From the first days of its existence some of the most learned
Americans joined the Society, which became known as the Theosophical
Society. Its members differed on many points, much as do the
members of any other Society, Geographical or Archeological, which
fights for years over the sources of the Nile, or the Hieroglyphs
of Egypt. But everyone is unanimously agreed that, as long as
there is water in the Nile, its sources must exist somewhere. So
much about the phenomena of spiritualism and mesmerism. These
phenomena were still waiting their Champollion--but the Rosetta
stone was to be searched for neither in Europe nor in America,
but in the far-away countries where they still believe in magic,
where wonders are performed daily by the native priesthood, and
where the cold materialism of science has never yet reached--in
one word, in the East.
The Council of the Society knew that the Lama-Buddhists, for instance,
though not believing in God, and denying the personal immortality
of the soul, are yet celebrated for their "phenomena," and that
mesmerism was known and daily practised in China from time immemorial
under the name of "gina." In India they fear and hate the very
name of the spirits whom the Spiritualists venerate so deeply, yet
many an ignorant fakir can perform "miracles" calculated to turn
upside-down all the notions of a scientist and to be the despair
of the most celebrated of European prestidigitateurs.
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