The Arena. Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891

“I will add that when my wife left Calcutta I accompanied her in a steam launch, and she embarked on board the Vega at Diamond Harbor. I was the bearer of a letter to Mr. Eglinton. It was given to me for him by Mrs. Gordon, I think, but I won’t be positive. I had known Mr. Eglinton; he was in the habit, when in Calcutta, of giving exhibitions of his powers in private houses, for a fee. He came to our house in this way, but nothing occurred; I think he considered it a failure.”

Mrs. Broughton writes that she was with her friend Mrs. Eddis when Eglinton brought the letter. Both ladies observed that the letter which Koothoomi was to convey across the sea contained no allusion to anything that had occurred since they left—nothing that might not have been written before they started. Instead of marking the envelope, for identification, in the way Eglinton suggested, she made his cross into an asterisk. But the envelope published in India to prove the power of Koothoomi was marked, as Eglinton had requested, with three separate crosses. All efforts to obtain explanation of the difference between the marks on the letter sent and the letter received were vain. In reply to my question Mr. Sinnett said, “All I can tell you now is that Mrs. Broughton acted very badly.” I was present when the Hon. Mrs. Pitt Rivers pressed Colonel Olcott for an explanation. He replied, “The tone of your question suggests collusion between the Theosophists of India and Mr. Eglinton. To such a charge I am, of course, dumb.” It was the only prudent answer he could make.

This incident lowered my idea of Madame Blavatsky’s powers. It was not clever to rest so much on the pliability of a “society lady” with whom she was unacquainted. I presently found that at Bombay she had failed in several performances, but was shielded by a theosophistical argument that mere jugglers never fail.4 There was a pretty general feeling in Calcutta and Bombay that no glamour or magnetic mystery was needed for Madame Blavatsky’s thaumaturgy, which would soon collapse in Madras as elsewhere. Nearly the first thing I heard after reaching London (1884) was of that collapse. Mr. and Mrs. Coulomb, the former a skilled mechanic, had confessed at Madras that they had all along been assisting Madame Blavatsky in frauds; elaborate contrivances were discovered behind the shrine, and compromising letters written by the high priestess were produced. Madame Blavatsky declared that the contrivances were put in the shrine to ruin her; but Coulomb could have done that by a small mechanism, whereas the arrangements were extensive and expensive, requiring such time as must have assured detection, and money which he had not. The letters, mainly efforts to prevent the Coulombs from revealing the frauds, were pronounced forgeries; but no expert reading them can fail to perceive that to forge them would require a genius far beyond even that of Madame Blavatsky. The letters are brilliant, and Mrs. Coulomb is sometimes worsted in them. Mrs. Coulomb, after her confession, wrote me a long letter, which shows no trace of the style or ability disclosed in the Blavatsky letters. However, it was a sufficient confession that the Theosophists receded from a proposal to test all these things, including the handwriting of the letters, before a law court, for which the Coulombs were eager. The result was that Madame Blavatsky left India and established herself in London.

At the very time that I was at Adyar, and despite a certain repugnance to “occultism,” sympathetically appreciating the serene harmony of the Theosophists in their beautiful retreat amid the palms, the place was turbid with discord, Madame Blavatsky at one end of the table and the Coulombs at the other were even then in mortal combat. I have often marvelled at the self-possession of the woman under the suspended sword that presently fell.

The most curious thing about this turbaned Spiritualism is its development of the Koothoomi myth. I asked Sir W. W. Hunter, Gazetteer-General of India, and other orientalists, about the name of this alleged Mahatma, or Rabat, and they declared Koothoomi to be without analogies in any Hindu tongue, ancient or modern. I was assured on good authority that the name was originally “Cotthume,” and a mere mixture of Ol-cott and Hume, Madame Blavatsky’s principal adherents. Out of Madame’s jest was evolved this incredible being, who performed the part allotted to the aboriginal “John King” in America. Sumangala, chief priest of the Buddhist world, though not unfriendly to Theosophy, told me that it was a belief among them that there had been Rahats in the early world. I gathered from him and others that they are thought of as Enoch, Seth, Elias, etc., are in Christendom. The Coulomb story is that a pasteboard doll, with half-shrouded head, superimposed on the shoulders of Mr. Coulomb, himself orientally draped, moved about in the dusk at Adyar when an “astral” apparition was wanted. In an accession of conscience, Mrs. Coulomb, who is a Catholic, smashed the effigy. She says she had not cared much so long as Hindus only were cheated, because they believed such things anyway, but she could not stand it when European gentlemen and ladies were subjects of the imposture. Perhaps it was because of this moral “strike” that Koothoomi was not tried on me.

