Mrs. Besant's latest Assertions and claims examined.

WE now come to the examination of two articles in the Theosophist for March, 1922, in which the President of the T. S. makes some attempt to deal with recent criticism. One is a Supplement, or Manifesto, addressed "To all Members of the Theosophical Society," and couched in Mrs. Besant's present style—flamboyant, a trifle bombastic, often Biblical in phraseology, and running throughout it, her usual fervid and disingenuous appeal to sentimental emotionalism, instead of the instinctive sense of justice latent in all beings. This latter, a feature of her best days, she has entirely abandoned; it no longer serves her ends. What those "ends" are one almost hesitates to formulate, so impious and almost insane do they appear. Even taking into consideration the tangled mass of evasions, misstatements and hypocritical equivocations presented in this manifesto, these "ends" emerge with sufficient clearness. But, in the first place, and before going further, one must ask on what basis this amazing claim to almost deific powers and knowledge rests. Let me here call M. Lévy into the witness box once more; for he also had put the same question to himself nine years ago, and will provide the answer. It occurs in his chapter on "Mrs. Besant's 'Return of the Christ,'" where he is dealing with her position and actions in regard to Dr. Steiner, the German occultist and Christian Theosophist—with whose ideas, I should add, I am not in personal agreement. My teacher is H. P. Blavatsky and she alone: I follow no lesser light. M. Lévy says:—

Our reason forces us to confess that all goes to suggest that Mrs. Besant, having herself ceased to believe in the identity of her Jesus with the Christ [of the Gospels.—A. L. C.], would still continue to make others believe it.... Her pride ... her dominating mind, have driven her on this crusade of extermination of Dr. Steiner's teachings; it has induced her to collect, without the least regard for truth, justice, or theosophic principles, no matter what weapons if they do but serve against her opponent; calumny, abuse of power, misstatement of facts, all combined in a subtle strategy.

Italics are mine; for we find Mrs. Besant using precisely the same methods to-day, only in a form fortunately neither so "subtle" nor so Jesuitically plausible. Her powers are failing, as the manifesto under consideration clearly proves. M. Lévy proceeds:—

And when she falls victim of some error in the course of her occult investigations—of which in theory she is always proclaiming the fallibility—it is again her pride that bars the way to admission, and makes her the slave of the most pitiful machinations ... which ... will shatter to fragments in all directions the confidence she had formerly inspired. For if she is not consciously defending her mistake, then what kind of a break-up of all her faculties are we witnessing?... The more deeply we study this [i.e., the "neo-theosophy" already described by M. Lévy and Pandit Bhagavan Das.—A. L. C.], the more terrible appear the responsibilities of Adyar in this deplorable scheme; for we would still seek the origin of such fearless confidence [in Mrs. Besant's followers.—A. L. C.] refusing, as it does, to be shaken by the eloquent appeal of the facts here set forth, and of which some, if not all, have been within the reach and open to examination of those members who profess such an enthusiastic confidence in Mrs. Besant. The result of our search is a yet further culpability, as overwhelming as it is unexpected.

For this confidence is not in the case of all the victims the result of the free use of their own inner faculties. It is in the case of the greater number, due to the influence of a strong suggestion deliberately organised and cleverly carried out by the authors of this mystification themselves; by Mr. Leadbeater who wrote, and by Mrs. Besant who published, the following lines in the Adyar Album, p. 45: "What can I say to you of your President that you do not know already? Her colossal [sic] intellect, her unfailing wisdom, her unrivalled eloquence, her splendid forgetfulness of self, her untiring devotion to work for others—all these are familiar to you. Yet these qualities, these powers, are but a small part of her greatness; they are on the surface, they may be seen by all, they leap to the eyes. But there are other qualities, other powers, of which you cannot know, because they pertain to the secrets of Initiation. She is a pupil of our Masters; from the fount of Their archaic wisdom she derives her own, the plans which she is carrying out are Their plans for the welfare of the world. Think, therefore, how great an honour it is for you that you should be permitted to work under her, for in doing so you are virtually working under Them. Think how watchful you should be to miss no hint which falls from her lips, to carry out exactly whatever instructions she may give you. Remember that because of her position as an Initiate she knows far more than you do; and precisely because her knowledge is occult, given under the seal of Initiation, she cannot share it with you. Therefore her actions must certainly be governed by considerations of which you have no conception. There will be times when you cannot understand her motives, for she is taking into account many things which you cannot see and of which she must not tell you. But whether you understand or not, you will be wise to follow her implicitly, just because she knows. This is no mere supposition on my part, no mere flight of the imagination; I have stood beside your President in the presence of the Supreme Director of evolution on this globe, and I know whereof I speak. Let the wise hear my words, and act accordingly."

