ANNIE BESANT
Gallery of
Great Theosophists
___________________________
Annie Besant
1847 - 1933
President of the Theosophical Society 1907-1933
1875-1891
A fragment of Autobiography
By
Annie Besant
Annie
Besant, on Sunday evening, the 30th of August,
delivered an address on “1875 to 1891: a Fragment of
Autobiography,”
at the Hall of Science, Old Street, St.
Luke’s. The occasion was her last appearance on the
platform
of this Hall, which has now passed entirely
under the
control of the National Secular Society. There was a
very
crowded and very interested audience.
Mrs Thornton
Smith presided and, after making various
announcements, said: “Tonight my friend [Mrs Besant] speaks
from this platform for the last time.” Annie
Besant, who was
greeted with most cordial and prolonged cheers, said:
On
on the
platform of the Hall of Science to speak from that
platform
to a Freethought audience. I spoke then,
announced
under my own name, but with another name added
thereto —
one under which, since the preceding August, I
had
written in the National Reformer. It was the name of
“Ajax,”
and I used that name for writing in the Reformer
because
when the darkness came down upon him and his army,
the words
which were said to have broken from his lips
expressed
my own feeling then, as they express it now. Out
of the
darkness and the danger, his voice is said to have
rung over
the battlefield; “Light, more light.” It is that
cry for
“light” which has been the key-note of my own
intellectual
life, then and ever since, light —
whithersoever
the light may take one; light, through
whatever
difficulties the light may lead one; light,
although
in its brightness it should blast the eyes that
gaze upon
it; I would rather be blinded by the light, than
sit wilfully in the twilight or the dark. Months before —
in the
August of the preceding year — I had come to the
Hall for
the first time to receive my certificate of
entrance
into the National Secular Society. I received it
then from the
greatest president that Society has had or
is likely
to have. From that time there dated a friendship
to which
no words of mine can do justice, or speak the
gratitude
I feel — a friendship that was only broken by
the grave.
Had he lived, this lecture would, probably, not
have
needed to be given, for, if there was one thing that
Charles Bradlaugh did, it was to keep free the platform
which was
given him in charge, and to permit no test of
doctrine
or of belief to claim a right to bar the platform
that was
free in name and in deed as well.
I pass
hurriedly — for I have but brief time tonight — I
pass
hurriedly over many years, taking but one point after
another
that seems to me to be of interest in the
retrospect
of tonight. Not very long after I came on to
this
platform, in the May following, I was elected a
vice-president
of the National Secular Society, and that
position I
laid down when the late president gave up his
office. I
began my service in the Society under him, and I
could serve
under no lesser man. From that time forward —
from the
time, that is, of the commencement of my service
— I
constantly occupied the platform here and elsewhere.
And they
were rougher days then with the Freethought party
in the
provinces, than those they have now to face. During
my first
year of lecturing work I can remember some rough
scenes
that now it would not be easy to parallel. Stones
that were
thrown as the most potent argument to use
against a
lecturer, even though that lecturer were a
woman; the
broken windows of a hall; a bruised neck at one
place; a
walk through waving sticks and a cursing crowd at
another
place — these were the kind of arguments which
Christians
were readier to use then than they are now. The
party has
grown very much stronger during the sixteen and
a half
years which have passed from then to now. I well
remember,
looking backward, and recalling incident after
incident
that marked those passing years, the memorable
Conference
in 1876, when there was present on the platform
a miner of
Yorkshire who, a member of the Society and an
Atheist,
was the first to spring into a cage to go down
where 143
of his comrades lay dead and others were in
danger of
death after a colliery explosion — the cage into
which none
dared to spring until the Atheist set the
example
and stimulated the courage of others. My
experience
in the National Secular Society has taught me
that you
have the most splendid courage, the most absolute
self-devotion,
the most heroic self-sacrifice, that those
virtues
can exist without possessing faith in God or
belief in
a hereafter: they are, indeed, the flowers of
man’s
nature springing up fragrant and beautiful in every
creed and
in none.