What will be the future of Theosophy? Its age of miracles has passed, and is more likely to be repudiated than renewed. It may easily be held that even if Madame Blavatsky was sometimes tempted, in the absence of her potent Guru, to satisfy the demand for signs and wonders with devices, she performed wonders not so explicable. In one of Madame Blavatsky’s letters to Mrs. Coulomb, she says, defiantly, “I have a thousand strings to my bow, and God Himself could not open the eyes of those who believe in me.” Elsewhere she quotes a letter she (Blavatsky) has from Colonel Olcott, saying: “If Madame Coulomb, who has undeniably helped you in some phenomena, for she told this to me herself, were to proclaim it on the top of the roof, it would change nothing in my knowledge, and that of Dr. Hartmann, Brown, Sinnett, Hume, and so many others, in the appreciation of Theosophy and their veneration for the brothers. You alone would suffer. For even if you yourself were to tell me that the Mahatmas do not exist, and that you have tricked in every phenomenon produced by you, I would answer you that you lie, for we know the Mahatmas, and know that you cannot—no more than a fly on the moon—have produced certain of the best of your phenomena.” It should be stated here that, in the whole correspondence revealed by Mrs. Coulomb, Colonel Olcott appears as the dupe of Madame Blavatsky, and in no case accessory to imposture unless by an amazing credulity.

We may assume that Colonel Olcott will continue his propaganda, and it remains only to consider what vitality there is in Theosophy, apart from its “occultism,” and what competency its leader has for such work. I gathered up in India a number of Colonel Olcott’s addresses, circulated in cheap form, and find them much like “The Veiled Isis” ascribed to Madame Blavatsky. They contain a medley of Buddhist, Brahmanic, and Zoroastrian traditions, interpreted in a mystical and moral way, the only thing systematic being a Buddhist catechism. This catechism was printed by the favor of a Singhalese lady, and approved, for use in schools, by the Buddhist high priest Sumangala. Colonel Olcott’s theosophy on the negative side aims to combine all oriental religions against Christianity. He has not “any belief in, or connection with, Christianity in any form whatsoever.” (Theosophy and Buddhism, p. 2.) But he maintains the oriental philosophies, and to some extent the mythologies, of eras corresponding to the discredited biblical doctrines and legends. It is not, indeed, a literal restoration; but no esoteric interpretation can make it very different from an attempt to rationalize for Europeans ancient Druidism, or for Americans Aztec fables and symbolism. This kind of revival appeals in a certain way to the Rajahs whom English rule has reduced to antiquarian curiosities; they too are survivals from primitive religious and social systems. Colonel Olcott had patrons among the Rajahs who used to send elephants to meet him, and entertain him in their palaces. But young India is not going that way. English freedom and English colleges have emancipated Hindu youth, and they look upon the cruel idolatry under which their fathers groaned as Colonel Olcott does on the Puritanism he fiercely denounces.

