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The Theosophical Movement 1875-1950

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HPBs Death And After

TODAY, THE LONDON Society for Psychical Research is a wellknown and respected body, with records of its investigations more voluminous than any other research organization in the field. Less known is the fact that it was founded in 1882 by a group which included several prominent members of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society. The latter were Prof. F. W. H. Myers, W. Stainton Moses—who wrote under the pseudonym of “M. A. (Oxon) ”—and C. C. Massey. It is evident that these founders of the Society for Psychical Research had been more attracted to Theosophy by its connection with psychical phenomena than by the ethical principles which were the primary consideration of H. P. Blavatsky. 

In any event, the preliminary an nouncement of the new Society declared that “the present is an opportune time for making an organized and systematic attempt to investigate that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical, and Spiritualistic.” Committees were to be appointed to investigate and report upon such subjects as telepathy, hypnotism, trance, clairvoyance, sensitives, apparitions, etc. The announcement stated that “the aim of the Society will be to approach these various problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated.” The new Society almost immediately attracted to its Fellowship some hundreds of men and women of reputation and ability in their several fields. By 1884 the Society had made numerous investigations, had begun publishing its Proceedings, and was established in the public confidence as a serious scientific body.

The announcement of the formation of the London Society for Psychical Research received a warm welcome in the Theosophist. An editorial called attention to the similarity of the aims of the new Society to some of the Theosophical objectives and offered full cooperation, concluding:
The new Psychic Research Society, then, has our best wishes, and may count upon the assistance of our thirty-seven Asiatic Branches in carrying out their investigations, if our help is not disdained. We will be only too happy to enlist in this movement, which is for the world’s good, the friendly services of a body of Hindu, Parsi and Sinhalese gentlemen of education, who have access to the vernacular, Sanskrit and Pali literature of their respective countries, and who were never yet brought, either by governmental or any private agency, into collaboration with European students of Psychology. . . . Let us, by all means, have an international, rather than a local, investigation of the most important of all subjects of human 1 study—PSYCHOLOGY.

There is no evidence that the London group accepted this invitation to collaborate. The London Lodge was largely under the influence of Mr. Sinnett, who had returned to England, and the interest of most of the members was upon the phenomenal aspect of “the occult.” The London Lodge, therefore, was a center of eager investigations and experiments nominally in line with the Third Object of the Theosophical Society. Rumors were afloat regarding “astral appearances,” “Occult letters” and other phenomena connected with the mysterious “Brothers” supposed to be the invisible directors behind the Theosophical activities.

When Col. Olcott arrived in London early in the summer of 1884, followed a little later by H.P.B., interest rose to a genuine excitement. This excitement, coupled with the fact that a number of members of the Society for Psychical Research were also Fellows of the Theosophical Society, made it natural and plausible for the S.P.R. to turn its attention to the inviting possibilities at hand. Accordingly, on May 2, 1884, the Council of the S.P.R. appointed a “Committee for the purpose of taking such evidence as to the alleged phenomena connected with the Theosophical Society as might be offered by members of that body at the time in England, or as could be collected elsewhere.” Out of this beginning grew the famous “exposure” that for a time threatened the ruin of the Theosophical Society.

The S.P.R. Committee as originally constituted consisted of Profs. E. Gurney, F.W.H. Myers, F. Podmore, and J. H. Stack. To these were subsequently added Prof. Henry Sidgwick, Mrs. Sidgwick, and Mr. Richard Hodgson, a young University graduate.

In May the Committee questioned Col. Olcott, he narrating the details of various phenomena he had witnessed during the years of his connection with H.P.B. Mohini M. Chatterji, a young Hindu who had accompanied the Founders from India, was also questioned. Mr. Sinnett repeated to the Committee his observations on the phenomena described in his Occult World. During the summer the meetings of the Cambridge Branch of the S.P.R. on several occasions invited Col. Olcott, Chatterji, and Madame Blavatsky to attend. According to the preliminary Report, “the visitors permitted themselves to be questioned on many topics.” Additional reports were obtained by the Committee from many sources testifying to a wide range and variety of phenomena through the preceding ten years, in America and Europe as well as in India. All the witnesses were persons of repute.

