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Letter №21 p. 5

reasons given. You may — though I would not advise you — read this letter to Mr. Hume. But I would strongly urge upon you the necessity of a greater caution than ever. Notwithstanding the purity of motives, the Chohan might one day consider but the results, and these may threaten to become too disastrous for him to overlook. There should be a constant pressure brought to bear upon the members of the S.E.S. to keep their tongues and enthusiasm at bay. And yet there is an increasing concern in the public mind, in regard to your Society and you may soon be called upon to define your position more clearly. Very soon I will have to leave you to yourselves for the period of three months. Whether it will begin in October or January will depend on the impulse given to the Society and its progress.

I would feel personally obliged to you were you to kindly consent to examine a poem written by Padshah, and give your opinion on its merits. I believe it too long for the Theosophical Journal, nor do its literary merits warrant exactly or justify the claim. However, I leave it to your better judgment. I am anxious that the Journal should be more successful this year than it has heretofore been. The suggestion to translate the Grand Inquisitor is mine; for its author, on whom the hand of Death was already pressing when writing it, gave the most forcible and true description of the Society of Jesus than was ever given before. There is a mighty lesson contained in it for many and even you may profit by it.


Notes: 

S.E.S. refers to the Simla Eclectic [Theosophical] Society.

S. J. Padshah was a member who on August 27, 1881, published in The Bombay Gazette a statement entitled "The Theosophists andThe Occult World" vouching for the existence of the Masters of the Wisdom claiming he had seen "more than one of them" and that he was a disciple of Master K.H.

The Grand Inquisitor is a parable in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880).

The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order whose members are known as "Jesuits".