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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued | | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |From Across the Ocean|4-38}} | ||
“After all the flourish which attended his coming, all the expectations that had been aroused, all the secret apprehensions of the church and the anticipated triumph of the materialists, what did he teach us that was really new or so extremely suggestive? Nothing, positively nothing,”<ref>{{Style S-HPB SB. Editors note|''Huxley and Slade: Who is More Guilty of “False Pretences”?'' ''Vide'': H. P. Blavatsky, ''BCW'', p. 226.}}</ref> the article states. “Of him it may be said, . . that what he said that was ''not false was by far not new''; and that which ''was new was absolutely false''.”<ref>{{Style S-HPB SB. Editors note|''Ditto''. The quotation is not quite accurate. The correct text is as follows: “. . . what he said that was new was not true; and that which was true was not new.”}}</ref> | |||
Here, to prove her opinion about the false arguments cited by the lecturer, Mme. Blavatsky displays her extreme erudition. She turns to ancient heathen accounts of creation, refers to the Hindu and Brahmin faiths, their sacred books, and she proves that “the benighted Hindus, it seems, made the trifling improvement over modern science, of hooking a ''First Cause'' on the further end of the chain of evolution. . .”<ref>{{Style S-HPB SB. Editors note|''Ditto'', pp. 226-227.}}</ref> | |||
In those ancient fruits of human thought she finds confirmation of the utter triviality of ideas passed off by materialists as the latest scientific discoveries: “. . . the ancient Hindus many centuries before the Christian era taught the doctrine of evolution. {{From ETG|text=Martin Haug}}, the Sanskrit scholar, asserts that the ''Vedas'' were already in existence 2,000 B.C.” | |||
Further, Mme. Blavatsky proves that materialists have no grounds to charge them, Spiritists, with “false pretences” and portray them as being “lost to reason.” As for their “false pretences,” she mentions one of their fellows, medium Slade, who was arrested at the complaint of Duke Lancaster for cheating him and taking ''$5'' for a sole ''séance'', and she asks whether he is more guilty of false pretences than Huxley himself, a {{Style S-HPB SB. HPB underlined|soulless}} person who wheedled not 5 but 5,000 dollars out of credulous New York residents for imparting them a very old hypothesis that man descended from an antediluvian four-toed horse? | |||
“To be consistent he must show that while the horse was losing at each successive period a toe, man has in reversed order acquired an additional one at each new formation; and, unless we are shown the fossilized remains of man in a series of one-, two-, three-, and four-toed anthropoid apelike beings antecedent to the present perfected Homo, what does Huxley’s theory amount to? . . ”<ref>{{Style S-HPB SB. Editors note|''Ditto'', p. 229.}}</ref> What grounds do we have to believe such bold assumptions, undemonstrated by anything but the lecturer's authority, | |||
{{Style S-HPB SB. Editors note|Last paragraph is badly demaged. The rest of the column is lost. It could be that the following part of the article is published in the next issue of the newspaper. The rest of the article is restored from another resource.|center}} | |||
{{Style P-No indent|more than numerous eye-witnesses of spirit phenomena? Of course, hypothesis, whether of positive sciences or of the realm of psychology, is no false pretence; but an unsupported assertion. However, as soon as it crosses the line, as soon as it is offered as a fact or enforced as a faith, such a hypothesis and its proponents can be charged with false pretences, especially when people are charged money (and a great amount at that!) for it.}} | |||
If, satisfied with the osseous fragments, rather incomplete and scattered, of various antediluvian creatures, materialists assume the right (without taking the risk of being branded as people lost to reason) to build a complicated theory of self-generation and origin of species passing it off as the scientific truth, if {{From ETG|text=Cuvier|article=Georges Cuvier}}, grants rights of citizenship in natural history to the image of a whole mammoth based upon a small ''bone'', a small osseous fragment of the antediluvian giant, why should Spiritualists be branded as those lost to reason (asks Mme. Blavatsky) when they base their conclusions on far more definite principles? In support of their theory of afterdeath life, they do not exhibit just ''small bones'' but, rather, entire hands, feet and even human bodies that appear during their séances in which they frequently recognize their departed relatives and acquaintances. | |||
Mme. Blavatsky closes her article by comparing the damage caused by the “system” of materialists, such as one propounded by the lecturer, with the evil presumably caused by Spiritists in promoting their highly (as she believes) moral theories of Spiritism. I need not say that she arrives at the conclusion that if the English found it possible to sentence medium Slade to three months in prison for extortion of five dollars, the Americans should have jailed materialist Huxley, at least, for three years – in proportion with the amount he was paid in New York for his false pretence! | |||
Of all the sad things to be seen in this era of “shams”, our ardent Spiritist concludes, none is more deplorable – though its futility is often ludicrous – than the conspiracy of materialists to stamp out the multitude of facts corroborating the philosophy of Spiritists from history. What the ancient and modern authors narrate, “that can be used to bolster up the physical part of science, scientists accept and sometimes cooly ''appropriate'' without credit;”<ref>{{Style S-HPB SB. Editors note|''Op. cit.'', p. 232.}}</ref> while what they recognize as ''contrary to the order of nature'', ''they'' “incontinently reject as ''mythical ''. . .” “They adopt the contrary course to {{From ETG|text=Lord Verulam}}, who, arguing on the properties of amulets and charms, remarks that, ‘we should not reject all this kind, because it is not known how far those contributing to superstition depend on natural causes.’ ”<ref>{{Style S-HPB SB. Editors note|''Op. cit.'', pp. 233.}}</ref> Clearly, humankind will never get to the truth as long as the freedom of thought and truthful exposition of scientific discoveries remains suppressed by preconceived opinions. More than that, “there can be no real enfranchisement of human thought, nor expansion of scientific discovery, until the existence of spirit is recognized, and the double evolution accepted as a fact. Until then, false theories will always find favour with those who, having forsaken ‘the God of their fathers,’ vainly strive to find substitutes in nucleated masses of matter . . .” | |||
That's how the Russian Theosophist vigorously stood up for her brothers venturing to deal with the London scientist. | |||
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==== Original text in Old Russian ==== | |||
„Послҍ всҍхъ громкихъ обьявленiй объ ожидаемыхъ съ такимъ волненiемъ лекцияхъ, послҍ опасенiй церкви и заранняго торжества гг. матерьялистовъ, что дали намъ эти лекции?...“ вопрошаетъ статья; „что новаго или особенно замҍчательнаго сказалъ намъ Т.Гексли? Ничего, положительно ничего! О немъ, по истинҍ, можно замҍтить, что все что онъ сказалъ ''не лживаго, было далеко не ново''; а ''все новое'' имъ высказанное, было ''совершенно ложно''“. | „Послҍ всҍхъ громкихъ обьявленiй объ ожидаемыхъ съ такимъ волненiемъ лекцияхъ, послҍ опасенiй церкви и заранняго торжества гг. матерьялистовъ, что дали намъ эти лекции?...“ вопрошаетъ статья; „что новаго или особенно замҍчательнаго сказалъ намъ Т.Гексли? Ничего, положительно ничего! О немъ, по истинҍ, можно замҍтить, что все что онъ сказалъ ''не лживаго, было далеко не ново''; а ''все новое'' имъ высказанное, было ''совершенно ложно''“. | ||
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{{Footnotes}} | |||