< The “Spiritless Souls” of the Theosophists (continued from page 4-121) >
there must be a good deal of calumny somewhere, and a good deal of weakness in receiving as gospel much that may come from, perhaps, the doubles of the inquirers, those “cloud-compelling Joves,” the Theosophists. All “elementaries” have lost their spirits, according to Colonel Olcott, whether in the body or out of it; and all souls who come to physical mediumship are without spirits. This may be the teaching, also, of some of the caste-ridden Brahmins of the pagodas, at whose “practices, penances, and phariseeism,” Max Muller tells us, Sakya Muni, the great Buddha was so shocked. But, wherever and however these sentiments may take their rise, Col. Olcott’s is, at any rate, a genuine attempt to explain Spiritualism without spirits.
I rejoice to find that Kardec’s del et I’Enfer, translated by Miss Blackwell, is at length coming out; for, I think, it deals with evil men who have left the world, and also with some in the world, more rationally and more justly than does Colonel Olcott, yet stringently enough for any but those whom the great statesman Burke called, “these bitter professors of the graces of religion.” This book deals also, shortly, with the power of mediums over spirits lower than themselves, among which M. Kardec enumerates primitive spirits (esprits primitifs), which appear to be synonymous with the “elementals” of Colonel Olcott. Signor Bosco, the conjuror, gave proof of this power of mediums over low spirits when he used to produce most extraordinary Spiritual effects by making lads on his platform say, in Italian, words which, being translated, mean—“Infernal spirits, obey!” “Spirits,” I would remark, infernal though they were called, but not, as Colonel Olcott would call them, mere “souls,” bereft of spirit.
It would not be, I think, difficult to show that Colonel Olcott is not only inconsistent with reference to the great Eastern religions, to which he professes to adhere, as well as mistaken as regards the teaching of Jesus which he advances; but also that he does great injustice to the grand doctrine of evolution, and that of the selection of the fittest, by forcing them into the support of his most unscientific assumption that souls or anything else can be “annihilated.” I think the great philosophers he quotes would be the first to tell him that nothing is ever lost, but that everything that may seem lost only, reappears under new combinations; and it is unjust, too, to quote Darwin and Wallace in confirmation of his most illiberal doctrine that—“The indiscriminate attainment of immortality would be contrary to the analogies of nature, and repugnant to the ideas of strict justice.” As if the attainment of immortality could be without discrimination, or any of God’s works devoid of justice or incompatible with goodwill towards mankind, God’s offspring.
I am, however, happy to find that all Theosophists do not agree with Colonel Olcott. I may say, without sorrow, that there is a division in the camp. Doctors differ among the Theosophists, as they do even among the Brahmins. So, while Colonel Olcott is seeking the selfassumed aristocracy of ancient Brahmin caste, with its “practices, penances, and Phariseeism,” that “shocked” the great and righteous Buddha, we find that these very practices are on the wane among the Hindoos themselves. We will not be so uncharitable as to say of them what Colonel Olcott says of the souls of so many men, that “they are burning out by their own intensity, until dissolution comes to crown their direful careers.” No, let us take a milder tone, let us say, with Bismarck, “Stewing away in their own juice.” We will quote Mr. G. M. Tagore, himself a Brahmin, in our behalf, who tells us, in The Spiritualist of February 25th, 1876:—“Wherever monotheistic ideas gain ground, caste gives way before them. Castes, consequently, are breaking up in India.”
But it is not alone the mysteries of the Pagodas to which the “inner ring” of the Theosophists “adhere,” which are now being avoided by the more liberal Brahmins themselves, but there exists evidently also a striking diversity of opinion among the Theosophists themselves, judging from their writings; for “An English Member of the Theosophical Society,” in most exact contrast to Colonel Olcott’s condemnation of “souls,” or “elementaries,” to “annihilation,” quotes in The Spiritualist of March 10th, 1878, “A very learned Occultist,” who tells us, “When the elementary dies out of one state of existence he is born into a higher one; and when man dies out of the world of gross matter, he is born into one more etherial; so on, from sphere to sphere, man never losing his trinity!” Just as I now say of the Colonel’s explanation of an elementary, and his description of the superabounding loss of trinity among men, “This looks a deal too bad.” So when nearly two years ago I read this learned occultist’s pleasing account of the destiny of “elementaries,” and the agreeable allotment of a happy, unruffled progress after death for all mankind, I exclaimed, “This, I fear, looks too good;” and I was irresistibly reminded of an ancient ditty—one, I believe, of what were called The Bailey Ballads— in which Mr. Bailey, their author, avowed, as his idea apparently of the summit of bliss, that—
He’d be a butterfly, born in a bower, |
So far Mr. Bailey, and all the Theosophists, not omitting Colonel Olcott, seem to be in most sweet accord as regards their own personal souls. But now, when I come to the next verse, where Mr. Bailey owns that—
He’d never languish for wealth or for power, |
I am struck with the utter discord of his sentiments with those of Colonel Olcott, who, as a “perfect initiate, has absolute dominion over the forces of nature,” which he makes his obedient servants, so would naturally scorn unfortunate Mr. Bailey, who was so evidently an adversary of slave-driving, and one who was quite willing to let the elements, and the elementals also, take their own course. But whatever may be the views on these points of the more liberal members of the Theosophical Society, one nevertheless regrets that, when we thought we had a right to expect something tangible and consistent from the Theosophical camp, we only get opinions the reverse of harmonious, or rather, in one sense, so entirely diverse, that beyond it the force of contrast can no further go.
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