In the autumn of 1884 the Committee published “for private and confidential use” the “first report of the Committee,” a pamphlet of 130 pages, now very rare. It contains a description of the basis and nature of the investigations, the Committee’s comments and tentative conclusions, and two notes, one relating to the Coulombs, the other, by Prof. Myers, giving a brief digest of the Theosophical views and explanations of the phenomena in question. Also included in this Report were a number of appendices summarizing the evidence obtained from the many witnesses.

The phenomena investigated by the Committee were chiefly (1) “astral appearances” of living men; (2) the transportation by “Occult” means of physical substances; (3) the “precipitation” of letters and other messages; (4) “Occult” sounds and voices. In the earlier portion of the Report the Committee says that in considering evidences of abnormal occurrences it “has altogether declined to acceptthe evidenceof apaidmediumastoany abnormal event.” It goes on to say that, “in dealing with these matters, it is admitted that special stringency is necessary, and one obvious precaution liesin the exclusion of all the commoner and baser motives to fraud or exaggeration.” But with regard to suspicion of the motives of the Theosophical exponents it says, “we may say at once that no trustworthy evidence supporting such a view has been brought to our notice.”

Although the witnesses emphasized that the Theosophical phenomena were not of the kind familiarly known as mediumistic, and although Madame Blavatsky declined to produce any phenomena for the consideration of the Committee, as her purpose was to promulgate certain doctrines, not to prove her possession of Occult powers, the Committee’s approach and its theories to account for the phenomena were the familiar ones employed in Spiritualistic investigations. The Committee stated that there were three points calling for the greatest care on its part. The first of these is “that it is certain that fraud has been practiced by persons connected with the Society.” This refers to the charges brought by the Coulombs, who were members of the Theosophical Society, against Madame Blavatsky; to the “Kiddie incident,” and to certain “evidence privately brought before us by Mr. C. C. Massey.” On this matter the Committee says that it suggests, “to the Western mind at any rate, that no amount of caution can be excessive in dealing with evidence of this kind.”

The second point raised by the Committee is that “Theosophy appeals to Occult persons and methods.” Accustomed to dealing with mediums and mediumistic manifestations, where the moral and philosophical factors have no bearing, accustomed to believe that where there is reticence there must be fraud, the Committee did not like the idea made plain at all times by H.P.B. that the subject of Occult phenomena, their production and laws, would not be submitted to scientific exploitation, but would only be made known to those who qualify themselves under the strictest pledges of secrecy and discipleship. Finally, the Committee recognized that—
Theosophy makes claims which, though avowedly based on occult science, do, in fact, ultimately cover much more than a merely scientific field.
The history of religions would have been written in vain if we still fancied that a Judas or a Joe Smith wasthe only kind of apostle who needed watching. . . .Suspicions of this kind are necessarily somewhat vague; but it is not our place to give them definiteness. What we have to point out is that it is our duty, as investigators, in examining the evidence for Theosophic marvels, to suppose the possibility of a deliberate combination to deceive on the part of certain Theosophists. We cannot regard this possibility as excluded by the fact that we find no reason to attribute to any of the persons whose evidence we have to consider, any vulgar or sordid motive for such combination.

But in spite of its suspicions, its doubts, fears and mental reservations, occasioned by ignorance of the laws governing metaphysical phenomena; by the absolute refusal of H.P.B. to disclose the processes of practical Occultism; by the atmosphere of mystery surrounding the whole subject of the hidden “Brothers” and their powers; by the charges of fraud laid by the Coulombs at the door of H.P.B.; by the undisclosed “evidence privately brought before us by Mr. C. C. Massey”—in spite of all these disturbing elements, the testimony amassed by the Committee was so absolutely overwhelming as to the fact of the alleged phenomena that the Committee found itself compelled to make certain admissions:
It is obvious that if we could account for all the phenomena described by the mere assumption of clever conjuring on the part of Madame Blavatsky and the Coulombs, assisted by any number of Hindu servants, we could hardly, under present circumstances, regard ourselves as having adequate ground for further inquiry. But this assumption would by no means meet the case. The statements of the Coulombs implicate no one in the alleged fraud except Madame Blavatsky. The other Theosophists, according to them, are all dupes. Now the evidence given in the Appendix in our opinion renders it impossible to avoid one or other of two alternative conclusions: Either that some of the phenomena recorded are genuine, or that other persons of good standing in society, and with characters to lose, have taken part in deliberate imposture.

