THEOSOPHY AND THE STAR'S LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

Evening Star, Issue 9571, 17 December 1894, Page 4

THEOSOPHY AND THE STAR'S LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

TO THE EDITOR. Sm, —I notice that your London correspondent in your issue of the" 12th and 13th inst. has devoted at least a column and a half, with more to follow, to an attack, not on Theosophy, but its leaders. Personalities do not undermine a philosophy, and to found a philosophy or a science on" the fleeting personality of its teachers is to stand a pyramid on its apex. To call Madame Blavatsky a fat prophetess does not show the inadequacy of Reincarnation to reconcile most of tho conflicting facts of life, or to designate Mrs Besant a bamboozled dupe does not explain away the inflexible, inexorable justice of the law of causation, otherwise Karma. As well think to injure ancient Christianity, which is Theosophy, by describing Jesus, who was undoubtedly a great Spirit, and

therefore a Mahatma, as a lean and hungry mendicant who worked miracles, and who had not sufficient common sense or capacity to select trustworthy apostles, one of whom (Judas) proved himself a traitor and another (Peter) a self-convicted liar; or, again, suppose that the law of gravitation can be superciliously ignored because Newton may have "had two left legs and Judas-colorec' hair and frowsy pores that taint the ambient air," or spent his spare time, when not engaged in philosophy, in promoting swindling gold mining companies* * Theosophy attaches no importance either to phenomena or Mahatmas. It depends for its success entirely on appealing to the reason, and not to the emotions, and nothing could be absolutely more logical than the principles of reincarnation and Karma; and to those only who are sufficiently attracted to study first the philosophy" and the explanation it gives of costnogenesls ahd authropogenesis is it of any profitable interest to ascertain the source from whence it proceeds, when doubtless there would dawn upon their minds the evolutionary necessity for the existence of men possessing such knowledge and such wisdom.

As far as I am myself concerned, I am perfectly unprejudiced, and if your London correspondent can advance a more reasonable theory accounting for the universe and things as they are I shall be most happy to entertain it, though he may be very fat or very thin, or a prophet or a fool (which latter we are told to sufFer gladly, for unconsciously they maybe vehicles of good), and even if he has broken all the Ten Commandments and does not possess a single cardinal virtue. A truth is a truth independent of the source from which it proceeds. What we Theosophists want are some facts and arguments that tell against the teachings, which, it appears, London correspondents do not possess, doubtless because, it entails work, the possession of some brains, and much mental exertion. A philosophy hoary with antiquity, and whichhas withstood for ages and ages the buffets and blows of the outside world, and containing the fundamental principles common to all great ancient religions, cannot be shaken by the prattling personalities of .a London correspondent or the preposterous telegraphic absurdities about the expelling of a distinguished member like Mrs Besant in ignorance of all accusation and without inquiry, contrary to the rules and constitution of the society.

In the meantime the Theosophical Society, though so frequently " exposed, crushed, ruined, threatened," flourishes mightily in this very amicable struggle for existence. Nurtured on ridicule, continually daudled in the arms of " exposure," and rocked in the cradle of " ruin," it possesses 400 active branches all over the world, and increasing annually, and numbers amongst its adherents such men as Edison, Crookes, Wallace, Sir Edwin Arnold, and others. Any honest criticism of Theosophical teachings will be welcomed by Theosophists themselves, even should they go to the extent of disproving the most cherished and fundamental ideas, and the substitution of higher and truer ones, for we always remember the motto of the society : " There is no religion higher than Truth."—l am, etc., An Esoteric Christian. Dunedin, December 14.