Karma, Neila Sen, The White Lotus, The Two Paths, Wonder-Light are the natural flowers of the plant.

We hail this venture into romance with pleasure, because creative imagination often illuminates a scheme of thought which dialectics and polemics have obscured. The stupendous and audacious claims of theosophy awaken our curiosity, if not our faith. It professes to explore the whole realm of occult science. It has entered the secret portals of ancient and oriental mysteries, and has looked upon the image of “absolute truth." It moves with the calm of perfect assurance in the sphere of superphysical nature. Hypnotism, telepathy, magic, clairvoyance, spiritism, visions and ghosts, which heretofore have baffled investigation, are but simple phenomena of nature as clearly understood as those of steam or optics. It knows the details of a soul's evolution through the long cycles of primordial millenniums until it came into this world age. It tracks the line of its progress in revolving circles, which pass out of this earth life and back again through numerous incarnations until it is fitted for other evolutionary eons in other planets, and so on and on through vast stretches of immeasurable time and multifarious existences to its final triumph in Nirvana, the beatific state in which all sense of individuality is merged in the whole. This is an evolution to cause Darwin to blush with shame; for his knowledge is but childish ignorance in the presence of this "universe wisdom." Western metaphysicians are but intellectual clouds as compared with the Eastern psychologists, who are "the sun of spiritual truth." Kant, Spencer, Bain, Hegel, Hobbes, Mill are but children in the presence of Colonel Olcott, Madame Blavatsky, and Mrs. Besant, who have come from their conferences with their sublime teachers, the Mahatmas, hidden from the rest of the world in Thibet or South India or elsewhere. These initiates are dazed at the appalling ignorance of Western scholarship. They have found the common foundation of all religions. They have the essential root, and can tell with unerring exactness just how much of paganism, Buddhism, Christianity, and all science is true and how much is false. Moreover, this spiritual science discovers new faculties in man, which have existed potentially in all our history, and are

evoked by this new-old truth as the return of spring calls the slumbering seeds into unfolding life. With these new faculties there comes a sublimated form of spiritual energy which does what would be miraculous to ordinary conditions, but in the new conditions are only natural as in accord with the subtle and until now unknown laws of nature. It produces a force called "Akaz," which is described as an agent as much more potent and subtle than electricity as electricity is superior in subtility and variegated efficiency to steam. It can transmit thought over immense distances without the aid of batteries or wires and without speech or any perceptible signal. It has antedated and surpassed the cathode ray; for it can look through walls into the bowels of the earth and the depths of the sea. Its vision is both telescopic and microscopic. It can detect the seat and cause of disease and prescribe infallibly suitable remedies. It can impart its own robust vitality to a glass of water or an article of dress. It can photograph a face a thousand miles away, transport letters without recognizable means, and drop flowers from a blank ceiling. It can project personal presence out of the corporeal being, and travel with the speed of thought to any distant point. Unhappily, these marvels are not performed before the eyes of unbelievers, excepting in rare and very doubtful instances. Our want of faith is a fatal disqualification for the vision of such supernal splendors.

For this reason the uninitiated welcome the romances which are designed to exhibit the tenets of this vast system. Unable to see its glories in the actual, we would have them pass before our eyes in the panorama of living story. Works of imagination give the charm of reality to what would be abstruse and difficult reading if presented as a philosophy. Romance does not state principles. It lives them in its characters. If the characters and incidents be true to fact we find ourselves in its heroes and heroines. What we have vaguely apprehended in thought stands out in story with all the vividness and detail of personal experience. A well-wrought romance is a picture of life in which we ourselves participate. For this reason it is also a test. There are few tests of the truth of a theoretical system of the soul's character and life so severe as its produc

tion in story. We believe it to be far more severe than accurate history. For, in veritable life, the natural results of one's doctrinal theory are modified, and in some instances completely neutralized, by other forces that enter into the mixed motive of being. The vital idiosyncrasies of character depend less on mental than on moral qualities. Men are better or worse than their accepted opinions, because other thoughts oftentimes intrude, the source of which they cannot trace, and to which they do not give assent, and yet which become the most potent in their lives. Sometimes men holding the purest doctrine display loose morals, and often loose faith is conjoined with the most upright behavior. The high moral character of such leading theosophists as Colonel Olcott, A. P. Sinnett, and Professor Coues may be sufficient warrant for us to examine their system with respect, but does not necessarily stamp it with the seal of infallibility.

