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The Formation of the Esoteric Section

In April, 1886, H.P.B. wrote a long and important letter to Dr. Franz Hartmann in reply to questions and problems raised by him. Dr. Hartmann, it will be remembered, was at Adyar before, during, and subsequent to the Coulomb charges, the Indian Convention's practical desertion of H.P.B., Mr. Hodgson's investigations for the S.P.R., the resignation and departure of H.P.B. He was familiar with much of the unwritten history of that eventful period. He learned enough, and his intuitions were sufficiently awake, to make him the faithful and loyal friend of both H.P.B., and W.Q.J., through all the troubled voyage of the Theosophical ship. H.P.B.'s letter to him was forced into publicity by the necessities of a decade later. It will be found in full in The Path, for March, 1896.

After acknowledging his letter she says:

"What you say in it seems to me like an echo of my own thoughts in many a way; only knowing the truth and the real state of things in the

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"Occult world" better than you do, I am perhaps able to see better also where the real mischief was and lies."

What the truth and the real state of things was in connection with the facts and factors underlying the course of events we are considering is discussed at length:

"As to... that portion of your letter where you speak of the 'army' of the deluded - and the "imaginary" Mahatmas of Olcott - you are absolutely and sadly right. Have I not seen the thing for nearly eight years? Have I not struggled and fought against Olcott's ardent and gushing imagination, and tried to stop him every day of my life? Was he not told by me... that if he did not see the Masters in their true light, and did not cease speaking and enflaming people's imaginations, that he would be held responsible for all the evil the Society might come to?...

"Ah, if by some psychological process you could be made to see the whole truth I ... I was sent to America on purpose and sent to the Eddys. There I found Olcott in love with spirits, as he became in love with the Masters later on. I was ordered to let him know that spiritual phenomena without the philosophy of Occultism were dangerous and misleading. I proved to him that all that mediums could do through spirits others could do at will without any spirits at all.... Well; I told him the whole truth. I said to him that I had known Adepts,... That... Adepts were everywhere Adepts - silent, secret, retiring, and who would never divulge themselves entirely to anyone, unless one did as I did - passed seven and ten years' probation and given proofs of absolute devotion, and that he, or she, would keep silent even before a prospect and a threat of death. I fulfilled

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the requirements and am what I am; and this no Hodgson, no Coulombs, no Sellin, (1) can take away from me....

"When we arrived [in India] and Master coming to Bombay bodily, paid a visit to us... Olcott became crazy. He was like Balaam's she-ass when she saw the angel! Then came other fanatics who began calling them 'Mahatmas'; and, little by little, the Adepts were transformed into Gods on earth. They began to be appealed to, and made puja to, and were becoming with every day more legendary and miraculous.... Well between this idea of Mahatmas and Olcott's rhapsodies, what could I do? I saw with terror and anger the false track they were all pursuing. The "Masters," as all thought, must be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent.... The Masters knew all; why did they not help the devotee? If a mistake or a flapdoodle was committed in the Society - 'How could the Masters allow you or Olcott to do so?' we were asked in amazement. The idea that the Masters were mortal men, limited even in their great powers, never crossed anyone's mind....

"Is it Olcott's fault? perhaps, to a degree. Is it mine? I absolutely deny it, and protest against the accusation. It is no one's fault. Human nature alone, and the failure of modern society and religions to furnish people with something higher and nobler than craving after money and honors - is at the bottom of it. Place this failure on one side, and the mischief and havoc produced in people's brains by modern spiritualism, and you have the enigma solved. Olcott to this day is sincere, true and devoted to the cause. He does and acts the best he knows how, and the mistakes and absurdities he has

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(1) A German professor and spiritualist to whom Dr. Hubbe-Schleiden turned for "messages," after his breach with H.P.B., and who, like Mr. Sinnett's "psychics," charged her with bogus communications.

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committed and commits to this day are due to something he lacks in the psychological portion of his brain, and he is not responsible for it. Loaded and heavy is his Karma, poor man, but much must be forgiven to him, for he has always erred through lack of right judgment, not from any vicious propensity."

This letter, it will be noted, was written a year after H.P.B.'s departure from India, a little over a year before the foundation of Lucifer, and forms part of the chain of time and action leading to the formation of the Esoteric Section. Both H.P.B. and Mr. Judge from then on made the most strenuous efforts, publicly and privately, in preparations for the restoration of the Society, in Europe and America at least, to a semblance of its original lines, through the Esoteric Section. The obstacles, internally, lay in misconceptions of the philosophy, in the erroneous ideas in regard to the nature of the Masters, in the deeply rooted preconceived opinions of Col. Olcott and many others as to the purposes of the Society. From their point of view the Society had achieved a magnificent success and, under their guidance and direction, was on the highroad to still greater conquests; its drawbacks and limitations chiefly due to the "mistakes" and the "interferences" of H.P.B. How intensely these opinions affected Mr. Sinnett we shall find in due course. (2) How entirely they governed the outlook and controlled the attitude of Col. Olcott we have now to witness. Turning to "Old Diary Leaves," we may join him in India in the summer of 1887, shortly after H.P.B. had removed to London. Beginning with the last chapter of his Third Series he says:

"At Chupra, among my foreign letters I received one from H.P.B. which distressed me much. She had consented to start a new magazine with capital subscribed by London friends

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(2) See also in this connection Mr. Sinnett's posthumous book, "The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe."

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of hers, while she was still editor and half proprietor of the Theosophist - a most unusual and unbusinesslike proceeding. Besides other causes, among them the persuasion of English friends, a reason which strongly moved her to this was that Mr. Cooper-Oakley, her own appointee as Managing Editor, had more or less sided with T. Subba Row in a dispute which had sprung up between him and H.P.B. on the question whether the 'principles' which go to the makeup of a human being were seven or five in number. Subba Row had replied in our pages to an article of hers on the subject, and her letters to me about it were most bitter and denunciatory of Cooper-Oakley, whom she, without reasonable cause, charged with treachery. It was one of those resistless impulses which carried her away sometimes into extreme measures. She wanted me to take away his editorial authority, and even sent me a foolish document, like a power-of-attorney, empowering me to send him to Coventry, so to say, and not allow any galleyproof to pass to the printer until initialed by myself. Of course, I remonstrated strongly against her thus, without precedent, setting up a rival competing magazine to hurt as much as possible the circulation and influence of our old established organ, on the title-page of which her name still appeared. But it was useless to protest; she said she was determined to have a magazine in which she could say what she pleased, and in due time Lucifer appeared as her personal organ, and I got on as well as I could without her. Meanwhile, a lively interchange of letters went on between us. She was at strife then, more or less, with Mr. Sinnett, and before this was settled, a number of seceders from his London Lodge organized as the Blavatsky Lodge, and met at her house in Lansdowne Road, where her sparkling personality

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and vast knowledge of Occult things always ensured full meetings."

In the second chapter of the Fourth Series, which Col. Olcott heads, "The Fears of H.P.B.," he says, by way of preface:

"When I look back through my papers of those days of stress and storm, and read the letters written me from exile by Mme. Blavatsky, the solemn feeling comes over me that the binding mortar of its blocks was stiffened by the blood of her heart, and in her anguish were they laid. She was the Teacher, I the pupil; she the misunderstood and insulted messenger of the Great Ones, I the practical brain to plan, the right hand to work out the practical details."

After a desultory sentence or two the "pupil" continues in regard to his Teacher, the "misunderstood messenger of the Great Ones":

"It is painful beyond words to read her correspondence from Europe, and see how she suffered from various causes, fretting and worrying too often over mares' nests. Out of the sorest grievances I select the defection of T. Subba Rao [Row]; the admission into the Theosophist by the Sub-Editor (whom she had herself appointed) of articles which she considered antagonistic to the Trans-Himalayan teachings; the refusal of Subba Rao to edit the Secret Doctrine MSS., contrary to his original promise,... his wholesale condemnation of it; the personal quarrels of various European colleagues; the war between Mr. Judge and Dr. Coues in America; the threatened renewal of persecution against her if she returned to India, as we begged her to do;..."

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On p. 41 he continues:

"Things were growing more and more unpleasant at Adyar on account of the friction between H.P.B. and T. Subba Rao and certain of his Anglo-Indian backers. They even went so far as to threaten withdrawal from the Society and the publication of a rival magazine if H.P.B. did not treat them better."

On p. 47 he says:

"Portents of a coming storm in our European groups, stirred up or intensified by H.P.B., begin to show themselves, and Judge complains of our neglecting him. Just then Dr. Coues was working hard for the notoriety he craved, and Judge was opposing him."

Finally, on p. 51, referring to the same year (1888) Col. Olcott relates:

"The last week in June brought me a vexatious letter from H.P.B., indicative of a storm of trouble that was raging in and about her."

Chapter IV of the Fourth Series is entitled "Formation of the Esoteric Section," and continues Col. Olcott's reminiscences of this momentous epoch. He first pays tribute to H.P.B. and then proceeds to soliloquize - always to the issue that he was the saviour of the Society against the weaknesses and mistakes of H.P.B. Thus:

"It was remarked at the end of the last chapter that we were now about to review some disagreeable incidents of the year in which H.P.B. was a conspicuous factor. If she had been just an ordinary person hidden behind the screen of domesticity, this history of the development of

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the Theosophical movement might have been written without bringing her on the stage; or if the truth had been told about her by friend and foe I might have left her to be dealt with by her karma, showing, of course, what great part she had played in it, and to how great a credit she was entitled. But she has shared the fate of all public characters of mark in human affairs, having been absurdly flattered and worshiped by one party, and mercilessly wronged by the other. Unless, then, her most intimate friend and colleague, the surviving builder-up of the movement, had cast aside the reserve he had all along maintained, and would have preferred to preserve, the real personage would never have been understood by her contemporaries, nor justice done to her really grand character. That she was great in the sense of the thorough altruism of her public work is unquestionable: in her times of exaltation self was drowned in the yearning to spread knowledge and do her Master's bidding. She never sold her rich store of occult knowledge for money, nor bartered instruction for personal advantage. She valued her life as nothing as balanced against service, and would have given it as joyfully as any religious martyr if the occasion had seemed to demand the sacrifice. These tendencies and characteristic traits she had brought over with her from a long line of incarnations in which she (and in some, we) had been engaged in like service; they were the aspects of her individuality, high, noble, ideally loyal, worthy, not of being worshipped - for no human being ought to be made the cause of slavish adoration - but of aspiration to be like it."

Then the wise pupil, sure of his own discrimination and judgment, proceeds to point out the weaknesses and failings with which his Teacher is afflicted:

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"Her personality is quite another affair, and afforded a strong background to throw out her interior brightness into stronger relief. In the matter under present discussion, for instance, the front she presents to me in her letters is unlovely to a degree: language violent, passion raging, scorn and satire poorly covered by a skin of soft talk; a disposition to break through the 'red tape' of the Society's mild constitution, and to rule or ruin as I might decide to ratify or disavow her arbitrary and utterly unconstitutional acts; a sniffing at the Council and Councillors, whom she did not choose to have stand in her way, a sharp and slashing criticism of certain of her European co-workers, especially of the one most prominent in that part of the movement, whose initials she parenthesized after the word 'Satan,' and an appeal that I should not let our many years of associated work be lost in the breaking up of the T.S. into two unrelated bodies, the Eastern and Western Theosophical Societies. In short, she writes like a mad person and in the tone of a hyperexcited hysterical woman,... Yet, ill in body and upset in mind as she may have been, she was still a mighty factor for me to deal with, and forced me to choose which line of policy I should pursue. The first count in her indictment against me (for, of course, more suo, it was all my fault) was that I had decided against her favourite in an arbitration I had held at Paris, that year, between two opposing parties among the French Theosophists; it was, she writes me, 'no mistake, but a crime perpetrated by you against Theosophy (doubly underscored), in full knowledge of what X is and fear of Y. Olcott, my friend you are - , but I do not want to hurt your feelings, and will not say to you what you are. If you do not feel and realize it yourself, then all I can say will be useless. As for P.