Accordingly, the Committee expressed these conclusions:
On the whole, however (though with some serious reserves), it seems undeniable that there is a prima facie case, for some part at least of the claim made, which, at the point which the investigations of the Society of Psychical Research have now reached, cannot, with consistency, be ignored.

The Committee decided to send one of its members to India to investigate the charges made by the Coulombs, to interview the numerous witnesses to phenomena testified to by Hindus and Europeans in India, and to report on the results of such examination. Mr. Richard Hodgson was the member chosen. 

His report is the foundation and superstructure of the celebrated exposure” embodied in Volume III of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.

Hodgson arrived at headquarters in December, passed three months in pursuing his inquiries, and returned to England in April, 1885. He was, therefore, present in India during the period of fierce attack and witnessed the wavering defense. He saw the bold confidence of the accusers and observed the timid, the cautious, the doubting and fearing attitude of Col. Olcott and other leading theosophists. Had there been no other influence at work upon his mind, these alone might have been ample to persuade him that Theosophy, the Theosophical Society, the “Adept Brothers” and their teachings were, with the phenomena of H.P.B., nothing but a vast fraud devised and perpetrated for some secret purpose.

Mr. Hodgson's report of his investigations was submitted to the Committee of the S.P.R., by them endorsed, and at the General Meeting of the Society on June 24, 1885, Prof. Sidgwick of the Committee read its Conclusions. Certain difficulties developing, the ensuing six months were spent by Mr. Hodgson in revising his report. As time passed it became generally understood that the report of the Committee of the S.P.R. was entirely adverse to the Theosophical phenomena. But, as in the Coulomb case, the preparations for this more “respectable” attack were carried on in secrecy and silence. No opportunity was given the Theosophists to inspect Mr. Hodgsons report, no chance was offered for correction, criticism, objection, or counter-statement, and during the long delay, rumors of the Committee's conclusions were allowed to prejudice public opinion before any evidence had been presented. Meanwhile, the Theosophists could only await the production of charges the particular character of which they knew nothing and to which, therefore, no reply was possible.

The Conclusions of the Committee and the full text of Mr. Hodgson's report were finally embodied in the Proceedings of the S.P.R., Vol. III, pp. 201-400, issued in December, 1885. The essential conclusions of the Committee are embodied in the following extracts:
After carefully weighing all the evidence before them, the Committee unanimously arrived at the following conclusions:
(1) That of the letters put forward by Madame Coulomb, all those, at least, which the Committee have had the opportunity of themselves examining, and of submitting to the judgment of experts, are undoubtedly written by Madame Blavatsky; and suffice to prove that she has been engaged in a long-continued combination with other persons to produce by ordinary means a series of apparent marvels for the support of the Theosophic movement. 
(2) That, in particular, the Shrine at Adyar, through which letters, purporting to come from Mahatmas were received, was elaborately arranged with a view to the secret insertion of letters and other objects through a sliding panel at the back, and regularly used for this purpose by Madame Blavatsky or her agents. 
(3) That there is consequently a very strong general presumption that all the marvelous narratives put forward as evidence of the existence and occult power of the Mahatmas are to be explained as due either (a) to deliberate deception carried out by or at the instigation of Madame Blavatsky, or (b) to spontaneous illusion, or hallucination, or unconscious misrepresentation or invention on the part of the witnesses. 
(4) That after examining Mr. Hodgson’s report of the results of his personal inquiries, they are of the opinion that the t e stimony to these marvels is in no case sufficient, taking amount and character together, to resist the force of the general presumption above mentioned. Accordingly, they think that it would be a waste of time to prolong the investigation.

With reference to Madame Blavatsky herself, the Committee says:
For our own part, we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the mo st a c comp l ish e d , 2 ingenious, and interesting impostors in history.

