Sir,—You have published slanderous articles against the Theosophical Society, using me as the person; you have asked for a reply; I send it to you and ask that it be given place in your paper.—Yours truly,
William Q. Judge.
Theosophical Society, American Section,
General Secretary’s Office, New York, Nov. 26.
To the Editor of The Westminster Gazette.
Sir,—At the time your articles directed against the Theosophical Society under the above title were appearing, I was lecturing in the country, and only within a few days have I seen your last numbers. Time is required for writing on such a subject, and at this distance from London I cannot be accused of much delay. With the greatest interest and amusement I have read your long series of articles. The writer is an able man, and you and he together constitute one of the advertising agencies of the Theosophical Society. The immense range of your notices cannot be well calculated, and very truly we could never pay for such an advertisement. Do you mind keeping this part of my letter as all the remuneration we can give you for the work done by you in thus advertising the movement and bringing prominently to the notice of your public the long-forgotten but true doctrine of the possible existence of such beings as Professor Huxley says it would be impertinent to say could not exist in the natural order of evolution?
And while I look at it all as an advertisement, I cannot admire the treason developed therein, nor the spiteful unworthy tone of it, nor the divergence from fact in many cases when it suited the purpose, nor the officious meddling in the private affairs of other people, nor the ignoring and falsification in respect to possible motive, made out by you to be gain by some of us, when the fact is that we are all losers of money by our work. That fact a candid person would have stated, and marvelled at it that we should be willing to slave for the Theosophical Society, and always spend our money. Such a person would have given “the devil his due.” You have suppressed it and lied about it, and hence it is not admirable in you, but is quite mean and low. You advertise us and then try to befoul us. Well, we gain by the advertisement, and the course of time will wipe off the small stain you try to paint upon us. When you and your ready writer are both dead and forgotten, and some of you probably execrated for offences not as yet exposed, we will still live as a body and be affecting the course of modern thought, as we have been doing for nearly twenty years.
I am the principal object of your attack, though you also cruelly abuse a woman who has long enough fought the world of your conventional nation, and perhaps you expect me to either rise and explain, or keep silent. Well, I will do neither. I will speak, but cannot fully explain. Your paper is a worldly forum, a sort of court. In it there is neither place nor credence for explanations which must include psychic things, facts, and laws, as well as facts and circumstances of the ordinary sort. Were I to explain in full, no one would believe me save those students of the occult and the psychical who know psychic law and fact. Those who doubt and wish all to be reduced to the level of compass and square, of eye and word of mouth, would still be doubters. Nothing would be gained at all. That difficulty no intelligent person who has had psychic experience can overlook. That is why you are quite safe from a suit for libel. I assure you that had you published something not so inextricably tangled up with psychic phenomena I should be glad to have you in court, not to soothe wounded feelings I have not, but to show that our faulty law and so-called justice do sometimes right some wrongs.
Let me first emphatically deny the inference and assertion made by you, that I and my friends make money out of the T.S., or that the organisation has built up something by which we profit. This is untrue, and its untruth is known to all persons who know anything at all about the society. No salaries are paid to our officers. We support ourselves or privately support each other. I have never had a penny from the society, and do not want any. The little magazine, the Path, which I publish here in the interest of the society, is not supported by subscriptions from members, but largely by others, and it is kept up at a loss to me which will never be repaid. I publish it because I wish to, and not for gain. Thousands of dollars are expended in the T.S. work here each year over and above what is paid in for fees and dues. The dues are but four shillings a year, and three times as much as that is expended in the work. Where does it come from? Out of our private pockets, and if I had a million I would spend it that way. My friends and myself give our money and our time to the society without hope or desire for any return. We may be fanatics—probably are—but it is false and malicious to accuse us of using the society for gain. The only payment we get is the seeing every day the wider and wider spread of Theosophical theories of life, man, and nature. I am ready to submit all our books and vouchers to any auditor to support these statements. And you were in a position to find out the facts as I have given them.
It is also absolutely untrue, as you attempt to show or infer, that the society grows by talking of the Mahatmas or Masters, or by having messages sent round from them. The movement here and elsewhere is pushed along the line of philosophy, and each one is left to decide for himself on the question of the Mahatmas. “Messages from the Masters” do not go flying round, and the society does not flourish by any belief in those being promulgated. Nor am I, as you hint, in the habit of sending such messages about the society, nor of influencing the course of affairs by using any such thing. Send out and ask all the members and you will find I am correct. It is true that those Masters tell me personally what I am to do, and what is the best course to take, as they have in respect to this very letter, but that is solely my own affair. Could I be such a fool as to tell all others to go by what I get for my own guidance, knowing how weak, suspicious, and malicious is the human nature of to-day? You are on the wrong tack, my friend.