Dear Sir, ---- I do not wish to continue a member of the Society for Psychical
Research, and shall be obliged if you will duly record my resignation.
For many reasons I regret to withdraw from a society in the general work of which I am
so much interested, but it appears to me that in connection with its recent attempt to
investigate certain occurrences in India, the leaders of the Society have hastily formed,
on insufficient data, injurious conclusions affecting persons I respect, and have gone out
of their way to promulgate these conclusions. I gratefully recognise that in so far
as it was thought these conclusions would be painful to myself much courtesy has been
shown to me personally during the proceedings that have taken place, but at the same time
the course pursued in reference to the persons whose reputation is assailed in the reports recently submitted to the Society, and substantially
adopted by its authorities, is open, in my opinion, to unequivocal disapproval.
Under these circumstances it would be undesirable for me to remain a member of the
Society.
This is not a convenient opportunity for me to go at length into a discussion of the
grounds on which I conceive Mr. Hodgsons report to be
misleading, and the methods of his inquiry unfair to the persons whose conduct he was
investigating, but at the same time, for obvious reasons, I should be glad if you would
kindly procure the insertion of this letter in the next number of the Societys Journal.
Yours very truly,
A. P. Sinnett.
7, Ladbroke Gardens, W.
September 18th, 1885.
E. T. Bennett, Esq.
[The following Note was appended to Mr. Sinnett's letter of resignation:]
We may remind our readers that only comparatively small portions of the Report on
Phenomena connected with the Theosophical Society, have already been laid before our
Society at the General Meetings. The complete report will
be published in the next number of the Proceedings. It will contain, ---
besides Mr. Hodgsons account of his investigations in India, which deals with most
of the phenomena mentioned in the First Report of the
Committee, as well as with those mentioned in The Occult World; --- a careful
discussion by him on the handwriting of the Koot Hoomi letters,
the authorship of which can, he thinks, be placed almost beyond dispute by a consideration
of the handwriting alone. In order to complete the subject, notes will be added on
phenomena connected with the Theosophical Society that have occurred in Europe.