It is easy to see how minds not gifted with a highly developed critical faculty, or the instinctive sense that discriminates the true from the false, would yield hopelessly to such a formidable assault. They cannot see that he who thus guarantees the infallibility of Mrs. Besant has himself need of guarantee.... I do not think that any religion or man-made cult, even in the earliest ages, has ever promulgated superstition in its grossest form so openly and boldly as this ... [Italics mine.—A.L.C.]. Mr. Leadbeater ... demands deliberate suppression of thought.... And having extolled such a deliberately induced mental torpor for Mrs. Besant's benefit, he immediately demands it for himself when he speaks of the "Supreme Director of evolution on this globe." Who is this administrative person? With whom is he to be identified in the scheme of evolution as it has been given to us by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater themselves?... What avenging God will come to confound this impious prophet who seeks to reduce humanity to the level of a troop of obedient automata!... A gentle and winning voice, infinitely reassuring, rises out of the depths of my being ... a great light breaks forth, triumphant. Mr. Leadbeater hears the words of a judgment immediate and without appeal, pronounced by the Buddha himself:—

"Believe not what you have heard said; believe not in traditions merely because they have been transmitted through many generations; believe not merely because a thing is repeated by many persons; ... believe not conjectures ... believe not solely upon the authority of your Masters and elders. When upon observation and analysis a principle conforms to reason and leads to the benefit and welfare of all, accept it and hold it."—(Buddha, Anguttura Nikaya.)

What a royal refuge, what a noble support are the words of those who are the truly great! They are the perpetual safeguard of humanity.

We have seen that upon "observation and analysis" the "unfailing" wisdom of Mrs. Besant is no more than a mass of inconsistencies, injustices, sectarian tactics in administration, error and mystification in esoteric announcements. Far from leading to "the benefit and welfare of all," this "unfailing" wisdom is leading to the ... most miserable slavery of souls, the emasculation of minds, the creation of a terrible heresy. And at the present time we are all feeling that we shall not be living up to the wise exhortations of that great Being who was the Buddha, unless we clearly denounce the lamentable aberrations of these two occultists in the hope of drawing all the souls we possibly can away from their pernicious influence. With this end in view, and faithful to this duty, we shall calmly and firmly continue our investigation of facts.

Fortunately, the assertions of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater have lately reached to such a pitch of extravagance and have so utterly defied common sense that they will rouse even the least critical minds and the most compliant hearts.

Then follows the section of M. Lévy's book in which he quotes from Man; Whence, How, and Whither; much of this I have given earlier in this pamphlet. And M. Lévy, one must remember, wrote all this nine years ago!

At this point it may serve a useful purpose if I specifically define my own position in regard to Mrs. Besant's claims. I entirely and most emphatically reject them all. Mr. Leadbeater's I was not even aware of, until I came to collect and examine the material for this pamphlet. They are so monstrous as not even to merit a specific "rejection"—it goes without saying. I practically lost all faith in Mrs. Besant when she dissimulated and tried to mislead the Inner Group Council on her return from her first visit to India in 1894. She then informed us that she had been "ordered by the Master to accuse Judge." On being closely cross-examined, however, she finally admitted that she had not received this "Order" direct, as she would have had us believe, but through the Brahmin whom she then followed blindly[11], exactly as she now follows Leadbeater. But later, when taxed with this in public, she pretended that he had had nothing whatever to do with it! This is a typical example of Mrs. Besant's idea of a 'truthful' statement in a matter of the most vital importance involving the fate of a leader and many thousands of members. What confidence can be placed in such a woman—one whose mental processes are so warped, and whose ideas of 'truth' and 'honesty' are so peculiar? To inspire confidence a leader must be the very soul of truth and uprightness. Mrs. Besant has always been remarkable for asserting herself to be this, and people have believed her. But a truly upright and honest person (even if aware of it, as in Occultism he has to be) would never draw attention to it—and that publicly and in print.

