r reads like a tale out of the Arabian Nights.
And there is Annie Besant, who was once an ardent worker in the
Social-democratic Federation; H.M. Hyndman tells of his dismay when
she went to India and walked in a procession between two white bulls!
Here in California is Madame Tingley, with a colony and a host of
followers in a minature paradise. Men work at money-lending or
manufacturing sporting-goods, and when they get old and tired they
make the thrilling discovery that they have souls; the theosophists
cultivate these souls and they leave their money to the soul-cause,
and there are lawsuits and exposes in the newspapers. For, you see,
there is ferocious rivalry in the game of cultivating millionaire
souls; there are slanders and feuds, just as in soulless affairs.
"Don't have anything to do with Madame Tingley," whispers a
Theosophist lady to my Wife; and when my wife in all innocence
inquires, "Why not?" the awe-stricken answer comes, "She practices
black magic!"

Let me add that I do not say that she practices black magic. I do not
believe that she #could# practice it, even if she wanted to--I do not
believe in black magic. My purpose is merely to show how theosophists
quarrel: going back to the days of Anu and Baal and the bronze Image
of the Babylonian fire-god:

Let them die, but let me live!
Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper!
Let them perish, but let me increase!
Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!

#Mental Malpractice#

This is the other side of the fair shield of religious faith. Why, if
there be a power which loves and can be persuaded to aid us, may there
not also be a power which hates, and can be persuaded to destroy? No
religion has ever been able to answer this, and therefore none has
ever been able to escape from devil-terrors. Even Jesus was pursued by
Satan, and the Holy Catholic Church has its ceremonies for the
exorcising of demons, and a most frightful formula for cursing. And
here are our friends the Christian Scientists, proclaiming the
unreality of all evil, their ability to banish disease by convincing
themselves that they are perfect in God--yet tormented by a squalid
phobia called "Mental Malpractice", or "Malicious Animal Magnetism".

Christian Science is the most characteristic of American religious
contributions. Just as Billy Sunday is the price we pay for failing to
educate our base-ball players, so Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is
the price