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"Gently to hear, kindly to judge."

SINCE the appearance of Theosophical literature in England, it has become customary to call its teachings "Esoteric Buddhism." And, having become a habit -- as an old proverb based on daily experience has it -- "Error runs down an inclined plane, while Truth has to laboriously climb its way up hill."


"Esoteric Buddhism" was an excellent work with a very unfortunate

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title, though it meant no more than does the title of this work, the "SECRET DOCTRINE." It proved unfortunate, because people are always in the habit of judging things by their appearance, rather than their meaning; and because the error has now become so universal, that even most of the Fellows of the Theosophical Society have fallen victims to the same misconception. From the first, however, protests were raised by Brahmins and others against the title; and, in justice to myself, I must add that "Esoteric Buddhism" was presented to me as a completed volume, and that I was entirely unaware of the manner in which the author intended to spell the word "Budh-ism."

This has to be laid directly at the door of those who, having been the first to bring the subject under public notice, neglected to point out the difference between "Buddhism" -- the religious system of ethics preached by the Lord Gautama, and named after his title of Buddha, "the Enlightened" -- and Budha, "Wisdom," or knowledge (Vidya), the faculty of cognizing, from the Sanskrit root "Budh," to know. We theosophists of India are ourselves the real culprits, although, at the time, we did our best to correct the mistake. (See Theosophist, June, 1883.) To avoid this deplorable misnomer was easy; the spelling of the word had only to be altered, and by common consent both pronounced and written "Budhism," instead of "Buddhism." Nor is the latter term correctly spelt and pronounced, as it ought to be called, in English, Buddhaism, and its votaries "Buddhaists."

This explanation is absolutely necessary at the beginning of a work like this one. The "Wisdom Religion" is the inheritance of all the nations, the world over, though the statement was made in "Esoteric Buddhism" (Preface to the original Edition) that "two years ago (i.e. 1883), neither I nor any other European living, knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first time put into a scientific shape," etc. This error must have crept in through inadvertence. For the present writer knew all that which is "divulged" in "Esoteric Buddhism" -- and much more -- many years before it became her duty (in 1880) to impart a small portion of the Secret Doctrine to two European gentlemen, one of whom was the author of "Esoteric Buddhism"; and surely the present writer has the undoubted, though to her, rather equivocal, privilege of being a European, by birth and education. Moreover, a considerable part of the philosophy

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In etymology Adi, and Adhi Budha, the one (or the First) and "Supreme Wisdom" is a term used by Aryasanga in his Secret treatises, and now by all the mystic Northern Buddhists. It is a Sanskrit term, and an appellation given by the earliest Aryans to the Unknown deity; the word "Brahma" not being found in the Vedas and the early works. It means the absolute Wisdom, and "Adi-bhuta" is translated "the primeval uncreated cause of all" by Fitzedward Hall. AEons of untold duration must have elapsed, before the epithet of Buddha was so humanized, so to speak, as to allow of the term being applied to mortals and finally appropriated to one whose unparalleled virtues and knowledge caused him to receive the title of the "Buddha of Wisdom unmoved." Bodha means the innate possession of divine intellect or "understanding"; "Buddha," the acquirement of it by personal efforts and merit; while Buddhi is the faculty of cognizing the channel through which divine knowledge reaches the "Ego," the discernment of good and evil, "divine conscience" also; and "Spiritual Soul," which is the vehicle of Atma. "When Buddhi absorbs our EGOtism (destroys it) with all its Vikaras, Avalokiteshvara becomes manifested to us, and Nirvana, or Mukti, is reached," "Mukti" being the same as Nirvana, i.e., freedom from the trammels of "Maya" or illusion. "Bodhi" is likewise the name of a particular state of trance condition, called Samadhi, during which the subject reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge.

Unwise are those who, in their blind and, in our age, untimely hatred of Buddhism, and, by re-action, of "Budhism," deny its esoteric teachings (which are those also of the Brahmins), simply because the name

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* Dan, now become in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics ch'an, is the general term for the esoteric schools, and their literature. In the old books, the word Janna is defined as "to reform one's self by meditation and knowledge," a second inner birth. Hence Dzan, Djan phonetically, the "Book of Dzyan."


