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Blavatsky H.P. - The Knout: Difference between revisions
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Good friends, whose inquiries we have occasionally but rarely answered, bear us witness that we have always disclaimed anything like “leadership”; that we have invariably referred you to the same standard authors whom we have read, the same old philosophers which we have studied. We call on you to testify that we have repudiated dogmas and dogmatists, whether living men or disembodied spirits. As opposed to materialists, theosophists are Spiritualists, but it would be as absurd for us to claim the leadership of Spiritualism as for a Protestant priest to speak for the Romish Church, or a Romish cardinal to lead the great body of Protestants, though both claim to be Christians! Recrimination seems to be the life and soul of American journalism, but I really thought that a Spiritualistic organ had more congenial matter for its columns than such materialistic abuse as the present “Fort Leavenworth” criticism! | Good friends, whose inquiries we have occasionally but rarely answered, bear us witness that we have always disclaimed anything like “leadership”; that we have invariably referred you to the same standard authors whom we have read, the same old philosophers which we have studied. We call on you to testify that we have repudiated dogmas and dogmatists, whether living men or disembodied spirits. As opposed to materialists, theosophists are Spiritualists, but it would be as absurd for us to claim the leadership of Spiritualism as for a Protestant priest to speak for the Romish Church, or a Romish cardinal to lead the great body of Protestants, though both claim to be Christians! Recrimination seems to be the life and soul of American journalism, but I really thought that a Spiritualistic organ had more congenial matter for its columns than such materialistic abuse as the present “Fort Leavenworth” criticism! | ||
One chief aim of the writer seems to be to abuse Isis Unveiled. My publisher will doubtless feel under great obligation for giving it such a notoriety just now, when the fourth edition<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Rather the fourth printing of the same original edition; the word “edition” has been often used in a rather loose manner.—Compiler.]}}</ref> is ready to go to press. That the fossilized reviewers of the Tribune and Popular Science Monthly—both {{Page aside|323}} admitted advocates of materialistic science, and unsparingly contemptuous denunciators of Spiritualism—should, without either having read my book, brand it as Spiritualistic moonshine, was perfectly natural. I should have thought that I had written my first volume, holding up modern science to public contempt for its unfair treatment of psychological phenomena, to small purpose, if they had complimented me. Nor was I at all surprised that the critic of the New York Sun permitted himself the coarse language of a partisan and betrayed his ignorance of the contents of my book by terming me a “Spiritualist.” But I am sorry that a critic like Mr. Coleman, who professes to speak for the Spiritualists and against the materialists, should range himself by the side of the flunkeys of the latter, when at least twenty of the first critics of Europe and America, not Spiritualists, but well-read scholars, should have praised it even more unstintedly than he has bespattered it. If such men as the author of The Great Dionysiak Myth and Poseidon, <ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Robert Brown, Jr.]}}</ref> writing a private letter to a fellow archeologist and scholar, which he thought I would never see, says the design of my book is “simply colossal,” and that the book “is really a marvelous production” and has his “entire concurrence” in its views about: “(1) The wisdom of the ancient sages; (2) The folly of the merely material philosopher [the Emmette Colemans, Huxleys and Tyndalls]; (3) The doctrine of Nirvana; (4) Archaic monotheism,” etc.; and when the London Public Opinion calls it “one of the most extraordinary works of the Nineteenth Century,” in an elaborate criticism; and when Alfred R. Wallace says, “I am amazed at the vast amount of erudition displayed in the chapters, and the great interest of the topics on which they treat—your book will open up to many Spiritualists a whole world of new ideas, and cannot fail to be of the greatest value in the inquiry which is now being so earnestly carried on,” Mr. Coleman really appears in the sorry light of one who abuses for the mere sake of abusing. | One chief aim of the writer seems to be to abuse Isis Unveiled. My publisher will doubtless feel under great obligation for giving it such a notoriety just now, when the fourth edition<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Rather the fourth printing of the same original edition; the word “edition” has been often used in a rather loose manner.—Compiler.]}}</ref> is ready to go to press. That the fossilized reviewers of the Tribune and Popular Science Monthly—both {{Page aside|323}} admitted advocates of materialistic science, and unsparingly contemptuous denunciators of Spiritualism—should, without either having read my book, brand it as Spiritualistic moonshine, was perfectly natural. I should have thought that I had written my first volume, holding up modern science to public contempt for its unfair treatment of psychological phenomena, to small purpose, if they had complimented me. Nor was I at all surprised that the critic of the New York Sun permitted himself the coarse language of a partisan and betrayed his ignorance of the contents of my book by terming me a “Spiritualist.” But I am sorry that a critic like Mr. Coleman, who professes to speak for the Spiritualists and against the materialists, should range himself by the side of the flunkeys of the latter, when at least twenty of the first critics of Europe and America, not Spiritualists, but well-read scholars, should have praised it even more unstintedly than he has bespattered it. If such men as the author of The Great Dionysiak Myth and Poseidon,<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Robert Brown, Jr.]}}</ref> writing a private letter to a fellow archeologist and scholar, which he thought I would never see, says the design of my book is “simply colossal,” and that the book “is really a marvelous production” and has his “entire concurrence” in its views about: “(1) The wisdom of the ancient sages; (2) The folly of the merely material philosopher [the Emmette Colemans, Huxleys and Tyndalls]; (3) The doctrine of Nirvana; (4) Archaic monotheism,” etc.; and when the London Public Opinion calls it “one of the most extraordinary works of the Nineteenth Century,” in an elaborate criticism; and when Alfred R. Wallace says, “I am amazed at the vast amount of erudition displayed in the chapters, and the great interest of the topics on which they treat—your book will open up to many Spiritualists a whole world of new ideas, and cannot fail to be of the greatest value in the inquiry which is now being so earnestly carried on,” Mr. Coleman really appears in the sorry light of one who abuses for the mere sake of abusing. | ||
