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THE SACRED MISSION OF THE S. P. R.
All our friends remember the astounding story, born and elaborated in the head of a too zealous “Researcher” sent to India to investigate that which he was incapable of understanding, accepted by many grave and wise men of Cambridge, and joyfully snapped up by the sensation-loving society fish. It was the Gordian knot of the T.S. cut at one blow by the perspicacious Alexander, the great conqueror of spooks and mediums: namely, that the motive for claiming certain phenomenal manifestations as true, was the desire to benefit thereby the Russian Government. So strong became the “Russian Spy” impression with the public, that actually writers of novels began to mention the charge as fait accompli. À propos of this, we find a very witty hit at the S. P. R. in the Hawk of March 12 ult.
Madame Blavatsky has recently compiled a work, called The Secret Doctrine, which covers the last brief period of the last thousand million of years which the world has supposed to have taken to evolute itself, Moses, Darwin, Huxley, and the rest notwithstanding. The Spookical Research Society have, I understand, appointed a permanent committee, with right of hereditary succession to its members, to study and analyze this work, as it is believed to be a covert attack on the British Empire.