But if Colonel Olcott should give up his Rajahs and elephants, and fix his headquarters in Ceylon, there would be, I believe, fair prospect of a fruitful alliance of Theosophy with Buddhism. In this island, now the centre of the Buddhist world, I found Madame Blavatsky comparatively unimportant, the great personage being Colonel Olcott. The Buddhists are a mild, speculative, unambitious people, easily overborne by the aggressive missionaries, and were without any leader to defend their rights before Olcott came. He came to their rescue in a case where their procession was attacked by Catholics, while enshrining relics of Buddha,—the Catholics thinking it a mockery of their own processions. Colonel Olcott appealed to the government and obtained redress. The Catholics (Portuguese) presently found some holy well, pointed out, I believe, by a vision, where ailing pilgrims were said to be healed,—among these a number of Buddhists who were deserting their temples. Colonel Olcott announced that he would try and heal sufferers in the name of Buddha, and it is said his success quite eclipsed the holy well. Several eminent Buddhists told me that he had healed members of their families. He is a robust man, of powerful will, and in these days of hypnotism his influence over the most passive of people may appear less wonderful to us than to them. No Christian was found willing to meet him in debate. By lectures, in which Ingersollism blends with Arnold’s “Light of Asia,” the Colonel brought about a sort of Buddhist revival. The Singhalese saw the Theosophists as wise men from the West, bringing frankincense and myrrh to the cradle of their prophet. Although their high priest, Sumangala, expressed disbelief in the Mahatmas, he valued the services of Colonel Olcott. He was especially moved by a request from this American for his permission to administer the pansala to another American. The ceremony took place at Madras. The two Americans, amid a crowd of witnesses, went through formulas unheard there since the ancient banishment of the Buddhists. “I take refuge in Buddha! I take refuge in religion! I take refuge in Truth!” The Colorado doctor (Hartmann) pledged observance of the Five Precepts (pansala): abstinence from theft, lying, taking life, intoxicating drink, adultery. All of this has profoundly impressed the Buddhist world, but that is a world of humble people. It remains to be seen whether Theosophy, which has hitherto shown an affection for titles in India and London, is willing to take its place beside Buddha under his Bo tree, and share the lowliness of his followers. This may be rather hard after the rapid success of Theosophy in India, where in four years from its foundation (1879) it counted seventy-seven flourishing branches; but these are withering away under the Blavatsky scandals, and if Theosophy is to live it must “take refuge in Buddha!”

EMANCIPATION BY NATIONALISM

BY T. B. WAKEMAN

The usually very liberal and skeptical Reverend Minot J. Savage has become astonishingly, and it may be prematurely, certain on one subject. In The Arena for August (p. 321) he declares that, “Nationalism, freely chosen, would be the murder of liberty, and social suicide.” To which the usually impartial editor cries Amen, thus:—

“I most heartily and cordially endorse Mr. Savage’s position.” For this sudden and decisive foreclosure of the future and of The Arena upon Nationalism the world was not prepared. We enter a protest and an appeal! Able “Gladiators are ready to fight for it,” with aid and sympathy from the leading reformers—the world over. The contest has hardly begun. A Bunker Hill or a Bull Run does not end the war.

He who opened an Arena must keep it open, and like “the God of battles” wait for the best cause to win.

Suppose it be found, as we propose to begin to show here and now, that Nationalism, under the laws of Sociology, is not the murder, but in fact and theory, the only condition of liberty, and the only way out from social suicide,—what then? Would it not have been better for The Arena to have been kept open, as if by the aforesaid Deity, with a level head and a stiff and silent upper lip?

For the Reverend and exultant Mr. Savage his exasperating situation is his excuse. For, with the inbred and lethal instinct of a Theolog he was put upon the trail of a brother Theolog to bring in his scalp. To return without some scalp would be a disgrace. But on coming up with his reverend brother Bellamy, instead of finding him ready for fight or “treed, like Capt. Scott’s coon,” he finds him already down and explaining in the blandest style: That, whereas, “this difficulty” was a secular one, not at all theological, but quite within the bounds of “the Knowable,” there was really no necessity for one brother to scalp the other, although both were clergymen. He even proposed ways by which the manifest benefit of both, and of all, could be secured if they should hunt together, being sure to go no further than such benefit justified. But an accommodation was just what the Reverend Savage was not out to find. Shaking his war feathers, he says, “You are too fair,—I must kill you, or something, though it may be ‘cruelty to animals.’ Stop,—I sniff ‘paternalism’! It must be you or yours!” And without waiting for an answer he bangs away at that old skunk which hasn’t a friend on this side of the world. Then, inflamed by smell of powder, blood, or something worse, he goes it wild, mistakes even the good social domestic animals for wild beasts, and his reverend friend as their protector. His slaughter of these purely imaginary enemies is accompanied by a self-approving wit, which only exhales when, as Mephisto says, the Parson and Comedian are happily combined, and inspire each other. But, alas! neither prayers nor laughter can settle the industrial and political difficulties of our day. They may do, and are doing, much to prevent such settlement, which must come from people who do not live in another world, and therefore are not free to ignore or to make a joke of this. There is hope, therefore, when our reverend friend “ties his legs,” and in his said article settles down to steady numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4. For by them, we can at least get hold of him, and all points in his prior antics can be thereunder disposed of.

