Page:Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Vol. 3.pdf/211

 The authorship of the letters attributed to Koot Hoomi, which are very numerous, and many of them very long, is fully discussed in Mr. Hodgson's Report. It may be mentioned here that it is maintained by some that the contents of these letters are such as to preclude the possibility of their having been written by Madame Blavatsky. This has never boon the opinion of the Committee, either as regards the published letters or those that have been privately shown to them in manuscript. Those who wish to form an independent opinion on the subject arc referred to "The Occult World" and "Esoteric Buddhism," which contain many of the letters themselves, and much matter derived from others.

In this connection may be conveniently mentioned what the Committee, in their First Report, called the most serious blot which had then been pointed out in the Theosophic evidence. A certain letter, in the Koot Hoonii handwriting, and addressed avowedly by Koot Hoomi, from Thibet, to Mr. Sinnett, in 1880, was proved by Mr. H. Kiddle, of Now York, to contain a long passage apparently plagiarised from a speech of Mr. Kiddle's, made at Lake Pleasant, August 15th, 1880, and reported in the Banner of Light some two months or more previous to the date of Koot Hoomi's letter. Koot Hoomi replied (some months later) that the passages were no doubt quotations from Mr. Kiddle's speech, which he had become cognisant of in some occult manner, and which he had stored up in his mind, but that the appearance of plagiarism was due to the imperfect precipitation of the letter by the Chela, or disciple, charged with the task. Koot Hoomi then gave what he asserted to be the true version of the letter as dictated and recovered by his own scrutiny apparently from the blurred precipitation. In this fuller version the quoted passages were given as quotations, and mixed with controversial matter. Koot Hoomi explained the peculiar form which the error of precipitation had assumed by saying that the quoted passages had been more distinctly impressed on his own mind, by an effort of memory, than his own interposed remarks: and, that inasmuch as the whole composition had been feebly and inadequately projected, owing to his own physical fatigue at the time, the high lights only, so to speak, had come out; there had been many illegible passages, which the Chela had omitted. The Chela, he said, wished to submit the letter to Koot Hoomi for revision, but Koot Hoomi declined for want of time.

The weakness of this explanation was pointed out (in Light) by Mr. Massey, who showed (among other points) that the quoted sentences seemed m have been ingeniously twisted into a polemical sense, precisely opposite to that in which they were written.

And more lately (in Light, September 20th, 1884) Mr. Kiddle has shown that the passage thus restored by no means comprises the whole