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(June 1891)
Publications:
- The Path, vol. VI, no. 3, June 1891, pp. 83-84
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CTD entry in Russian: Фуллертон, Александр - Испытания характера
DATA
Title for references: Fullerton A - Tests of Character
Short description: Signed "Alexander Fullerton, F. T. S." Written after H. P. Blavatsky's death, defends her character ...
83 Madame Blavatsky's retirement from this incarnation has incited journalists to columns of description, in which those hostile to her have repeated anew the various charges of humbuggery, deception, imposture, mercenariness, rapacity, lasciviousness, immorality, and falsehood. All may be grouped under 3 heads, Fraud, Extortion, and Lust.
Now to determine the actual character of any person widely known as an author, there are 3 tests,—the flavor of the writings, the quality of the readers drawn to them, the personal experience of those most closely associated with him in domestic life. Let us apply these tests to Madame Blavatsky.
1st. The flavor of the writings. Throughout all, but especially in the one avowedly written as a hand-book for pupils who would practice Theosophic teachings, The Voice of the Silence, the duties most explicitly, repeatedly, and unqualifiedly enjoined are Truth, Unselfishness, and Purity. It is declared that no one should attempt the Higher Path till deliberately purged of every falsehood, unbrotherliness, and uncleanness, such being an absolute bar to the spiritual progression which alone can conduct to Beatitude. This is beyond question the reiterated injunction of each book. Now if it mirrored the soul of the writer, Madame Blavatsky was honest, unselfish, and chaste; if the reverse, she was publishing sentiments opposite to her own, opposite to those fitted to secure her the followers she would desire, opposite to the tendency of the age and to the demands of literature, opposite to a motive for fame, ease, emolument, or praise. She was universally admitted to be clever; does a clever writer hypocritically avow doctrines certain to ensure failure in popularity and gain?
84 2d. The quality of the readers drawn to them. Are her works the chosen favorites of the frivolous, the tricky, the dishonest, the sensual? The question is as though one should ask if the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius were the delight of thieves. Apart from the matter of philosophical discussion or esoteric exposition, facts show that the purchasers and students of her writings are men and women of sober mind, intent on spiritual things, dwelling on soul-advance and fraternal help as the aims of life. Does an unscrupulous sensualist devote years of laborious work to provide guidance for that class; does that class feel magnetic sympathy with the self-seeking and the corrupt?
3d. The personal experience of those most closely associated in domestic life. Every man is best known by such as dwell in his household, note his private habits, tastes, affiliations, are familiar with his ways and speech and revelations. Now it is remarkable of Madame Blavatsky that the most unreserved testimony to her sincerity comes from those most competent to test it, members long of her own family, intimately connected with her in daily life. Mrs. Besant, the Countess Wachtmeister, Dr. and Mr. Keightley, speak in no measured tones of her generosity, kindness, forgiveness of injuries, freedom from resentment, her patience with learners, her condemnation of wrong, selfishness, and incontinence, her amazing and ceaseless energy, her self-sacrifice, her indifference to money, her refusal to accept gifts, her cheerful poverty that her work might be sustained, her unreserved renunciation of ease, income, rest, and health for the cause of Theosophy. They, and such of us as have had like, though less, experience, are uniform in testimony as to these points. Strange that all such should be deceived, and that the true interpreters of her character should be journalists who never read a page of her writings, never attended a meeting of the Society she founded, never passed a day in her household, never even looked upon her face!
The friends of Madame Blavatsky, those who knew and loved her, do not ask that the world shall take her at their valuation. They ask merely that the rules of palpable common-sense shall be admitted in any judgment of her, that testimony from those who know much shall be thought weightier than testimony from those who know nothing, that every well-established principle in the interpretation of human character shall not be reversed in her case, that the unsupported assertion of a daily newspaper shall not be conceded the authority of a Court or the infallibility of a Scripture. They do not even ask that the impartial shall read her books, but they suggest, not from hearsay but from experience, that if any man wishes his aspirations heightened, his motive invigorated, his endeavor spurred, he should turn to the writings which express the thought and reflect the soul of Helena P. Blavatsky.
Alexander Fullerton, F. T. S.
Footnotes