THE END
Footnotes
[1]. Marie Lenéru, Les Affranchis, Act III., Sc. iv.
[2]. This essay forms part of the volume published under the title of Life and Flowers.—Translator’s Note.
[3]. To learn the precise truth about the neotheosophical movement and its first manifestations, the reader should study the striking report drawn up, after an impartial, but strict enquiry, by Dr. Hodgson, who was sent to India for this special purpose by the Society for Psychical Research. In it he unveils, in a masterly fashion, the obvious and often clumsy impositions of the famous Mme. Blavatsky and the whole neotheosophical organization (Proceedings, Vol. III, pp. 201-400: Hodgson’s Report on Phenomena connected with Theosophy).
[4]. How strict these investigations are is shown by the perpetual attacks on the S.P.R. in the spiritualistic press, which constantly refers to it as the Society “for the suppression of facts,” “for the wholesale imputation of imposture,” “for the discouragement of the sensitive and for the repudiation of every revelation of the kind which was said to be pressing itself upon humanity from the regions of light and knowledge.”
[5]. It would, however, be unjust to assert that all these apparitions are open to question. For instance, it is impossible to deny the reality of the celebrated Katie King, the double of Florence Cook, whose actions and movements were rigorously investigated and controlled by a man like Sir William Crookes for a period of three years. But, looked upon as a proof of survival—notwithstanding that Katie King professed to be a dead person who had returned to earth to expiate certain sins—her manifestations are not so valuable as the communications obtained since her time. In any case, they bring us no revelation concerning existence beyond the grave; and Katie, who was so young, so much alive, whose pulsations could be counted, whose heart was heard beating, who was photographed, who distributed locks of her hair to those present, who replied to every question put to her, Katie herself never uttered a word on the subject of the secrets of the next world.
[6]. Those who take up the study of these supernormal manifestations usually ask themselves:
“Why mediums? Why make use of these often questionable and always inadequate intermediaries?”