| Nor am I, as you hint, in the habit of sending such messages about the society, nor of influencing the course of affairs by using any such things. Could I be such a fool as to tell all others to go by what I get for my own guidance? | I now send you this, all of it being either direct quotations from the messages to me or else in substance what I am directed to say to you…. We are all, therefore, face to face with the question whether we will abide by Masters and their messenger.—(Mr. Judge, circular to “the core of the T.S.,” deposing Mrs. Besant, November, 1894.) |
What Mr. Judge Lives On. Mr. Judge pretends that I have said that his motive is mere pecuniary gain. I have throughout treated the vice-president as a spiritual Jabez, not a financial one; and I wish him joy of the distinction. But since he has raised the question at such length, I will examine it a moment. Mr. Judge says: “No salaries are paid to our officers. We support ourselves, or privately support each other.” As he has elsewhere explained that he, for one, gives his whole time to the society, it will be seen that the Theosophical officials supply a parallel to those famous Scilly Islanders who “eked out a precarious existence by taking in each others’ washing.” The statement about the salaries is directly contradicted, on turning to the 1894 Convention Report, by an extra vote of £150 for the officials at Avenue-road. But I am well aware that the ready money of the T.S. is drawn far more from a few individuals with means and from special funds than from the small annual subscription, and I have said already that the “free board and lodging” amid the temple groves at Adyar, Avenue-road, and New York is more than their small salary to those of “the smaller fry” to whom such things are a consideration. As for Mr. Judge, he does not deny that it is he to whom the Path, and the press and publishing business connected with it, now belong; but he makes the curious statement that the proceeds, whatever they may be, come out of the pockets, not of “members, but largely of others.” In other words, it is not Theosophists, but the outside public, who support the official organ of Theosophy! Can it be that the Path is widely taken in as a comic paper?
