Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00730)

Recently when I had a chance to read the Introduction to Secret Doctrine, 
it is clear as to where HPB stands in regard to the work. See the quote 
below. Any student of theosophy may find it worthwhile to keep it in mind 
when one tried to understand what she laid out in the monumental work.

mkr

====================
"To my judges, past and future, therefore -- whether they are serious 
literary critics, or those howling dervishes in literature who
judge a book according to the popularity or unpopularity of the author's 
name, who, hardly glancing at its contents, fasten like
lethal bacilli on the weakest points of the body -- I have nothing to say. 
Nor shall I condescend to notice those crack-brained
slanderers -- fortunately very few in number -- who, hoping to attract 
public attention by throwing discredit on every writer
whose name is better known than their own, foam and bark at their very 
shadows. These, having first maintained for years that
the doctrines taught in the Theosophist, and which culminated in "Esoteric 
Buddhism," had been all invented by the present
writer, have finally turned round, and denounced "Isis Unveiled" and the 
rest as a plagiarism from Eliphas Levi (!), Paracelsus
(!!), and, mirabile dictu, Buddhism and Brahmanism (!!!) As well charge 
Renan with having stolen his Vie de Jesus from the Gospels, and Max Muller 
his "Sacred Books of the East" or his "Chips" from the philosophies of the 
Brahmins and Gautama, the Buddha. But to the public in general and the 
readers of the "Secret Doctrine" I may repeat what I have stated all along, 
and which I now clothe in the words of Montaigne:

Gentlemen, "I HAVE HERE MADE ONLY A NOSEGAY OF CULLED FLOWERS, AND
HAVE BROUGHT NOTHING OF MY OWN BUT THE STRING THAT TIES THEM."

Pull the "string" to pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for 
the nosegay of FACTS -- you will never be able to make away with these. You 
can only ignore them, and no more".

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