It was not
so long after my entrance into the National
Secular
Society — a little more than two brief years —
that that
struggle came upon us in which Charles Bradlaugh
and I
myself defended the right to publish, at a cheap
rate,
information which we believed to be useful to the
masses of the
poor and of the weak. What the upshot of
that
struggle was you all know. How bitter the struggle
was some
of you, perchance, may have gauged. I, who went
through
it, know its results were that no amount of
slander or
abuse could hereafter make much difference,
when one
thought it right to take a particular line of
conduct;
for in the years that followed that trial there
were no
words too foul, no epithets too vile, to be used
in
Christian and in Freethought journals, against my
co-defendant
and myself. When one has once been through
that fire
of torture, when everything that man and woman
hold dear,
fame, good name, reputation, character, and all
else —
when all have been sullied, slandered and maligned,
after such
a hammering all subsequent attacks seem but
poor and
feeble, and no words of reproach or unkindness
that later
can be used avail to touch a courage that has
held
through trials such as that. And I do not regret (I
have never
regretted and don’t now) the steps that then I
took, for
I know that both in the eyes of the wise today,
and in the
verdict of the history that in centuries to
come shall
judge our struggles, the verdict that then
shall be
given will not be given on what one has believed
but on how
one has worked: and I know that though one’s
eyes may
often be blinded and one’s efforts wrong, the
courage
that dares to speak, the courage that dares to
stand —
those are the things that men remember, and if you
can never
write “coward” on man or woman’s grave, their
place is
safe in the hearts of men, whether their views
are
blessed or banned in days to come.
I pass,
however, to the theological position, for that is
one that
interests all, is the most important, and the one
to which your
thoughts and minds will most strongly turn
tonight.
In 1872 I broke with Christianity, and I broke
with it
once and for all. I have nothing to unsay, nothing
to undo,
nothing to retract, as regards my position then
and my
position now. I broke with it, but I am no nearer
to it in
1891 than I was when I first joined the ranks of
the
National Secular Society. I do not say that my
language
then was not harsher than my language would be
now, for
in the first moments after a great struggle, when
you have
paid such a price as I paid for intellectual
liberty,
you do not always in the first moments of
freedom,
in the reaction from a great conflict, you do not
always
think of the feelings of others as charity and as
true
toleration would command that you should think. I
spoke
words bitterer than I should speak now; words
harsher
and more critical than I should speak today; but
of the
groundwork of my rejection then I have nothing to
alter, for
I stand upon that ground today as I stood then.
I did not
give up that Christian faith without much and
bitter
suffering; and I do not know whether, if anyone set
to work to
fabricate some physical apparatus which would
give the
best opportunity for suffering during life — I do
not know
that any ingenious artificer could do very much
more
cleverly, than to weld together in one human body the
strong
brain of a man and the warm heart of a woman: for
where a
man can break with opinions where logic tells him
(not always,
indeed, without bitter suffering), I doubt if
there can
be any woman who can break with any faith she
has ever
held, without paying some heart’s blood as the
price of
alienation, some bitter meed of pain to the idol
which is
broken.
In looking
back, as I have been looking today over some of
my own
past writing, I saw words with respect to the
giving up
of Christianity which were true: true in the
feeling
that they then depicted, and true in my
remembrance
of it now; for the deity of Christ is the last
Christian
doctrine, I think, to which we cling when we
leave
Christianity. “The doctrine was dear from
association:
there was something at once soothing and
ennobling
in the idea of a union between man and God,
between a
perfect man and a divine supremacy, between a
human
heart and an almighty strength. Jesus as God was
interwoven
with all art, with all beauty in religion; to
break with
the deity of Jesus was to break with music,
with
painting, with literature. The Divine Child in his
mother’s
arms, the Divine Man in his Passion and in his
Triumph,
the human friend encircled with the majesty of
the
Godhead — did inexorable truth demand that this ideal
figure,
with all its pathos, its beauty, its human love,
should
pass into the pantheon of the dead Gods of the
past?”
People speak so lightly about change in theological
belief.
Those who speak lightly never felt deeply. They do
not know
what a belief is to the life that has been
moulded round it, to the intellect that has accepted
it,
to the
heart that has worshipped it; and those are not the
feeblest
but mostly the strongest Freethinkers who have
been able
to break with the faith that they have outgrown
and still
feel the pang of letting the intellect be master
of the
heart. On that I have nothing more to say than
this:
that, in the newer light into which I have passed,
return to
Christianity has become even more impossible
than in my
older days of the National Secular Society;
for,
whilst then I rejected, seeing the logical
impossibilities,
now I understand why that faith has held
men for
centuries as I never understood before; and if you
want to be
safe against a superstition, know the human
truth that
underlies it, and then no fresh name can ever
take you
back to it, no sort of new label can ever make
you accept
as true the myth that covers the truth you
know.
