ribed with imaginary
dates. Again, the "Adepts" ask why should any one be awed into
accepting as final criterion that which passes for science of high
authority in Europe? For all this is known to the Asiatic scholar--in
every case save the purely mathematical and physical sciences--as little
better than a secret league for mutual support, and, perhaps,
admiration. He bows with profound respect before the Royal Societies of
Physicists, Chemists, and, to a degree, even of Naturalists. He refuses
to pay the slightest attention to the merely speculative and conjectural
so-called "sciences" of the modern Physiologist, Ethnologist,
Philologist, &c., and the mob of self-styling Oedipuses to whom it is
not given to unriddle the Sphynx of Nature, and who therefore throttle
her.

With an eye to the above, as also with a certain prevision of the
future, the defendants in the cases under examination believe that the
"historical difficulty" with reference to the non-historical statement,
necessitated more than a simple reaffirmation of the fact. They knew
that with no better claims to a hearing than may be accorded by the
confidence of a few, and in view of the decided antagonism of the many,
it would never do for them to say "we maintain" while Western professors
maintained to the contrary. For a body of, so to say, unlicensed
preachers and students of unauthorized and unrecognized sciences to
offer to fight an August body of universally recognized oracles, would
be an unprecedented piece of impertinence. Hence their respective
claims had to be examined on however small a scale to begin with (in
this as in all other cases) on other than psychological grounds. The
"Adepts" in Occult Arts had better keep silence when confronted with the
"A.C.S.'s"--Adepts in Conjectural Sciences--unless they could show,
partially at least, how weak is the authority of the latter and on what
foundations of shifting sands their scientific dicta are often built.
They may thus make it a thinkable conjecture that the former may be
right after all. Absolute silence, moreover, as at present advised,
would have been fatal. Besides risking to be construed into inability
to answer, it might have given rise to new complaints among the faithful
few, and lead to fresh charges of selfishness against the writers.
Therefore have the "Adepts" agreed to smooth in part at least a few of
the most glaring difficulties and showing a highway to avoid them in
fu