CHAPTER XII.
A MEETING OF THE (THEOSOPHICAL) PICKWICK CLUB.
The Chairman felt it his imperative duty to demand of the hon. gentleman whether he had used the expression “a humbug” in a common sense?
Mr. Blotton had no hesitation in saying that he had not—he had used the word in its Pickwickian sense. (Hear, hear.) He was bound to acknowledge that personally he entertained the highest esteem for the hon. gentleman; he had merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view.
Mr. Pickwick felt much gratified by the candid explanation of his hon. friend. He begged it to be at once understood that his own observations had been merely intended to bear a Pickwickian construction. (Cheers.)—The Pickwick Papers.
We have now seen how, step by step, as by a resistless nemesis the rival Theosophical leaders were led on to bring their quarrel to that which neither of them had much stomach for—an inquiry into evidence. Bluff meeting bluff, the thing got as far as the summoning from three continents of a Committee of Investigation representing both parties. “Investigating” hidden forces in nature, as we saw in Chapter II., is one of the professed “Objects” of the Theosophical Society. The present chapter is to show what the Theosophical idea of investigating is like.
There lies before me a pamphlet, reprinted from Lucifer of August last, which bears the facetious title, “AN INQUIRY Into
