have been
exploring the subconscious and its strange powers. What Myers and
Lodge and Janet and Charcot and Freud and Jung are telling us today
they had hints of a long time ago; and doubtless they have hints of
other things, upon which our scientists have not yet come. I have
friends, perfectly sane and competent people, who tell me that they
can see auras, and use this ability as a means of judging character.
Shall I say that there are no auras, simply because I do not happen to
have this gift of seeing them? In the same way, having read Gurney's
"Phantasms of the Living," I am not ready to ridicule the claim of the
Yogi adepts, that they are able to project some kind of astral body,
and to communicate with one another from distant places. But granting
such occult powers in a world of economic strife, what follows? Simply
new floods of charlatanism, elaborate and complicated systems of
ritual and metaphysic for the deluding and plundering of the
credulous.

I have seen the thing working itself out in one case known to me. A
young man had a gift of mental healing; I know, because I saw it work;
but it did not always work, and that was annoying. He was penniless
and had a taste for power, and to eke out his erratic endowment he got
himself books of Eastern lore, and day by day as I watched him I could
see him becoming more and more impressive, mysterious and forbidding.
Today he is a full-fledged wonder-worker, with the language of a dozen
mystic cults at his tongue's end, and the reverent regard of many
wealthy ladies. I have never tried to break through his guard, but I
feel certain that he is a deliberate charlatan.

This is an economic process, automatic and irresistible. Just as the
manufacturer of honest foods is driven out by the adulterator, so the
worker of miracles drives out the sincere investigator. As a result we
have here in America a plague of Eastern cults, with "swamis" using
soft yellow robes and soft brown eyes to win the souls of idle society
ladies. These teachers of ancient Hindoo lore despise us as a race of
barbarians; but they stay--whether because of love of man or woman, I
do not pretend to say.

There are the Theosophists of many brands, with schools and institutes
and temples and colonies, and a doctrine as complex and detailed and
fantastic as that of the Roman Catholics. I have already referred to
the writings of Madame Blavatsky, a runaway Russian army officer's
daughter, whose caree