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[a Frenchman, subsequently expelled from the Society], you have put yourself entirely in his hands, and you have sacrificed Theosophy, and even the honour of the T.S. in France, out of fear of that wretched little - ."

Although on page 23 he specifically declares that "she refused point-blank to lead any Society that did not recognize Adyar as its central head," - a sheer assertion of his own stated in a manner to indicate it as an indirect citation from one of her letters - on p. 55 he contradicts himself de but en blanc by quoting directly from her correspondence:

"She had hatched out a new section, with herself elected as "President," taken a commodious house, and had a sign-board ready to have painted on it either "European Headquarters of the T.S." or "Western Theosophical Society." Seeming to suspect that I might not like it very much to have the whole machinery of the Society upset to gratify her whim, and remembering of old that the more she threatened the more stubborn it made me, she writes:

"'Now look here, Olcott. It is very painful, most painful, for me to have to put you what the French call marche en main, and to have you choose. You will say again that you "hate threats," and these will only make you more stubborn. But this is no threat at all, but a fait accompli. It remains with you to either ratify it or to go against it, and declare war on me and my Esotericists. If, recognizing the utmost necessity of the step, you submit to the inexorable evolution of things, nothing will be changed. Adyar and Europe will remain allies, and to all appearance, the latter will seem to be subject to the former. If you do not ratify it - well, then there will be two

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Theosophical Societies, the old Indian and the new European, entirely independent of each other.'"

Colonel Olcott says that "This stand-and-deliver ultimatum naturally frightened the 'mild Hindu' members of our Executive Council to fits," and that "The Paris arbitration above referred to occurred during my European visit of 1888, which kept me there from 26th August to 22nd October, and was made at the entreaty of the Executive Council, as the tone of H.P.B.'s letters had alarmed them for the stability of the movement in the West. The tour should, by rights, have been mentioned before the incidents of the threatened split above alluded to, but H.P.B.'s letters lying nearest to hand, and the trouble being continuous through the two successive years [1888-9], I took it up first."

He then gives the "true history" of the "Paris imbroglio," raging in the "Isis" branch of the T.S. over its conduct by M.F.K. Gaboriau, the editor of Le Lotus. Colonel Olcott says:

"In doing this he had become involved in disputes, in which H.P.B. had taken his side, and made a bad mess for me by giving him, in her real character of Co-Founder and her assumed one of my representative, with full discretionary powers, a charter of a sweeping and unprecedented character, which practically let him do as he pleased. This was, of course, protested against by some of his soberer colleagues, recriminations arose, and an appeal was made to me."

Colonel Olcott characterizes M. Gaboriau as a "hypersensitive young man... who showed an excessive enthusiasm for Theosophy, but small executive faculty."

Colonel Olcott proceeded to Paris and on the 17th September read his formal "decision" to the assembled members. The account in "Old Diary Leaves" recites:

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"My action in this affair was taken according to my best judgment, after hearing all that was to be said and seeing everybody concerned; I believe it to have been the best under existing circumstances, though it threw M. Gaboriau out of the active running, caused him and some of his few followers to denounce me unqualifiedly, and led to a pitched battle, as one might say, between H.P.B. and myself on my return to London. The sequel is above shown in her revolutionary action with respect to the reorganization at London... Nearly all the persons engaged in the Paris quarrel were to blame, they having given way to personal jealousies, obliterated the landmarks of the Society, fallen into a strife for supremacy, with mutual abuse, oral and printed...."

Judging from the account in "Old Diary Leaves" Olcott was the savior of the T.S. and the Movement, against the "language violent," the "passion raging," the "arbitrary and utterly unconstitutional acts," the "disposition to rule or ruin," the "breaking-up of the T.S. into two unrelated bodies," the "stand-and-deliver ultimatum," the "bad mess" created by H.P.B. - the "mad person," the "conspicuous factor" in the "disagreeable incidents," the "hyperexcited hysterical woman."

In the case in point, the student may turn to the actual "official decision" of Col. Olcott, in contrast to his story as given in "Old Diary Leaves," and there learn whether H.P.B. exceeded her "constitutional powers" in the "Isis Branch" imbroglio. In his own words, as recorded in that "decision":

"It has been objected that Mme. Blavatsky had not the right to act in this matter; that her interference was illegal according to the Rules of the Theosophical Society.... But, in point of fact, Mme. Blavatsky is... with me Co-

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Founder of the Society, Corresponding Secretary and, ex officio, member of the General Council, of the Executive Council and of the Annual Convention, a sort of Parliament held at Adyar by delegates from all countries....

"She was, then, perfectly authorized (competente) to issue the order in question as a temporary measure, an order which must be finally submitted for approbation to the President in Council. The Executive Council, in its session of 14th July, formally ratified the measure taken by Mme. Blavatsky, a measure which was urgent, and which I declare to have been legal...."

The absolute contradiction between the facts and the story given in "Old Diary Leaves" with its inferences and derogatory statements in regard to H.P.B., shows the utter unreliability of Col. Olcott when his feelings were involved, or when the full facts place him in an unenviable light. Only in the light of a "probationary chela" in the fiery furnace of "pledge fever" can his contradictions be understood and so reconciled with the real honesty of his nature and the genuine devotion which he manifested for the Theosophical Society, of which he was President-Founder and which was the be-all and end-all of existence to him. So identified was it with himself in his consciousness, that more and more he came to view and treat any differences with himself, any correction by his Teacher, as an assault and a menace on the Society.

Colonel Olcott's comments, strictures, and judgments on H.P.B., of which those herein given are but samples of many, stand in melancholy contrast to the Master's own statements in a letter to Col. Olcott at this very time. It is a characteristic anachronism that leads Col. Olcott, in "Old Diary Leaves," Third Series, Chapter VIII, to relate this letter to the joint visit of H.P.B. and himself to Europe in 1884 and the troubles then prevalent in the London Lodge; instead of, as was the

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fact, to the very matters we are considering, in 1888. This letter, which, says Col. Olcott at p. 91, "I received phenomenally in my cabin on board the Shannon, the day before we reached Brindisi," is but barely referred to by the Colonel. No one could by any possibility infer the transcendent importance of its contents from the brief quotation given by him. Its textual omission from "Old Diary Leaves" is amply accounted for, (1) by the contents of the letter itself; (2) by the failing faculties of Col. Olcott when "Old Diary Leaves" was written. The brief quotation he gives, however, is sufficient to identify the letter itself, as is also the fact stated that it was received on board the Shannon, which was the vessel in which he voyaged in 1888, not in 1884; and, no less, the citations in Lucifer for October 15, 1888, where it is stated by H.P.B. that the letter was received by Col. Olcott "only a few weeks ago." The same number of Lucifer gives extracts from the letter, the extracts being certified by Col. Olcott himself. Fuller extracts were contained in a pamphlet sent out at the time, entitled "To All Theosophists." The complete text of the letter came to the light of general publicity only after many years. It will be found in the volume, "Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom."

Several momentous facts should be borne in mind in connection with this letter: It was "phenomenally" delivered to Col. Olcott who was voyaging alone, and was at sea, a day from Brindisi, when it was received. Its contents show that it was "precipitated," but a very short time before it was received by the Colonel - a matter of hours or minutes; it refers prophetically as well as historically to other subjects, to which we shall refer later on. (3) At this point it is enough to introduce those extracts which directly relate to Col. Olcott and H.P.B. and shed a clear and authoritative light on their respective natures, status, and functions, no less than on the hidden aspects of the events under consideration. The Master addresses Col. Olcott without preamble or circumlocution:

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(3) See Chapters XV and XXIII.

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Again, as you approach London, I have a word or two to say to you. Your impressibility is so changeful that I must not wholly depend upon it at this critical time. Of course you know that things were so brought to a focus as to necessitate the present journey.... Put all needed restraint upon your feelings, so that you may do the right thing in this Western imbroglio. Watch your first impressions. The mistakes you make spring from failure to do this. Let neither your personal predilections, affections, suspicions nor antipathies affect your action....

"Your revolt, good friend, against her 'infallibility' - , as you once thought it - has gone too far, and you have been unjust to her, for which I am sorry to say, you will have to suffer hereafter, along with others. Just now - on deck, your thoughts about her were dark and sinful, and so I find the moment a fitting one to put you on your guard....

"Make all these men feel that we have no favourites, nor affections for persons, but only for their good acts and humanity as a whole. But we employ agents - the best available. Of these for the past thirty years, the chief has been the personality known as H.P.B. to the world (but otherwise to us). Imperfect and very 'troublesome,' no doubt, she proves to some; nevertheless, there is no likelihood of our finding a better one for years to come, and your theosophists should be made to understand it.... Her fidelity to our work being constant, and her sufferings having come upon her through it, neither I nor either of my brother associates will desert or supplant her. As I once before remarked, ingratitude is not among our vices. With yourself our relations are direct, and have been, with the rare exceptions you know of, like the present, on the psychical plane, and so will continue through force of circumstances. That

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they are so rare - is your own fault as I told you in my last. To help you in your present perplexity; H.P.B. has next to no concern with administrative details, and should be kept clear of them, so far as her strong nature can be controlled, but this you must tell to all: - with Occult matters she has everything to do. We have not 'abandoned' her. She is not 'given over to chelas.' She is our direct agent. I warn you against permitting your suspicions and resentment against 'her many follies' to bias your intuitive loyalty to her. In the adjustment of this European business, you will have two things to consider - the external and administrative, and the internal and psychical. Keep the former under your control and that of your most prudent associates jointly; leave the latter to her. You are left to devise the practical details with your usual ingenuity. Only be careful, I say, to discriminate when some emergent interference of hers in practical affairs is referred to you on appeal, between that which is merely exoteric in origin and effects, and that which beginning on the practical tends to beget consequences on the spiritual plane. As to the former you are the best judge, as to the latter, she....

There have been sore trials in the past, others await you in the future. May the faith and courage which have supported you hitherto endure to the end....

This letter... is merely given you as a warning and a guide...."

This letter from the Master, and the influence of H.P.B., prevailed for the time to restore the poise of Col. Olcott, to put him in his proper place, and to prevent any open breach in the Theosophical ranks. As in the spring of 1885, H.P.B. made every effort to shield Olcott himself, no less than the Society at large, from the bad consequences of his ill-advised actions. A "Joint

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Note" was published in Lucifer along with the extracts from the Master's letter, from the official "decision" of Col. Olcott, and the notice of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society. The form, both of the "Joint Note" and of the "Notice" was made, as with the notices in The Theosophist in the spring of 1885, to shield Col. Olcott in his position of President-Founder of the T. S., and to uphold as far as possible his standing before the membership. The "Joint Note" is as follows:

"To dispel a misconception that has been engendered by mischief-makers, we, the undersigned, Founders of the Theosophical Society, declare that there is no enmity, rivalry, strife, or even coldness, between us, nor ever was; nor any weakening of our joint devotion to the Masters, or to our work, with the execution of which they have honoured us. Widely dissimilar in temperament and mental characteristics, and differing sometimes in views as to methods of propagandism, we are yet absolutely of one mind as to that work. As we have been from the first, so are we now united in purpose and zeal, and ready to sacrifice all, even life, for the promotion of theosophical knowledge, to the saving of mankind from the miseries which spring from ignorance.

- H.P. Blavatsky

H.S. Olcott"

The public Notice of the Esoteric Section reads:

"The Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society

"Owing to the fact that a large number of Fellows of the Society have felt the necessity for the formation of a body of Esoteric Students, to be organized on the Original Lines devised by the real founders of the T.S., the

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following order has been issued by the President-Founder:

"I. To promote the esoteric interests of the Theosophical Society by the deeper study of esoteric philosophy, there is hereby organized a body, to be known as the 'Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society.'

