Page:Isis very much unveiled - being the story of the great Mahatma hoax (IA b24884273).pdf/131

Rh is why you are quite safe from a suit for libel. I assure you that had you published something not so inextricably tangled up with psychic phenomena I should be glad to have you in court, not to soothe wounded feelings I have not, but to show that our faulty law and so-called justice do sometimes right some wrongs.

Let me first emphatically deny the inference and assertion made by you, that I and my friends make money out of the T.S., or that the organisation has built up something by which we profit. This is untrue, and its untruth is known to all persons who know anything at all about the society. No salaries are paid to our officers. We support ourselves or privately support each other. I have never had a penny from the society, and do not want any. The little magazine, the Path, which I publish here in the interest of the society, is not supported by subscriptions from members, but largely by others, and it is kept up at a loss to me which will never be repaid. I publish it because I wish to, and not for gain. Thousands of dollars are expended in the T.S. work here each year over and above what is paid in for fees and dues. The dues are but four shillings a year, and three times as much as that is expended in the work. Where does it come from? Out of our private pockets, and if I had a million I would spend it that way. My friends and myself give our money and our time to the society without hope or desire for any return. We may be fanatics—probably are—but it is false and malicious to accuse us of using the society for gain. The only payment we get is the seeing every day the wider and wider spread of Theosophical theories of life, man, and nature. I am ready to submit all our books and vouchers to any auditor to support these statements. And you were in a position to find out the facts as I have given them.

It is also absolutely untrue, as you attempt to show or infer, that the society grows by talking of the Mahatmas or Masters, or by having messages sent round from them. The movement here and elsewhere is pushed along the line of philosophy, and each one is left to decide for himself on the question of the Mahatmas. “Messages from the Masters” do not go flying round, and the society does not flourish by any belief in those being promulgated. Nor am I, as you hint, in