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Thus the reader is asked to bear in mind the very important difference between orthodox Buddhism -- i.e., the public teachings of Gautama the Buddha, and his esoteric Budhism. His Secret Doctrine, however, differed in no wise from that of the initiated Brahmins of his day. The Buddha was a child of the Aryan soil; a born Hindu, a Kshatrya and a disciple of the "twice born" (the initiated Brahmins) or Dwijas. His teachings, therefore, could not be different from their doctrines, for the whole Buddhist reform merely consisted in giving out a portion of that which had been kept secret from every man outside of the "enchanted" circle of Temple-Initiates and ascetics. Unable to teach all that had been imparted to him -- owing to his pledges -- though he taught a philosophy built upon the ground-work of the true esoteric knowledge, the Buddha gave to the world only its outward material body and kept its soul for his Elect. (See also Volume II.) Many Chinese scholars among Orientalists have heard of the "Soul Doctrine." None seem to have understood its real meaning and importance.

That doctrine was preserved secretly -- too secretly, perhaps -- within the sanctuary. The mystery that shrouded its chief dogma and aspirations -- Nirvana -- has so tried and irritated the curiosity of those scholars who have studied it, that, unable to solve it logically and satisfactorily by untying the Gordian knot, they cut it through, by declaring that Nirvana meant absolute annihilation.


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This is the true reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few fundamental truths from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic ages is now permitted to see the light, after long millenniums of the most profound silence and secrecy. I say "a few truths," advisedly, because that which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a hundred such volumes, nor could it be imparted to the present generation of Sadducees. But, even the little that is now given is better than complete silence upon those vital truths. The world of to-day, in its mad career towards the unknown -- which it is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the problem eludes the grasp of the physicist -- is rapidly progressing on the reverse, material plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena -- a true valley of discord and of eternal strife -- a necropolis, wherein lie buried the highest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes with every new generation more paralyzed and atrophied. The "amiable infidels and accomplished profligates" of Society, spoken of by Greeley, care little for the revival of the dead sciences of the past; but there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled to learn the few truths that may be given to them now; and now much more than ten years ago, when "Isis Unveiled," or even the later attempts to explain the mysteries of esoteric science, were published.

One of the greatest, and, withal, the most serious objection to the correctness and reliability of the whole work will be the preliminary STANZAS: "How can the statements contained in them be verified?" True, if a great portion of the Sanskrit, Chinese, and Mongolian works quoted in the present volumes are known to some Orientalists, the chief work -- that one from which the Stanzas are given -- is not in the possession of European Libraries. The Book of Dzyan (or "Dzan") is utterly unknown to our Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by them under its present name. This is, of course, a great drawback

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However it may be, and whatsoever is in store for the writer through malevolent criticism, one fact is quite certain. The members of several esoteric schools -- the seat of which is beyond the Himalayas, and whose ramifications may be found in China, Japan, India, Tibet, and even in Syria, besides South America -- claim to have in their possession the sum total of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and type: all the works, in fact, that have ever been written, in whatever language or characters, since the art of writing began; from the ideographic hieroglyphs down to the alphabet of Cadmus and the Devanagari.




* Prof. Max Muller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could extort from the Brahmans the original text of the Veda; and boasts that European Orientalists have it (Lecture on the "Science of Religion," p. 23). Whether Europe has the complete text is very doubtful, and the future may have very disagreeable surprises in store for the Orientalists.

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direct references to the ancient mysteries, after having been carefully copied in cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the best and cleverest palaeographer, was also destroyed to the last copy. During Akbar's reign, some fanatical courtiers, displeased at the Emperor's sinful prying into the religions of the infidels, themselves helped the Brahmans to conceal their MSS. Such was Badaoni, who had an undisguised horror for Akbar's mania for idolatrous religions.*




* Badaoni wrote in his Muntakhab at Tawarikh: "His Majesty relished inquiries into the sects of these infidels (who cannot be counted, so numerous they are, and who have no end of revealed books) . . . As they (the Sramana and Brahmins) surpass other learned men in their treatises on morals, on physical and religious sciences, and reach a high degree in their knowledge of the future, in spiritual power, and human perfection, they brought proofs based on reason and testimony, and inculcated their doctrines so firmly that no man could now raise a doubt in his Majesty even if mountains were to crumble to dust, or the heavens were to tear asunder." This work "was kept secret, and was not published till the reign of Jahangir." (Ain i Akbari, translated by Dr. Blochmann, p. 104, note.)

