CHAPTER V.
MYSTIFICATION UNDER MRS. BESANT.
“I look to possible developments of her Theosophic views with the very gravest misgiving.”—Charles Bradlaugh, National Reformer, June, 1889.
“The lady doth pretest too much, methinks.”—Hamlet.
I have said that the Psychical Research report put a stop to most of the Theosophic miracles. But there were obvious reasons why the Mahatmas should continue to “precipitate” letters, even when the scoffs of a hard, cold world drove them to restrain their wonder-working propensities in other respects. The business was so beautifully safe and simple. It defied “tests.” The task of proving that a scribble in red chalk on a scrap of paper found in a disciple’s pocket is not the authentic handwriting of an inaccessible teacher, whose devotees have doubtless the best reason for knowing that he can never be produced as a witness—this is a task from which the boldest sceptic might well recoil.
But what of the actual process of “precipitation”? Alas, it appears to be surrounded by disappointingly obscure conditions. It is not given to see the scrap of psychically-manutactured notepaper glimmer into being and become cream-laid out of nothing before one’s eyes, nor to watch the mystic characters form themselves in lines along it like the writing on Belshazzar’s wall. It is always the finished result that is discovered ready-made, and this precisely resembles what is produced if you or I write it in the ordinary way. The “precipitation,” in fact, is a deed of darkness, and can only he done concealed from view, just as mediums are wont to declare at a séance that the spirits are prevented from manifesting themselves by the mere presence of a sceptical inquirer with a box of wax vestas. Perhaps