"II. The constitution and sole direction of the same is vested in Madame H.P. Blavatsky, as its Head; she is solely responsible to the Members for results; and the section has no official or corporate connection with the Esoteric Society save in the person of the President-Founder.

"III. Persons wishing to join the Section and willing to abide by its rules, should communicate directly with Mme. H.P. Blavatsky, 17 Lansdowne Road, Holland Park, London, W.

(Signed) H.S. OLCOTT, President in Council.

"Attest: H.P. Blavatsky"

The astonishing admixture of complacency and naivete exhibited in "Old Diary Leaves" is well illustrated by the following extracts, summing up, from Col. Olcott's point of view, the "title role" played by himself:

"I called two Conventions at London of the British Branches, organized and chartered a British Section of the T.S., and issued an order in Council forming an Esoteric Section, with Madame Blavatsky as its responsible head.... This was the beginning of the E.S.T. movement. ... The reason for my throwing the whole responsibility for results upon H.P.B. was that she had already made one failure in this direction at Adyar in 1884... and I did not care to be responsible for the fulfilment of any special engagements she might make with the new set of students she was now gathering about her, in

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her disturbed state of mind. I helped her write some of her instructions, and did all I could to make the way easy for her, but that was all....

My tour realized the objects in view, H.P.B. being pacified, our affairs in Great Britain put in order, and the E. S. started; but... the calm was not destined to last and a second visit to Europe had to be made in 1889, after my return from Japan."

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The Work of the Esoteric Section

After the admission that "the Annual Convention of the General Council has ceased to be, save in name, the true parliament or congress of the Branches," the report nevertheless goes on to affirm that the "fair thing" was "evidently to extend the sectional scheme to all countries," while yet "keeping the Headquarters as the hub and the President-Founder as the axle of this wheel of many spokes under the car of Progress... with the central point where the President-Founder represents and wields the executive authority of the entire undivided body known as the Theosophical Society."

"The President-Founder's Address" to the Convention opens with an argument to show that he "should be left with the widest discretion" in the management of the Society. Col. Olcott sums up:

"The time has come when I should say, most distinctly and unequivocally, that since I am to stay and be responsible for the progress of the work, I shall not consent to any plan or scheme which hinders me in the performance of my official duty.

"... I have never interfered with the esoteric or metaphysical part, nor set myself up as a competent teacher. That is Madame Blavatsky's specialty; and the better to enunciate that

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idea I have just issued an Order in Council in London creating an Esoteric Section under her sole direction, as a body, or group, entirely separate and distinct from the Society proper and involving the latter in no responsibilities toward those who might choose to enroll themselves in her list of adherents.

"... This is my determination: To be.... loyal and staunch to the colleague you and I, and all of us know and a few of us appreciate at her true worth. This is my last word on that subject; but in saying it I do not mean to imply that I shall not freely use my own judgment, independently of Madame Blavatsky's, in every case calling for my personal action, nor that I shall not ever be most willing and anxious to receive and profit by the counsel of every true person who has at heart the interests of the Society. I cannot please all: it is folly to try; the wise man does his duty as he can see it before him."

The Address gives in brief the story of the troubles in Paris and London. Though these events were then all fresh in his mind; though the Master's words were still ringing in his ears; though the generous protection of H.P.B. still enveloped him and enabled him to "save his face" before the rank and file of the membership - the attitude taken and view expressed testify the same invincible self-complacency that at last wholly absorbed the probationary chela in the President-Founder. Thus"

"It was by the Executive Council found expedient that I should proceed to Europe and attempt to bring our affairs into order. We saw the Continental Branches languishing for lack of superintendence and reciprocal work, although there was reason to hope that the movement might be greatly strengthened and ex-

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panded under the proper organization.... I formed new Branches...; dischartered the old 'Isis' Branch at Paris and chartered a new one...; called two Conventions in London...; organized and chartered a British Section of the Theosophical Society; and issued an order in Council forming an Esoteric Section of the Society, with Madame Blavatsky as its responsible head. The trouble in the Paris Branch was solely due - as we have almost invariably found to be the case - to personal jealousies and disagreements. The landmarks of the Society had been obliterated and forgotten; there had arisen a strife for supremacy, and, instead of setting the public an example of zealous fraternal union for the propagation of our ideas, the members had fallen to mutual abuse, oral and printed. Both parties were to blame, as I found after patient examination of the documents...."

In no part of Col. Olcott's published statements is there a hint that might be construed that he at any time found himself in any way at fault; on the contrary, there is everywhere the continuous holding out of himself as the all-important factor in bringing order out of chaos, in holding the Society true to its purposes. Nowhere appears the faintest glimmer of perception that he himself might be the weakest joint in the Society's armor; that it was his failures as a probationer which were constantly upsetting his work as Executive.

It is intensely interesting and instructive to turn from the Adyar parliament to the proceedings of the Convention of the American Section in the April following. Delegates and proxies, democratically elected, were in attendance from all of the twenty-five active Lodges in the United States. The only one not represented was the Gnostic of Washington, D.C., controlled by Dr. Elliott Coues, whose case we shall shortly consider.

The spirit and energizing direction of the American section, the devotion to a Cause rather than to its in-

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strument, the Society, as contrasted with the work in India under Col. Olcott's autocratic control, are well typified in Madame Blavatsky's Letter to the Convention, presented by Mr. Judge in these words: "I have received from our revered founder, Madame H.P. Blavatsky, a letter for this Convention... and beg to lay it before you."

The four Letters of H.P.B. to the Conventions of the American Section are unique. They are the only addresses of H.P.B. to any Theosophical bodies, for she never thus honored either the Indian, the British, or the European Sections. These Letters are the public authoritative statements by the Agent of the Masters in enunciation of the real basis of the Theosophical Society and of all Theosophical endeavor, esoteric and exoteric. This second Letter was written soon after the issuance of the Preliminary Memorandum and First Instruction to the members of the Esoteric Section. The Letter shows the real spirit of the Movement in the West, the ever-existent dangers to be confronted, her insistent endeavor to keep the line energized in the true direction, and illustrates her exoteric handling of the situation. Thus:

But you in America. Your Karma as a nation has brought Theosophy home to you. The life of the Soul, the psychic side of nature, is open to many of you. The life of altruism is not so much a high ideal as a matter of practice. Naturally, then, Theosophy finds a home in many hearts and minds, and strikes a resounding harmony as soon as it reaches the ears of those who are ready to listen. There, then, is part of your work: to lift high the torch of the liberty of the Soul of Truth that all may see it and benefit by its light.

Therefore it is that the Ethics of Theosophy are even more necessary to mankind than the scientific aspects of the psychic facts of nature and man...

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"... Once before was growth checked in connection with the psychic phenomena, and there may yet come a time when the moral and ethical foundations of the Society may be wrecked in a similar way. What can be done to prevent such a thing is for each Fellow of the Society to make Theosophy a vital factor in their lives - to make it real, to weld its principles firmly into their lives - in short, to make it their own and treat the Theosophical Society as if it were themselves. Following closely on this is the necessity for Solidarity among the Fellows of the Society; the acquisition of such a feeling of identity with each and all of our Brothers that an attack upon one is an attack upon all...."

These statements were at once the recital of history, a warning, an admonition, and, as events have all too plainly proved, a prophecy. Where the danger ever lies, and how to meet it, are considered:

"We have external enemies to fight in the shape of materialism, prejudice, and obstinacy; the enemies in the shape of custom and religious forms; enemies too numerous to mention, but nearly as thick as the sand-clouds which are raised by the blasting Sirocco of the desert. Do we not need our strength against these foes? Yet, again, there are more insidious foes, who 'take our name in vain,' and who make Theosophy a by-word in the mouths of men and the Theosophical Society a mark at which to throw mud. They slander Theosophists and Theosophy, and convert the moral Ethics into a cloak to conceal their own selfish objects. And as if this were not sufficient, there are the worst foes of all - those of a man's own household - Theosophists who are unfaithful both to the Society and to themselves...

"Let us, for a moment, glance backwards at

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the ground we have passed over. We have ha.... to hold our own against the Spiritists, in the name of Truth and Spiritual Science. Not against the students of the true psychic knowledge, nor against the enlightened Spiritualists; but against the lower order of phenomenalists - the blind worshipers of the illusionary phantoms of the Dead. These we have fought for the sake of Truth, and also for that of the world which they were misleading.... Unless prepared carefully by a long and special course of study, the experimentalist risks not only the medium's soul but his own. The experiments made in Hypnotism and Mesmerism at the present time are experiments of unconscious, when not of conscious, Black Magic. The road is wide and broad which leads to such destruction; and it is but too easy to find; and only too many go ignorantly along it to their own destruction. But the practical cure of it lies in one thing. That is the course of study which I mentioned before. It sounds very simple, but it is eminently difficult; for that cure is "ALTRUISM." And this is the key-note of Theosophy and the cure for all ills; this it is which the real founders of the Theosophical Society promote as its first object - UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD.

"Thus even if only in name a body of Altruists, the Theosophical Society has to fight all who under its cover seek to obtain magical powers to use for their own selfish ends and to the hurt of others. Many are those who joined our Society for no other purpose than curiosity. Psychological phenomena were what they sought, and they were unwilling to yield one iota of their own pleasure and habits to obtain them. These very quickly went away empty-handed. The Theosophical Society has never been and never will be a school of promiscuous Theurgic rites. But there are dozens of small occult Societies

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which talk very glibly of Magic, Occultism, Rosicrucians, Adepts, etc. These profess much, even to giving the key to the Universe, but end by leading men to a blank wall instead of the "Door of the Mysteries." These are some of our most insidious foes. Under cover of the philosophy of the Wisdom-Religion they manage to get up a mystical jargon which for the time is effective and enables them, by the aid of a very small amount of clairvoyance, to fleece the mystically inclined but ignorant aspirants to the occult, and lead them like sheep in almost any direction... But woe to those who try to convert a noble philosophy into a den of disgusting immorality, greediness for selfish power, and money-making under the cloak of Theosophy. Karma reaches them when least expected. But is it possible for our Society to stand by and remain respected, unless its members are prepared, at least in future, to stand like one man, and deal with such slanders upon themselves as true Theosophists, and such vile caricatures of their highest ideals.... ?

"But in order that we may be able to effect this working on behalf of our common cause, we have to sink all private differences. Many are the energetic members ... who wish to work and to work hard. But the price of their assistance is that all the work must be done in their way and not in anyone else's way. And if this is not carried out they sink back into apathy or leave the Society entirely, loudly declaring that they are the only true Theosophists. Or, if they remain, they endeavor to exalt their own method of working at the expense of all other earnest workers. This is fact, but it is not Theosophy. There can be no other end to it than that the growth of the Society will soon be split up into various sects, as many as there are leaders.... Is this prospect one to look forward to... ? Is

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this "Separateness" consonant with the united Altruism of Universal Brotherhood? Is this the teaching of our noble Masters?"

The Letter contained a public reference to the Esoteric Section in these words:

"As many of you are aware, we have formed the 'Esoteric Section.' Its members are pledged, among other things, to work for Theosophy under my direction. By it, for one thing, we have endeavored to secure some solidarity in our common work; to form a strong body of resistance against attempts to injure us on the part of the outside world, against prejudice against the Theosophical Society and against me personally. By its means much may be done to nullify the damage to the work of the Society in the past and to vastly further its work in the future."

The Letter closes:

"And now a last and parting word. My words may and will pass and be forgotten, but certain sentences from letters written by the Masters will never pass, because they are the embodiment of the highest practical Theosophy. I must translate them for you: -

"'... Let not the fruit of good Karma be your motive; for your Karma, good or bad, being one and the common property of all mankind, nothing good or bad can happen to you that is not shared by many others. Hence your motive, being selfish, can only generate a double effect, good and bad, and will either nullify your good action, or turn it to another man's profit.... There is no happiness for one who is ever thinking of Self and forgetting all other Selves.