Because, for Mrs. Besant, Mr. —— was at this period her mouthpiece for the Master, she expected her colleagues to take the same view without question. This attitude is typical, and can be applied to all that she now says about Leadbeater (see ante p. 19.) From this time I found it impossible to believe in her or her statements; such, for instance, as that H. P. B. had reincarnated in Mr. ——'s little daughter!![12]—or in anyone else for that matter. H. P. B. herself, when someone asked her about reincarnating, jokingly replied—"Yes, in some mild Hindu youth with half a lobe to his brain!" H. P. B. has not reincarnated. On the ridiculous belief above mentioned Mrs. Besant based her "authority" for doing things in H. P. B.'s name after her death (see post p. 71 for examples). It follows also that I absolutely reject her claim to be an "agent" of the Masters (i.e., the Trans-Himâlayan Brotherhood), neither do I believe that she has had any communication whatsoever with Them since H. P. B.'s death.[13] Finally, I reject her most presumptuous claim that she is able, or in anyway fitted, to "expand," "verify," or "check" by psychic faculties H. P. B.'s statements and teachings; still less to carry on independent occult investigations on the same, or any similar plane of consciousness. Whether Mrs. Besant, in making these claims, is acting under the glamour of Mr. Leadbeater's "clairvoyant" delusions, as MM. Lévy and Schuré suggest, or is fully conscious and responsible, is not my part to judge, nor does it really matter. For me, her life may be summed up in some words she applied recently to Mr. Gandhi (Theosophist, April, 1922). It is "the tragedy of a soul." Her criticisms on what she calls his "failure" apply fully and literally to her own.

There is really very little in the Manifesto (Theosophist, March, 1922), that is not sufficiently answered by the various extracts I have quoted from previous critics. Mrs. Besant opens with the usual disingenuous statements about the "Liberal Catholic Church." Her argument that all religions are on an equal footing in the T. S. carries no weight when it is widely known that L. C. C. agents are everywhere at work pushing its interests.

Coming next to Mr. Leadbeater, Mrs. Besant states that he was "cleared by a Committee in England"! But it is really a little too much, and altogether too brazen,[14] when she dares to compare his case with that of H. P. B. in the matter of slander. There can be no possible comparison. The worst ever suggested against H. P. B. was what has been said of many other women, including Mrs. Besant herself, who have had to work in the glare of publicity and champion an unpopular cause. No evidence was ever brought forward, and the New York Sun promptly apologised for publishing such statements on being shown that they were unfounded.[15] The grave charges against Mr. Leadbeater were supported by documentary evidence which has never been rebutted, and they have to do with something far worse than personal moral laxity, as we have seen. Mrs. Besant knows she cannot meet these charges, and so seeks to brush them aside by voluble talk about "hatred," "defamation," and "vilification." The only justification she offers for having reinstated him in 1907 is that she had discovered that it was "a cruel lie that he had confessed to wrongdoing"! This is to argue that the "accused" should be "acquitted" because he refused to confess—in the face of evidence of no matter how damning a nature! Did Mrs. Besant follow this procedure in her "Case against W. Q. Judge"? Not at all; far from "acquitting" him when he refused to "confess to wrongdoing" and asked for production of the incriminating documents, she calmly confessed that she had destroyed them! But now that it is a case of her own guide and "intermediary" in the dock, her attitude is entirely different, and it is quite enough for her that the "accused" did not "confess" his crime!

As Dr. Stokes, Editor of the O. E. Critic (Washington, D.C.) has been fearlessly stating the facts and encouraging the "Back to Blavatsky" movement for some time past, she next devotes a paragraph to an attempt to discredit him by suggesting his connection with an old enemy of H. P. B.'s. Dr. Stokes's championship of H. P. B., and relentless exposure of the Besant-Leadbeater imposture is the more effective since he persists in retaining his membership in the T. S.

The next to be dealt with is Pandit Bhagavan Das, and his criticisms about the Central Hindu College. Here again, all I have quoted from his pamphlet about the secret sections, underhand work, pledges, etc., are entirely ignored.

Mr. T. H. Martyn's letter, which has caused such a sensation in the Society (Holland alone asking for 500 copies) is dismissed as full of "untrue" statements. Truly a very simple method of dealing with matter which Mrs. Besant finds compromising or unpleasant (see ante p. 18); but she can hardly believe it to be convincing.

