In the issue of the Agnostic Journal for February 7th there are several passages
referring to Madame Blavatsky. Will the editor permit the humble individual of that
name to answer one only of the charges, as all the others are really not worth noticing?
Theosophy at Bay is the presumptive and very confident title of Mr.
McIlwraiths logogriph. I have not read his pamphlet --- the subject of Mr.
Iastrzebskis attack --- nor do I remember even its title, though it was sent to
me. I never read our opponents effusions. Were our members to follow
this policy, there would be less useless wrangling, less ridiculous blunders made by our
critics, and hence no need to rectify them. However, it is a strange Karma that the
obscure opponents of Theosophy should be made to gain an inglorious notoriety by attacking
it. Yet so it is; and the fact is an interesting one for the philosopher to
study. But --- pas trop nen faut. Why should we Theosophists help
them to advertise their names, which otherwise would remain forever unknown to
posterity? Moreover, none of the disputants will ever convince the other; and, as it
is impossible to place before the public the teachings of the Eastern esoteric school
in their harmonious fulness --- The
Secret Doctrine having given out but a few fragmentary outlines of some of the
fundamental doctrines of that school --- our evil-wishers will be ever finding something
to carp at. (1)
Such a literary battle over the shadows of things, the real substance of which is known
only to those who study seriously the Occult philosophy, does seem, at best,
unprofitable. Nor are our enemies over-scrupulous in mangling and misrepresenting
even very plain and clear passages in order to gain a point. The following is a
glaring instance. Mr. McIlwraith, after taking his opponent to task for saying that
esotericism is never afraid of figures, and myself for stating that the
figures belonging to the Occult calculation cannot be given, etc. (Secret Doctrine,
vol. I., p. 170), makes a praiseworthy attempt to show in this a contradiction.
Then he proceeds to cast insults at Messrs. Sinnett, Iastrzebski, and myself, not to
mention the great Masters of Occultism, by asking: Is the esoteric knowledge
of Mr. Iastrzebski the result of a different experience from that of Madame Blavatsky and
Mr. Sinnett, or do the Masters think they have carried their thimble-rigging trick (2) as far as it is advisable; and that it is now time their dupes were
finding the pea; hence an accusing conscience has induced them to disgorge the huge mass
of figures we find in vol. ii., pp. 68-70,
of The Secret Doctrine?
This once, the thimble-rigging trick belongs by legal right to Mr.
McIlwraith. We proceed to render unto Caesar the thing which is Caesars ---
namely, the pea concealed by him --- alas, very clumsily! The reader is
asked to turn to The Secret
Doctrine (pp. 68, 70), and see and judge for himself. Preceding
the huge mass of figures found therein is an explanation that the said figures
are all exoteric. They are copied from a public Tamil Calendar; they
are in all the Puranas; and every Orientalist has quoted them over and over again,
the merest tyro in the study of Hindoo religion knowing them to come from the laws of
Manu. The only thing said by me to connect them in any way with esotericism is that
these figures are almost identical with those taught in esoteric
philosophy (p. 67). Finally, the huge mass of figures, which Mr.
McIlwraith would make the reader believe were esoteric and pre-eminently occult,
are directly followed by the following remark on page 70: These are the exoteric
figures accepted throughout India, and they dove-tail pretty nearly with those of
the secret works. Pretty nearly is not entirely. The
displacement, addition, or subtraction of one single cipher or figure from them would
hardly be remarked, and yet would throw the whole huge mass into a blind.
Moreover, throughout the two volumes of The Secret Doctrine
there will not be found one set of esoteric computations. Which, then, of us
is the thimble-rigger in this case? Methinks echo responds --- Mr.
McIlwraith, our would-be critic.
I will not touch upon other points, but will conclude with a few words about
Atlantis. Our pre-eminently scientific adversary does not believe that
Atlantis has ever existed except in the imagination of the Lydian (?) priests
who told it to Solon. (3) He quotes from Professor Jowetts
Introduction to Timaeus, in proof of Platos ignorance of physical
science, confusion of thought, etc. Well, Dr. Jowett is a great Greek scholar, let
us say one of the first in England; but this does not make of him an authority on ancient
history or geography. I, for one, have the sublime audacity of setting
Dr. Jowetts claim of knowing Platos inner thought, and his authority on
the spirit of Platonic and other philosophies, at naught. He denies the
presence of any element of Oriental or Gnostic mysticism in Plato, and conveniently
forgets that Plato was an Initiate, bound by the Sodalian oath, who could not speak
otherwise than in blinds. Plato admits it himself by remarking: You say
that.........I have not sufficiently explained to you the nature of the First.
I purposely spoke enigmatically that, in case the tablet should have happened with
any accident, either by land or sea, a person, without some previous knowledge of the
subject, might not be able to understand its contents (Plato, ep. ii., p. 312;
Cory, Ancient Fragments). Plato had a veneration for the Mysteries; and,
as Dr. Jowett takes the latter fact in no consideration, I declare that, though he may
have devoted half a lifetime to get a thorough grasp of Platos writings,
he has, nevertheless, ingloriously failed in his attempt; and this settles the question
for the Theosophist. There are other Greek scholars as great as the Master of Baliol
College who thought and still think otherwise, and believe in Atlantis. Bailly, the
most learned astronomer and encyclopaedist of the last century, wrote a large work on
Atlantis. Voltaire believed in it. Matter, the great authority on Gnosticism, (4) a Royal Academician and a learned Platonist into the bargain, gives
views entirely opposed to those of Dr. Jowett. Donnelly gives a long list of
scientific men who believe in this myth. Nor does the experience of the
last decade of the present century warrant further any too dogmatic denial of things
hitherto held as myths. Hardly fifteen years ago Troy and the legends of
pre-historic Hellas, along with Homer and his Iliad, were also regarded as myths.