** Karakorum mountains, Western Tibet.

*** According to the same tradition the now desolate regions of the waterless land of Tarim -- a true wilderness in the heart of Turkestan -- were in the days of old covered with flourishing and wealthy cities. At present, hardly a few verdant oases relieve its dead solitude. One such, sprung on the sepulchre of a vast city swallowed by and buried under the sandy soil of the desert, belongs to no one, but is often visited by Mongolians and Buddhists. The same tradition speaks of immense subterranean abodes, of large corridors filled with tiles and cylinders. It may be an idle rumour, and it may be an actual fact.

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He is said to have written 930 books on Ethics and religions, and seventy on magic, one thousand in all. His great work, however, the heart of his doctrine, the "Tao-te-King," or the sacred scriptures of the Taosse, has in it, as Stanislas Julien shows, only "about 5,000 words" (Tao-te-King, p. xxvii.), hardly a dozen of pages, yet Professor Max Muller finds that "the text is unintelligible without commentaries, so that Mr. Julien had to consult more than sixty commentators for the purpose of his translation," the earliest going back as far as the year 163 B.C., not earlier, as we see. During the four centuries and a half that preceded this earliest of the commentators there was ample time to veil the true Lao-tse doctrine from all but his initiated priests. The Japanese, among whom are now to be found the most learned of the priests and followers of Lao-tse, simply laugh at the blunders and hypotheses of the European Chinese scholars; and tradition affirms that the commentaries to which our Western Sinologues have access are not the real occult records, but intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the texts, have long since disappeared from the eyes of the profane.


* "If we turn to China, we find that the religion of Confucius is founded on the Five King and the Four Shu-books, in themselves of considerable extent and surrounded by voluminous Commentaries, without which even the most learned scholars would not venture to fathom the depth of their sacred canon." (Lectures on the "Science of Religion," p. 185. Max Muller.) But they have not fathomed it -- and this is the complaint of the Confucianists, as a very learned member of that body, in Paris, complained in 1881.

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These, however, are almost valueless, even as a clue to the character of what has disappeared. For they passed through the hands of his Reverence the Bishop of Caesarea -- that self-constituted censor and editor of the sacred records of other men's religions -- and they doubtless bear to this day the mark of his eminently veracious and trustworthy hand. For what is the history of this treatise on the once grand religion of Babylon?

Written in Greek by Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus, for Alexander the Great, from the astronomical and chronological records preserved by the priests of that temple, and covering a period of 200,000 years, it is now lost. In the first century B.C. Alexander Polyhistor made a series of extracts from it -- also lost. Eusebius used these extracts in writing his Chronicon (270-340 A.D.). The points of resemblance -- almost of identity -- between the Jewish and the Chaldean Scriptures,* made the latter most dangerous to Eusebius, in his role of defender and champion of the new faith which had adopted the Jewish Scriptures, and with them an absurd chronology. It is pretty certain that Eusebius did not spare the Egyptian Synchronistic tables of Manetho -- so much so that Bunsen** charges him with mutilating history most unscrupulously. And Socrates, a historian of the fifth century, and Syncellus, vice-patriarch of Constantinople (eighth century), both denounce him as the most daring and desperate forger.



* Found out and proven only now, through the discoveries made by George Smith (vide his "Chaldean account of Genesis"), and which, thanks to this Armenian forger, have misled all the civilized nations for over 1,500 years into accepting Jewish derivations for direct Divine Revelation!

** Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in History," vol. i. p. 200

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Turning now to the oldest Aryan literature, the Rig-Veda, the student will find, following strictly in this the data furnished by the said Orientalists themselves, that, although the Rig-Veda contains only "about 10,580 verses, or 1,028 hymns," in spite of the Brahmanas and the mass of glosses and commentaries, it is not understood correctly to this day. Why is this so? Evidently because the Brahmanas, "the scholastic and oldest treatises on the primitive hymns," themselves require a key, which the Orientalists have failed to secure.

What do the scholars say of Buddhist literature? Have they got it in its completeness? Assuredly not. Notwithstanding the 325 volumes of the Kanjur and the Tanjur of the Northern Buddhists, each volume we are told, "weighing from four to five pounds," nothing, in truth, is known of Lamaism. Yet, the sacred canon of the Southern Church is said to contain 29,368,000 letters in the Saddharma alankara,* or, exclusive of treatises and commentaries, "five or six times the amount of the matter contained in the Bible," the latter, in the words of Professor Max Muller, rejoicing only in 3,567,180 letters. Notwithstanding, then, these "325 volumes" (in reality there are 333, Kanjur comprising 108, and Tanjur 225 volumes), "the translators, instead of supplying us with correct versions, have interwoven them with their own commentaries, for the purpose of justifying the dogmas of their several schools."** Moreover, "according to a tradition preserved by the Buddhist schools, both of the South and of the North, the sacred Buddhist Canon comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 tracts, but most of them were lost, so that there remained but 6,000," the professor tells his audiences. "Lost" as usual for Europeans. But who can be quite sure that they are likewise lost for Buddhists and Brahmins?