The preliminary and final reports of the Committee should be taken together. A careful examination of these documents will prove as nothing else can the monstrous injustice of the S.P.R. investigation and report. In the first place, the investigation was entirely ex parte. The Committee laid out its own course of procedure, determined its own basis, admitted what it chose, rejected what it chose, reported what it chose of the evidence—subject to no supervision, no safeguards to insure impartiality or afford redress if bias were present. Of its own motion and decision it declared itself court, judge, and jury; at its pleasure it finally took upon itself the role of prosecutor without allowing or permitting to those it thus constituted “defendants” any right of cross-examination or rebuttal. That which began ostensibly as a mere inquiry into the evidences available concerning the Theosophical phenomena degenerated into something very like a criminal prosecution, in which a verdict of “guilty” was pronounced upon H. P. Blavatsky—without a hearing, without appeal, without recourse. Had the Committee been a duly and legally constituted Court, its procedure would have been likened to that of the Committee of Public Safety of the French Revolution.

But in fact the Committee was that of a rival society whose objects, methods, and purposes were radically different from those proclaimed by H. P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society for ten years preceding the investigation. The Society for Psychical Research was interested solely in phenomena and was moved by mere scientific curiosity. It specifically disclaimed any interest in philosophical research, any concern in Occult laws, any regard for the moral factor. The Theosophical Society and H.P.B., on the contrary, specifically avowed that the primary Object of its existence was the moral factor of Universal Brotherhood, its second Object the serious study and comparison of religions and philosophies, and its third Object the investigation of laws and powers as yet unexplained and misunderstood; not phenomena at all, save as these might be incidental and illustrative. These differences were recognized by the Committee. The preliminary report says: 

The difference between The Theosophical Society and the Society for Psychical Research is . . . almost diametrical. The Society for Psychical Research exists merely as a machinery for investigation. . . . The Theosophical Society exists mainly to promulgate certain doctrines already formulated, those doctrines being supported by phenomena which are avowedly intended and adapted rather for the influencing of individual minds than for the wholesale instruction of the scientific world. 

The Committee’s attitude toward the “certain doctrines already formulated” for the promulgation of which the Theosophical Society “mainly exists” is shown by its own reports. In the preliminary report it is said that “The Theosophical Society was founded . . . for certain philanthropic and literary purposes, with which we are not now concerned.” In the final report the statement is made: “The Theosophical Society was founded ostensibly for certain philanthropic and literary purposes . . . with these doctrines (or so-called “Wisdom-Religion”) the Committee have, of course, no concern.”

It should be understood in connection with this use of the word “ostensibly” that not a shred of evidence is introduced to show that the Theosophical Society ever had any other objects than its proclaimed ones. 

The Committee took enough note of the Theosophical doctrines to recognize their extensive implications: 
The teaching . . . comprises a cosmogony, a philosophy, a religion. With the value of this teaching per se we are not at present concerned. But it is obvious that were it widely accepted a great change would be induced in human thought in almost every department. To take one point only, the spiritual and intellectual relationship of East to West would be for the time in great measure reversed. “Ex oriente lux” would be more than a metaphor and a memory; it would be the expression of actual contemporary fact. (Italics added.)

Why was the Committee “not concerned” with the value of this teaching? Was it because the West or the Committee already possessed abundant knowledge as to the existence of superphysical phenomena and the laws and processes by which such phenomena are produced? Here is what was proclaimed in the prospectus of the S.P.R. in 1882:
The founders of this Society fully recognize the exceptional difficulties which surround this branch of research; but they evertheless hope that by patientandsystematiceffortsomeresultsof permanentvaluemaybeattained.

And the Committee itself declares in the preliminary report that the evidence for these phenomena “ is of a kind which it is peculiarly difficult to disentangle or to evaluate. The claims advanced are so enormous, and the lines of testimony converge and inosculate in a manner so perplexing that it is almost equally hard to say what statements are to be accepted, and what inferences as to other statements are to be drawn from the acceptance of any.”

To have concerned itself seriously with Madame Blavatsky’s teachings, to have investigated and studied the principles and processes she inculcated would have called for the same self sacrificing devotion that was expected of the theosophists themselves. There was no middle ground. Rejection of this course left the Committee stranded on the shores of conventional opinion. Its members chose the “safe” policy of avoiding any direct challenge to the “cosmogony, philosophy and religion” of the times. Nor did they in any way question the prevailing idea of the complete superiority of “the spiritual and intellectual relationship” of the West to the East. Apparently the Committee had no urge to conduct researches in a direction that might result in making ex oriente lux” something more than “a metaphor and a memory.”