Scholars as great as Dr. Jowett, and greater even than Mr. McIlwraith --- e.g.,
Grote, Niebuhr, and others --- have determined, as Professor Sayce has it, that
the tale of Troy divine, like that of the beleaguerment of Kadmeian
Thebes, was but a form of the immemorial story, which told how the battlements of the
sky were stormed day after day by the bright powers of Heaven. (5)
This amounted to saying that Troy was a solar myth, Priam and Hector, Agamemnon and
Menelaus, and the tutti quanti of the famous Epos, were all solar heroes and sun
gods, agreeably with the modern solar craze. Never was Atlantis more denied than the
truths of the Iliad. And yet hear what is now said of this
craze and myth in the work cited: The problem from which the
scholars of Europe had turned away in despair has been solved by the skill, the energy,
and the perseverance of Dr. Schliemann. At Troy, at Mykenae, and at Orkhomenos, he
has recovered a past which had already become but a shadowy memory in the age of
Peisistratos. We can measure the civilisation and knowledge of the peoples who
inhabited those old cities, can handle the implements they used and the weapons they
carried....... The heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey have become to us men of flesh and
blood. We can watch both them, and older heroes still.......It is little wonder if so
marvellous a recovery of a past, in which we had ceased to believe, should have
awakened many controversies, and wrought a silent revolution in our conceptions of Greek
history. It is little wonder if, at first, the discoverer who had so rudely shocked the
settled prejudices of the historian should have met with a storm of indignant
opposition or covert attack. But......we can never return to the ideas of ten
years ago. (6)
And if Troy from a myth has now become a reality, why not Atlantis?
Already the Challenger has discovered the site of a submerged land; and, ten years
hence, something more may be brought to view --- even the ruins of a submarine city, if
not the bones of the giant Atlanteans.
A confession from the same pen fits exactly with what we Theosophists might answer to
any covert or open attack on our figures: The natural tendency of the
student of to-day is to post-date rather than to ante-date, and to bring everything down
to the latest period that is possible. The same reluctance that the scientific world
felt in admitting the antiquity of man, when first asserted by Boucher de Perthes, has
been felt by modern scholars in admitting the antiquity of civilisation. (7)
Had our scientifically inclined critic, Mr. McIlwraith, lived in the days
of the pious persecutors of Harvey, he would, no doubt, have jumped along with the others
at the throat of the audacious physician who dared to proclaim the heresy of the
circulation of the blood.
Evidently, Mr. Iastrzebskis opponent has much to study and read --- for one
thing, the history of the interminable blunders of science --- before he can hope to hold
Theosophy at Bay.
H. P. BLAVATSKY.
Endnotes
(1) See second page of my editorial, The Babel of
Modern Thought, in the forthcoming February number of Lucifer, concerning
The Secret Doctrine. [HPB]
(2) The author of this gratuitous impertinence, who, no doubt,
ranks himself with the eminent scientists of the day he defends and quotes so often, would
do well to apply the term of thimble-rigging trick to some Darwinists, and
that of dupes to the English, along with the rest of the European
public. Let him open Haeckels Pedigree of Man (Avelings
translation, p. 77), and meditate on the fraud of the eighteenth stage.
Almost ten years ago Quatrefages exposed the dishonesty of Haeckel and his supporters, by
proving, on pages 108-10 of his Human Species, that, while there were no such
creatures as Prosimiae with placenta in this world, Haeckels Sozura
was equally unknown to science, and that, as a result, these two fanciful
animals could not be made to supply the missing gaps in the genealogy of man through the
animal stages. This has in no wise prevented the scientists --- the staunch
supporters of the animalistic theory --- from ignoring
Quatrefages protest; and we find the mythical Sozura and Prosimiae
with placenta as flourishing as ever in the last edition of Dr. Avelings
translation. This is thimble rigging with facts and science,
indeed. See Lucifer, vol. I., pp. 73, 74, September, 1887, article
Literary Jottings, for the full account; and this is not an isolated case by
any means! [HPB]
(3) A Lydian priest at Sais, in Egypt, is as
curious as a Prosimia with placenta. [HPB]
(4) Author of the Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme,
a work crowned by the Academy. [HPB] (8)
(5) Preface to Dr. Schliemanns Troja,
Results of the Latest Researches and Discoveries on the Site of Homers
Troy, p. I. [HPB]
(6) Troja, by Schliemann; Preface by Professor
Sayce; p. vii., et seq. The italics are mine. [HPB]
(7) Ibid, p. vi. [HPB]
(8) [H.P.B. is referring to Jacques Matter (1791-1864) who wrote
Histoire critique du gnosticisme, et de son influence sur les sectes religieuses et
philosophiques des six premiers siècles de lère chrétienne. 2. éd.
Strasbourg, V.E. Levrault; Paris, P. Bertrand, 1843-44. 3 volumes in 1.---BAO Editor.]