This remark shows the same utter oblivion of the appreciation of truth that has unhappily shown itself in the society’s record before. It is not a question of phenomena; it is one of good faith; and if this is the line taken, not the phenomena-hunters merely, but seekers for truth and respecters of it, who expected to find it in the Theosophical Society, will abandon that body in disgust.
Mr. Mead continues:—“Theosophists could no more divulge secrets without violating every sense of honour than a Mason could.”
To compare the Theosophical Society, as at present constituted, with an honourable body like the Masons, is an insult to the latter, goose-guzzling and luxuriant as they may have tended to become in these latter days.
There is a profound difference between hiding secrets, which are entrusted to one, and which concern certain (perhaps) important facts in the nature of man, and taking part in proceedings to gull a number of fellow-students and the outside public. This is practically what has been done before, and the dissatisfied either disappeared altogether or were well howled at as traitors to “the cause,” whereas, in verity, they were doing their best for the disowned cause of truth; or, again, they were coerced by the solemn warning of “your pledge, take care of your pledge,” and thereby intimidated from seeing that they were making themselves parties to a continuous misrepresentation of facts and a deliberate fraud upon their less-informed fellow-members, not to mention the public. “What have our troubles to do with the public?” has been the question. I reply, “Everything,” for it is to the public that constant appeal is made and amongst its ranks that proselytes are sought.
Nothing has, so far, been exposed in these articles that any right-thinking truth-seeker would wish to have cloaked. The public are not being made acquainted with any arcane wisdom; but if one-third of the statements made in The Westminster Gazette are supported by documentary and other evidence, then the world certainly ought to be warned against a society that takes as its motto, “There is no religion higher than truth” and forthwith allows its leading members to play such antics and engage in such grotesque jugglery without bringing them sternly to book. As for continuing to work with these people in the establishment of a
