716 



THEOSOPHY. 



tain 2,800,000,000 cubic feet of water, or 21.000,- 

 000,000 gallons. The estimated available horse 

 power is 14,500 for ten hours a day. The dam 

 stands in the channel of a river, which has 40,000 

 square miles of watershed, and will have floods 

 of 250,000 cubic feet of water per second to pass 

 from crest to base. No other dam in existence 

 has to pass a volume of water in flood even 

 approximating this through so great a height. 

 The primary object of the work was to furnish 

 the city with water and with power for lighting. 

 Lynch Law. On Feb. 1, at Paris, a negro 

 named Henry Smith, charged with ravishing 

 and murdering a three-year-old child, was 

 lynched by a mob of citizens under circum- 

 stances of extreme cruelty. Such were the re- 

 volting features of the case that Gov. Hogg, on 

 Feb. 6, made it the subject of a special message 

 to the Legislature, in which he says : 



Brushing away sentiment, which should never ac- 

 company punishment for crime, the public murder 

 committed at Paris is a disgrace to this State. Its 

 atrocity, inhumanity, and sickening eft'ect upon the 

 people at large can not be obscured_ by reference to 

 the savage act of the culprit himself in brutally tak- 

 ing the life of an innocent child. For his deed the 

 death penalty awaited him under the law. The im- 

 putation that he could not have been legally executed 

 any court in this State is a slander upon the integ- 

 rity of every citizen. To contend that his execution- 

 ers, who publicly murdered him, can either be in- 

 dicted or tried in the county where that crime was 

 committed, is a pretense and a mockery. So the con- 

 dition exists in our State that, while one man may be 

 convicted for murder, a hundred men who publicly 

 commit murder can not be. The lawSj therefore, 

 without further legislation, may be held in defiance 

 in any community where the forces are strong enough 

 to overawe the local officers and set aside the legal 

 machinery of justice. Our Constitution is not so 

 hidebound that this condition must continue. It is 

 in the power of the Legislature to adopt suitable 

 measures to either prevent mob law or to bring to 

 punishment all murderous executioners. 



Although the Governor made several recom- 

 mendations designed to prevent such scenes in 

 the future, the Legislature failed to enact any 

 law pursuant thereto. 



THEOSOPHY, "the science of divine wis- 

 dom." Its disciples are supposed to be doing 

 all they can to attain a high condition of spirit. 

 They believe not only in a spiritual existence after 

 death, but in numberless flesh-and-blood lives on 

 this and other planets. They believe in the re- 

 incarnation of spirit, or "re-embodiment," as 

 they call it. " The evolution of man is not a 

 process carried out on this planet alone. It is a 

 result to which many worlds, in different condi- 

 tions of material and spiritual development, have 

 contributed, and the earth is merely one link in 

 a mighty chain of worlds. The system of worlds 

 is a circuit round which all individual spiritual 

 entities must pass, and that passage constitutes 

 the evolution of man. The higher evolution will 

 be accomplished by our progress through the 

 successive worlds of the system, and in higher 

 forms we shall return to this earth again aud 

 again." Another authority declares that ' the- 

 osophy is religion, science, and philosophy, and 

 these three at once : a religion because it aims to 

 know, to become, and therefore to worship the 

 truth ; a science because it examines by strict 

 analysis all processes in nature, in order to dis- 



cover that which is ; a philosophy because, by 

 logical synthesis from the facts of nature discov- 

 ered by science, it deduces the laws that under- 

 lie phenomena and govern the universe. The- 

 osophy is therefore the work of a lifetime nay, 

 of many lives or incarnations." 



The movement began in the United States in 

 1875, when the society was formed in New York 

 city by Madame Helene Petrowsky Blavatsky 

 and Col. Olcott. At that time there were not a 

 dozen adherents to be found, while now the 

 membership of the organization is over 100,000. 

 Its conception was due to Madame Blavatsky, 

 who believed that the interests of religion and 

 science would be promoted by the revival of 

 Sanskrit, Pali, Zend, and other ancient litera- 

 tures, in which the sages and initiators had pre- 

 served for the use of mankind truths of the 

 highest value. It was deemed best to organize a 

 society whose first object should be to form the 

 nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity, 

 without distinction of race, creed, sex, or color. 

 Once formed, the society was to promote the 

 study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures, 

 religions, and sciences. The third object was 

 the investigation of the unexplained laws of na- 

 ture and the psychical powers of man. A few 

 years ago Madame Blavatsky wrote the book 

 " Isis Unveiled." Having organized the society 

 and aroused public interest to some extent by 

 the apparent exhibition of occult power, she 

 sailed for India, accompanied by several follow- 

 ers. In 1884 the society had grown to such pro- 

 Ejrtions that the founders were invited to visit 

 ngland, where a branch society had been 

 formed, with A. P. Sinnett, author of " The Oc- 

 cult World," as president. Mr. Sinnett was ed- 

 iting an English paper in Allahabad when 

 Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott went there, 

 in 1879, to organize a branch society. Madame 

 Blavatsky made friends and enemies everywhere 

 she appeared by denunciations of spiritualism. 

 She had a habit of making startling predictions, 

 and usually in such an ironical manner that it 

 was almost impossible to decide whether she 

 meant what she said or was merely trying to 

 make others commit themselves. She could pro- 

 duce a sound like a chime of bells, low and sweet, 

 but perfectly clear, and this was heard undet 

 various conditions. She would know what was 

 going on in other parts of the building, and one 

 day reproached one of her party for something 

 that was said in the park, a mile from the cas- 

 tle. Her hostess said that Madame Blavatsky 

 had not left her room all the afternoon. One of 

 her visitors wrote thus : " I remember an occa- 

 sion when I excused myself to go to my room to 

 write. In the evening, when we all assembled in 

 the drawing-room, I was astonished to have her 

 say to me : ' You have not written to-day ; I saw 

 you idling the time away.' It was true that I had 

 sat at the large window the entire afternoon, 

 looking out upon the hills, watching the clouds, 

 and pondering over many things. Madame Bla- 

 vatsky had been much in my thoughts, as I con- 

 sidered the question a grave one to me of re- 

 maining longer with the party or of returning 

 to England. She knew by some means what had 

 been agitating my mind, and said to me as we 

 passed down the stairs : ' You will go back with 

 me ? ' I said to myself that I would not ; but 



