HPB-SB-10-401

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

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vol. 10, p. 401	volume 10, page 401 vol. title: vol. period: 1879-1880 pages in vol.: 577
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eng • рус

Psychonomy in its Relation to Religion and Ethics*

by j. a. campbell, b.a. (cantab.)

“And if they say unto you, Seek unto them whose speech is in their belly, and those that speak out of the earth, those that utter vain words, that speak out of their belly: shall not a nation seek unto their God? Why do they enquire of the dead concerning the living?”—Isaiah, cap. vii. v. 19. Septuagint Tr.

1. Before proceeding to consider the subject upon which you have done me the honour of permitting me to address you this evening, I feel it to be both just and necessary that I should apologise to you for making use of a novel, and as I must confess, a somewhat barbarous compound word, in the place of one which, if not etymologically preferable, possesses at any rate the advantage of being familiar. The reasons influencing me I trust to make plain in the course of what I have to say.

In these days of restless craving for novelty and continual change, the responsibility incurred by innovators of all sorts is so apt to be overlooked, that the substitution of one word for another equally well or better representing our meaning seems to us a very little thing. Yet this same indifference was regarded by the Greeks of old, a by no means unenlightened people, as the most sure evidence possible in a nation, of corruption and decline, the precursor of lawlessness and of every evil deed. How it is regarded by the writers of that book, which, if not any longer sacred to us is, I trust still admitted to be wise, I need scarcely remind you. When any one thing is singled out as the index of condemnation as the opposite carefulness is of justification there can be no ambiguity.† And as in those nations with whose prophecies fate has rendered us familiar, so in all others; the myth of the Logos embodies for us their sense of the supreme importance and value of speech; the vehicle of thought; the revealer of character; the herald of action, human and Divine—for evermore.

I have not time to enlarge as I should like to do upon this; what I have said will suffice to show you that not without earnest consideration should I have ventured to alter, much less to “coin” a word. Necessity alone can justify a man doing that, and this is what I mean by necessity—when current words and phrases are serving to perpetuate some error or delusion.

2.In all sciences the difficulty of fixing upon an accurate nomenclature is necessarily very great, and is increased by the unfortunate craze for self-exaltation, that urges each individual professor, whether of Zoology, Botany, or Geology, to invent one of his own. Take up, for example, in succession, any two standard works upon ornithology, and look out the scientific name for a robin; it will be by the luckiest of chances that you find him called the same in both; though they agree so far as to call him something which is supposed to tell you in striking Latin what Linnaeus told you long ago simply,—that a robin has a red breast.

But while scientific people, for neither rhythm’s sake nor reason’s, thus play fast and loose with Latin words, and I am sorry to say with English words too, wrangling over the subordinate names to be given to genera and to species, they are at least usually agreed upon the nature of the object they intend to study. They do not, in the instance we have chosen, differ in their definition of a bird, though they dispute endlessly over the origin and classification of birds. Two so-called sciences exist however in the world at present, that have each of them elaborated vast systems of detail without making serious attempt to settle that elementary question. One of these is known to us as Political Economy, the other as modern Spiritualism.

“The object of this treatise,” says Mr. Mill in the opening chapter of his Political Economy, is to “teach or to investigate the nature of wealth. Every one has a notion sufficiently correct for common purposes of what is meant by wealth.”

“The object of these treatises,” say the hundred and one writers on the subject of modern Spiritualism, “is to teach or to investigate as to the nature of spirits. Every one has a sufficiently correct notion for common purposes of what is meant by a spirit.” Then after a lofty rebuke addressed to those who “aim at metaphysical niceties of definition,” the perplexed reader finds himself at once considering the relations of labour and capital, or following out the test experiments of Mr. Crookes.

I have spoken of these two cases together, because in both confusion has resulted from the loose and inaccurate use of words, though the origin and outcome of the confusion in either case have been widely different. In that of political economy, it was the result of deliberate carelessness on the part of a professed teacher of a newly invented creed, and <... continues on page 10-402 >

* A paper read before the National Association of Spiritualists, May 17th.

† By thy words shalt thou be justified and by thy words shalt thou be condemned.

Editor's notes

Sources

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  London Spiritualist, No. 407, June 11, 1880, pp. 283-87