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"'The Universe groans under the weight of such action (Karma), and none other than self-sacrificial Karma relieves it.... How many of you have helped humanity to carry its smallest burden, that you should all regard yourselves as Theosophists? Oh, men of the West, who would play at being the Saviors of mankind before they even spare the life of a mosquito whose sting threatens them! Would you be partakers of Divine Wisdom or true Theosophists? Then do as the gods when incarnated do. Feel yourselves the vehicles of the whole humanity, mankind as part of yourselves, and act accordingly.... '

"These are golden words; may you assimilate them! This is the hope of one who signs herself most sincerely the devoted sister and servant of every true follower of the Masters of Theosophy."

To any sincere student of today the thirty years of history intervening since the date of this Letter furnish their own confirmation and commentary on the prevision, the spiritual insight, the practical common sense and the never-dying courage of H.P.B. They show, as nothing else does or can do, the overwhelming need for a return to the Source of all true Theosophical inspiration and endeavor. This from the esoteric standpoint alone. Permissible extracts from the Preliminary Memorandum to the E.S. applicants show her esoteric treatment of the same problems:

Immediately following upon the publication in Lucifer of the Notice of the formation of the Esoteric Section, H.P.B. sent out to all applicants a formal communication, marked as were all subsequent papers of the Section, strictly private and confidential. It contained an introductory statement, a summary entitled "Rules of the Esoteric Section (Probationary) of the Theosophical Society," the "Pledge of Probationers in the Eso-

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teric Section," and some preliminary questions and requirements to be responded to by the applicant. The introductory paragraphs read as follows:

"I forward you herewith a copy of the Rules and Pledge for Probationers of the Esoteric Section of the T.S.

"Should you be unable to accept them, I request that you will return this to me without delay."

The Rules referred to recite, amongst others, that no one will be admitted who is not a Fellow of the T.S.; that applications for membership in the Esoteric Section must be accompanied by a copy of the Pledge "written out and signed by the Candidate, who thereupon enters upon a special period of probation, which commences from the date of his signature"; that "all members shall be approved by the Head of the Section" - H.P.B. Some hundreds of the most active and earnest Fellows of the T.S. complied with all the formal requirements above outlined, sent in their Pledges, and entered upon their special period of probation. H.P.B. forwarded to all these the First Preliminary Memorandum of the Section. This remarkable document has either been suppressed, altered or ignored, like the Pledge and Rules of the original School, by its unworthy "successors"; while its plain statements of facts, its prescient presentments of principles and their applications to the then present and future, now the past, the present, and the future, have been deliberately disregarded and corrupted.

The Preliminary Memorandum tells the probationers the impelling occasion for the step taken:

"... At this stage it is perhaps better that the applicants should learn the reason for the formation of this Section, and what it is expected to achieve.

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"The Theosophical Society had just entered upon the fourteenth year of its existence; and if it had accomplished great, one may almost say stupendous, results on the exoteric and utilitarian plane, it had proved a dead failure on all those points which rank foremost among the objects of its original establishment. Thus, as a 'Universal Brotherhood,' or even as a fraternity, one among many, it had descended to the level of all those societies whose pretensions are great, but whose names are simply masks - nay, even Shams. Nor can the excuse be pleaded that it was led into such an undignified course owing to its having been impeded in its natural development, and almost extinguished, by reason of the conspiracies of its enemies openly begun in 1884. Because even before that date there never was that solidarity in the ranks of our Society which would not only enable it to resist all external attacks, but also make it possible for greater, wider and more tangible help to be given to all its members by Those who are always ready to give help when we are fit to receive it. When trouble arose, too many were quick to doubt and despair, and few indeed were they who had worked for the Cause and not for themselves. The attacks of the enemy have given the Society some discretion in the conduct of its external progress but its real internal condition has not improved, and the members, in their efforts toward spiritual culture still require that help which solidarity in the ranks can alone give them the right to ask. The Masters can give but little assistance to a Body not thoroughly united in purpose and feeling, and which breaks its first fundamental rule - universal brotherly love, without distinction of race; creed, colour or caste, i.e., the social distinctions made in the world; nor to a Society, many members of which pass their lives in judg-

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ing, condemning, and often reviling other members in a most untheosophical, not to say disgraceful, manner.

"For this reason it was decided to gather the 'elect' of the T.S., and to call them to action. It is only by a select group of brave souls, a handful of determined men and women hungry for genuine spiritual development and the acquirement of soul-wisdom, that the Theosophical Society at large can be brought back to its original lines. It is through an Esoteric Section alone - i.e., a group in which all the members, even if unacquainted with one another, work for each other, and by working for all work for themselves - that the great Esoteric Society may be redeemed and made to realize that in union and harmony alone lie its strength and power. The object of this Section, then, is to help the future growth of the Theosophical Society as a whole in the true direction, by promoting brotherly union at least among a choice minority.

"All know that this end was in view when the Society was established, and even in its mere unpledged ranks there was a possibility of development and knowledge, until it began to show want of real union; and now it must be saved from future dangers by the united aim, brotherly feeling, and constant exertions of the members of this Esoteric Section. Once offered the grand example of practical altruism, of the noble lives of those who learn to master the great knowledge but to help others, and who strive to acquire powers but to place them at the service of their fellow-men, and the whole Theosophical community may yet be steered into action, and led to follow the example set before them.

"The Esoteric Section is thus 'set apart' for the salvation of the whole Society, and its course from its first step is an arduous and

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uphill work for its members, though a great reward lies behind the many obstacles once they are overcome."

To allay any misapprehensions due to widespread erroneous ideas regarding chelaship and asceticism while at the same time placing before the Candidates the seriousness of the steps contemplated and the absolutely essential prerequisites to any real solidarity or individual evolution, several paragraphs are devoted to direct plain speaking on these subjects. Thus the Candidates are told that one object of the Memorandum -

"... is to give timely warning to any applicant, should he feel unable or unwilling to accept fully and without reserve, the instructions which may be given, or the consequences that may result, and to do the duties whose performance shall be asked. It is but fair to state at once that such duties will never interfere with, nor encroach upon, the probationer's family duties; on the other hand, it is certain that every member of the Esoteric Section will have to give up more than one personal habit, such as practised in social life, and adopt some few ascetic rules."

Those who may be seeking "powers" and "Occult preferment" are advised:

"This degree of the Esoteric Section is probationary, and its general purpose is to prepare and fit the student for the study of practical Occultism or Raja Yoga. Therefore, in this degree the student - save in exceptional cases - will not be taught how to produce physical phenomena, nor will any magical powers be allowed to develop in him; nor, if possessing such powers naturally, will he be permitted to exercise them before he has mastered the knowledge of Self, of the psycho-physiological processes...

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in the human body generally, and until he has in abeyance all his lower passions and his Personal Self ....

"Each person will receive in the way of enlightenment and assistance, just as much as he or she deserves, and no more; and it is to be distinctly understood that in this Section and these relations no such thing is known as favour - all depends upon the person's merits - and no member has the power or knowledge to decide what either he or she is entitled to. This must be left to those who know - alone. The apparent favour shown to some, and their consequent apparent advancement, will be due to the work they do, to the best of their power, in the cause of Universal Brotherhood and the elevation of the Race.

"No man or woman is asked or expected to do any more than is his or her best; but each is expected to work to the extent of his ability and powers.

"The value of the work of this Section to the individual member will depend upon:

"1st. The person's power to assimilate the teachings and make them a part of his being; and

"2nd. Upon the unselfishness of the motives with which he seeks for his knowledge; that is to say, upon whether he has entered this Section determined to work for humanity, or with only the desire to benefit or gain something for himself."

The Book of Rules supplied to each Candidate with the Preliminary Memorandum provided specifically amongst other things, that the various Groups into which those accepted were to be formed were not for practical Occultism, but for mutual study of the Instructions and help in the Theosophic life; gossip, derogatory statements, and the repetition of slanderous and

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hearsay statements were strictly forbidden; the dangers and evils of cant, hypocrisy, and injustice to others were enforced; claims of Occult powers, boasting or speaking of Occult experiences, whether falsely or truly, discountenanced under penalty; the widest charity, tolerance, and mutual consideration and helpfulness laid down as the sine qua non of all true progress. "The first test of true apprenticeship," said the Rule on that subject, "is devotion to the interest of another," and continued:

"For these doctrines to practically react on the life through the so-called moral code or the ideas of truthfulness, purity, self-denial, charity, etc., we have to preach and popularize a knowledge of Theosophy. It is not the individual or determined purpose of attaining oneself Nirvana, which is, after all, only an exalted and glorious selfishness, but the self-sacrificing pursuit of the best means to lead our neighbor on the right path, and cause as many of our fellow creatures as we possibly can to benefit by it, which constitutes the true Theosophist.

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Mabel Collins and professor Coues

Originally a newspaper writer and novelist, Miss Mabel Collins, then a young woman, had joined the London Lodge in 1884. Imaginative and sensitive in temperament she became intensely interested, not in Theosophy, but in the "psychical activities" pursued by many of the members of that Lodge. During that year she produced "The Idyll of the White Lotus." This was followed, early in 1885, by "Light on the Path, a Treatise written for the personal use of those who are ignorant of the Eastern Wisdom, and who desire to enter within its influence. Written down by M.C., Fellow of the Theosophical Society." As this was the first and up to that time the only, apparently simple and direct statement of the Rules of practical Occultism, and as it was plainly hinted

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that the book was "inspired" it attracted immediate attention. Moreover, its inherent merit, the sustained beauty of its diction, the noble simplicity of its expression of the loftiest ethics, the moral grandeur of the ideals submitted as within the reach of human attainment, at once gave it rank as a Theosophical classic. "Through the Gates of Gold," from the same pen, appeared in 1887. In the autumn of the same year, when Madame Blavatsky began the publication of Lucifer, the name of Mabel Collins appeared with her own as Editor. In view of the circumstances it was but natural that Theosophists everywhere should hold Miss Collins in the highest respect and regard.

When, therefore, with the issue of February 15, 1889, the name of Mabel Collins disappeared from Lucifer, it was inevitable that a furor of curiosity and interest should set in. This was accentuated by the fact that Miss Collins retired to privacy and gave no hint as to the cause of the breach; Lucifer gave no explanations and made no comments; Mr. Judge's Path and Col. Olcott's Theosophist remained equally silent. There the matter rested, so far as concerned public knowledge of events "behind the scenes," until the month of May.

On May 11, 1889, there appeared in the Religio-Philosophical Journal a letter from Dr. Elliott Coues, embodying a letter to him from Miss Mabel Collins. The Religio-Philosophical Journal was an old established and leading Spiritualist publication printed at Chicago and edited by Col. Bundy, a life-long Spiritualist and a friend of Prof. Coues. Colonel Bundy had been admitted to membership in the Theosophical Society in 1885, on the recommendation of Prof. Coues and was a member of the Gnostic Branch of the T.S., at Washington, D.C., a Branch founded by Prof. Coues who was and had been its President from the beginning. The Religio-Philosophical Journal had previously given publicity to attacks upon H.P.B., by W. Emmette Coleman, whose life was for many years chiefly devoted to that purpose.

The Coues-Collins letters, and other communications from the same source in later issues of the Religio-Phil-

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osophical Journal, made grave charges against H.P.B., - grave in themselves, and doubly so from the reputation of those who made them.

