< Colonel H. S. Olcott on Recent Criticisms–Psychical Drawings (continued from page 7-86) >
Debate upon my “Views of the Theosophists’’ paper, in The Spiritualist of December 7, including all of the articles on both sides, and the paper itself, measures less than sixty-four columns—not much when compared with the 6,888 columns that have previously appeared in the paper—but our welcome is already worn out. “Welcome the coming, speed the parting, guest”—the old legend seemed written in invisible ink, as a headline over every page of the number for March 1. Well, if so it must be, we will e’en trudge along the dusty road that leads up-hill, leaving you our corporate and individual blessings for what you have done for us. “It is now high time to cease endless and profitless talk about matters of doctrine,” says the editor, in a leading article upon “Unproved Speculations.” Profitless talk; unproved speculations? Now, pray, to what profit has been all this talk since 1848, if, after witnessing millions of phenomena, we find that they may be, or that there is, very strong probability that they may be accounted for on another hypothesis than that hitherto accepted? And whose speculations, when we come right to the point, are more unproved than those that have been current among us these thirty years? Translated into plain English, the editor’s rap at us Theosophists would read thus:—“We have plenty of phenomena to amuse and startle us; a pretty and captivating theory of essential immortality with the necessary corollary of inevitable progression upward; inspired poets to sing to us; Oxford and Cambridge men to dogmatise for us; the priceless consolation of feeling that our sainted dead are near us, to guard, to counsel, strengthen, and to warn—leave us alone! You are intruders, obstructionists, wordchoppers. We do not want to be told what your countless generations of sages believed or taught; nor to undergo the self-discipline you say is a pre-requisite to adeptship. There are phenomena in India, Thibet, and Egypt, no doubt; but the Thaumaturgists are all mediums, as were Gantawa, Buddha, Jesus, Apollonius, Porphyry, Plotinus, and every other wonder-worker in history. If you have anything to show us in the way of phenomena, show it or shut up; but we warn you in advance that your phenomena will be those of mediumship, and that we denounce and metaphorically sit upon your Eastern doctrine of potential immortality I’’
That is about the meaning of what has been written by our opponents in The Spiritualist—Mr. Harrison, “M.A. (Oxon),” “Scrutator,” ‘‘M.A. (Cantab),” and all the rest. “None of your doctrines, gentlemen,” they say, “we want facts. Gradgrind for ever!” And we answer that if the dogmas of Spiritualism are not on trial; if our profane hands may not touch this ark of the covenant; if cycles of human experience weigh nothing as compared with the undemonstrable theories of one generation, then we move the previous question and close the debate. Time enough for us to describe our phenomena when those of the circles have been satisfactorily explained: the burden of proof lies with Spiritualists, not with us.
Grant that the language quoted by Mr. Harrison in his leader of March 1st was used in the inaugural address of the President of the Theosophical Society, what then? It may have been in questionable taste for me to use it, but no one familiar with what had been passing in American Spiritualistic journals, could blame us for making some retort. I am no passive non-resistant. If I have an opinion I am always ready to fight for it, and return blow for blow. Madame Blavatsky and I were even charged with being in the employ of the Jesuits to break up Spiritualism—we who have crossed swords, everywhere and always, with Christian theologians; who ask no quarter, nor give any to them; who would see Christianity replaced by that Oriental religious philosophy from whose maternal bosom it drew the very nourishment upon which it has existed for almost nineteen centuries! I said—and I would not obliterate a word now—that if Mr. Felt made objective to the public, by his chemical vapours, the spirits of the elements, it would be a sorry day for dogmatic Spiritualists, as for physicists and the Christian clergy. Whether Mr. Felt did this privately or not, is nobody’s business outside our society, but it is within the knowledge of witnesses, myself included, that there are such beings, that they can produce the phenomena of mediumism, and can be made objective to the senses. My statement is not proof, but it is all that will be furnished at the moment; and, as I see the situation, even that is superfluous, since it is the philosophy of Spiritualism which is on its defence, not the views of the Theosophists.
To “M.A. (Oxon)’s” demand for our seers and our phenomena, I referred him to those Eastern countries where both may be found by every earnest and courageous inquirer. Am I unreasonable? Then why not demand that a peak of the Himalayas shall be brought to Great Russell-street, or Jacolliot’s Covindasamy be put into the Psychological Society’s hall, before you will believe that the mountains exist, or the fakir’s power to produce marvels is a verity. We must take the testimony of our fellow-men upon every physical fact not witnessed by ourselves, and I always found my fellow Spiritualists disposed (and very justly) to denounce scientists for not crediting the cumulative testimony of so many thousands as to the reality of the medial phenomena, whatever they might think as to their source. But there was a time when none but the inmates of a very obscure hamlet in New York State had had the smallest proof that such things could happen. How did the general public learn the truth? By going to the place where the mediums were, and personally witnessing the manifestations. So, now, we Theosophists tell Spiritualists, who have no love for anything but facts, to go to the East, .and see things even more wonderful than medium’s show, done in utter violation of all recognised medial conditions.
