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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |Colonel H. S. Olcott on Recent Criticisms–Psychical Drawings|7-88}}
{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |Colonel H. S. Olcott on Recent Criticisms–Psychical Drawings|7-88}}
...
I have seen in your possession a portrait in black and white of an Indian religious ascetic, which is entirely ''unique. ''It would require an artist of very extraordinary power to reach the degree of ability which is expressed in this work. There is a oneness of treatment difficult to attain, with a pronounced individuality, combined with great breadth. As a whole, it is an ''individual.'' It has the appearance of having been done on the moment, a result always inseparable from great art. I cannot discover with what material it is laid on the paper. I first thought it chalk, then pencil, then Indian ink; but a minute inspection leaves me quite unable to decide. Certainly, it is neither of the above.
If, as you tell me, it was done instantaneously by Madame Blavatsky, then all I can say is, she must possess artistic powers not to be accounted for on any hypothesis except that of magic. The tint seems not to be laid on the surface of the common writing paper upon which the portrait is made, but to be combined, as it were, with the fibres themselves.
No human being, however much genius he might have, could produce the work, except with much time and painstaking labour; and, if my observation goes for anything, no medium has ever produced anything worthy of being mentioned beside it.
{{Style P-Signature in capitals|Thos. Le Char.}}
Studio Building, 31, West 10th Street, New York.
I hope this will suffice to show that when we Theosophists have been charged with putting forth “unsupported assertions,” injustice has been done us, and that we are not quite the rash fools we have been taken for. Men who have had a quarter of a century’s experience with the medial phenomena, and who have no sympathy whatever with materialists, or Christians, or any other class which opposes their investigation, are neither to be regarded as incompetent observers, nor as banded together to split the great body of Spiritualists into factions for the mere sake of carrying out a sinister design.
{{Style P-Signature in capitals|Henry S. Olcott,
''President of the Theosophical Society.''}}
New York, March 12th, 1878
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