Ostende. 10 Boulevard van Isaghem,
"Villa Nova,"
August 12.{1886}
My dear Mr. Lane Fox,
Your kind message was delivered to me by Mohini. He says "Mr. L.F. says he is not hostile to you: on the contrary, he defends you whenever opportunity arises. But, of course, he does not think you perfect because you are not perfect."
Three propositions involved in one message. Will you permit me, while thanking you for the kind expressions, to make a few remarks?
(1) Why should you be hostile to me? I have never been hostile or even untrue to you. People have done their best to make me believe you have been both to me. Whether so, or not, I think you too generous and unselfish to act upon the axiom "He who wrongs another, will always be the first to hate him." This is my opinion of you, I knew you better from the first than you knew me. I make bold to say that with all your great intellect you knew me far less than anyone else has. Your actions have shown it to be the case.
(2) You defend me? As well defend a corpse, on whom the Car of Jaggernath has passed! It is my Karma, but so it is yours to be doomed to failure in whatever you undertake, especially now that the tie between us has been broken by you. I had offered to do whatever you would have suggested for the salvation of the T.S.; I had placed myself entirely at your disposal. You have trusted more in people who had neither your ability nor your sincerity, and they have forced you to make fausse route. I never had either personal ambition or love of power, and had ever shown myself to people in my worst light. Had I been an actress or a hypocrite, no enemy could have crushed me. It is my actual position that can alone defend me, if not now then after death. I am a beggar in the full sense of the word — and I am proud of it: I am a wanderer on the Earth without roof or home — or any prospect of returning to India, and I feel ready even for this sacrifice provided I can do good to our Society by my physical and mental suffering.
All this will "defend" and justify me when I am gone. From Christ to Gladstone, from Buddha to the poor President of the T.S. who, in his childish sincerity and devotion to his work worshipped you when you came, thinking you would be the plank of salvation for the T.S. — no one who has worked unselfishly (mistakes are in human nature) escaped being spat upon.
The whole organisation of the "Parent" Society so-called, was a blunder and a mistake from beginning to end. You might have saved it. You preferred deserting it, had you believed in my sincerity as I believed in yours — you would have waited a few days longer at Adyar and then every reform would have been accomplished. You believed I had but a few days to live — you listened to other people, those who were then my enemies and lost your patience with the poor Hindus: — It is our karma all round.
(3) You do not think me perfect? A fool is he, or she, who does! Were I perfect I would be there where no Govt. Expedition is able to get in, not in Europe — the well of perdition where no true Theosophist can breathe for 6 months and remain one, if he lives.
My dear Mr. Lane Fox . . . [The remainder of this letter is missing. — Ed.]
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