Considering the sacredness for the Buddhists of every line written


* Spence Hardy, "The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists," p. 66.

** "Buddhism in Tibet," p. 78.

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upon Buddha or his "Good Law," the loss of nearly 76,000 tracts does seem miraculous. Had it been vice versa, every one acquainted with the natural course of events would subscribe to the statement that, of these 76,000, five or six thousand treatises might have been destroyed during the persecutions in, and emigrations from, India. But as it is well ascertained that Buddhist Arhats began their religious exodus, for the purpose of propagating the new faith beyond Kashmir and the Himalayas, as early as the year 300 before our era,* and reached China in the year 61 A.D.** when Kashyapa, at the invitation of the Emperor Ming-ti, went there to acquaint the "Son of Heaven" with the tenets of Buddhism, it does seem strange to hear the Orientalists speaking of such a loss as though it were really possible. They do not seem to allow for one moment the possibility that the texts may be lost only for West and for themselves; or, that the Asiatic people should have the unparalleled boldness to keep their most sacred records out of the reach of foreigners, thus refusing to deliver them to the profanation and misuse of races even so "vastly superior" to themselves.



* Lassen, ("Ind. Althersumkunde" Vol. II, p. 1,072) shows a Buddhist monastery erected in the Kailas range in 137 B.C.; and General Cunningham, earlier than that.

** Reverend T. Edkins, "Chinese Buddhism."

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covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and with the strange pictures of gods and goddesses. . . . . . . . On rolls of papyrus, which seem to defy the ravages of time, we have even fragments of what may be called the sacred books of the Egyptians; yet, though much has been deciphered in the ancient records of that mysterious race, the mainspring of the religion of Egypt and the original intention of its ceremonial worship are far from being fully disclosed to us."* Here again the mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, but the keys by which alone they become intelligible have disappeared.

Nevertheless, having found that "there is a natural connection between language and religion"; and, secondly, that there was a common Aryan religion before the separation of the Aryan race; a common Semitic religion before the separation of the Semitic race; and a common Turanian religion before the separation of the Chinese and the other tribes belonging to the Turanian class; having, in fact, only discovered "three ancient centres of religion" and "three centres of language," and though as entirely ignorant of those primitive religions and languages, as of their origin, the professor does not hesitate to declare "that a truly historical basis for a scientific treatment of those principal religions of the world has been gained!"

A "scientific treatment" of a subject is no guarantee for its "historical basis"; and with such scarcity of data on hand, no philologist, even among the most eminent, is justified in giving out his own conclusions for historical facts. No doubt, the eminent Orientalist has proved thoroughly to the world's satisfaction, that according to Grimm's law of phonetic rules, Odin and Buddha are two different personages, quite distinct from each other, and he has shown it scientifically. When, however, he takes the opportunity of saying in the same breath that Odin "was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the age of the Veda and of Homer" (Compar. Theol., p. 318), he has not the slightest "historical basis" for it. He makes history and fact subservient to his



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own conclusions, which may be very "scientific," in the sight of Oriental scholars, but yet very wide of the mark of actual truth. The conflicting views on the subject of chronology, in the case of the Vedas, of the various eminent philologists and Orientalists, from Martin Haug down to Mr. Max Muller himself, are an evident proof that the statement has no historical basis to stand upon, "internal evidence" being very often a jack-o'lantern, instead of a safe beacon to follow. Nor has the Science of modern Comparative Mythology any better proof to show, that those learned writers, who have insisted for the last century or so that there must have been "fragments of a primeval revelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind . . . . preserved in the temples of Greece and Italy," were entirely wrong. For this is what all the Eastern Initiates and Pundits have been proclaiming to the world from time to time. While a prominent Cinghalese priest assured the writer that it was well known that the most important Buddhist tracts belonging to the sacred canon were stored away in countries and places inaccessible to the European pundits, the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, the greatest Sanskritist of his day in India, assured some members of the Theosophical Society of the same fact with regard to ancient Brahmanical works. When told that Professor Max Muller had declared to the audiences of his "Lectures" that the theory . . . . "that there was a primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human race, finds but few supporters at present," -- the holy and learned man laughed. His answer was suggestive. "If Mr. Moksh Mooller, as he pronounced the name, were a Brahmin, and came with me, I might take him to a gupta cave (a secret crypt) near Okhee Math, in the Himalayas, where he would soon find out that what crossed the Kalapani (the black waters of the ocean) from India to Europe were only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our sacred books. There was a "primeval revelation," and it still exists; nor will it ever be lost to the world, but will reappear; though the Mlechchhas will of course have to wait."