To pass
from that to the other two great points around
which the
struggle of the age today is raging: belief in a
personal
God and belief in the persistency of life after
death. As
regards the first, belief in a personal God, I
have again
nothing to say different from that which I
wrote many
years ago: “Existence evolving into endless
forms,
differing modes, changing phenomena, is wonderful
enough;
but a God, self-existing, who creates out of
nothing
who gives birth to an existence entirely diverse
from his
own — ‘matter’ from ‘spirit’, ‘non-intelligence’
from ‘intelligence’
— who, being everywhere, makes the
universe,
thereby excluding himself from part of space,
who being
everywhere, makes the things which are not he,
so that we
have everywhere and somewhere else, everything
and
something more — such a God solves no question of
existence,
but only adds an unnecessary riddle to a
problem
already sufficiently perplexing.” Those were the
words with
which I summed up an argument against a
personal
God outside nature. By those words I stand today,
for the concept
is as impossible to me now as it was to me
then.
Some years
later, in 1886, I came across a phrase which
shows how
at that time my mind was beginning to turn
towards a
different conception. I was speaking of the
various
religions of the world, and alluded to those of
Hinduism
and Buddhism as dealing with the problem of
existence,
and then went on to say: “These mystic Oriental
religions
are profoundly Pantheistic; one life pulsing
through
all living things; one existence bodying itself
forth in
all individual existences; such is the common
ground of
those mighty religions which number amongst
their
adherents the vast majority of human kind. And in
this
magnificent conception they are in accord with modern
science;
the philosopher and the poet, with the
far-reaching
glance of genius, caught sight of that unity
of all
things, the ‘one in the many’ of Plato, a belief
which it
is the glory of modern science to have placed on
the sure
foundation of ascertained fact.” I do not mean
that when
I wrote those words I was a Pantheist; but I
mean that
you have in them the recognition of that unity
of
existence which is common to Pantheism and to
Materialism,
the great gulf between the two being this:
that
whereas Pantheism speaks of one universal life
bodying
itself forth in all lives, Materialism speaks of
matter and
of force of which life and consciousness are
the
ultimate products and not the essential fact. That is
the
difference in the opinions that I held, and that I
hold now.
I still believe in the unity of existence, but I
realise that that existence is a living force, and
not
only what
is called “matter” and “energy”; that it is a
principle
of life, a principle of consciousness; that the
life and
the consciousness that pulse out from its centre
evolve
from that one eternal life without which life and
consciousness
could never be. That is the great difference
which
separates the position of the Materialism that I
once held
from the position I hold today; and that has its
natural
corollary that, as the essence of the universe is
life, so
the essence of each man is life as well; that
death is
but a passing phenomenon, as simple and as
natural as
that which is spoken of as life; that in the
heart of
man as of the universe, life is an eternal
principle
fulfilling itself in many forms, but immortal,
inextinguishable,
never to be either created or destroyed.
Now,
glancing back to the Materialism to which I clung for
so many years
of life, glancing back over the training it
gave me,
and the steps by which slowly I left it behind,
there is
one point that I desire here to place on record.
You have
Materialism of two very different schools. There
is the
Materialism which cares nothing for man but only
for
oneself; which seeks only for personal gain, personal
pleasure,
personal delight; which cares nothing for the
race but
only for self; nothing for posterity but only for
the
moment; of which the real expression is: “Let us eat
and drink,
for tomorrow we die.” With that Materialism
neither I
nor those with whom I worked had aught in
common.
With that Materialism, which is only that of the
brute, we
never had part nor lot. That is the Materialism
that
destroys all the glory of human life, it is the
Materialism
that can only be held by the selfish and,
therefore,
the degraded. It is never the Materialism that
was
preached from this platform, nor which has been the
training
school in which have been trained many of the
noblest
intellects and truest hearts of our time.
For what
is the higher Materialism after all? What is it
but the
reason and thought which is the groundwork of many
a noble
life today? It is that which, while it believes
that the
life of the individual ends in death, so far as
he himself
is concerned, recognises the life of the race
as that
for which the individual is living, and to which
all that
is noblest and best in him is to be devoted. That
is the Materialism
of such men as Clifford, who taught it
in
philosophy, and of such men as Charles Bradlaugh, who
lived it
out in life. It was that Materialism which was
put into
words by Clifford when, for the moment fearing he
might be
misunderstood, he said: “Do I seem to say, ‘Let
us eat and
drink, for tomorrow we die’? Nay; rather let us
take hands
and help, for today we are alive together.”
Against
that Materialism I have no word of reproach to
speak now.
