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169 anything like argument with the Spiritualists is worse than useless. Mere phenomena, however wonderful, can never prove to their satisfaction either the actual existence of Adepts or the nature of true Adeptship. Any phenomena that you may show them will at once be attributed to the agency of spirits (as they are called by them) or elementals as we call them, and classed with their own seance room manifestations. Even if we were to effect an impossibility and induce one of our Eastern Adepts to appear in London and prove his existence and knowledge before their eyes, these phenomena-hunters would proclaim him by way of compliment an excellent medium and nothing more. Hence, it is not difficult to foresee that so long as the general body of Spiritualists or their leaders are satisfied with their own illogical and fanciful hypotheses and make no attempt to investigate scientifically their phenomena and their causes in connection with the ancient systems of religious philosophy and occultism, it is impossible to expect them to give a patient hearing to the teachings of our Mahatmas. To a real scientific investigator who is attempting to ascertain the general law governing a particular class of phenomena, even the suggestion of a plausible hypothesis is of considerable value. The Mahatmas have never declared that they would give a systematic and exhaustive exposition of the Occult Science, but only that they intended to place before the general public a few general doctrines which might suggest some reasonable hypothesis by which the experience of ancient mystics and the so-called Spiritualistic phenomena of modern times may be knit together, and brought under one general law, and which may also show to some extent the scientific basis of all ancient religions whose teachings are generally supposed to be diametrically opposed to those of modern science. To every genuine Occultist and every student of science these doctrines are of immense importance; especially at the present time, when old religious systems are dying out from want of real vital strength, when science has as yet found no means of penetrating into the inner world of noumena, and when the 22