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the gods of many nations. Thus, though the Mother of Mercury (Budha, Thot-Hermes, etc.), was Maia, the mother of Buddha (Gautama), also Maya, and the mother of Jesus, likewise Maya (illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great illusion symbolically) -- yet these three characters have no connection, nor can they have any, since Bopp, has "laid down his code of phonetic laws."


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"Not a pool, not a bush, not a house is seen,
And the mountain-range forms a rugged screen
Round the parch'd flats of the dry, dry desert. . . . ."


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The traces of such civilization, and these and like traditions, give us the right to credit other legendary lore warranted by well educated and learned natives of India and Mongolia, when they speak of immense libraries reclaimed from the sand, together with various reliques of ancient MAGIC lore, which have all been safely stowed away.



The Occultists assert that all these exist, safe from Western spoliating hands, to re-appear in some more enlightened age, for which in the words of the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, "the Mlechchhas (outcasts, savages, those beyond the pale of Aryan civilization) will have to wait."

For it is not the fault of the initiates that these documents are now "lost" to the profane; nor was their policy dictated by selfishness, or

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The documents were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge itself and its actual existence had never been made a secret of by the Hierophants of the Temple, wherein MYSTERIES have ever been made a discipline and stimulus to virtue. This is very old news, and was repeatedly made known by the great adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato down to the Neoplatonists. It was the new religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a change for the worse -- in the policy of centuries.

Moreover, there is a well-known fact, a very curious one, corroborated to the writer by a reverend gentleman attached for years to a Russian Embassy -- namely, that there are several documents in the St. Peters-

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legislator in historical chronology, though a very modern Sage in the World's History, shown by Dr. Legge* -- who calls him "emphatically a transmitter, not a maker" -- as saying: "I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the ancients and therefore I love them."** (Quoted in "Science of Religions" by Max Muller.)



* Lun Yu (§ I a) Schott. "Chinesische Literatur," p. 7.

** "Life of Confucius," p. 96.


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called "a modern forgery" even so recently as fifty years ago? Was not Sanskrit proclaimed at one time the progeny of, and a dialect derived from, the Greek, according to Lempriere and other scholars? About 1820, Prof. Max Muller tells us, the sacred books of the Brahmans, of the Magians, and of the Buddhists, "were all but unknown, their very existence was doubted, and there was not a single scholar who could have translated a line of the Veda . . . of the Zend Avesta, or . . . of the Buddhist Tripitaka, and now the Vedas are proved to be the work of the highest antiquity whose 'preservation amounts almost to a marvel' (Lecture on the Vedas).

The same will be said of the Secret Archaic Doctrine, when proofs are given of its undeniable existence and records. But it will take centuries before much more is given from it. Speaking of the keys to the Zodiacal mysteries as being almost lost to the world, it was remarked by the writer in "Isis Unveiled" some ten years ago that: "The said key must be turned seven times before the whole system is divulged. We will give it but one turn, and thereby allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole!"


Such a work as this has to be introduced with no simple Preface, but with a volume rather; one that would give facts, not mere disquisitions, since the SECRET DOCTRINE is not a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given out to the world in this century.




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However great and zealous the fanatical efforts, during those early centuries, to obliterate every trace of the mental and intellectual labour of the Pagans, it was a failure; but the same spirit of the dark demon of bigotry and intolerance has perverted systematically and ever since, every bright page written in the pre-Christian periods. Even in her uncertain records, history has preserved enough of that which has survived to throw an impartial light upon the whole. Let, then, the reader tarry a little while with the writer, on the spot of observation selected. He is asked to give all his attention to that millennium which divided the pre-Christian and the post-Christian periods, by the year ONE of the Nativity. This event -- whether historically correct or not -- has nevertheless been made to serve as a first signal for the erection of manifold bulwarks against any possible return of, or even a glimpse into, the hated religions of the Past; hated and dreaded -- because throwing such a vivid light on the new and intentionally veiled interpretation of what is now known as the "New Dispensation."