I have said not what I had hoped, first and last, to say, but as much as the limits of the time and space granted allow. In parting from the numerous, and, with a few exceptions, respected public of The Spiritualist, we do so without anger, and with sincere regret that there is not room for us in The Spiritualist’s family pew. If it had been incumbent upon us to give our facts, believe me there would have been no lack of material. We are not of the kind to build fortifications and give battle on shifting sands. What we know we know, and that experience is our private property; our criticisms upon the alleged agency of pure disembodied spirits in producing the modern phenomena, are entirely amenable to the review of our antagonist. Nevertheless, there have been proofs of the potencies of the will given to various persons not within our society. Among many equally convincing, I will, in parting, cite the following:—
On an evening in December last, we had dining with us, at the “Lamasery,” a French physician, Dr. Marquette, and Mr. W. Q. Judge, of the New York bar, and, until recently, associated in practice with a gentleman who was successively United States’ District Attorney and Counsel to the Corporation of New York. Returning to the library after dinner, an illustration of the power of the will to imprint a permanent tint upon paper, the reflector of the adept’s thought, was vouchsafed us by Madame Blavatsky, Taking a half sheet of my notepaper from my desk, she asked Mr. Judge to name a subject, which he did. She laid her hand, palm downward, upon the page, rubbed the paper with it a few times, and—there was the picture Mr. Judge desired—the portrait of a Hindu ascetic. I had seen a hundred experiments of this sort, but this was almost a novelty to the other witnesses. Let them give their own version of the occurrence:
City and County of New York, U.S.
William Q. Judge being duly sworn says, that he is an attorney and counsellor at law, practising at the bar of the State of New York; that he was present at the house of Madame H. P. Blavatsky, at No. 302 West 47th Street, New York City, on one occasion in the month of December, 1877, when a discussion was being held upon the subject of Eastern magic, especially upon the power of an adept to produce phenomena by an exercise of the will, equalling or surpassing those of mediumship. To illustrate the subject as she had often done in deponent’s presence previously by other experiments, Madame Blavatsky, without preparation, and in full light, and in the presence and sight of deponent, Col. Olcott, and Dr. L. M. Marquette, tore a sheet of common writing paper in two and asked us the subject we would have represented. Deponent named the portrait of a certain very holy man in India. Thereupon laying the paper upon the table, Mme. Blavatsky placed the palm of her hand upon it, and after rubbing the paper a few times (occupying less than a minute) with a circular motion, lifted her hand and gave deponent the paper , for inspection. Upon the previously white surface there was a most remarkable and striking picture of an Indian fakir, representing him as if in contemplation. Deponent has frequently seen it since, and it is now in possession of Col. Olcott. Deponent positively avers that the blank paper first taken was the paper on which the picture appeared, and that no substitution of another paper was made or was possible,
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 20th day of March, 1878, Samuel Y. Speyer, Notary Public, New York County.
State of New York, City and County of New York.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and affixed the Seal of the said Court and County, the 20th day of March, 1878.
The undersigned, a practising physician, residing at No. 224, Spring Street, in the City of New York, having read the foregoing affidavit of Mr. Judge, certifies that it is a correct statement of the facts. The portrait was produced as described, in full light, and without there being any opportunity for fraud. Moreover, the undersigned wishes to say that other examples of Madame Blavatsky’s power to instantly render objective the images in her mind, have been given in the presence of many witnesses, including the undersigned; and that, having intimately known that lady since 1873, when she was living with her brother at Paris, the undersigned can and does unreservedly testify that her moral character is above censure, and that her phenomena have been invariably produced in defiance of the conditions of mediumship, with which the undersigned is very familiar.
So much for the circumstances attending the production of the portrait; now let us see what are its artistic merits. The witnesses are well qualified, Mr. O’Donovan being one of our best known sculptors, and an experienced art critic, and Mr. Le Char occupying a place second to none as a portrait painter
Sir,—For the benefit of those among your readers who may be able to gather the significance of it, I beg to offer some testimony concerning a remarkable performance claimed by Col. Olcott and Madame Blavatsky to have been done by herself without the aid of such physical means as are employed by persons usually for such an end. The production referred to is a small portrait in black and white of a Hindu Fakir, which was produced by Madame Blavatsky, as it is claimed, by a simple exercise of will power. As to the means by which this work was produced, however, I have nothing at all to do, and wish simply to say as an artist—and give also the testimony of Mr. Thos. Le Char, one of the most eminent of our portrait painters, whoso experience as such has extended over fifty years—that the work is of a kind that could not have been done by any living artist known to either of us. It has all the essential qualities which distinguish the. portraits by Titian, Masaccio, and Raphael, namely, individuality of the profoundest kind, and consequently breadth and unity of as perfect a quality as I can conceive. I may safely assert that there is no artist who has given intelligent attention to portraiture, who would not concur with Mr. Le Char and myself in the opinion which we have formed of this remarkable work, and if it was not done as it is claimed to have been done, I am at utter loss to account for it. I may add, that this drawing, or whatever it may be termed, has at first sight the appearance of having been done by washes of Indian ink, but that upon closer inspection, both Mr. Le Char and myself have been unable to liken it to any process of drawing known to us; the black tints seem to be an integral part of the paper upon which it is done. I have seen numbers of drawings claimed to have been done by spirit influences, in which the vehicle employed was perfectly obvious, and none of them were of more than mediocre artistic merit; not One of them, certainly, could be compared at all with this most remarkable performance of which I write.
Studio Building, 51, West 10th Street, New York.
Dear Sir,—My experience has not made me at all familiar with magic, but I have seen much of what is termed spiritualistic phenomena. Among the latter, so-called spirit drawings, which were thought by the mediums and their friends very fine, but the best of which I found wanting in every element of art.
I do not wish to be censorious, but an experience of fifty years in portrait painting has perhaps made me exacting, when it is a question of paintings alleged to come from a supernal source. This much by way of preface to the subject of my present note.
<... continues on page 7-88 >