He delivers his first fire, thus:—

“1. The world began in Socialism. In the barbaric period the tribe was all, the individual nothing. Every step of human progress has kept pace with the rise of the individual.”

Most true! But that is half of the truth. If you had told the other half your article could not have been written, for it would have been answered beforehand from a to z. The other half is: That the rise of the individual has always been because of, and the result of, the concomitant and ever-increasing Socialism. The two have ever gone, and must ever go, hand in hand. Integration is the inevitable counterpart of individuation.

This is the fundamental law of history and Sociology, recognized the world over, as much as the law of gravitation. To blink it, is to go wild or blind. This is the law of progress upon which all human affairs expand, and there is scarcely a difference in wording it. For instance, in the last book out on “Economics,”—that of Prof. George Gunton, he says (p. 22): “Progress is an integrating differentiation. Only that differentiation is progressive which results in new integrations and greater complexity of social relations.” Comte’s, and Fiske’s, and Herbert Spencer’s statements of the same law are the same in substance, but too well known to quote here. So Professor Huxley in his “Administrative Nihilism,” Henry George in “Social Problems,” and indeed pretty much everybody who touches the subject, except Mr. Savage. He, however, has the grace to admit that “The world began in Socialism,”—and, by the law referred to, it will continue in an ever-enlarging, integrating Socialism, till the rise of “the complete individual” will result. Yes, man’s origin was social; from the “Social Anthropoids,”—says Professor Huxley; and to omit the continuance of this social fact and law in sociology is worse than talking pre-Copernican astronomy. That should be left to our metaphysical anarchists, who chatter as if man was a solitarily created “Adam,” defying the social “compact” of Rousseau, or dickering as to the terms upon which he will “come in.”

From Henry C. Carey’s noble work, “Social Science,” Americans should have heard, if not read, enough of this law of enlarging integration never to forget it, or to let those address them who have. He illustrates it not only by human history, but by the fundamental law of biology from Oken, Goethe, and the evolutionists generally. This application has been continued by them to the present day; the last instance I noticed is that of Prof. Ernst Hæckel, translated in Dr. Paul Carus’ late work, “The Soul of Man.” This law measures the progress of organisms from the homogeneous jelly-fish to the complex elephant or man; from the savage tribe to the Roman Empire, or the future “Federation of Mankind and Parliament of the World.” Integration is the mother, nurse, and protector of the individual.

In history and politics this law stands, however expressed or applied, as the door which opens to the mental vision, the river of human evolution and progress,—a sight grander far than Niagara. Those who see not this fact, law, vision!—are socially blind.

In industrial and economic evolution the same law of progress holds. The tribal homogeneous industry, when one man did work at everything, became heterogeneous, special, and complex, as society enlarged and advanced into higher integrations, and as the life of the individual became more and more advanced through Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism, to our modern inception of Humanism.

Do you stop this lecture to say that all this is a truism—a “chestnut”?

Yes, but everybody who talks against Nationalism forgets it. So follow a step farther.

“People will buy where they can buy the cheapest.” But the cheapest can only result from the highest integration of capital, machinery, labor, intellect, and means of wholesale production. Thus industrial integration and progressive civilization, where the people can have the means of a higher life, are indispensable parts and complements of each other. But the result and the difficulty is, that while the people get their travel, oil, sugar, and necessities of life cheaper and better than ever, they become the dependents, wage-slaves, and political and social underlings of the industrial Feudal System which that integration of transporting and producing monopolies builds up. For, those who can and do combine to control the conditions of the people’s life and welfare have the people and their Republic in their power. Under the integration of the Roman Empire and Papacy the “Republic” was continued, but as a name only.