It is when this profoundly disingenuous woman comes to an explanation of the motive behind her political work in India, that we find a typical specimen of the peculiar form of megalomania already so ably demonstrated by M. Lévy. What must be the mental condition of a person who can sit down and solemnly write the following?

The work entrusted to me directly by the great Rishi who is—as one may say [sic]—the spiritual Viceroy[16] for India of the King of Kings of our world—is the bringing about of Home Rule in India, in close union with Great Britain, as part of a great Federation of Free Nations, a model of the future World Commonwealth...."

Why such a very mundane and political idea should need an order from a Rishi is not explained. The patent appeal both to the Government and the Indian people in this portentous announcement is not very happily conceived.

It is unfortunate for Mrs. Besant that her indignant denial that another of the notorious "Bishops" (Wedgwood) is "wanted" by the police was immediately followed by a priest's confession and the Bishop's resignation from the L. C. C., the T. S., and the Co-masons![17]

Finally we come to the most ominous part of the whole document, where Mrs. Besant refers to the present condition of the sex problem, and indicates that Mr. Leadbeater's vile teachings to, and practices with boys—trying "to wean lads from evil practices" is her version of it—are part of a process necessary "to save mankind in the near future." The "lessening of the sex impulse" on the "line of higher mental evolution" is "too slow." "Early marriage and birth-control"—preceded, one must assume, by Leadbeaterism—are now Mrs. Besant's inspired panaceas.

The appalling menace to the evolution of the spiritual nature in man, of the secret Leadbeater teaching known as the "X-system," is shown by the evidence of Dr. Eleanor M. Hiestand-Moore (M.D.), Editor of the Theosophic Voice (Chicago), in which all the Leadbeater proceedings of 1906 were reported and discussed. In the August number, 1908, Dr. Hiestand-Moore writes:—

During the winter of 1906-7 the Editor [herself] was in Chicago and in order to combat the widespread tendency to uphold self-abuse on the lines indicated by Mr. Leadbeater, a series of lectures on the psychology of sex was given. There were members in the E. S., and out of it who upheld the X-system. One person declared ... that this system would, before many years, be taught in our public schools. Still another insisted that by self-abuse humanity was to return to the hermaphroditic type and that this practice would be universal among Fifth Round Humanity. A number declared that, while they did not pretend to know anything about such matters, they had understood this was a highly occult teaching given to would-be disciples! We could lay hands on a letter setting forth the claim that this teaching is purely "esoteric" and not to be estimated by exoteric standards—this, too, from a Branch president! [Italics mine.—A. L. C.].

These instances are sufficiently appalling in themselves. But what can we say now that The Voice has elicited a correspondence which is simply a brazen defence of these "teachings"?[18]

What, then, must be the moral condition of this horrible travesty of the old T.S. now, fourteen years after Dr. Hiestand-Moore wrote the foregoing? Mrs. Besant is thus seen to have now returned practically to the Neo-Malthusianism of her earlier, pre-theosophic association with the late Charles Bradlaugh. It may not be generally known that H. P. B. refused to accept her as a pupil until she had published a recantation of all she and Bradlaugh had advocated in The Fruits of Philosophy. It is a sinister omen that under C. W. Leadbeater, the sex pervert, Mrs. Besant has abandoned H. P. Blavatsky's imperative requirement for becoming a student of White Occultism, and has returned to the essentially materialistic doctrine of "birth-control," in direct contravention of the true Occult teaching. In other words, her assertion amounts to this:—Self-control is not possible (or is "too slow "), therefore we must control results. How different is the Occult teaching is well-known to all who have taken the trouble to read H. P. B.'s articles from which I have already quoted (see ante p. 31) and the splendid chapter in Vol. II of The Secret Doctrine entitled "The Curse from a Philosophical Point of View." And H. P. B. told me herself that she included the following verse in The Voice of the Silence with the express object of combating such teachings and placing the Occult doctrine beyond possibility of misinterpretation:—

"Do not believe that lust can ever be killed out if gratified or satiated, for this is an abomination inspired by Mâra. It is by feeding vice that it expands and waxes strong, like to the worm that fattens on the blossom's heart."