Of Catholic family and education, Prof. Coues was a university graduate and originally by profession an American Army surgeon attached to various posts and expeditions. Highly educated, exceedingly versatile, of independent means, he became interested in various branches of science and pursued his studies and investigations to such good purpose that he soon ranked as an authority on many subjects. He published various books and was invited to edit that portion of the "Century Dictionary" dealing with his specialties. Early in the 80's of the last century, while still in the prime of life, he awakened to an interest in psychical research, and conducted many experiments of his own with chosen "subjects." He early became a member of the London Society for Psychical Research and was in London in the summer of 1884, at the time the S.P.R. Committee was making its preliminary investigation and report on the Theosophical phenomena. He sought out Col. Olcott who was naturally rejoiced to make his acquaintance, and finding his interest, to induct him into membership in the Theosophical Society. In company with Col. Olcott, Prof. Coues and his wife journeyed to Elberfeld, Germany to meet H.P.B., who was at the time with the trusted and trusting Gebhards. A great and spontaneous affection sprang up between Mrs. Coues and H.P.B. - an affection which never lapsed, on the one side or on the other.

Professor Coues met Col. Olcott again at London and was appointed a member of the newly constituted American Board of Control of the Theosophical Society. On his return to the United States he established the Gnostic Branch of the T.S. In 1885 he was active in the formation of the American Society for Psychical Research along the same lines of inquiry as pursued by its British predecessor. He was elected Chairman of the American Board of Control of the T.S., and in the midst of his multifarious activities in other directions busied himself in correspondence with members of the Society. Of

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engaging manners and distinguished appearance, as excellent a speaker as he was brilliant a writer, he was a very popular lecturer and gave many addresses before scientific bodies, clubs, and other associations. Although he never made any distinctly Theosophical addresses there runs through all his lectures of the period a definite note of inquiry and suggestion of broader fields of investigation than those passing current under the name of "science." Although he was not a contributor to the Theosophical literature of the times, as editor of the "Biogen Series" he brought out an American edition of Col. Olcott's "Buddhist Catechism," republished the monograph, "Can Matter Think?" and published with an introduction and notes by himself Robert Dodsley's "True and Complete Economy of Human Life," originally issued at London in 1750. To this reprint he added the subtitle, "Based on the System of Theosophical Ethics." This phrase, his use of the name "Kuthumi" - a variant spelling of Koot Hoomi, the Mahatma to whom Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World" is dedicated - some questionable expressions in his introduction and notes, and his personal prominence and known affiliation with the Theosophical Society, gave Mr. Judge occasion to insert in The Path for July, 1886, two references, one a review complimentary to the "Biogen Series" and to Prof. Coues personally, and the other a correction of possible misconceptions in the following words

"The association of the name Kuthumi with the book, so perplexing to understand, is not a biographical fact, as Prof. Cones explains in his 'foreword' (p. 10). It only remains to state clearly what is implied in the foreword that the Theosophical Society has no special code of morals, ready made and rigorously defined, for the acceptance of its members on admission."

By the summer of 1886, it became evident that the Board of Control, originally promulgated by Col. Olcott at Mr. Judge's request in order to avoid delay in

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the conduct of the official routine of the American Branches, was, in the hands of Prof. Coues, a mere exchange of the paternal autocracy of Col. Olcott for the arbitrary autocracy of Prof. Coues. Mr. Judge had recourse to H.P.B. and Col. Olcott, and at a meeting of the Board of Control, held at Rochester, N.Y., at the house of Mrs. Cables on July 4, 1886, additional "orders" from Col. Olcott and his Indian General Council were presented by Mr. Judge, calling for a revised plan whereby an American Section of the General Council was to be formed. In this American Council was to be merged the Board of Control, the members of which, as also the Presidents of Branches, were to become ex officio members of the American Council. Provision was also to be made for the election of additional members of the American Council by the votes of the members of the Society.

Notwithstanding this promulgation, Prof. Coues, immediately after his return to his home, issued of his own motion the following:

"American Board of Control - Office of the President"

"Washington, D.C., July 12 1896

"It is desired that The Occult Word become the official organ of the American Board of Control of the Theosophical Society.

"Correspondents having notes and news respecting the Society in America are requested to send them to The Occult Word. Members and others having the interests of the Society at heart will do well to extend the circulation of The Occult Word.

"Contributors of articles upon speculative, doctrinal, or operative Theosophy will be individually responsible therefor, as heretofore.

Elliot Coues, President."

It was already an open secret that Mrs. Cables, Editor of The Occult Word, another member of the Board of Control, and her associate, Mr. Brown, were disaf-

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fected with the "Theosophical Mahatmas," a disaffection which burst into flame a few months later, as has been narrated in an earlier chapter. (1)

In The Path, for August, 1886, Mr. Judge, knowing well the tangential activities of Prof. Coues, Mrs. Cables, and others, published in the section, "Reviews and Notes," an article, "Theosophy in the Press," in which, after noting the sudden appearance within a few months of many articles in the daily papers "full of misstatements mixed with ignorance of... Theosophy," he goes on to say:

"But some Theosophists have been guilty of ventilating in the papers the statement that Theosophy is astralism, that is to say, that the object of the Society is to induce people to go into the study and practice of spirit raising, cultivating the abnormal faculties, of clairvoyance and the like, ignoring entirely the prime object, real end, aim and raison d'etre of the movement - universal brotherhood and ethical teaching. In fact, we make bold to assert, from our own knowledge and from written documents, that the Mahatmas, who started the Society, and who stand behind it now, are distinctly opposed to making prominent these phenomenal leanings, this hunting after clairvoyance and astral bodies, and they have so declared most unmistakably, stating their wish and advice to be, that 'the Society should prosper on its ethical, philosophical and moral worth alone.'

"Theosophists should haste to see that this false impression created at large, that it is a dangerous study, or that it is any way dangerous, or that we conceal our reasons for doing what we are doing, is done away with... If one or two persons in the Society imagine that the pursuit of psychical phenomena is its real end and aim and so declare, that weighs nothing

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(1) See chapter VIII.

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against the immense body of the membership or against its widespread literature; it is merely their individual bias.

But at the same time, this imagination and misstatement are dangerous, and insidiously so. It is just the impression which the Jesuit college desires to be spread abroad concerning us, so that in one place ridicule may follow, and in another superstitious dread of the thing; which ever of these may happen to obtain, they would be equally well pleased.

"Let Theosophists attend to this, and let them not forget, that the only authoritative statements of what are the ends and objects of the Society are contained in those printed in its bylaws. No amount of assertion to the contrary by any officer or member can change that declaration."

In the September, 1886, number of The Path was printed the notice of the receipt of the "formal orders" to form the American Council. On this Mr. Judge comments:

"This action is eminently wise, as the term Board of Control was misleading, inasmuch as the very foundation of the Society is democratic in its nature, and control savored too much of form, ceremonies, discipline, officers, secret reports and all the paraphernalia of an established church."

The expression "Board of Control" was Col. Olcott's coinage. The various stages recounted were accepted by Mr. Judge as necessary intermediate steps in the effort to arrive at real democracy among the American Theosophists. Colonel Olcott was at all times loath to surrender his "paternal government" of the Society as a whole, and he acceded to the gradual democratization of the Society in America only under the steady pressure

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of Mr. Judge, reinforced by the insistence of H.P.B. He at last consented to issue his "official order" for the formation of the American Section of the Theosophical Society, and at a meeting of the Board of Control, held at Cincinnati in October, 1886, and attended also by delegates and members from numerous Branches, the arrangements were perfected for the first Convention at New York City in April, 1887, at which elected delegates from all the Branches were present, adopted a constitution, and elected officers and a Council. The first formal Convention was held the next year, April, 1888, at Chicago.

Meantime a "lively interchange of letters," as "Old Diary Leaves" phrases it, had been going on, not only between H.P.B. and Col. Olcott over the threatening breach between them on matters of policy and the forthcoming Esoteric Section, but as well among Prof. Coues, Mr. Judge, Col. Olcott, and H.P.B. over affairs in America - as may readily be inferred from what has been stated. (2)

There can be no doubt that Col. Olcott, impressed by the prominence and ability of Prof. Coues, sympathized with that gentleman, whose views were entirely congenial to him. Nor can it, we think, be doubted that Prof. Coues, fully informed as to Col. Olcott's feelings, those of Mr. Sinnett and others, may well have concluded that he had but to lead in the coming battle, and all the disaffected would openly as well as secretly support him. Able, audacious, and subtle, he was writing in one strain to Col. Olcott, in another to H.P.B., and in a third to Mr. Judge. Like so many others he was entirely unaware that H.P.B. and Mr. Judge, working as one in the Cause dear to them, made no moves, the one without the other, nor ever wrote letters or other communications on moot Theosophical matters without supplying each other with copies. Nor was it conceivable to him or to many others prominent in the Society that the Occultism of H.P.B. and Mr. Judge was genuine and not spurious or mediumistic.

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(2) See Chapters IX and X.

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Colonel Olcott, honest to the core, loyal in his better moments to both his colleagues, was yet, by reason of his personal weaknesses and past life, almost wholly susceptible to the arts of those who knew how to play and prey upon his vanity, his fears and doubts concerning the welfare of his beloved Society, of which he had long since constituted himself the tutelary deity. Much may be read and inferred of the unwritten history of this period from the following extract from one of the President-Founder's letters to Prof. Coues:

"Another warning: Beware how you encourage H.P.B. to act outside her special province of mystical research and esoteric teaching. The Council will stand no nonsense, nor shall I ratify a single order or promise of hers made independently of me and my full antecedent possession of the facts. She telegraphed to abolish the Board of Control and had just issued a revolutionary commission to Arthur Gebhard with an idiotic disregard of the proprieties and her own position. She seems a Bourbon as to memory and receptivity and fancies the old halcyon days are not gone. I shall neither ratify what she has done, nor anything of the sort she may in future do. Within her domain she is queen; outside that - well, fill in the blank yourself. Several attempts have been made to get her to set up a rival society.... She has not yet been fool enough to fall into the trap, nor do I think her brain will soften to the point of doing it. She would thereby take a life-contract for a fight;... and find herself with enfeebled health, advanced years and a tainted reputation recommencing our work of 1875, without, pardon me, an Olcott to stick to her, as I have, through thick and thin and bear shame and disgrace with mute endurance." (3)

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(3) The Sun, New York, July 20, 1890. The authenticity of this letter, published by Prof. Coues, was never disputed by Col. Olcott.

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At the Chicago Convention at the end of April, 1888, Prof. Coues was present as a delegate and President of the Gnostic Branch of the T.S. He was elected Chairman of the Convention and presided over its sessions. The newspapers of the city gave a good deal of space to the proceedings and reporters were present at all of the open meetings. Following the Convention the Chicago Tribune published, without disclosing the source from which it had received them, a letter and facsimile of an alleged "message from a Mahatma" to Dr. Coues. Naturally this aroused considerable passing curiosity among the general public, and a very decided interest among American Theosophists. No public notice was taken of the matter either by H.P.B. or Mr. Judge, but the latter wrote privately to Dr. Coues, who responded as follows, under date of May 21, 1888:

"My dear Judge: - I think that on reflection you will find yourself a little hasty in pitching into me about that Tribune matter.

"... Now I saw that letter of which you complain fall down from the air over a person's head, precisely in the same manner as you have seen a like letter fall - one, of which we have since heard a good deal. The writing on one side was in that peculiar hand which I have learned to recognize in several expressions of the will of the Blessed Masters which you have been good enough to send me.... The writing on the other side must have been subsequently precipitated and the seal affixed.... If K.H. had not wished about 75,000 persons to be advised of the mode in which he brought about the Convention in Chicago he could easily have dematerialized that document.... It was clearly the will of the Brotherhood that the T.S. should be thus broadly advertised - and no doubt it would also be by the will of the same august personages, if the "Religio" (4) for example

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(4) "Religio" means the Religio-Philosophical Journal.

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should contain some day a column or two explaining the delicate and mysterious manner in which rice-paper communications are 'precipitated' out of the Akasa."