Never have I spoken word of reproach against
it, and I
never shall; for I know that it is a philosophy
so
selfless in its noblest forms that few are grand enough
to grasp
it and live it out, and that which I have brought
back as
fruit from my many years of Materialism is the
teaching
that to work without self as the goal is the
great
object-lesson of human life. For there can be no
selflessness
more complete than that which accepts a life
of
struggle for itself that the race may have an easier
life in
years to come, which is willing to die that, from
its death,
others may have wider life; which is willing to
sacrifice
everything, so that even on its own dead body
others may
rise to greater happiness and a truer
intellectual
life.
But — and
here comes the difference — there are problems
in the
universe which Materialism not only does not solve
but which
it declares are insoluble, difficulties in life
and mind
that Materialism cannot grapple with, and in face
of which
it is not only dumb but says that mankind must
remain dumb
for evermore. Now, in my own studies and my
own
searching, I came to problem after problem for which
scientific
Materialism had no answer — nay, told me that
no answer
could be found. There were things that were
facts, and
the whole scheme of science is not that you are
to impose
your own will on nature, but that you are to
question
nature and listen to her answer, whatever that
answer may
be. But I came upon fact after fact that did
not square
with the theories of Materialism. I came across
facts
which were facts of nature as much as any fact of
the
laboratory, or any discovery by the knife or the
scalpel of
the anatomist. Was I to refuse to see them
because my
philosophy had for them no place? Was I to do
what men
have done in every age — insist that nature was
no greater
than my knowledge, and that because a fact was
new it
was, therefore, a fraud or an illusion? Not thus
had I
learned the lesson of materialistic science from its
deepest
depths of investigation into nature. And, when I
found that
there were facts that made life other than
Materialism
deemed; when I found that there were facts of
life and
consciousness that made the materialistic
hypothesis
impossible; then I determined still to study,
although
the foundations were shaking, and not to be
recusant
enough to the search after truth to draw back
because it
wore a face other than the one I expected. When
I found
that in the researches of men today, who still are
Materialists,
there are many facts which they themselves
admit they
cannot explain, and about which they will
endeavour to form no theory; when I found in studying
such
branches
of mental science as hypnotism and mesmerism,
that there
were undeniable facts which had their place in
nature as much
as any other facts; when I found that as
those
facts were analysed and experimented on,
consciousness
did not rise and fall with the pulsations of
the brain
or the vibrations of the cells of the brain;
when I
found that as you diminish the throb of physical
life your
intellectual manifestations became more vivid
and more
startling; when I found that in that brain in
which the
blood ran freely, from which, on examination,
every
careful instrument of science gave an average of the
lowest
conditions that made life possible at all, when I
found that
from the person with a brain in such a
condition
thoughts could proceed more vividly than when
the brain
was in full activity — then do you wonder that I
began to
ask whether other methods of investigation might
not be
useful, and whether it was wise for me to turn my
back upon
any road which promised to lead towards a better
understanding
of the subtlest problems of psychology?
Two or
three years before, I had met with two books which
I read and
re-read, and then put aside because I was
unable to
relate them to any other information I could
obtain,
and I could find no other method then of carrying
my study
further along those lines. They were two books by
Mr
Sinnett. One was Esoteric Buddhism and the other The
Occult
World. They fascinated me on my scientific side,
because
for the first time they threw an intelligible
light
upon, and brought within the realm of law and of
natural
order, a large number of facts that had always
remained to
me unexplained in the history of man. They did
not carry
me very far, but they suggested a new line of
investigation;
and from that time onward, I was on the
look-out
for other clues which might lead me in the
direction
I sought. Those clues were not definitely found
until
early in the year 1889. I had experimented, to some
extent,
then, and many years before, in Spiritualism, and
found some
facts and much folly; but I never found there
an answer,
nor anything which carried me further than the
mere recordal of certain unexplainable phenomena. But in
1889 I had
a book given to me to review, written by H. P.
Blavatsky,
and known as The Secret Doctrine. I was given
it to
review, as a book the reviewers of the paper did not
care to
tackle, and it was thought I might do something
with it,
as I was considered more or less mad on the
subjects
of which it treated. I accepted the task, I read
the book,
and I knew that I had found the clue that I had
been
seeking. I then asked for an introduction to the
writer of
that book, feeling that the one who had written
it would
be able to show me something at least of a path
along
which I might travel with some hope of finding out
more than
I knew of life and mind. I met her for the first
time in
that year. Before very long I placed myself under
her
tuition, and there is nothing in the whole of my life
for which
I am one tithe so grateful as the apparent
accident
that threw her book into my hands, and the
resolution
taken by myself that I would know the writer of
that book.
