Blavatsky H.P. - About Spiritualism: Difference between revisions

The dreaded day has come; the number of The Daily Graphic for November the 9th is before us. We have read it carefully, with respectful awe—for true science has always been an authority for us (weak-minded fool though we may be), and so we handled the dangerous exposure with a feeling somewhat akin to the one of a fanatic Christian opening a volume of “Büchner.” We perused it to the last; we turned the page over and over again, vainly straining our eyes and brain to detect therein one word of scientific proof or a solitary atom of overwhelming evidence that would thrust into our spiritualistic bosom the venomous fangs of doubt. But no; not a particle of reasonable explanation or a scientific evidence that what we have all seen, heard, and felt at the Eddys’ was but delusion. In our feminine modesty, still allowing the said article the benefit of the doubt, we disbelieved our own senses, and so devoted a whole day to the picking up of sundry bits of criticism from judges that we believed more competent than ourselves, and at last came collectively to the following conclusion:

The Daily Graphic has allowed Dr. Beard in its magnanimity nine columns of its precious pages to prove—what? Why, the following: First, that he, Dr. Beard, according {{Page aside|38}} to his own modest assertions (see columns second and third), is more entitled to occupy the position of an actor entrusted with characters of simpletons (Molière’s Tartuffe might fit him perhaps as naturally) than to undertake the difficult part of a Prof. Faraday vis-à-vis the Chittenden D. D. Home.

Secondly, that notwithstanding the learned doctor was “overwhelmed already with professional labours” (a nice and cheap réclame, by the way) and scientific researches, he gave the latter another direction, and so went to the Eddys’. That arrived there he played with Horatio Eddy, for the glory of science and the benefit of humanity, the difficult character of a “dishevelled simpleton,” and was rewarded in his scientific research by finding on the said suspicious premises a professor of bumps, “a poor harmless fool”! Galileo, of famous memory, when he detected the sun in its involuntary imposture, chuckled certainly less over his triumph than does Dr. Beard over the discovery of this “poor fool” No. 1. Here we modestly suggest that perhaps the learned doctor had no business to go so far as Chittenden for that.

Further, the doctor, forgetting entirely the wise motto “non bis in idem,” discovers and asserts throughout the length of his article that all the past, present, and future generations of pilgrims to the “Eddy homestead” are collectively fools, and that every solitary member of this numerous body of Spiritualistic pilgrims is likewise “a weak-minded, credulous fool”! Query—The proof of it, if you please, Dr. Beard? Answer—Dr. Beard has said so, and Echo responds, Fool!

Overwhelmed—be switched! . . . . not my father’s pet, if you please. H. P. Blavatsky is never “overwhelmed.”  

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{{Page aside|45}}{{HPB-CW-comment|[In {{SB-page|v=1|p=8|text=Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 8}}, the account of Mr. Brown is followed immediately by an article entitled “Unpractical Spirits,” presumably also from The Daily Graphic. It is signed with the initials “I.F.F.” which obviously stand for Irvin Francis Fern. H.P.B. added the following remarks in pen and ink:]}}

Bravo! Irvin Francis Fern—a great Occultist. He IS RIGHT but we have to defend phenomena & prove it too before we teach them philosophy.  

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