The next question involves the competency of the Committee to inquire into the Theosophical phenomena. The history of Spiritualistic phenomena without exception shows that the occurrences are involuntary on the part of the medium, as regards both their production and control, and that their rationale and processes are not understood by either mediums or investigators. On the other hand, all the evidence amassed by the Committee shows that the Theosophical phenomena were voluntary—that is, consciously produced and consciously controlled by the operators, and those operators themselves claimed that the explanation of laws and processes could be acquired only through the Theosophical teachings. Nevertheless, the Committee and Mr. Hodgson took the position that the Theosophical phenomena were of the same character as Spiritualistic manifestations, and were to be approached in the same way. Their deliberations increasingly assumed a tone of suspicion, their serious hypotheses concerning the phenomena becoming limited to those founded on presumption of fraud. The preliminary report shows that the Coulomb accusations, the “Kiddle incident,” and Mr. Massey’s “private evidence” weighed heavily on the minds of the members of the Committee. Nevertheless, other phenomena were so overwhelmingly convincing that the Committee is obliged to conclude:—“Either that some of the phenomena recorded are genuine, or that other persons of good standing in society, and with characters to lose, have taken part in deliberate imposture.” It should be realized that no evidence can be found in the final Report to controvert this testimony, nor to impeach the “persons of good standing in society, and with characters to lose.” These witnesses, at least, are not charged with having “taken part in deliberate imposture.” 

How, then, does the Committee explain the phenomena so overwhelmingly testified to? It says they were due “to spontaneous illusion, or hallucination, or unconscious misrepresentation or invention on the part of the witnesses.” But no evidence is offered to support this wholesale “explanation.”

Neither the members of the Committee nor Mr. Hodgson were able themselves to produce any phenomena, nor, with one or two exceptions, had they been witness to any of the Theosophical phenomena. They did not claim for themselves any knowledge of their own as to how such phenomena could or could not be produced. All that they had originally set out to do was to secure the testimony of witnesses who had seen phenomena. The two reports show that, except for the accusations of the Coulombs, and the testimony of one or two others, such as that of Major Henderson, chief of the Indian Secret Service, the more than one hundred persons whose statements were obtained all testified to the occurrence of phenomena under circumstances that precluded any other conclusions than that the phenomena were genuine. 

Upon what, then, did the Committee rely forits conclusions? Upon theCoulombs; upon the “Kiddie incident”; upon Mr. Massey’s “private evidence”; upon the “expert opinions” of Netherclift and Sims on handwriting; mostof all,onthe “opinions”of Mr.Hodgson

The Coulombs and their charges have already been discussed. Their story had no independent corroboration of any significance; it was directly denied by Madame Blavatsky and contradicted pointblank by the testimony of scores of actual witnesses of the phenomena. William Q. Judge, who arrived in India soon after the Coulombs had been sent away from headquarters, made a detailed examination of the false doors M. Coulomb had constructed in Madame Blavatsky’s “occult room.” He showed the product of Coulomb’s interrupted labors to some three hundred witnesses, who signed their names to a description of the place. He then removed the “shrine,” in which the Coulombs had attempted to plant evidence of fraud. Hodgson never saw this portion of the “evidence” for his case, but relied upon the second-hand reports of H. P. B.’s enemies. 

Judge relates that after the Coulombs were caught at their work and sent away, the Principal of the Christian College visited headquarters, asking to see the occult room. Mr. Judge writes: “He [the missionary] was then asked in my presence by Dr. Hartmann what he had paid to Coulomb for his work, and replied, somewhat off his guard, that he had paid him somewhere about one hundred rupees.” Hartmann himself reported that Coulomb came to him and said that ten thousand rupees were at his disposal if he could ruin the Society—which was doubtless an exaggeration of the amount offered him. Apparently, the Coulombs hoped by such means to extort more money for their silence. 