I know
that in this hall there will not be many who will
share the
view that I take of Helena Blavatsky. I knew
her, you
did not — and in that may lie the difference of
our
opinion. You talk of her as “fraud,” and fling about
the word
as carelessly of one with whom you disagree, as
Christians
and others threw against me the epithet of
“harlot”
in the days gone by, and with as much truth. I
read the
evidence that was said to be against her. I read
the great
proofs of the “fraud”: how she had written the
letters
which she said had come to her from the men who
had been
her Teachers. I read the evidence of W
Netherclift, the expert, first that the letters were not
written by
her, and then that they were. The expert at
Berlin
swore that they were not written by her. I read
most
carefully the evidence against her, because I had so
much to
lose. I read it; I judged it false on the reading;
I knew it
to be false when I came to know her. And here is
one fact
which may, perhaps, interest you much, as rather
curious
from the point of view that Madame Blavatsky was
the writer
of those famous letters.
You have
known me in this Hall for sixteen and a half
years. You
have never known me lie to you. My worst public
enemy,
through the whole of my life, never cast a slur
upon my
integrity. Everything else they have sullied, but
my truth
never; and I tell you that since Madame Blavatsky
left, I
have had letters in the same writing and from the
same
person. Unless you think that dead persons write —
and I do
not think so — that is rather a curious fact
against
the whole challenge of fraud. I do not ask you to
believe
me, but I tell you this on the faith of a record
that has
never yet been sullied by a conscious lie. Those
who knew
her, knew she could not very well commit fraud,
if she
tried. She was the frankest of human beings. It may
be said:
“What evidence have you beside hers?” My own
knowledge.
For some time, all the evidence I had of the
existence
of her Teachers and the existence of those
so-called
“abnormal powers” was second-hand, gained
through
her. It is not so now, and it has not been so for
many
months: unless every sense can be at the same time
deceived,
unless a person can be, at the same moment, sane
and
insane, I have exactly the same certainty for the
truth of
those statements as I have for the fact that you
are here.
Of course you may be all delusions, invented by
myself and
manufactured by my own brain. I refuse — merely
because
ignorant people shout fraud and trickery — to be
false to
all the knowledge of my intellect, the
perceptions
of my senses, and my reasoning faculties as
well.
And so I
passed out of Materialism into Theosophy, and
every
month that has gone since then has given me reason
to be more
and more grateful for the light which then
came; for
it is better to live in a universe you are
beginning
to understand than in one which is full of
problems never
to be solved; and if you find yourself on
the way to
the solution of many, that gives you at least a
reasonable
hope that you may possibly at last be able to
solve
those that are at the moment beyond your grasp. And,
after all,
those with whom I stand are not quite the
persons
whom it is the part of wise men merely to scoff at
and make a
jest of. Amongst them are men well able to
investigate;
many are men of the world, doctors and
lawyers —
the two professions which are just the two which
ought to
be able to deal with the value of scientific and
logical
evidence. Already you may find the ranks of
Theosophy
winning day by day thoughtful and intellectual
adherents.
Even in the ranks of my own party I have not
gone over
quite alone, for my friend and colleague, Mr
Herbert
Burrows, went over with me; and since then, Dr.
Carter-Blake
has joined us.
Are you
quite wise to be so sure that you are right and
that there
is nothing in the universe you do not know? It
is not a
safe position to take up. It has been taken in
all ages,
and has always proved mistaken. It was taken by
the Roman
Catholic Church centuries ago, but they have
been
driven back. It has been taken by the Protestant
Church
time after time. They also have proved mistaken. If
it is
taken by the Freethought party now, is that to be
the only
body in human history that is the one and final
possessor
of the truth and knowledge that never in all the
centuries
to come may be increased? For, friends, that,
and nothing
else than that, is the position that you are
taking in
this Hall at the present time. [“Quite Right,”
and “No,”
“No”.] You say “no”. Listen for a moment, and
let us see
if it be not so. What is the reason I leave
your
platform? Because your society shuts me off it [“No,”
and
“Yes”.] When you have done shouting “no,” I will
finish my
sentence. The reason, that this is my last
lecture in
this Hall is because the condition which was
placed
upon my coming on the platform, after the hall
passes into
the hands of the National Secular Society, is
that I
shall not in my lectures say anything that goes
against
the principles and objects of the Society.
