Now when we apply these manifest principles and facts to the latest spiritual movement, that which gave birth to the Theosophical Society, we find that we are running through, in a very short time, the same series of facts as characterised the religions of the past. Here also, as with them, a great outburst of phenomena in the earlier days; H.P.B. living in a cloud of phenomena and those who came in touch with her bathed in phenomena of all kinds. You can see the result of that early training in our late President, Colonel Olcott, to whom phenomena in connection with the Theosophical Society were the most natural things in the world. He had no hesitation in talking of them, was always bubbling over with his experiences of them in the past. You must remember, when he was over here, how much he thought about them, the pleasure he took in recalling his earlier experiences, and of showing the material articles produced phenomenally in those earlier days; and you cannot take up _Old Diary Leaves_ without finding yourself face to face with every-day happenings of phenomena. Life then seemed to be made up of the abnormal, in the sense in which that word is used. The normal for the time being had disappeared. If a duster had to be hemmed, an elemental did it. If pencils were needed, a hand was put forward, twisted the pencils about, and there were twelve in place of the one, and so on. Much greater people than H.P.B. were concerned in producing these phenomena. Colonel Olcott tells us how H.P.B. on one occasion drank some lukewarm water which a Master drew from a water-skin on a camel, and magnetised, and made her believe it to be coffee. On his removing the magnetism before she had finished drinking, she found to her disgust that she had been drinking this lukewarm water. The present-day Theosophist would probably have objected to such playfulness, but such things were continually happening in the early days. When Colonel Olcott came into the Society he came straight from the investigation of spiritualistic phenomena--a thoroughly well-trained observer, beginning with a good deal of scepticism, and beaten out of it by his own observations in innumerable spiritualistic séances. So that when he came in touch with H.P.B. he was no credulous, unobservant person, overborne by a number of wonderful happenings, but a thoroughly equipped and cold-blooded and well-trained observer of the super-physical, and he naturally brought his powers of observation to bear on these wonderful happenings. He has left on record the full stories of these earlier days. You may find similar stories, not to the same extent indeed, in Mr. Sinnett's book, _The Occult World_. There we find similar instances, similar marvels worked by H.P.B. in order to arouse his attention, and to prove to him the existence of certain laws; which otherwise would have remained, so to speak, in the air. So there were also there a large number of unusual happenings--letters in