III.—LETTERS FROM MINOR OFFICIALS AND PRIVATE MEMBERS.
What matters “Truth or Falsehood?”
Sir,—My husband and myself are two of the officials in one of the local branches of the Theosophical Society. I write in his name and my own to say that we have read with some interest your voluminous attack on the personal characters of some of our leading members.
We were also amused by the ingenuous surprise of your reporter, that the Blavatsky Lodge meeting in London, which he attended, was spent in philosophic study, not in the discussion of psychic phenomena or of the personal characters of members.
You say (Chapter II.):—“This society as such must stand or fall with its Mahatmas.” This is not so. The Theosophical Society is entirely neutral on the question of the existence or non-existence of such beings, and the reason why the charges, of which you have published a more or less correct statement, were not gone into by the authorities of the T.S. was, that to have done so would have entailed an infringement of that neutrality.
The question whether Mrs. Besant was misled when she made the statement at the Secular Hall in 1891 has been answered by her own clear withdrawal of that statement.
The question as to Mr. Judge is entirely one as to his own truth or falsehood, and may be well left to him to answer or not. It is not necessary for the public or for the members of the Theosophic Society to judge him.—Faithfully yours,
Manchester, November 6.
A Protest against “Condoning.”
Sir,—Having read the revelations your correspondent has been pleased to give to the public, and presuming them to be correct, it seems to me that there are now three parties at fault in place of two as I had supposed, viz., Mr. Judge for imposing (whether consciously as a deceiver or unconsciously as a medium obsessed by a spirit of ambition and the communicator of the facts (if a member of the inner circle) for breaking his solemn pledge not to reveal or betray the affairs of that circle. The recent correspondence now adds others
