itself shrank back and were afraid to face public opinion, ignorant
and persecuting as it was; and it is pathetic and interesting to read
the letters she wrote in the years immediately succeeding the Coulomb
difficulty, in which she pointed out that those to whom she had
brought the light were ashamed to stand beside her under the
conditions to which she was then exposed. She complained that the
writings in the Society were changing their character; that they were
no longer occult and full of teaching of the unseen, but had become
purely philosophical and metaphysical; that her own journal had
turned aside from its earlier occultism, and confined itself to
articles addressed only to the intellect; and she says in one of these
letters: "Say what you may, it was my phenomena on which the
Theosophical Society was founded. It is my phenomena by which that
Society has been built up." It was a natural feeling of half
resentment against the policy of the time, that had left her in the
lurch, and put the Society upon a different footing. It was in
connection with that terrible time, in the turmoil and whirl of
conflicting opinions, that those words recorded of her Master, spoken
to herself, in one of the records left to the Society, occurred, in
which He said: "The Society has liberated itself from our grasp and
influence ... it is no longer ... a body over the face of which broods
the Spirit from beyond the Great Range." Along those newer lines the
Society went, and there are many who will say: "They are better lines.
It is better that these abnormal happenings should fall into the
background, that they should not be presented to a scornful and
sceptical world, that we should rely on the literature that we have,
without desiring to increase it by new knowledge, in which much can
only be gained by abnormal means. Better to rest on what we have, and
not try to add to it." Very many of our members take that view, and it
is a perfectly reasonable view to take, a view which ought to have its
place in the Theosophical Society, a view which is useful as
correcting the tendency to undue credulity, which otherwise might hold
on its way unchecked. For the life of the Society depends on the fact
that it should include a vast variety of opinions on all the
questions on which difference of opinion is possible; and it is not
desirable that there should be only one school of thought in the
Society. There should be many schools of thought, as many schools as
there are different thinkers who can formulate their thought, and each
standing with an equal right to speak and of claiming a respectful
hearing. None of them has a right to say: "There is no place for you
in the Theosophical Society." Neither must the person who is strong on
the subject of phenomena try to silence those who meet phenomena with
disbelief, or who think them dangerous; nor should a person who stands
only on philosophy and metaphysics say to the Theosophical acceptor of
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