The public will await satisfactory answers to these questions. It will not, I hope, for a moment suspect Mrs. Besant of conscious fraud, or of sordid motives. I most certainly do not. With some of the lesser fry, who would be bankrupt in every sense if Theosophy failed them, the consideration of pleasant board and lodging at other people’s expense may be a governing one. With Mrs. Besant, who brings far more to the organisation in the shape of gate-money, no doubt, than she ever condescends to accept from it, the motives are subtler. Had she boldly cut herself free from the rottenness at the core of the Theosophic movement as soon as it was shown to her, she might have saved her reputation for straightforwardness, if not for intelligence. In choosing instead the equivocal policy of hushing up a scandal at all costs, she doubtless convinced herself that she was acting only for the ends of edification and the good of her church. That is the old, old story of priestcraft, and Mrs. Besant has been playing the high priestess now for three years. But were there not also some more personal motives at work? There is one thing which even the most candid hate to confess—and that is, that they have been thoroughly bamboozled. It does not improve matters when they have themselves helped in their own bamboozlement. To confess how recklessly inaccurate were her statements about “the same handwriting,” the “semi-miraculous precipitation,” the absolute assurance of her own senses, and so forth; to let the public see for itself the childish twaddle which she accepted, and helped to force upon others, as profound and oracular: all this would have been a sad come-down from the Delphic tripod. I do not wonder the poor lady shrank from it. I do wonder that Mrs. Besant cared to evade it at the expense of a sort of confidence-trick. To this has come the woman whom we once thought, whatever her other faults, at least fearless and open—the woman whose epitaph, so she tells us, is to be—
She Sought To Follow Truth!
Lastly, a few words to the rank-and-file of the Theosophical Society, a large proportion of whom are now gathering open-mouthed at Adyar. In Madame Blavatsky few of the better-informed of the flock nowadays affect to believe—except in public. They cling to her gifts, perhaps; they have thrown over her morals. For fresh evidence has been coming to light, ever since that strange woman died, as to the tricks to which she condescended, and encouraged her chelas to condescend; and poor Colonel Olcott, though he continues to work the old gold-mine in print, has been driven even there to enunciate the theory that Madame Blavatsky herself was really killed at the battle of Mentana, and her body thereafter occupied by seven distinct spirits who, of course, are not responsible for contradicting each other. Till May, 1891, Madame was the principal witness to the objective existence and attributes of Mahatmas. Since that date, the principal witness is William Q. Judge. Soon the faithful at Adyar will be filing into the Occult Room to gaze through peep-holes at the two August Portraits, illuminated and set off by all the artifices associated here with exhibitions by M. Jan van Beers. Will they dare, any of them, to ask their officials plainly what evidence they can now offer that either of the subjects of those fancy portraits ever existed?
And if on this and other questions suggested by these chapters, Mrs. Besant, President Olcott, and Vice-President Judge do not succeed in satisfying their followers——what next? No doubt each member of the trinity will sit secure in his or her autocracy in his or her own continent, owning there, as I understand, the official organ and the publishing plant which the society as a whole has built up into prosperity. Yet something, surely, may be done by those who do not care to remain unwilling parties to the Great Mahatma Hoax, to recover their own self-respect, if not to save the Theosophical Society.
It is for them to decide whether the society, on its non-fraudulent side, is worth saving. It may be a kind of university extension for the popularising of Eastern philosophies. Or it may be, as some rather think, a mere smattering of catch-words out of cribs for the use of Mutual Mystification clubs, tending to a certain indigestion in the mental processes and a flatulent style of English composition. In either case there is no reason why the organisation should revolve about a vortex of tomfoolery and legerdemain into which honest members are apt to be sucked before they realise its true nature.
PART II.
“THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE.”
LETTERS ON VARIOUS SIDES FROM THEOSOPHISTS.
The foregoing chapters appeared in the Westminster Gazette, of October 29th, and nine succeeding issues. They attracted wide notice and comment, and were the subject of allusion in a large part of the London and provincial press. In accordance with their usual custom, the official Theosophists in England are said to have cabled to their leaders abroad to know what line they should take; but, if so, they do not appear to have got any clear answer.
A mass of correspondence was addressed to the Westminster Gazette, and to the author of the articles, some of it from officials, most of it from private members; some admitting that “much is, and all may be true,” others denying everything—in general terms; some throwing over the Vice-President, others lauding him as a model of Theosophic rectitude; some rejoicing (“in confidence”) at the “cleaning-out of this Augean stable of trickery,” others declaring that, proved or disproved, the charges do not matter a pin.
In regard to the repeated accusations that the assailant of the society “waited” till its three Theosophic chiefs were at a distance before challenging them on their “Enquiry,” it was pointed out that they gave nobody any chance to wait, the official Report of the Enquiry being sent round almost on the very day that Mrs. Besant sailed for Australia.