This is dearly a tacit admission on Coues' part that he furnished the "message" to the Tribune, that he "saw" it precipitated, and an insinuation that he had received from Mr. Judge similar "messages." To Dr. Coues' letter Mr. Judge replied intimating that the whole tale, "messages" and all, originated in Dr. Coues' own brain. Under date of June 11, 1888, Prof. Coues replied to Mr. Judge's warnings:

"Dear Judge: - But now comes another trouble. It appears, and not from 'Cones' brain,' but from a much more material and very likely much stupider source, that you have been opposing my long standing candidacy for the esoteric presidency, in order to keep the ostensible control of T.S. in your own hand and make yourself the real or actual head of the concern in America, leaving me only as a figure-head; and I am referred to all and any newspaper reports which emanate from the Aryan (5) or yourself, as carefully suppressing or at least not putting forward my name, etc."

It had become very well known amongst members of the T.S. in the United States that Dr. Coues, in the course of his personal propaganda had broadly hinted at his own Occult relations with the Mahatmas, and as neither Mr. Judge nor H.P.B. in any way confirmed his claims, more or less questioning and suspicion arose in regard to him and his ulterior purposes. Thus "hoist with his own petard," Dr. Cones endeavored to turn his tactics to better advantage in the attempt to gain for

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(5) "Aryan" means the Aryan Theosophical Society of New York City, the re-organization of the parent T.S. Mr. Judge was President of the Aryan Society.

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himself the powerful support of H.P.B. in his ambition to be the public head of the Society in America, and as part of his campaign to enfold Mr. Judge in the soiled robes of his own pretended "messages." H.P.B. replied guardedly to his communications; agreeing where she could with Coues' strictures and criticisms on Col. Olcott, Mr. Judge, and the "management" of the Society; encouraging him to live up to his own protestations of loyalty, influence, and devotion to the Society; ignoring his egotism and blandishments; correcting him only where the issue raised was point-blank. On Christmas Day, 1888, he wrote her a bombastic and fulsome letter. Mr. Judge was at the time in England with H.P.B.; Col. Olcott, furious with her action in the Paris T.S. and her plain speaking with him, had just departed after his "pitched battle" with her, and his reconciliation due chiefly to the Master's Letter, as has already been told. (6) Col. Olcott had been in communication with Prof. Coues and had poured out his feelings as we have seen. Prof. Coues' Christmas letter to H.P.B. was intended to avail himself of the supposed strained relations all around. We quote his closing phrases:

"Is your 'first-born,' the meek Hibernian Judge, (7) still with your majesty? Give my love to him and say, I don't get up very early, but I stay up very late. I am glad you made it all right with your psychologized baby Olcott when he was with you....

"And after all, dear H.P.B., I am really very fond and very proud of you, and admire your genius as only a man of genius can. So here's my blessing, and all good wishes, for the greatest woman of this age, who is born to redeem her times, and go down to everlasting historical fame.

"Ever yours, still in the psychic maelstrom, Darius Hystaspes II"

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(6) See Chapter X.

(7) Mr. Judge was of Irish parentage and birth.

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In one of her letters to Dr. Coues, H.P.B. had called Mr. Judge her first-born; Col. Olcott she had spoken of as a psychologized baby when referring to the effects upon him of his twenty years' dabbling with mediums and his never-ending thirst for phenomena. Darius Hystaspes II was a favorite signature of Dr. Coues in writing to H.P.B., as Dr. Faustus was in his letters to Mr. Judge.

On April 16, 1889, just prior to the Convention of the American Section for that year, Dr. Coues wrote H.P.B. a long letter detailing his own greatness and influence, the strength of his Gnostic Branch (it had some thirty members all told, at the time, none of them active Theosophically), and with half-veiled threats tried to induce her to ask the American Theosophists to place him at their head. Thus:

"You appear to have been misinformed or uninformed respecting the Gnostic and its Branches, as well as my own work in your behalf. Both in numbers and in quality of its membership, the Gnostic is unquestionably the leading Branch of the T.S. in the country. Its members are for the most part of a high, refined, educated, and influential class in society, in science and before the world, and most of them are indefatigable in working for the cause to which your own great and noble life is devoted. I am satisfied that if you would do your part to give my Gnostics their just dues and recognition, they and I can lift Theosophy clear of the mud which has been thrown upon it and set your own self in a proper light before the world. We all feel keenly the abuse and persecution to which you have been subjected, and anxious to do you full justice and honor. But they are unanimously dissatisfied with the way the society is run at present, and they wonder

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where your Intuition can be, that you fail to see where your obvious advantage lies, in not strengthening and holding up the hands of their representative man [Prof. Cones]... Be wise now and be warned in time; you are a very great woman, who should be quick to see that this is no ordinary occasion. I tell you frankly, it is possible that all this prestige, social and personal and professional influence, scientific attainment and public interest, can be thrown on the side of the T.S., as at present constituted, or can be switched off on a new track aside from the old lines. If you cannot See this, and understand it, and act accordingly, there is nothing more for me to say, and I must presume that you do not care for my people. Judge and I came to a fair understanding once, and I was carrying out our agreement in good faith, and all was smooth, when something or other, affecting the question of the Presidency, interfered, and since then there has been nothing but friction and misunderstanding in the "Esoteric" T.S. - which you know consisted of yourself, myself, and Judge and your issue of a new and different "esoteric" manifesto did not mend matters. Now be wise and Politic.... The T.S. in America is at present a Headless monstrosity: it must have a visible, official head to represent its real, invisible source. You know whom the majority of the F.T.S. have desired to put forward as their representative theosophist in America. It is only necessary for you to cable the Chicago Convention, to elect him president. Weigh these words well; pause, consider, reflect, and Act. 'If 'twere well done, 'twere well done quickly.'"

The next day, April 17, 1889, he wrote her further on the same subject and, with incomparable effrontery, in-

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eluded the following choice gems of his egotism and mendacity:

"... do you know you are getting great discredit in this country and for what do you suppose? for being jealous of me! Can you imagine such flapdoodle? You are not moved by abuse, but you want to know how people think and what they say, and a great many are talking loudly and wildly, that your silence respecting my books in the 'Secret Doctrine,' and the absence of my name from Lucifer (as well as from The Path) means that you are afraid of my growing power, and will brook no rival so dangerously near the papal throne of theosophy.... There is another queer thing. You have somehow got it stuck in your mind, that I put in the Chicago Tribune last year a caricature of the Master K.H. I had nothing whatever to do with the article, which was merely a newspaper skit, and the lithographed effusion was no more a Mahatmic document than this letter. It was simply a piece of newspaper wit.

"Judge is a good fellow and means well, and I like him for many things, especially his devotion to you and the masters and their Cause; but dabbling in occultism, especially on a Mahatmic altitude is dangerous except to an Adept!! I am the humble servant of my Mahatma."

The American Convention met at the end of the same month. Professor Coues was not present. He was not elected President or any other officer of the American Section. H.P.B. did not cable the Convention as requested. On the contrary, her formal Letter to that Convention had distinct reference to the class of "Theosophists" of which Prof. Coues was such a shining example, as may be observed from the extracts given in the last chapter. And under date of April 30, 1889, she wrote Prof. Coues from London, saying:

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"Dear Doctor Coues: I have received your two letters and read them as they stand and also between the lines and therefore I mean to be as frank with you as you are frank with me. I will take your two letters point by point."

Point by point she goes over the various matters in Prof. Coues' letters, in friendly, considerate, but severely plain language, and on the subject of the "message from the Mahatma" she says:

"3. If you had nothing to do with the Chicago Tribune article (tho' you must have influence with your own nephew) then why did you not contradict it, then and there?

"4. I know nothing about the number of messages you may have received from Masters through Judge, whom I would never believe capable of it, or any one else.... You speak of my seals on those letters.... Where did they get this? From Judge, from me or from you? It could hardly have been any except one of us three.... Your wise advice that such Mahatma messages should be confined to one channel, 'the only genuine and original H.P.B. your friend,' was anticipated by Mahatma K.H. in so many words. Then why do you kick against that? You speak of your Mahatma, then why don't you send letters in his name instead of those of my Master and Mahatma K.H. That would settle all the difficulties and there would be no quarrel... What you have learned through me, I know, and do not want to know beyond. You may obey or disobey your Master as much as you like, if you know him to exist outside of your psychic visions. As to mine, every man devoid of all psychic powers can see him, since he is a living man. I wish he could be yours, for then, my dearest Dr., you would be spiritually a better man and a less sceptical one than you are.

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"You speak of your eagerness 'to defend and help a woman who has been sadly persecuted, because misunderstood.' Permit me to say to you for the last time that no bitterest enemy of mine has ever misunderstood me as you do.... "

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The Coues-Collins Charges and their Aftermath

On May 11, 1889, appeared the first Coues-Collins letters in the Religio-Philosophical Journal; followed up in the issue of the same journal for June 1, with two more letters from the same source. Succeeding issues followed with additional guns from the Editor, Col. Bundy, from Mr. W. Emmette Coleman, and others, in addition to Prof. Coues. Other Spiritualist and sectarian publications and the secular press followed suit. A manifestly inspired attack on everything Theosophical, including of course H.P.B. and Mr. Judge, raged in many quarters. In England the ground had been equally well prepared, and in Light of the issues for May, June, and succeeding months the charges first published in America were repeated, with additions and variations. There, as in the United States, many other publications entered the fray, and there was a revival of the familiar tactics employed five years previously during the Coulomb and S.P.R. attack. The Religio-Philosophical Journal did not open its columns to counter evidence, but Light, with a display of fairness as commendable as it was unique, gave space as freely to defenders as to assailants. During the summer and autumn another strategem was employed in a manner worthy of the best traditions of the followers of Ignatius Loyola. This jesuitical device was

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ably carried out through Michael Angelo Lane. Mr. Lane was a newspaper reporter of St. Louis. Becoming interested in Theosophy as early as 1885, he joined the Society and corresponded with the headquarters at Adyar. Later on he became acquainted with Mr. Judge and volunteered his services in New York. After the formation of the Esoteric Section, Mr. Lane made his application for admission thereto as a probationer. He professed the utmost devotion to the Cause and wrote H.P.B. his desire to go to London to be near her and to aid in the work there. He took the pledge of the Esoteric Section, went to London, and was at the London headquarters for several weeks. He mysteriously disappeared on several occasions and very shortly returned to the United States. Thereafter he went from Lodge to Lodge, ostensibly as a Theosophist and member of the Esoteric Section and spread stories among the members to the discredit of H.P.B., of the Section and of the Society. Mr. Lane was promptly exposed as soon as circumstantial statements of his activities were forwarded to London, whereupon he ranged himself openly with Prof. Coues and other enemies of H.P.B., and her work. Professor Coues also had early applied to H.P.B. for the pledge and preliminary papers of the Esoteric Section, and these had been transmitted to him in confidence, the same as to all other applicants. He violated the confidence reposed in him, for these papers and the pledge were printed in the Religio-Philosophical Journal during the course of the warfare, and their contents discussed with, and a portion of them given by Prof. Coues directly to the New York Sun in an interview.

In his first letter to the Religio-Philosophical Journal Prof. Coues stated specifically that "about four years ago," (i.e., in 1885) being interested in "Light on the Path," he "wrote Mrs. Collins a letter, praising it and asking her about its real source." This was because "Light on the Path," said Prof. Coues, "was supposed to have been dictated to Mrs. Collins by 'Koot Hoomi,' or some other Hindu adept who held the Theosophical Society in the hollow of his masterly hand." To this

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letter of his Miss Collins "promptly replied, in her own handwriting, to the effect that `Light on the Path' was inspired or dictated from the source above indicated." Dr. Coues goes on to say that since that time "nothing passed between Mrs. Collins and myself until yesterday [May 2, 1889], when I unexpectedly received the following letter." Miss Collins' letter is dated April 18, 1889, and runs:

"Dear Sir: I feel I have a duty to write you on a difficult and (to me) painful subject. and that I must not delay it any longer.

