Published by Blavatsky Study Center. Online Edition copyright 2004.


Mr. Sinnett's Resignation.
[A Letter from A.P. Sinnett]

[Reprinted from the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research
(London),October 1885, pp. 86-87.]

This online edition is reprinted with permission
of the Society for Psychical Research, London.


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. Hodgson’s 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 Society’s 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. Hodgson’s 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.