THEO. The Englishman is as ready to believe evil as a man of any other nation; for it is human nature, and not a national feature. As to lies, if they have no legs to stand upon, according to the proverb, they have exceedingly rapid wings; and they can and do fly farther and wider than any other kind of news, in England as elsewhere. Remember lies and calumny are the only kind of literature we can always get gratis, and without paying any subscription. We can make the experiment if you like. Will you, who are so interested in Theosophical matters, and have heard so much about us, will you put me questions on as many of these rumours and “hearsays” as you can think of? I will answer you the truth, and nothing but the truth, subject to the strictest verification. ENQ. Before we change the subject, let us have the whole truth on this one. Now, some writers have called your teachings “immoral and pernicious”; others, on the ground that many so-called “authorities” and Orientalists find in the Indian religions nothing but sex-worship in its many forms, accuse you of teaching nothing better than Phallic worship. They say that since modern Theosophy is so closely allied with Eastern, and particularly Indian, thought, it cannot be free from this taint. Occasionally, even, they go so far as to accuse European Theosophists of reviving the practices connected with this cult. How about this? THEO. I have heard and read about this before, and I answer that no more utterly baseless and lying calumny has ever been invented and circulated. “Silly people can see but silly dreams,” says a Russian proverb. It makes one’s blood boil to hear such vile accusations made without the slightest foundation, and on the strength of mere inferences. Ask the hundreds of honourable English men and women who have been members of the Theosophical Society for years whether an _immoral_ precept or a _pernicious_ doctrine was ever taught to them. Open the _Secret Doctrine_, and you will find page after page denouncing the Jews and other nations precisely on account of this devotion to Phallic rites, due to the dead letter interpretation of nature symbolism, and the grossly materialistic conceptions of her dualism in all the _exoteric_ creeds. Such ceaseless and malicious misrepresentation of our teachings and beliefs is really disgraceful. ENQ. But you cannot deny that the Phallic element _does_ exist in the religions of the East?