The outer ranks of the Theosophical Society seem to be largely composed of harmless enthusiasts who imagine that they are receiving genuine instruction in the religions and occult doctrines of the East. That the teaching of the E.S. would not be taken seriously by any real Orientalist and that they could learn far more by studying the works of recognized authorities on these subjects at a University or at the British Museum does not occur to them for a moment. Nor would this fulfil the purpose of the leaders. For the Theosophical Society is not a study group, but essentially a propagandist society which aims at substituting for the pure and simple teaching of Christianity the amazing compound of Eastern superstition, Cabalism, and eighteenth-century charlatanism which Mrs. Besant and her coadjutors have devised. Yet even were the doctrines of Mrs. Besant those of true Buddhism or of Brahmanism, to what extent are they likely to benefit Western civilization? Setting the question of Christianity aside, experience shows that the attempt to orientalize Occidentals may prove no less disastrous than the attempt to occidentalize Orientals, and that to transport Eastern mysticism to the West is to vulgarize it and to produce a debased form of occultism that frequently ends in moral deterioration or mental derangement.[721] I attribute the scandals that have taken place amongst Theosophists directly to this cause. But it is time to turn to another society in which this debased occultism plays a still more important part. Rosicrucianism At the present time, as in the eighteenth century, the term "Rosicrucianism" is used to cover a number of associations differing in their aims and doctrines.