It is evident that the unfinished work of the Coulombs was supplemented by the imagination of the missionaries and the lies of the former, and that Hodgson preferred the testimony of these witnesses to the ingenuous and confusing statements of many of the theosophical witnesses. Hindu students, in particular, were appalled by the whole idea of an “investigation,” and Hodgson made no effort to understand their attitude. 

So far as Hodgson is concerned, however, there is no extenuation for his failure to make a more critical examination of the letters which Madame Coulomb claimed to have received from H.P.B. He did not submit these letters to handwriting experts to determine their t r u e authorship. In claiming them to be genuine, he ignored the illiterate French they contain—as though the cosmopolitan Madame Blavatsky could have composed these passages! Hodgson, it seems, gave way to his predisposition to believe Madame Blavatsky guilty of fraud; his impartiality succumbing to prejudice, he became the self-righteous representative of conventional society—its defender against any disturber of the status quo and its wellestablished beliefs.

Hodgson was under a similar necessity to brand the “Mahatma Letters” as spurious. After his return to England, he found himselfin a quandary on this phase of his report. Hodgson and the Committee had declared that, in their opinion, Madame Blavatsky had herself written the adept lettersto Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Hume. Butwhen some of the letterswere submitted to Mr. Sims of theBritish Museum, and F. G. Netherclift, a London handwriting expert, along with samples of the writing of H.P.B., both these “experts” concluded independently that the Mahatma letters were not written by H.P.B. But if she did not write them, who did? 

The investigator for the Psychical Research Society thereupon presented “new evidence” to the experts, and agreeably, they reversed their opinions and decided that the letters were written by Madame Blavatsky! The need for this change in expert opinion was one of the causes of the delay in publication of Mr. Hodgson’s report. (Further evidence of the fallibility of this sort of “expert” opinion is furnished by Mr. Netherclift himself, for a few years later, in the case of Charles Parnell against the London Times, he swore positively that the signature to the famous “Pigott letters” was in Parnell’s handwriting; then later on, Pigott confessed in open court that he had forged the signatures.)

“The Kiddie incident” has been described, and whatever opinion may be formed in regard to it, there is no evidencewhatever of fraud in connection with it, or of any bad faith on the part of Mr. Sinnett or H.P.B. or any other theosophist. Mr. Massey’s “private evidence” is given at page 397 of the S.P.R. Report and anyone who reads it can determine for himself that, whatever of the mysterious and the unexplained there may be in connection with the matter, there is no evidence whatever of any fraud on H.P.B.’s part. Asin other cases,something occurred which Mr. Massey could not understand; his doubts were aroused; H.P.B. denied absolutely any wrongdoing, but refused as absolutely toexplainthemystery;hence shewas “guiltyof fraud.”

The “prosecution” of Madame Blavatsky by the Society for Psychical Research was for the crime of nonconformity to the “accepted” methods of the nineteenth century. Science, said the authorities of the day, must maintain complete ethical neutrality. “Facts,” they maintained, may be discovered without reference to their moral implications.This elementin the theory of scientificmethodwas categorically rejected by H.P.B., who said that the ultimate facts of life are essentially moral in nature, as man is essentially a moral being, and that the quest for truth can never be divorced from the study and practice of natural moral law. She would not submit to the methods of “psychic research” evolved according to the theories of Western science, but demanded that its investigators adopt the principles and method of Occult science. The choice was a hard one for the average Westerner. Either he must acknowledge that his canons of knowledge were inadequate for occult inquiry, and humbly accept the conditions prescribed by H.P.B., or disregard occultism as a subject unworthy of his attention.

The latter course would have been easy, except for the Theosophical phenomena. These extraordinary happenings, if they were real, could not be ignored. Occult phenomena had intruded themselves into his circumstantial world of familiar fact and experience; there they were, and they could not be accounted for by any known theory. Fraud, therefore, was the only “comfortable” explanation of them, the alternative being an acceptance of the revolutionary views of the theosophists. Thus the relation of the London Society for Psychical Research with the Theosophical Movement was far more than an “investigation” of certain phenomena and of the occult powers of Madame Blavatsky: it was the collision of two radically opposed and fundamentally incompatible theories of knowledge. The dramatic character of the phenomena precipitated this trial of theory, and the force of prejudice —the moral inertia of the age—predetermined the result. 