"You will remember writing to ask me who was the inspirer of 'Light on the Path.' If you had not yourself been acquainted with Madame Blavatsky I should despair of making you ever understand my conduct. Of course I ought to have answered the letter without showing it to any one else; but at that time I was both studying Madame Blavatsky and studying under her. I knew nothing then of the mysteries of the Theosophical Society, and I was puzzled why you should write me in such a way. I took the letter to her; the result was that I wrote the answer at her dictation. I did not do this by her orders; I have never been under her orders. But I have done one or two things because she begged and implored me to; and this I did for that reason. So far as I can remember I wrote you that I had received 'Light on the Path' from one of the Masters who guide Madame Blavatsky. I wish to ease my conscience now by saying that I wrote this letter from no knowledge of my own and merely to please her; and that I now see that I was very wrong in doing so. I ought further to state that 'Light on the Path' was not to my knowledge inspired by any one; but that I saw it written on the walls of a place I visit spiritually, (which is described in the "Blossom and the Fruit") - there I read

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it and I wrote it down. I have myself never received proof of the existence of any Master; though I believe (as always) that the mahatmic force must exist.

Yours faithfully,

Mabel Collins"

Professor Coues says of Mabel Collins' letter to him as above:

"I was not surprised at the new light it threw on the pathway of the Theosophical Society, for late developments respecting that singular result of Madame Blavatsky's now famous hoax left me nothing to wonder at."

Next, in the Religio-Philosophical Journal of June 1, 1889, Prof. Coues appears with another letter in which he says that in his first communication he did not give the original letter from Miss Collins because - "I could not conveniently lay my hands on it." He says he now gives it "word for word. It is in Mrs. Cooke's handwriting, undated and unsigned." This undated and unsigned note is as follows:

"The writer of 'The Gates of Gold' is Mabel Collins, who had it as well as 'Light on the Path' and the 'Idyll of the White Lotus' dictated to her by one of the adepts of the group which through Madame Blavatsky first communicated with the Western world. The name of this inspirer cannot be given, as the personal names of the Masters have already been sufficiently desecrated."

Professor Coues adds:

"This is exactly, word for word, what Mrs. Cooke now says she wrongly wrote to me because Madame Blavatsky 'begged and im-

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plored' her to do so, and which she also wrote

at her dictation. It certainly has the genuine Blavatskian ring about it."

In a subsequent communication to the Religio-Philosophical Journal Dr. Coues has the hardihood to subscribe himself "F. T. S." (Fellow of the Theosophical Society), but the contents of the letter identify him as its author. Addressing himself to the Editor, Dr. Coues says:

"If your mail resembles mine in quantity and quality of theosophical correspondence since "Mabel Collins'" disavowal of inspiration from Madame Blavatsky's Hindu 'controls' it must be curious reading.... At this revelation through the Journal some people are pleased; other sorry, others angry; some applaud; some condemn; many are curious, and most of them want to argue about it. My mail has a sort of shivery, gooseflesh quality, as if a panic in mahatmic stock were imminent and there is a tendency of the hair of the faithful to stand on end....

"First, a good many persons are surprised that I seem to have only now found out that 'Light on the Path' was not dictated by our friend Koot Hoomi or any other Eastern adept. Such have always known all about its source and my discovery is discounted as a theosophical chestnut. Let me say to all such that I do not always tell all I know, and that I might have continued silent on the authorship of 'Light on the Path,' had I not had reasons for publishing Mrs. Cooke's letter just then and there - reasons I reserve for the present."

Examining Prof. Coues' "evidence" as supplied by himself the reader will note that he says he first wrote Miss Collins in 1885 (the year in which "Light on the Path" was first published), asking her about its "real

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source," and that he was moved to do this both because of the inscription that it was "written down" by her, and because "it was supposed to have been dictated to Mrs. Collins by 'Koot Hoomi' or some other adept who held the Theosophical Society in the hollow of his masterly hand." He says her reply confirmed the supposition.

At the time he wrote Miss Collins he was already himself a member of the Society and of the American Board of Control, was well acquainted with H.P.B., and Mr. Judge, and in communication with them then and thereafter, up to and including April, 1889, professing the warmest admiration and friendship for both, and the utmost devotion to the Cause they served. It does not appear that at any time during those four years he ever wrote either H.P.B. or Mr. Judge for confirmation of Miss Mabel Collins' affirmation that "Light on the Path" was inspired or dictated by one of the Theosophical Adepts. Yet, either on the assumption that he wanted to verify the source as claimed by Miss Collins or that he all along believed H.P.B. to be the inventor of a "hoax," as his first communication affirms and his last intimates, it is clear that he made no effort to verify Miss Collins' statement. This is the more peculiar, as it is plainly evident he neither knew Miss Collins personally, kept up his intercourse with her, nor had at the time he received her letter of April 18, 1889, any but the scantiest knowledge about her. For he says that in the intervening four years "nothing passed between Mrs. Collins and myself until yesterday" (May 2, 1889); and in his first letter he four times calls her "Mrs. Collins," whereas her married name was Cook; while in his later communications he repeatedly speaks of her as Mrs. Cooke.

Notable as was his omission in the circumstances, to verify in any way Miss Collins' first statement as to the authorship of "Light on the Path," his course of procedure, when her second letter came, is still more significant. For in that letter she plainly said to him that her own first statement was false, that in fact "Light on the

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Path" was not to her knowledge inspired by anyone; that she had never received proof of the existence of any Master; that she knew nothing at the time of the "mysteries of the Theosophical Society."

Quite apart from anything else, these two contradictory statements must have shown Prof. Coues that Miss Mabel Collins' testimony was untrustworthy and valueless without corroboration. Here, from every angle, was something that required and demanded clearing up in mere justice to himself as an honest inquirer interested in getting at the facts. But much more than his own interests were concerned in doing his utmost to ascertain the truth: his fellow Theosophists by thousands were as much concerned as himself, if Mabel Collins' second "explanation" should be true, as much concerned as himself should it be false; finally, remained H.P. Blavatsky, his friend, revered by many, hated by many, accused of an abominable offense by a woman who had already once given him false testimony, and who, he must have known, had recently been dismissed from Lucifer and from all association with H.P.B. Certainly every motive of fairness, of common decency, even, would require him to take steps to ascertain the truth or the falsity of Mabel Collins' "explanation" and accusation before making any charges. Yet what did he do? Immediately on receipt of Miss Collins' letter of April 18, he says, "I cabled Mrs. Collins for permission to use her letter at my discretion." "Mrs." Collins obediently replied, "Use my letter as you please." And the same day Prof. Coues enclosed her letter and one of his own to the Religio-Philosophical Journal - an ardent Spiritualist publication, vehicle of Mr. W. Emmette Coleman's prolonged and malicious attacks on H.P.B. Thus, in view of the facts, what credence can be attached to the character or veracity of Dr. Elliott Coues' testimony where his motives are so absolutely impeached?

But there is more. In his second communication to the Religio-Philosophical Journal Prof. Coues gives, he says, "word for word" the first letter sent him by Mabel Collins. "It is in Mrs. Cooke's handwriting" and in it

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she says, in reply to his original inquiry, "The writer of 'The Gates of Gold' is Mabel Collins who had it as well as 'Light on the Path' and 'Idyll of the White Lotus' dictated to her by one of the adepts." In his first communication (dated May 3, 1889) Prof. Coues had already stated that his original inquiry and her reply had occurred "about four years ago" - that is, sometime in 1885 - "since which time nothing passed between Mrs. Collins and myself." Now the actual and indisputable fact is that "The Gates of Gold" was not published until 1887 - two years after the alleged correspondence had taken place! Thus the "evidence" produced by Prof. Coues against the honor of H.P. Blavatsky not only falls of its own weight so far as she is concerned, but convicts Prof. Coues out of his own mouth of shameless duplicity and an equally shameless mendacity.

Turning now to Mabel Collins' share in the attempted stroke, the reader will note upon examining her two letters that she confesses her own falsehood. In her first letter she says her books were dictated by one of the Adepts; in her second letter she says her falsehood was dictated by H.P.B. If her first statement is accepted it was the Adept who dictated her books. But in her second letter she declares (1) "I have myself never received proof of the existence of any Master"; (2) "I knew nothing then of the mysteries of the Theosophical Society."

In her second letter Mabel Collins admits the falsehood in her first but says she told it because Madame Blavatsky "begged and implored me to."

Let us contrast these statements with known and undisputed facts.

H.P.B. was in London from the end of July, 1884, till November 11 of the same year, when she sailed for India, less the interval when she was in Germany with the Gebhards. She was in India till April of 1885, during which time she was in the midst of the storm of the Coulomb case and most of the time lying between life and death. From April, 1885, on, she was in Naples, in Germany, in Belgium, returning to England only in

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May, 1887. During the entire period from November, 1884, until after May, 1887, she neither saw nor had any communications with Mabel Collins. Even while H.P.B. was in England during the fall of 1884 she never even saw Mabel Collins more than two or three times and at no time did she see her except in the presence of others. The "Idyll of the White Lotus" was written by Mabel Collins before she ever met H.P.B. That work was shown by her in manuscript to Mr. Ewen and Mr. Finch, both well-known and reputable men, to both of whom she stated that the work had been "inspired" by "some one" whose appearance she described. Mr. Ewen showed the manuscript to Col. Olcott, with whom Mabel Collins talked and made the same claim of "inspiration." She told Col. Olcott that the work had been written by her either in trance or under dictation, and described to him the appearance of the "inspirer." All this was before H.P.B. ever set eyes on Mabel Collins. Furthermore the first edition of the "Idyll," published when H.P.B. was thousands of miles away, and without any intervening communication with Mabel Collins, bore this inscription: "to the True Author, the Inspirer of this work; It Is Dedicated."

Next, with regard to "Light on the Path": The undisputed facts are that Mabel Collins did not begin that work until November, 1884, just prior to the departure of H.P.B. for India. On November 8 of that year Miss Collins showed H.P.B. a page or two of manuscript of what afterwards became "Light on the Path." H.P.B. was in India when that work was completed and published, yet the inscription and Mabel Collins' various statements at the time and on down to the present date, claim that work, not as her own composition, but "written down" by her. Her last claim in that respect was as recently made as the year 1919. (1) H.P.B. never even saw the text of "Light on the Path" until the summer of 1886, when a copy of it was given to her in Germany by Arthur Gebhard.

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(1) In an autograph letter, now in the possession of the Editors of the magazine Theosophy (Los Angeles, California).

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Further, Mrs. C.A. Passingham, a reputable and well known English woman, wrote to Light while the Coues-Collins charges were pending, to the effect that early in 1885 Mabel Collins spent an afternoon and part of the evening at her house. This, Mrs. Passingham thinks, was in February. She continues:

"She expressed a wish to leave early, as she had an 'appointment' with 'Hilarion' . . . I may add that Mrs. Collins told me herself that the influence under which she wrote the book in question was that of a person whom she had long known, but had only lately identified as being that of an 'adept.'"

On the 12th of June, 1889, Mabel Collins' sister, Ellen Hopkins, wrote a letter to Light which is published in that journal for June 15, 1889. The letter follows:

"... Will you allow me to state that my sister, Mabel Collins, is too ill at the moment to be able to speak for herself, but I trust that she will

be well enough in a few days to furnish you with a reply which will put a very different aspect on the whole affair?"