Now I will
never speak under such conditions. I did not
break with
the great Church of England, and ruin my social
position,
and break with all that women hold dear, in
order to
come to this platform and be dictated to as to
what I
should say. Your great leader would never have done
it.
Imagine Charles Bradlaugh standing upon this platform
and, when
he went up to the room of the Committee of the
National
Secular Society, their coming to him and saying:
“You
should not have said so and so in your lecture.” And
do you
suppose that I, who have spoken on this platform so
long, will
place myself in that position? Mind, I do not
deny the
right of your Society to do it. I do not
challenge
the right of your Society, or any other, to make
any
conditions it pleases round its platform. You have
exactly the
right that every church and sect has to say:
“This is
my creed and, unless you accept it, you shall not
speak
within my walls.” You have the right; but, O my
friends
and brothers, is it wise? Think. I have no word
today to
say against the Society; no word to say against
its
committee; but I have sat upon that committee for many
a year,
and I know on it are many young men sent up by
their
societies — when they have only been members a very
short time
— to take part in the deliberations. Are these
young
fellows, who are not my equals in training or
knowledge,
of the world, of history or theology — are they
to have
the right to come and say to me, when I leave the
platform:
“Your lecture went beyond the limits of the
principles
and objects of our Society”? It is not thus I
hold the
position of a public teacher, of a public
speaker.
I will
only speak from a platform where I may say what I
believe to
be true. Whether it be true or not, it is my
right to
speak it; whether it be correct or not, it is my
right to
submit it to a tribunal of my fellows. But you,
what is it
you are saying? That you will have no word from
your
platform save that which you already know, echoing
back from
your brains to the brain of the speaker the
truth you
have already discovered. While one more truth
remains in
the universe to be discovered, you do wrong to
bar your
platform. Truth is mightier than our wildest
dreamings; deeper than our longest plummet-line; higher
than our loftiest
soarings; grander than you and I can
even
imagine today. What are we? People of a moment. Do
you think
centuries hence, millenniums hence, your
principles
and objects will count in the truth which our
race then
will know? Why bar your platform? If you are
right,
discussion will not shake your truth. If you are
right, you
ought to be strong enough to hear a lecturer
put views
you don’t agree with. I never dreamt that from
this
platform, identified with struggles for human
liberty, a
platform on which I have stood with half the
world
against me, I never thought I should be excluded
from it by
the barrier of objects already accepted; and
while I
admit your right to do it, I sorely misdoubt the
wisdom of
the judgment that so decides.
In bidding
you farewell, I have no words save words of
gratitude
to say in this Hall; for well I know that for
seventeen
years I have met with a kindness that has never
changed, a
loyalty that has never broken, a courage that
has always
been ready to stand by me and defend me.
Without
your help I had been crushed many a year ago;
without
the love you gave me, my heart would have been
broken
many long years since. But not even for love of
you, shall
a gag be placed upon my mouth; not even for
your sake will
I promise not to speak of that which I know
to be
true. Although my knowledge may be mistaken, it is
knowledge
to me. As long as I have it, I should commit the
worst
treachery to truth and conscience if I allowed
anyone to stand
between my right to speak that which I
believe I
have found to those who are willing to listen to
me. And
so, henceforth, I must speak in other Halls than
this;
henceforth in this Hall — identified to me with so
much of
struggle, so much of pain, so much of the
strongest
joy that anyone can know — after having tried to
be
faithful, after having struggled to be true, henceforth
in this
Hall my voice will not again be heard. To you,
friends
and comrades of so many years, of whom I have
spoken no
harsh word since I left you, and of whom through
all the
years to come no words save of gratitude shall
ever pass
my lips — to you, friends and comrades, I must
say
farewell, going out into a life that is shorn indeed
of its
friends, but has on it that light of duty which is
the
polestar of every true conscience and brave heart. I
know — as
far as human being can know—that Those to Whom I
have
pledged my faith and service are true and pure and
great. I
would not have left your platform had I not been
compelled;
but if I must be silent on what I know to be
true then
I must take my dismissal, and to you now, and
for the
rest of this life, to you I bid ---- FAREWELL.
[As
attempts are being made to misrepresent what is above
said, I
add here that the above Farewell was meant, as was
plainly
said, for the Hall of Science and its audience. In
future, as
since May, 1889, when I joined the Theosophical
Society, I
shall speak to any Branches of the National
Secular Society,
as I do to Spiritualists and others with
whom I
disagree, so long as they do not claim a censorship
over what
I say.]
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