In a note H. P. B. explains that Mâraacirc;ra is "personified temptation through men's vices, and translated literally means 'that which kills' the Soul." Far from "saving" mankind, therefore, these professed 'expanders' and 'expounders' of H. P. B.'s doctrines are in reality doing their best to hasten its end. Better far, from the Occult standpoint, that a race should be wiped out by "outraged Nature," as were the Atlanteans for the same sins, than that it should be kept alive only to sink lower and lower until "Mâra" kills its Soul.

In the "Watch-Tower" (Theosophist, March, 1922,) Editorial mention is made of a display at Adyar of "treasures of the most varied kinds," which have just been unearthed from "all the old locked-up boxes" at the headquarters. Why, one may not unreasonably enquire, has Mrs. Besant waited until 1922 to disinter, for instance, a long and valuable letter from H. P. B. herself? Why have such "treasures" been kept back for over thirty years; just as "Letters" from the Masters (the Trans-Himâlayan Brotherhood) were kept hidden away for an even longer period—nearly forty years? The reasons are so ridiculously transparent that they would hardly deceive an intelligent child. Mrs. Besant is becoming seriously discomposed, even alarmed, by the growing strength of the "Back to Blavatsky" movement, which is in itself a reaction against her own neglect. Hence all this "burrowing" (her own word) in order to make a brave show of these "treasures" for which she had no sort of use until, disturbed by alarming rumours, she hastily resorts to them for purposes of camouflage and disguise. For she is a skilful opportunist and clever actress, assuming successive parts with as convincing an air as any "star"; neither does she scruple to employ every device of the party politician.

Does Mrs. Besant seriously believe that this attempt to drag the red herring of an unexplained and suddenly awakened interest in these "treasures" across the trail of Mr. Leadbeater's infamies will deceive anyone save their blind and infatuated followers? Has she forgotten that when, only two years after H. P. Blavatsky's death, she came under the direct hypnotic control of Brahmin influence, she threw doubts upon her old Teacher's bona fides and her occult knowledge; and, in the course of formulating her charges against her fellow-disciple (a chela of many years' standing before she ever even heard of Theosophy) suggested to Mr. Judge that, "misled by a high example" (H. P. B.), he had fallen "a victim." For, as she then told him, her "theory was first, that H. P. B. had committed several frauds for good ends and made bogus messages; second, that [he] was misled by her example; and third, that H. P. B. had given [him] permission to do such acts. She then," continues Mr. Judge, "asked me to confess thus, and that would clear up all. I peremptorily denied such a horrible lie, and warned her that everywhere I would resist such attack on H. P. B. These are the facts, and the real issue is around H. P. B." (The Path, March, 1895.)

With the complete disruption of the Society the Brahmin period of dominance over Mrs. Besant came to an end. Then followed the Leadbeater régime, the first phase of which culminated in the crisis of 1906. But on Colonel Olcott's death in the following year, she contrived the realisation of her great ambition, and became President of the Society. At this point in her career, however, there were two serious difficulties which she had to meet:—first, the Leadbeater scandal which raised a storm of horror and protest from those old and tried members who had remained in the Society up to that time, but who then practically withdrew in a body Deprived of their support, and having reinstated the infamous Leadbeater, Mrs. Besant realised that, as President, she could no longer risk appearing half-hearted over H. P. Blavatsky; nay more, she needed the support of her venerated name; second, as President of the Society created by H. P. B., she must, for the sake of her own prestige, take some definite action which would remove all possibility of suspicion that she was no longer the follower of the Teacher whom she had, in fact, already "denied" and "betrayed" only two years after her death. Mrs. Besant realised, in short, that she had gone too far, and must now retrieve the position. Accordingly, in 1907, she issued a pamphlet entitled H. P. Blavatsky and the Masters of the [sic] Wisdom, in which, with all her accustomed ability, she dealt once more with the famous (or rather infamous) Report of the Society for Psychical Research, published in 1885. But the concluding eulogy strikes a false note, coming from one who, as I have shown, was capable of being persuaded that H. P. B. had concocted messages from those Masters Whom she so faithfully served for two-thirds of her life.

It was at this time also (1907), so Mrs. Besant later declared, that "the T. S. fully regained its original position, with the Masters of the [sic] Wisdom as once more the 'First Section' of the Society." This bold assertion was made in 1919, when, under pressure of some fresh scare connected with Mr. Leadbeater, Mrs. Besant published a small volume of the Masters' Letters (most of which had presumably been lying in the archives of the Society at Adyar for nearly forty years!), obviously for no other reason than because among them are two alleged to have been received by Mr. Leadbeater. This she did in order to bolster up the extravagant claims she now makes for him as a "Great Teacher." But there were many who received Letters in the early days, and there is no reason why similar claims should not be made for all the recipients!