The "few days" spoken of by Ellen Hopkins went by and rolled into months with no statement from Mabel Collins. Meantime pamphlets had been gotten out by "F.T.S.," by Mr. Judge, and by H.P.B. Statements had been made by Archibald and Bertram Keightley, both of whom had known H.P.B. since the summer of 1884, both of whom had been intimate indeed with Mabel Collins, and both of whom had resided almost continuously in the headquarters house with H.P.B., after her return to England in 1887. The several statements, the documentary and other proofs, the establishment of dates, the production of letters of Prof. Coues to H.P.B., all showed conclusively the utter falsity of the charges made by the Cones-Collins alliance.

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Professor Coues had overreached himself. He had been thoroughly exposed. The charter of the Gnostic Branch was revoked and Coues himself expelled from the Society. Months later, while preparing a further attack, he endeavored to retrieve his earlier blunder by writing a letter to Light which is referred to in the leading editorial of that publication for November 2, 1889. From this it appears that he concocted an ex post facto correction by saying that he had been mistaken in fixing the date of his first letter to Miss Mabel Collins as 1885, when it should have been 1887. As proof he told the editor of Light that on June 1st, 1889, Miss Collins had cabled him of his mistake and as further proof he sent a card of Mabel Collins, undated, and without the envelope - a card, whether the original or otherwise does not matter, but claimed to be the original, - which Light accepted as an "explanation" because "The Gates of Gold" was not published until 1887! The animus of this laggard explanation of Prof. Coues' impasse is, we think, entirely clear, and worthy of the same degree of credibility as his other facile statements. It is to be noted that although Mabel Collins was "too ill" to make a concrete statement to Light at the time - and before the publication of the pamphlets which proved by dates alone the impossibility of her statements or Coues' being true - she was not too ill to send a cablegram to her co-conspirator warning him of the discrepancy into which his too great facility and too zealous haste had led him. But to return to Miss Mabel Collins' books.

The third of the trio was "The Gates of Gold" which her unsigned note to Prof. Coues attributed to "one of the adepts" and which her retraction, whether four years later or two does not matter - by implication at least is included in the falsehood which Madame Blavatsky "begged and implored" her to circulate. Let us see as to that.

"The Gates of Gold" was written in 1886. Madame Blavatsky was living at the time in Germany. The book was published in England and in America very early in

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1887, while H.P.B. lay on a sick-bed in Belgium. The first edition of the work contained this inscription:

"Once, as I sat alone writing, a mysterious Visitor entered my study unannounced, and stood beside me. I forgot to ask who he was,

All these are undisputed facts. As in the case of the "Idyll" and "Light on the Path," this book was written and published when H.P.B. was not in England, when she was not in any communication with Mabel Collins, when she was physically in the gravest condition. Yet all three books bear inscriptions written by Mabel Collins which can be interpreted only as a disclaimer of her own authorship of them and a claim that they were inspired - no matter how or by whom.

Finally, as in the Coulomb case, H.P.B. had everything to risk and nothing to gain by such chicanery as was attributed to her. No one of her enemies ever imagined it plausible for a moment to call her a fool, but a fool as well as a "fraud" she must have been to put herself at the mercy of Madame Coulomb, Mabel Collins, or any one else, for such paltry ends as such rascality, even if successful, would have achieved. For quite without risk or occasion for either the Coulombs' or the Collins' help, she had the recorded testimony of Col. Olcott, of Mr. Judge, of Damodar, of Maj.-Gen. Morgan, of Mr. Sinnett, of Mr. A.O. Hume, of Countess Wachtmeister, of Mr. Hubbe-Schleiden, Dr. Hartmann, Miss Arundale, a hundred others of reputation and character, both as to Adept inspiration, and her own phenomenal powers. What had she to gain, what motive could inspire her, whether in 1885, while a storm was already raging about the Coulomb charges, or in 1887, when her

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own position as regards Theosophists needed no bolstering - what had she to gain, one may ask, by fraudulently procuring what, if believed, would add neither to her own repute nor to that of her Masters, but would only enhance the importance and prestige of Mabel Collins?

It thus becomes clear with regard to all three books, first that Miss Collins on her own account both before and since, claimed them to be inspired; secondly, that with regard to any and all of them H.P.B. was physically absent, physically not in communication, physically not in a position to beg and implore Mabel Collins to do or say anything in regard to them. If, then, she "influenced" Miss Collins in any way, it was from a distance and by the use of phenomenal powers indeed. But if she actually possessed such Occult powers - and desired to misuse them - why in the name of the commonest of common sense should she betray herself by using cheap physical frauds, when by employing her Occult powers she could procure the wished for result without risk?

Miss Mabel Collins also wrote: "At the time - whether 1885 or 1887 does not matter - I was both studying Madame Blavatsky and studying under her." As Miss Collins was not in communication with H.P.B. nor in her presence from their first meeting in the fall of 1884 till just prior to the commencement of the publication of Lucifer in September, 1887; it is certain that during that interval this statement is as inaccurate as her others. Mabel Collins was closely associated with H.P.B. in the publication of Lucifer from September, 1887, until January, 1889. The contents of the magazine show that whatever Miss Collins wrote was published over her own signature, the same as with H.P.B. and other contributors - and on her own responsibility. Part of her contribution was "The Blossom and the Fruit," a novel for which she made the same claim of an inspirer as with the three works already discussed. At no time and in no place has anyone produced a line written or signed by H.P.B. supporting Miss Mabel Collins' claims to studying under her. On the contrary, H.P.B. refused to accept Mabel Collins even as a probationer of the

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Esoteric Section until the latter "begged and implored" indeed. She was then placed on probation after warning, and within four days, in the words of H.P.B., "broke her vows, becoming guilty of the blackest treachery and disloyalty to her Higher Self. And when I could no longer keep in the E.S. either herself or her friend, the two convulsed the whole Society with their calumnies and falsehoods." Mabel Collins brought suit in England against H.P.B. for libel. When the case came for trial in July, 1890, a certain letter written by Miss Mabel Collies was shown by H.P.B.'s attorney to the counsel for Miss Collins, who thereupon asked the Court to take the case off the docket, which was done.

Viewing the enormous difference between the three books named and the prior and subsequent writings of Mabel Collins, and the many stories told by Miss Collins and others as to the real source of "Light on the Path" and its companion volumes, and how they were obtained, the student may be interested in the only comment made directly by H.P.B. in those respects. In her letter to Light of June 8, 1889, she says, inter alia, "When I met her [Mabel Collins] she had just completed the Idyll of the White Lotus, which as she stated to Colonel Olcott, had been dictated to her by some 'mysterious person.' Guided by her description, we both recognized an old friend of ours, a Greek, and no Mahatma, though an Adept; further developments proving we were right. This fact, acknowledged by Mrs. Cooke in her dedication of the Idyll, sets aside the idea that the work was either inspired or dictated by Koot Hoomi or any other Mahatma." In the pamphlet issued by H.P.B. at the same time, this statement is repeated, together with the following most interesting paragraph:

"Was the dedication invented, and a Master and 'inspirer' suggested by Mme. [Blavatsky] before the latter had ever seen his amanuensis [Mabel Collins]? For that only she proclaims herself in her dedication, by speaking of the 'true author,' who thus must be regarded as

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some kind of Master, at all events. Moreover, heaps of letters may be produced all written between 1872 and 1884, and signed .'. ; (2) the well-known seal of one who became an adept only in 1886. Did Mme. Blavatsky send to 'Miss Mabel Collins' this signature, when neither knew of the other's existence?"

The same pamphlet of H.P.B.'s contains also a letter, signed "A Student of Light on the Path," reprinted from Light of June 8, 1889, in which the following suggestive ideas are put forth:

"Referring to Miss Collins' explanation, it is at once evident that another intelligence besides her own must also have visited the place, 'spiritually' or otherwise, where she saw 'Light on the Path' written upon its walls, for someone must have placed the words there; moreover, that intelligence had command over good modern English as well as being the possessor of high practical wisdom.

"We judge, therefore, that Miss Collins was simply the favoured vehicle for the communication of those particular rules of the 'Hall of Learning' to the many mortals now needing and hungering for them, and while it is impossible that they could have been written up where she was permitted to observe them, otherwise than by an intelligent Being who had also visited that place, it does not at all follow that he should, or ought to, have made himself or his nature known to her. That would have been creating a basis for personal intimacy which was not necessary and perhaps not advisable.

"As regards the manner in which one mind may instruct or inform another, on what may be termed the occult plane, we know at present very

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(2) This symbol was used as a signature in the original edition of "Light on the Path," following the numbered "rules."

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little, but the phenomena of psychometry and thought-transference may some day, if scientifically studied, be the means of our understanding those things better."

To whatever conclusions the student may come on the mooted real authorship of "Light on the Path" and its related volumes, what has been adduced will, we believe, serve to make two points, general and particular, very clear. The general point is that expressed in the words of H.P.B. in the "Introductory" to the "Secret Doctrine":

"It is above everything important to keep in mind that no theosophical book acquires the least additional value from pretended authority."

Had Theosophical students kept this admonition in mind, whether as regards H.P.B. herself, Miss Mabel Collins, or all the host of those before and since, who have claimed, truly or falsely, to "speak with authority," whether "in the name of the Lord" or "in the name of the Master" - had they been content to study the "message" on the basis of its own inherent merit instead of under the glamour of belief in some authority, real or imaginary, they would quickly have become able to "test the spirits" to some purpose.

The particular point is that it is evident alike from Miss Mabel Collins' own statements as to her inspirer and from the quality of the other writings emanating from her pen, that she had not then and has not now, the remotest knowledge of her own, either as to the actual source of her three gem products, as to the means by which their substance and form reached her, or as to their substance. She was, in no invidious sense, purely and simply the medium of their transmission.

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"The New York Sun" Libel Case

"During the past year there has been no appeal to the Executive Committee from any Branch or individual, and but one case of discipline. On June 11th [1889] formal charges of untheosophic conduct were preferred by Mr. Arthur B. Griggs of Boston against Dr. Elliott Coues, of Washington. These charges were in part based on public imputations by Dr. Coues of fraud and falsehood to Madame Blavatsky, and in part upon unpublished letters in which the Theosophical Society, its teachings, aims, and officers, were treated as shams and deceits. I officially sent a copy of these charges to Dr. Coues in a registered letter, notifying him of the date when the Executive Committee would be prepared to hear his defense. During the intervening time no reply was received, and the Committee, having considered the charges, adjudged them sustained, by a unanimous vote, and on June 22d expelled Dr. Coues from the Theosophical Society. Later events have conclusively shown that it is better for its enemies to be placed without its pale than permitted to remain within it. From this decision there has been no appeal to Col. Olcott, and therefore it is final."

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The Theosophical community having thus disembarrassed itself of the traitor within the household, and placed on record its action, Dr. Coues prepared his final thunderbolt. In the New York Sun for Sunday, June 1, 1890, the leading editorial article was entitled, "The Humbug of Theosophy." It says:

"The exposure of the imposture of Mme. Blavatsky does not seem to lessen at all the prosperity of her humbug religion....

"The number of new members admitted during the year was 373, and there was one expulsion, Dr. Elliott Coues of Washington. He is a man of scientific reputation, who showed up the lying and trickery of the Blavatsky woman after having been one of her dupes for several years. With her closer intimates she seems to make little attempt to conceal her real character as a charlatan, and her hearty contempt for their folly in taking her seriously. Her long success in keeping up the humbug is, therefore, all the more astonishing. Whether her principal disciple, Col. Olcott, is also playing a fraudulent part, it is hard to say. He seems to be very much in earnest, and as she seems to despise him thoroughly and undisguisedly, laughing at his antics, it is perhaps presumable that he is honest and sincere in his credulity. He treats the snuffy old woman as a veritable seeress, and reads her mystical writings with apparent and probably real veneration, though she has described him to her old confederate, Mme. Coulomb, as a muff of the first water. Dr. Coues is of very different stuff, and he did not hesitate to banter her on the su