SIXTEENTH TALK 3l7

success. People do not understand the necessity of
getting themselves into a state of perfect calm, and
then of not allowing themselves to be disturbed by
whatever happens. This steadiness is very rare.

You remember how an apostle advised you not to
be blown about by every wind of doctrine. Some of
our members are likely to be blown about by any
rumour that comes along. You know that periodi-
cally troubles come over our Society; I have seen
a good many of them in my time. I remember very
well the excitement over the Coulomb business in
1884, in Madame Blavatsky's life-time, and how many
people were very greatly worried and disturbed over
that, and their faith in Theosophy quite lost to them,
because they gupposed that Madame Blavatsky had
been playing tricks upon them. That, if you will
observe, had nothing to do with the case. Our faith
in Theosophy does not rest upon the statements of
Madame Blavatsky, or upon the statement of any-
one else. It rests upon the fact that it is a perfect
and satisfactory system which explains more difficult-
ies and solves more problems than any other system
which has been given to us, and that remains true^
even if it had been the case that Madame Blavatsky
had played tricks. It was not true, of course, that
our Founder had made all sorts of mistakes and had
done things she should not have done. But suppos-
ing it were all true, and I know that those things
were not so, but if they had been, it would not have