In the article entitled "Whom will ye Serve?" (Theosophist, March, 1922,) Mrs. Besant says that H. P. B. "formed an inner circle of her pupils, that it might bear witness to the truth and reality of the inner side of life." This was the "Inner Group" of which she and I were two of the six women members. But as, unfortunately Mr. Leadbeater was not included, although he had become a member of the T. S. some years before, she adds:—"And behold! ere she passed away, she had led others to the Light, and bade them bear witness to it...." Considering that she "passed away" less than a year after forming the Inner Group in the summer of 1890, and that we were constantly with her and never heard of these "others," this statement is manifestly untrue. Mrs. Besant also refers to Mr. Leadbeater as "one of H. P. B.'s nearest and most trusted pupils [Absolutely untrue.—A. L. C.] whom she had led to his Master of many lives, and in whom she had awakened the powers since so splendidly used in the service of the Society that he might become a great Teacher...."

I challenge Mrs. Besant to produce anything in writing by H. P. B. to warrant this audacious assertion. I was a pupil of H. P. B. (and through her was accepted as "a chela on probation," in 1889) before Mrs. Besant joined the T. S., and saw her expel one of her most gifted and valued workers from the Esoteric Section for offences against the occult and moral law similar to those with which Mr. Leadbeater's name has now been associated for nearly twenty years. H. P. B. was always extremely strict on this particular point, and many would-be aspirants for chelaship were refused on this one ground alone, while others who had been accepted "on probation" failed almost immediately afterwards.

When I joined the T. S. in 1885 my diploma was signed by Colonel Olcott as President and C.W. Leadbeater as Secretary (he was then at Adyar), but I never heard him mentioned by H. P. B. or anyone else at the London Headquarters, as a person of any importance whatever, in the occult sense. Mrs. Besant goes on to say that H. P. B. left "the twain of us [Leadbeater and herself] to bear personal witness to the truth when she had gone"! Where is her evidence that Mr. Leadbeater was ever one of H. P. B.'s pupils? There is none, save this bare, unsupported assertion of a highly interested party. How could these two, to the exclusion of all H. P. B.'s pupils—some of them "regularly accepted chelas on probation"—be specially selected, taught, and prepared, (and above all, to promulgate the sort of "teachings" of which I have given a few specimens), without any of us hearing even a hint of it! Moreover, I never saw, or even heard of Mr. Leadbeater at the London Headquarters while H. P. B. was alive. I might just as well claim such a mission for myself, or Mr. Mead, or Dr. Keightley, or any other member of the Inner Group who has remained true to the pledge and the Teacher; and with greater justice, for Mrs. Besant has not. The truth is that Mr. Leadbeater was never heard of in connection with occult teaching until he was taken up and foisted on the unfortunate T. S. and E. S. as a "Great Teacher" by Mrs. Besant who was herself never more than a "chela on probation"—during H. P. B.'s lifetime.

Let me refer again to H. P. B.'s article "The Theosophical Mahatmas" from which I have already quoted (ante p. 3), in which she deals with the members of the T. S. who were "regularly accepted chelas on probation," and the subsequent failure of nearly all of them. If this was true at that time, it can certainly now be applied to the case of Mrs. Besant, who, in my judgment and that of many others, conspicuously failed under two great tests. The first failure occurred when she went to India in 1893, became an orthodox Hindu, and was induced to entertain those doubts of her Teacher that I have already alluded to. (ante p. 66.) Bound up with this failure—the doubt of the Teacher—was her attack on her fellow chela, Mr. Judge.

The second failure was a far worse one when, in 1906, after having publicly endorsed the finding of the Advisory Committee on Leadbeater's crimes (see footnote ante p. 59), she suddenly turned round and secured his reinstatement. In thus condoning and even endorsing immorality of the vilest description, she denied one of the strictest occult laws binding upon a chela.

This double failure had far more serious results in her case than in those of which H. P. B. wrote in 1886, because, owing to her commanding position as a leader, the fate of the many thousands of earnest souls in the Society who believed in and followed her implicitly, was involved.

FOOTNOTES: