are, that they separate their votaries from the practical duties of life, and create a class of idle visionaries who, wrapping themselves in their own vain conceits, would stand by and allow their fellow-creatures to starve to death, because, as Mr Sinnett frankly tells us, ’if spiritual existence, vivid subjective consciousness, really does go on for periods greater than the periods of intellectual physical existence, in the ratio, as we have seen in discussing the devachanic condition, of 80 to 1 at least, then surely man’s subjective existence is more important than his physical existence and intellect in error, when all its efforts are bent on the amelioration of the physical existence.’

“This is the ingenious theory which the Brothers of Thibet have devised to release them from acknowledging that they have any other Brothers in this world to whom they are under sacred obligations besides themselves, and which, owing to the selfish principle that underlies it, has a tendency to sap the foundations of all morality.  So that we have this nineteenth-century apostle of Esoteric Buddhism venturing to assert to his Western readers that ’it is not so rough a question as that—­whether man be wicked or virtuous—­which must really, at the final critical turning-point, decide whether he shall continue to live and develop into higher phases of existence, or cease to live altogether.’  We, the Sisters of Thibet, repudiate and denounce in the strongest terms any such doctrine as the logical outcome either of the moral precepts of Buddha or of the highest esoteric science.  Let the Brothers of Thibet beware of any longer cherishing the delusion that the Sisters of Thibet, because their existence is purely objective, ’are therefore unreal and merely transitory delusions of sense.’  We also have a secret to reveal—­the result of twenty centuries of occult learning—­and we formally announce to you, the so-called adepts of occult science, that if you persist in disseminating any more of your deleterious metaphysical compounds in this world under the name of Esoteric Buddhism, we will not only no longer refrain, as we have hitherto done, from tormenting you in your subjective conditions while still in your rupas, but, by virtue of the occult powers we possess, will poison the elements of devachan until subjective existence becomes intolerable there for your fifth and sixth principles,—­your manas and your buddhis,—­and nirvana itself will be converted into hell.”

ADOLPHUS:  A COMEDY OF AFFINITIES.

Dramatis personae.

The HON.  ADOLPHUS GRESHAM.

The EARL OF GULES.

ADOLPHUS PLUMPER.

Mr FLAMM.

LADY ELAINE BENDORE.

The COUNTESS OF GULES.

Mrs PLUMPER.

CHARLES.

SCENE I.—­A railway carriage.  The Earl and Countess of Gules—­Lady
Elaine Bendore—­The Hon. Adolphus Gresham.