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Letter №81, p. 6

the potential selfishness there is in him; of the cruel, remorseless egotism he brought back with him from his last incarnation — a selfishness and egotism which remained latent only owing to the uncongenial soil of the sphere he is in, of his social status and education — and we have. Can you believe he wrote his famous article in the Theosophist simply for the reason he gives you — to help breaking the unavoidable fall? to save the situation, and by answering Davidson and C.C.M., etc. to make the work — of answering in the future and reconciling the contradictions in the past — easier? Not at all. If, he sacrifices in it remorselessly H.P.B., and the author of the Review of the "Perfect Way", and shows the "Brothers"as inferior in intelligence to the "educated European gentlemen," and devoid of any correct notions about honesty or right and wrong — in the European sense — selfish and cold, stubborn and domineering — it is not at all because he cares one button for either of you, least of all for the Society; but simply because in view of certain possible events, that he is too highly intelligent not to have fore-shadowed in his mind — he wants to screen himself; to be the only one to come out unscarred if not immaculate in case of a crush, and to dance, if need be, the "death dance" of the Maccabreans over the prostrate body of the T.S. rather than risk one little finger of the great Simla "I am" to be sneered at. Knowing him as we do, we say that Mr. Hume is at perfect liberty to quote the "unhappy phrase" as many times a day as his breath will allow him to, if it can in any way soothe his ruffled feelings. And, it is just because Morya saw through him as plainly as I see my


Notes: 

his famous article in The Theosophist refers to the article "C.C.M." and "Isis Unveiled" published in The Theosophist in Sept., 1882, pp. 324-326. Click here to read the article.

Davidson refers to an ornithologist who worked for A. O. Hume as a private secretary.

the Review of the The Perfect Way was anonymously published in two installments in The Theosophist, in May and June 1882. (Sinnett was its real author; see Letter No. 63).

"death dance" of the Maccabreans refers to the Danse Macabre or Dance of Death, a medieval allegory on the universality of death.