On the other hand, the philosophical romance which aims at the picturesque representation of a doctrine in life traces that doctrine in its natural effect on character and conduct to its final triumph. If it be correctly done, even though the outward events do not tally with fact, the inner history is most real and appeals to the reader with all the force of immutable truth. In literature, as in sculpture and painting, the artist exaggerates nature with the courage of Angelo or Rembrandt, that he may accentuate and sustain the true. Without mentioning it, he places a microscope under the reader's eye. Thus the dreadful shrinking of The Magic Skin in which Balzac traces the inevitable law of uncontrolled desire is as unreal as it is grotesque. But who that reads the tale can fail to see the innermost reality of his own being set forth in actual truthfulness? Stevenson's Strange Story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is as impossible as it is strange; but whose consciousness does not respond to the truth there impersonated? In this sense romance is truer than history, making a crucible test of any theoretical scheme that may be cast into its white heat. Many a reckless advocate of an hysterical idea has sought to give it a hearing in the novel, but discovered that his darling was as unreal as Mother Rigby's scarecrow vitalized by the smoke of her pipe kindled by old Dickon's fire.

There is

The test of romance is truer than that of reason. hardly a monstrosity that may not be supported by some form of logical process, and so beguile assent. But when untruth moves before us in the light of romance one of two things results: either the story becomes mechanical, lacking the elements of life and awakening a suspicion of its unsoundness, or it plunges us into conclusions that are so revolting to the moral consciousness as to brand it false without any process of formal refutation. We would not generalize so carelessly as to say that every mechanical story stamps the intellectual scheme it would picture as necessarily untrue. That is a rare gift that can intrude a theory into a narrative and still preserve accuracy of delineation and lifelike touch. Even the genius of George Eliot could not always hide the chisel marks when she would carve a character to impersonate a theory. Daniel Deronda is a splendid statue rather than a living personality. He proves neither the truth nor the falsity of the Jewish idea. If he were as genuine a person as Dinah Morris, commanding sympathy and retaining the magnetism of nature to the end, that creation would have been at least a strong presumption of the truth the authoress would impress upon the reader. Art is close akin to life, and never more so than when it portrays personal character. But poor art is simply negative; it proves nothing. By this test theosophy is condemned. Cast into the crucible of romance, it is not gold.

The most formidable novel that has issued from this cult is Karma. It was written by A. P. Sinnett, who had long declared his want of faith in the "Christian superstition," and who became an ardent believer in the gospel of Blavatsky, and at once consecrated his literary gifts to its propaganda. He is the author of Esoteric Buddhism, which is the most comprehensive popular treatise of the system that has appeared in English. In this and kindred works the author has exhibited gifts of a superior order as a teacher. And it is the spirit of the pedagogue that fills Karma. It was evidently written not because Mr. Sinnett had a story to tell, but because he had a principle to illustrate. And it is this that makes it oppressively artificial. Its persons are not characters, but fashion figures set up to show theosophy. One familiar with

the literature of magic can almost tell from whose palettes the author has borrowed his colors and from what haberdasher he has procured his costumes. There is an excess of theosophic paint, which the brush of the artist fails to blend into the soft flesh tints of nature. The drapery, the ornament, the perfume, the movement are as conventional and lifeless as Madame Jarley's wax works. The gray old castle of Heiligenfels, which is the scene of the greater part of the story, has none of that witchery of character and history which genius breathes into a building. A flat on Third Avenue or a salesroom on Broadway would have been quite as interesting. It is simply a showcase in which Mr. Sinnett exhibits his wares. Think of the baron of the castle living in such a state of spiritual exaltation as to be completely lifted out of all those interests and passions that fill the life of the rest of mankind. Think of his coming and going, sometimes in his corporeal being, sometimes in his astral body, so that you are never certain whether it be actually he or his ghost that you see. Think of his writing letters over immense distances without visible means; of his summoning his guests to his chamber by telepathy; of his casting from his fingers a force that makes delicate glasses sing and giant oaks fall. Think of his consoling the sorrow of his stricken friends by putting them in an hypnotic state with its splendid psychic visions. Think of his reading at will the innermost thought and the play of every passion in the heart of his companions. Think of his tracing their history back into their former earth life when possibly the present beautiful Miss Vaughan was a noble Roman youth-for, as he says, "sex is by no means invariable throughout successive incarnations, and does not belong in any true sense to the spiritual individuality at all." Think of his reading in the present karma of souls their future career with the inerrancy of an astronomer who tracks the orbit of a planet. One almost feels that he is reading one of Rider Haggard's fantastic tales. But this was written in all seriousness to set forth Baron von Mondstern, the central figure of the whole group, the hero of the tale, the ideal of theosophy. And this very seriousness degrades the story below the level of that of Haggard. We who are jaded with

2-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XV.