EDITOR'S TABLE. 



1 ag- 



grades of matter, the deficit arising on 

 the latter would be vastly greater than 

 that shown by the general balance sheet. 

 Ag^in, could newspaper matter paying 

 only a cent a pound in bulk be separated 

 from matter paying one cent per ounce, 

 one cent per two ounces, and one cent 

 per four ounces, it would still more 

 clearly be seen at what an enormous loss 

 the conveying of newspapers at the rate 

 mentioned is carried on. It is too bad 

 that people should beimposed on in this 

 way ; they support a paper specially to 

 defend their interests, and it does so by 

 feeding them with sophistry and mis- 

 information. That is not the way to 

 bring on the millennium. 



THEOSOPHIST LOGIC NO BETTER. 



In the August number of the Nine- 

 teenth Century a leading theosophist 

 writer, Mr. A. P. Sinnett, undertakes 

 to explain to us by an analogy the posi- 

 tion of superiority which persons who 

 are theosophically enlightened enjoy 

 with reference to those who use only 

 their ordinary senses and faculties. 

 Conceive, he says, that mankind at 

 large, while sensitive to light and shade, 

 possessed no sense for color, but that a 

 certain number of individuals were en- 

 dowed with such a sense : the result 

 would be that the latter would be re- 

 garded by the great majority " as 

 guilty (to say the least) of a very gross 

 aft'ectation in professing to regard the 

 tints of a flower as more agreeable to 

 the eye than the color of a lump of 

 clay." If the color- distinguishing mi- 

 nority were to go a step further and 

 profess to be able to distinguish claret 

 from sherry by simply looking at them, 

 they would offend, we are told, still 

 more deeply the common sense of the 

 majority and would create doubt " as to 

 the healthiness of their understanding." 



It is indeed, we must confess, very 

 difficult to have full confidence in the 

 healthiness of the understanding of a 

 writer who tries to palm off upon us 



an argument of this kind. In the case 

 supposed the persons possessing the 

 more-developed faculty would demon- 

 strate every day of life, and in matters 

 coming within the cognizance of all, 

 that they had a definite power not pos- 

 sessed by men in general ; and, instead 

 of offending the common sense of the 

 majority, they would be in high honor, 

 and would have their choice of lucra- 

 tive employments. But i f these persons 

 merely professed to have a sense, and 

 now made a hit and now a miss, but 

 far more often a miss than a hit in the 

 pretended application of it, and if they 

 charged money for their exercises in 

 guess work they would make some 

 dupes, but they would certainly offend 

 both the common sense and the com- 

 mon honesty of right-thinking people. 

 We venture to say in the most positive 

 manner that theosophists can do noth- 

 ing whatever parallel, in the world as 

 it is to-day, to the distinguishing of 

 colors in a color-blind community. If 

 they can, tests can be made anywhere 

 and everywhere, before any class of 

 persons, with equal and unvarying suc- 

 cess. The person who could distin- 

 guish claret irom sherry by the color 

 could go on doing it all day long, and 

 it would not matter in the least to him 

 before whom he exercised the power. 

 He would do it so infallibly, so unvary- 

 ingly, and under such every-day condi- 

 tions, that the non-recognition of his 

 possession of a special faculty would 

 be out of the question. But is there 

 any theosophist to-day who, as theoso- 

 phist, can claim to be able so much as 

 to play an unvaryingly successful game 

 of poker, to take a most familiar, and 

 we hope not too vulgar, illustration ? 

 If there is, a grand career is open to 

 him in some of our social circles. But 

 Mr. Sinnett makes no such claim for 

 his co-religionists. He goes no further 

 than to say that, " although still a 

 minority as compared with the whole, 

 those persons who exercise what occult 

 students generally call the ' astral 



