HPB-SB-14-104

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

T i

vol. 14, p. 104	volume 14, page 104 vol. title: vol. period: 1882 pages in vol.: 174
Legend HPB note HPB highlighted HPB underlined HPB crossed out <Editors note> <Archivist note> Lost or unclear SBT, DT Restored

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eng • рус

< The Salvation Tent. (continued from page 14-103) >

a curiously dressed figure. He had a yellow coat, a pair of yellow trousers and a yellow scarf across his shoulders. The Arab cap on his head was partly concealed under a white pheta, which was folded without any proper shape. In his hand was an instrument, somewhat like the seetar, with only one wire to it, something like the one the beggars use in the streets. On his left was seated on a chair a lady. The gentleman we were told, was Major Tucker himself. He is of middle stature and can be said to be rather thin looking than stout. His face is broad, and cheeks quite pale; he presented the appearance of one who was starved for a fortnight. The lady had a yellow European dress with a hump of it put up behind the waist. Over her head she wore a blue piece of cloth, serving the purpose of a shawl of our native ladies. Behind them was a bench on which were two of the Lieutenants of the Army, and two young men. Near them was a boy of about seven years, by whose side was an elderly dark-looking saheb in European clothes. Presumably he was a Negro of the revivalists’ class in America. Each and all of them had some instrument or other. The dress of the Lieutenants was the same as that of Major Tucker, with the exception of the colour of the scarf: the Major’s was yellow, while that of the Lieutenant’s, blue. They sang one or two hymns from their Hindustani book of Hymns, which can be purchased from them for an anna or two each. One of the Lieutenants then came forward and addressed the audience in Hindustani. With the exception of about half a dozen persons occupying some of the chairs near the platform, the rest of the audience consisted of baniah merchant boys and Mahomedan children who have nothing to do, and who go about playing and dancing. The lack of any sense in the talk was made up by the Lieutenant by his gestures. The boys seemed to think that the Saheb Logues conducted their nautch by merely pacing the platform to and fro and stretching and drawing back the hands. After about a quarter of an hour’s dance, the Lieutenant resumed his seat; and Major Tucker gave the signal for the next martial song to be sung. The chieftain was evidently full of enthusiasm. He was gently stroking the platform with the toes of his feet in accompaniment to the singing. This singing of hymns gave the Lieutenants the time to make their rounds for Bhiksha. To a piece of small stick was attached a small cocoanut shell, in which the audience threw a pie or two or bits of silver coin, as these shells were passed round to them by the Lieutenants. The boys gave their pies with great pleasure as they evidently thought that the first act of the Saheb Logue’s Nautch or Tamasha was over, and the next one to begin. No sooner was the work of collection over than the hymns were at an end. Lieutenant Miss Thompson then rose at Major Tucker’s command and addressed the meeting in English, the Major acting as an interpreter. The chieftain evidently knows Hindustani well enough and has also the art of translating so as to present the hardest English expressions in the mildest Hindustani form. This art was brought into prominent play when the next speaker, the dark old venerable gentleman, came up, in obedience to Major Tucker’s wishes. After Miss Thompson’s speech, which was delivered in the strongest Yorkshire accent and in nasal twists, the hymns were as usual sung again. Then rose the negro gentleman. He came forward with such a serious looking face that a superstitious Hindu would have thought he had just returned to his normal condition from his state of Samadhi. In clear, gentle accents he said:— “Gentlemen, I have a message for you this morning; a message from my master, from—your master;—Jesus Christ. You cannot say you do not believe in him; I know you do; otherwise you would not be here. . .” A Daniel come to judgment! Because people go to the Salvation Tent to see what they consider to be a fun, they must therefore believe in Jesus Christ, or else they would not be there! A fine piece of logic! Such is the stuff of which the champions of the Salvation Army are composed. These are its heroes; its condemnation. Even some of the sensible Christians who were then present had to put down their heads in shame, as they did when they found out of what stuff Joe Cook was made. The Venerable gentleman further tells us that his master offers us “salvation; salvation from false Gods and false religious systems.” Major Tucker had here the good sense to alter the second clause in his translation. His art here helped him and he put it thus to his native audience: “Salvation from the woes of the world.” Our personal visit to the Tent has thus shown us that these Salvationists are a set of harmless monomaniacs, and the only thing they are doing is to bring the Englishmen into ridicule, and Christianity into contempt. In Calcutta they could join company with the New Dispensationists, although we wonder if they ever had a “Mystic Dance,” in Babu Keshub Chunder Sen’s company. In Madras they will find another set of “Monomaniacs” already referred to often and often in these columns. It is only this Bombay that does not afford them any parallel and company. We sincerely trust and hope that in Madras both these sets of “monomaniacs” will join hands and confine their meetings to themselves. The Salvationists will thus have saved Madras from the weekly outbursts of its old inmates. The intelligent public will thus have some peace and rest for a short time at least.

A Victim.

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SOUL SUBSTANCE.

By C. C. Massey.

The following speculation, here designated as above for brevity, concerning the formative process of thought, and proceeding by analogy to yet higher generalisations, seems to have been suggested to the celebrated mathematician, Riemann, by Fechner’s “Zendavesta.” I have taken it from a part of Zöllner’s Transcendentale Physik not included in the English volume. No criticism of this hypothesis will be here attempted; but it may conduce to intelligibility if I preface the translation by stating generally what seems to be the characteristic idea, into which I may perhaps be allowed to introduce some further considerations.

Riemann, then, and perhaps Fechner, conceived matter as the workshop of spirit—its matrix, so to speak—for the evolution, as well of the memorial earth-soul, as of the individual soul-life. The evolution of life through matter, it will be observed, is a very different thing from the evolution of life from matter. When Riemann says, “thought itself I at least can only regard as a proceeding in the interior of ponderable matter,” he might seem to be asserting the strict dependence of consciousness on physical organism. But it is evident from the context that he regarded matter as a reactive basis of the spiritual activity he calls thought, and which is not merely the conscious intellectual process in man, but the whole effort of reason to express itself through nature. The soul-substance, or, as Riemann terms it, spirit-mass, once formed, must, he expressly declares, survive the physical bases; and this, he thought, was equally the case throughout the whole of organic nature—all organic processes resulting in a permanent record or memorial in the world-soul. How, in his further hypothesis of the passage of immaterial substance through ponderable atoms, he would connect this with gravitation, I do not profess to understand. But the growth of a world-soul by successive incorporations or assumptions of individual souls, as these are formed through bodies, is a speculation of great interest in relation to the conception of spiritual solidarity. The anima mundi is unintelligible to us solely for this reason, that the whole stream of intellectual tendency since the downfall of the Platonic philosophy, by the triumph of Nominalism in the later middle ages, has made it difficult for us to conceive a centre and unity of consciousness other than individual; or, rather, because we have identified “the real” with individuality in the sense of ultimate differentiation. We conceive<... continues on page 14-105 >

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Editor's notes

Sources

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  The Psychological Review, vol. V, November 1882, pp. 430–437