

That meeting made an epoch in the attitude of public opinion toward the Theosophical Movement. Never sympathetic, public opinion thereafter became frankly hostile and incredulous. Mme. Blavatsky was treated as an imposter, and her friends as fools. The public accepted Mr. Hodgson's view without question or examination. And public opinion

has never gone behind that verdict, but has rested on it for more than twenty years.

With others, I was present at that fateful meeting. After Mr. Hodgson had read his Report, members of the Committee went among the audience to discuss it. Mr. F. W. H. Myers was one of these. When he asked what impression the meeting had made on me, I remember replying that the whole thing was so scandalously unfair that, had I not been a member of the Theosophical Society, I should have joined it forthwith, on the strength of Mr. Hodgson's performance.

My reason for this extreme expression was that, while it was popularly supposed that the "Society for Psychical Research" had investigated the phenomena in question, that Society had never, in fact, investigated the phenomena. It delegated its work to a Committee of five. But the Committee never investigated the phenomena. The Committee in turn entrusted its task to Mr. Richard Hodgson. But Mr. Hodgson never investigated the phenomena. And for an excellent reason. Mr. Hodgson came to India at the close of 1884 and left it early in 1885. But the phenomena had, for the most part, taken place years earlier, the most important of them at Simla, in 1880. So what Mr. Hodgson really did, was to make a pretence of investigating phenomena which had taken place four or five years before, while he was thousands of miles away. He was somewhat in the position of a small boy poking about a laboratory, after some lecture on spectrum analysis, and coming sagely to the conclusion that the experiments had been carried out with the aid of a tallow candle and a piece of painted ribbon.

Certain things may be cited, to illustrate the candor and judgment of Mr. Hodgson. He submitted to an expert in handwriting parts of letters attributed to a Master, and some writing said to be by Mme. Blavatsky. The expert, in a somewhat detailed reply, after commenting on the documents, gave it as his positive conclusion that Mme. Blavatsky was not the writer of the letters attributed to the Master. It will hardly be believed that Mr. Hodgson deliberately cut out this part of the expert's letter. It is only from a stray sentence a hundred pages away that we get the purport of the missing passage.

Again, consider Mr. Hodgson's credulity. For example, there is the question of a meeting not far from Darjiling, between a disciple, Ramaswamier by name, and a Master, said by those who have met him to be a Rajput by race, certainly not less than six feet four, and of majestic bearing. But Mr. Hodgson seems able to believe that this great Rajput was "personated" by a little Madrasi, not much over four feet six. And he believes that an intelligent man, such as Ramaswamier was, could talk to the little Madrasi for a considerable period, in broad daylight, in the open air, and believe him to be the majestic Rajput with whose portrait he was familiar. And this is the more singular, as Mr. Hodgson else

where dilates at length on the peculiar type and voice of this very Madrasi, as evidence that he would be recognized even if carefully disguised.

Or take Mr. Hodgson's treatment of handwriting. We have already seen how he disposes of adverse expert opinion. He prefers to be his own expert. And he makes a great show of counting g's and d's and e's. He finds that in some pieces of writing there are two forms of the letters e and d; what might be called a German d and a Greek e, alternating with the ordinary copybook forms. On this discovery he builds great conclusions. When he comes to count up hundreds of these letters, one is insensibly persuaded that something is being proved. I was somewhat impressed, until it occurred to me that my own writing shows exactly the same variations of the same letters, and in about the same proportions. So the evidence pointed strongly to me, as the real delinquent. Emerson's handwriting also has the same peculiarity. One sees how flimsy is Mr. Hodgson's reasoning. In exactly the same way it can be proved that the English, or the Red Indians, are the lost tribes of Israel, or that Shakespeare wrote Bacon's Essays.

Again, one notices that, where the conditions under which certain phenomena took place were vague, Mr. Hodgson is fertile in conjecture. But where everything is clear-cut and convincing, the Report airily declares that it "does not profess to give completely satisfactory explanations." Soon after he reached India, Mr. Hodgson fell under the spell of the Coulombs, became the victim of their suggestions, and saw exactly what they wished him to see. Othello-like, he found confirmations strong as holy writ in every suspicion that they suggested to him; and this, although he knew that the Coulombs were hundreds of miles away when the more important phenomena occurred; that they had a personal spite to wreak, and, perhaps, a personal profit to secure. The really grave charge against the "Report of the Society for Psychical Research" is, that not one of all those who are reporting was actually a witness of the phenomena as they occurred. The whole thing is hearsay and conjecture; very credulous hearsay, and not very intelligent conjecture.

Procedure of this kind, in any established field of research, would have imperilled the reputation of the Committee and its members. But they were perfectly safe in this instance, because they had behind them an immense force of hostile public opinion, suspicious of all suggestion of Occult force, suspicious of Mme. Blavatsky because she proclaimed the reality of Occult force. Not one in ten thousand of those who to this day believe that the Society for Psychical Research "exposed" Mme. Blavatsky, ever read the Report. As the verdict fell in with their prejudices, they accepted the view of the Society, which accepted the view of its committee, who accepted the view of its agent, who never saw the phenomena he professed to investigate.