Many members
of the Society have visited India--many were born there and have
themselves witnessed the "sorceries" of the Brahmans. The founders
of the Club, well aware of the depth of modern ignorance in regard
to the spiritual man, were most anxious that Cuvier's method of
comparative anatomy should acquire rights of citizenship among
metaphysicians, and, so, progress from regions physical to regions
psychological on its own inductive and deductive foundation.
"Otherwise," they thought, "psychology will be unable to move
forward a single step, and may even obstruct every other branch
of Natural History." Instances have not been wanting of physiology
poaching on the preserves of purely metaphysical and abstract knowledge,
all the time feigning to ignore the latter absolutely, and seeking
to class psychology with the positive sciences, having first bound
it to a Bed of Procrustes, where it refuses to yield its secret
to its clumsy tormentors.
In a short time the Theosophical Society counted its members, not
by hundreds, but by thousands. All the "malcontents" of American
Spiritualism--and there were at that time twelve million Spiritualists
in America--joined the Society. Collateral branches were formed
in London, Corfu, Australia, Spain, Cuba, California, etc.
Everywhere experiments were being performed, and the conviction
that it is not spirits alone who are the causes of the phenomena
was becoming general.
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