What a curious psychological power I must have! All the {{Page aside|324}} Journal writers, from the talented editor down to Mr. Coleman, pretend to account for the blind devotion of Colonel Olcott for Theosophy, the over-partial panegyric of Miss Kislingbury, the friendly recantation of Dr. G. Bloede, and the surprisingly vigorous defense of myself by Mr. C. Sotheran, and other recent events, on the ground of my having psychologized them all into the passive servitude of hoodwinked dupes! I can only say that such psychology is next door to a miracle. That I could influence men and women of such acknowledged independence of character and intellectual capacity, would be at least more than any of your lecturing mesmerizers or “spirit controls” have been able to accomplish. Do you not see, my noble enemies, the logical consequences of such a doctrine? Admit that I can do that, and you admit the reality of magic, and my powers as an adept. I never claimed that magic was anything but psychology practically applied. That one of your mesmerizers can make a cabbage appear a rose, is only a lower form of the power you all endow me with. You give an old woman—whether forty, fifty, sixty, or ninety years old (some swear I am the latter, some the former), it matters not; an old woman whose “Kalmuco-Buddhisto-Tartaric features,” even in youth, never made her appear pretty; a woman, whose ungainly garb, uncouth manners and masculine habits are enough to frighten any bustled and corseted fine lady of fashionable society out of her wits you give [her] such powers of fascination as to draw fine ladies and gentlemen, scholars and artists, doctors and clergymen, to her house by the scores, to not only talk philosophy with her, not merely to stare at her as though she were a monkey in red flannel breeches, as some of them do, but to honor her in many cases with their fast and sincere friendship and grateful kindness! Psychology! If that is the name you give it, then, although I have never offered myself as a teacher, you had better come, my friends, and be taught at once the “trick” (gratis, for unlike other psychologizers, I never yet took money for teaching anybody anything), so that hereafter you may not be deceived into recognizing as— what Mr. Coleman so graphically calls “the sainted dead {{Page aside|325}} of earth”—those pimple-nosed and garlic-breathing beings who climb ladders through trap-doors and carry tow wigs and battered masks in the penetralia of their underclothing. | What a curious psychological power I must have! All the {{Page aside|324}} Journal writers, from the talented editor down to Mr. Coleman, pretend to account for the blind devotion of Colonel Olcott for Theosophy, the over-partial panegyric of Miss Kislingbury, the friendly recantation of Dr. G. Bloede, and the surprisingly vigorous defense of myself by Mr. C. Sotheran, and other recent events, on the ground of my having psychologized them all into the passive servitude of hoodwinked dupes! I can only say that such psychology is next door to a miracle. That I could influence men and women of such acknowledged independence of character and intellectual capacity, would be at least more than any of your lecturing mesmerizers or “spirit controls” have been able to accomplish. Do you not see, my noble enemies, the logical consequences of such a doctrine? Admit that I can do that, and you admit the reality of magic, and my powers as an adept. I never claimed that magic was anything but psychology practically applied. That one of your mesmerizers can make a cabbage appear a rose, is only a lower form of the power you all endow me with. You give an old woman—whether forty, fifty, sixty, or ninety years old (some swear I am the latter, some the former), it matters not; an old woman whose “Kalmuco-Buddhisto-Tartaric features,” even in youth, never made her appear pretty; a woman, whose ungainly garb, uncouth manners and masculine habits are enough to frighten any bustled and corseted fine lady of fashionable society out of her wits you give [her] such powers of fascination as to draw fine ladies and gentlemen, scholars and artists, doctors and clergymen, to her house by the scores, to not only talk philosophy with her, not merely to stare at her as though she were a monkey in red flannel breeches, as some of them do, but to honor her in many cases with their fast and sincere friendship and grateful kindness! Psychology! If that is the name you give it, then, although I have never offered myself as a teacher, you had better come, my friends, and be taught at once the “trick” (gratis, for unlike other psychologizers, I never yet took money for teaching anybody anything), so that hereafter you may not be deceived into recognizing as— what Mr. Coleman so graphically calls “the sainted dead {{Page aside|325}} of earth”—those pimple-nosed and garlic-breathing beings who climb ladders through trap-doors and carry tow wigs and battered masks in the penetralia of their underclothing. | ||
{{Style P-Signature|H. P. BLAVATSKY. | {{Style P-Signature|H. P. BLAVATSKY. | ||
“The masculino-feminine Sclavonic Theosoph, from Crim-Tartary”— | “The masculino-feminine Sclavonic Theosoph, from Crim-Tartary”— | ||
a title which does more credit to Mr. Coleman's vituperative ingenuity than to his literary accomplishments.}} | a title which does more credit to Mr. Coleman's vituperative | ||
ingenuity than to his literary accomplishments.}} | |||
{{Footnotes}} | {{Footnotes}} | ||