In no one thing, perhaps, is the weakness of the S.P.R. investigation more fatally self-betraying than in the motive assigned to account for the “long-continued combination and deliberate deception instigated and carried out by Madame Blavatsky.” That anyone should for ten or more years make endless personal sacrifices of effort, time, money, health, and reputation in three continents, merely to deceive those who trusted her, with no possible benefit to herself; should succeed in so deceiving hundreds of intelligent men and women that they were convinced of the reality of her powers, her teachings, her mission as well as her phenomena, only to be unmasked by an investigator who, after interviewing some of the witnesses and hearing their stories, is able infallibly to see what they could not see, is able to suspect what they could find no occasion for suspecting, is able to detect a sufficient motive for inspiring H.P.B. to the most monumental career of chicanery in all history—this is what one has to swallow in order to attach credibility to the elaborate tissue of conjecture and suspicion woven by Mr. Hodgson to offset the solid weight of testimony that the phenomena were genuine. 

What, then, was the motive attributed by Mr. Hodgson and the Committee to make credible their conclusion that she was “one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history”? She was a Russian spy, and her motive was to destroy British rule in India! 

It is interesting to observe the successive steps of the Committee’s struggle with this question of the possible motive of H.P.B. In the preliminary report the Committee raises the question of “all the commoner and baser motivesto fraud or exaggeration,” and dismisses them: “We maysay atonce that notrustworthyevidence supporting such a view has been brought under our notice.” Next the Committee considers the possibility of “good”motivesfor bad conduct: ‘Now we know, indeed, that the suspicions which the Anglo-Indian authorities at first entertained as to the political objects of the Theosophical Society have been abandoned as groundless.” Next theCommittee says, “Butwe can imagine schemes and intentions of a patriotic kind . . . we must be on our guard against men’s highest instincts quite as much as their lowest.”

In the final report Mr. Hodgson goes over the grounds of possible motives: “The question which will now inevitably arise is—what Induced Madame Blavatsky to live so many laborious days in such a fantastic work of imposture ? . . .

I should consider this Report incomplete unless I suggest what I myself believe to be an adequate explanation of her ten years’ toil on behalf of the Theosophical Society.”

Was it egotism? “A closer knowledge of her character would show such a supposition to be quite untenable.” Was she a plain, unvarnished fraud? “She is, indeed, a rare psychological study, almost as rare as a ‘Mahatma’! She was terrible exceedingly when she expressed her overpowering thought that perhaps her ‘twenty years’ work, might be spoiledthroughMadameCoulomb.”

Was it religious mania, a morbid yearning for notoriety? “I must confess that the problem of her motives ... caused me no little perplexity. . . . The sordid motive of pecuniary gain would be a solution still less satisfactory than the hypothesis of religious mania. . . . But even this hypothesis I was unable to adopt, and reconcile with my understanding of her character.”

What, then, was the compelling motive that induced the labors of a Hercules, the sacrifices of a Christ, to carry on a career of deception worthy of the Prince of Deceivers himself? “At last a casual conversation opened my eyes. . . . I cannot profess, myself, after my personal experiences with Madame Blavatsky, to feel much doubt that her real object has been the furtherance of Russian interests. . . . I suggest it here only as a supposition which appears best to cover the known incidents of her career during the past 13 or 14 years.”

H. P. Blavatsky lived and died a martyr, physically, mentally, and in all that men hold dear; she forsook relatives, friends, ease and high social standing, became an expatriate and naturalized citizen of an alien land on the other side of the globe; she founded a Society to which she gave unremitting and unthanked devotion; she wrote Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine, The Voice of the Silence, all of which were proscribed in Russia; she became a veritable Wandering Jew devoted to the propagation of teachings and ideas hateful to the world of “reactionary forces”; she eschewed all concern with political objects of any kind, all attachment to “race, creed, sex, caste, or color,” and formed and sustained with her lifeblood a Society sworn to the same ideals; she lived and she died without personal possessions of any kind—slandered, calumniated, betrayed, and misunderstood; she never, from 1873 to the day of her death, set foot on Russian soil, an exile from family and country. 

Why did she do these things? “In furtherance of Russian interests”!