The lesson of history is, that Republics and Liberty always go down when the necessary integrations of civilization and progress, military or other, pass from the control of the people. In a word monopoly in war, politics, industry, or in any form of integration, has been the murder of Liberty, ending in social suicide. Nationalism proposes to prevent this murder and suicide under the law above stated, thus: Whenever the necessary transportation and production are integrated into monopolies beyond the power of competition to control them, then the people must control and operate them, or become the dependents of those who do. Such is the difficulty, the danger, and the remedy, concisely stated. Critics like Mr. Savage can only reply: “The difficulty does not exist; the remedy is worse than the disease; there is a better remedy.” But Mr. Savage admits the difficulty. In an evasive way he says, “the industrial condition of the world is not all that one could wish.” But he has no remedy, and concludes by saying the remedy proposed would kill the patient sooner than the disease. This is the diagnosis of an ostrich who tries to escape by burying his head in the sand. It simply abandons the patient and there is no solution, no health in that. Let our lecture proceed and see if there is not a scientific remedy.

“Capital is the condition of production and the controlling factor of modern civilization.” Those who control it are the masters of the world. The contest of the monopolists of this capital with the workers and producers, that is, the people, is a burning fever which can only end by the healthy triumph of the people. There is not a railroad, mine, or factory, where this is not the daily issue upon which an internecine war is being waged or smothered. In literature, religion, politics, economics, ethics, everything turns upon the relations of these contending parties, from the Pope’s Encyclical to the Platform of the People’s Party. When we speak of our age, as the age of iron, silver, gold, or of steam, electricity, intellect!—we simply say it is the age of integrated capital, material and mental. To destroy this capital is impossible, and if possible would be the suicide of civilization.

The question then urges upon us in every direction: Shall the people become the slaves of this capital, or its masters? The watchman on the towers of our Boston Zion who fails to see the gathering storm clouds seems strangely out of place, when we recall 1775 and 1861. Nationalism says, the “Conflict is irrepressible,” between labor and individualized capital; and that the conflict will be fatal to liberty, unless a remedy is found under the law of our national evolution. This remedy that law gives as follows: That the people must defend their liberties and “the rise of the individual,” against this industrial despotism of money kings, railroad barons, political bosses, etc., better than they defended themselves against the foreign tyrants in 1775, or the slaveocrats of 1861,—to-wit, by organizing an army for their peaceful protection and safety—A free Army of Industry—before an army for war shall be needed, and as its preventive.

But this name, “Army of Industry,” fills our peaceful Mr. Savage with horror—a remedy worse than the disease? For thus he lets off his second charge:—

“2. Military Socialism, such as Mr. Edward Bellamy advocates, would be only another name for universal despotism, in which the individual, if not an officer, would only count one in the ranks. It would be the paradise of officialism on the one hand, and helpless subordination on the other.”

Mr. Savage has been taking novels and poetry literally, and has gone into a fright at a ghost raised by his own excited imagination; or else, he makes an objection out of a figure of speech because hard up for a real one. Who does not see that an “industrial army” has nothing to do with a military army, or a military despotism, except to prevent both. There is no war, military compulsion, or “military” at all, in the army of peace. The word “army” is short poetry for the order, economy, punctuality, and reliable co-operation and co, not sub-ordination of the public administration of industries. Remember that we are in America, where this administration will be quite different from that proposed in Europe where the Revolution of 1776 was not, and where “government” is one of divine right, authority, and force, and covers the all of life from the cradle to the grave.

Nationalism is purely an American product, to be exercised as a popular benefit, and having no mainspring or motive power but that. It is the co-operation and co-ordination of equal partners, and while by a figure of speech fraternalism might be used to describe it, paternalism can never be properly so used. When Mr. Savage says, or implies otherwise, he is simply imposing upon, or trading upon an ignorance he ought to correct. He must know that the attempt to load up American Nationalism with European despotism, Paternalism, or even Socialism, is to bear false witness against his neighbor.