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"-------------- the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,

Both creeds have won their proselytes at the point of the sword; both have built their churches on heaven-kissing hecatombs of human victims. Over the gateway of Century I. of our era, the ominous words "the KARMA OF ISRAEL," fatally glowed. Over the portals of our own, the future seer may discern other words, that will point to the Karma for cunningly made-up HISTORY, for events purposely perverted, and for great characters slandered by posterity, mangled out of recognition, between the two cars of Jagannatha -- Bigotry and Materialism; one accepting too much, the other denying all. Wise is he who holds to the golden mid-point, who believes in the eternal justice of things. Says Faigi Diwan, the "witness to the wonderful speeches of a free-thinker who belongs to a thousand sects": "In the assembly of the day of resurrection, when past things shall be forgiven, the sins of the Ka'bah will be forgiven for the sake of the dust of Christian churches." To this, Professor Max Muller replies: "The sins of Islam are as worthless as the dust of Christianity. On the day of resurrection both Muhammadans and Christians will see the vanity of their religious doctrines. Men fight about religion on earth -- in heaven they shall find out that there is only one true religion -- the worship of God's SPIRIT."*

In other words -- "THERE IS NO RELIGION (OR LAW) HIGHER THAN TRUTH" -- "SATYAT NASTI PARO DHARMAH" -- the motto of the Maharajah of Benares, adopted by the Theosophical Society.

As already said in the Preface, the Secret Doctrine is not a version of "Isis Unveiled" -- as originally intended. It is a volume explanatory of


* "Lectures on the Science of Religion," by F. Max Muller, p. 257.

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Volume I. of "Isis" begins with a reference to "an old book" --



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* Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Chananea, who died about A.D. 72, openly declared that he had performed "miracles" by means of the Book of Sepher Jezireh, and challenged every sceptic. Franck, quoting from the Babylonian Talmud, names two other thaumaturgists, Rabbis Chanina and Oshoi. (See "Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin," c. 7, etc.; and "Franck," pp. 55, 56.) Many of the Mediaeval Occultists, Alchemists, and Kabalists claimed the same; and even the late modern Magus, Eliphas Levi, publicly asserts it in print in his books on Magic.

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To my judges, past and future, therefore -- whether they are serious literary critics, or those howling dervishes in literature who judge a book according to the popularity or unpopularity of the author's name, who, hardly glancing at its contents, fasten like lethal bacilli on the weakest points of the body -- I have nothing to say. Nor shall I condescend to notice those crack-brained slanderers -- fortunately very few in number -- who, hoping to attract public attention by throwing discredit on every writer whose name is better known than their own, foam and bark at their very shadows. These, having first maintained for years that the doctrines taught in the Theosophist, and which culminated in "Esoteric Buddhism," had been all invented by the present writer, have finally turned round, and denounced "Isis Unveiled" and the rest as a plagiarism from Eliphas Levi (!), Paracelsus (!!), and, mirabile

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dictu, Buddhism and Brahmanism (!!!) As well charge Renan with having stolen his Vie de Jesus from the Gospels, and Max Muller his "Sacred Books of the East" or his "Chips" from the philosophies of the Brahmins and Gautama, the Buddha. But to the public in general and the readers of the "Secret Doctrine" I may repeat what I have stated all along, and which I now clothe in the words of Montaigne: Gentlemen, "I HAVE HERE MADE ONLY A NOSEGAY OF CULLED FLOWERS, AND HAVE BROUGHT NOTHING OF MY OWN BUT THE STRING THAT TIES THEM."

Pull the "string" to pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for the nosegay of FACTS -- you will never be able to make away with these. You can only ignore them, and no more.


Thus, the Past shall help to realise the PRESENT, and the latter to better appreciate the PAST. The errors of the day must be explained and swept away, yet it is more than probable -- and in the present case it amounts to certitude -- that once more the testimony of long ages and of history will fail to impress anyone but the very intuitional -- which is equal to saying the very few. But in this as in all like cases, the true and the faithful may console themselves by presenting the sceptical modern Sadducee with the mathematical proof and memorial of his obdurate obstinacy and bigotry. There still exists somewhere in the archives of the French Academy, the famous law of probabilities worked out by an algebraical process for the benefit of sceptics by certain mathematicians. It runs thus: If two persons give their evidence to

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