MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

[The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 6, March, 1882, pp. 156,166]

[In connection with a discovery by Dr. Vincent Richards that permanganate of potash was a good antidote against cobra poison.]

And should Dr. Richards be prevailed upon to discover as valuable an antidote to the far more virulent poison of the slander-tongued Anglo-Indian missionary, the Theosophists and the “heathen” would vote him a statue—at the top of “Crow’s Nest.”*

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[In connection with various emotional outbursts on the part of the Salvation Army in India, and the unsavory reputation of some of its fanatical missionaries.]

The correspondent laughs at this; we do not, for we have studied history and believe in cycles and recurring events. To buy the right of caricaturing the Jesuits, society had to spend the lives of fifty millions of human beings burnt alive, tortured to death, and otherwise killed during that period of Christianity when the Church reigned supreme.
The ancestors of “Don Basilio,” Rosina’s music teacher, have a bloody record, which oceans of witty jokes can
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* [The name of the Founders’ residence in Bombay.—Compiler.]
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hardly obliterate.* Cruelty is the child of fanaticism, and history is full of examples of the children of martyrs of one kind or another having become oppressors and tyrants. Nay, the very martyrs of a majority themselves, have often been known to turn around when the smart of their own sufferings had been forgotten in the flush of subsequent triumph, and to bully, wrong, or torture a new generation of heterodox. Of all cruel bigots, the Spanish Catholics have, perhaps, earned the most shameful reputation. Their savagery towards the Jews and heretics in Spain, and the wild Indians of their new-found Americas, makes a dark blot upon the history of the race.

[Pertinent quote from Major J. W. Powell, U.S.A., explorer of the Colorado River, regarding Spanish cruelty.]

How much less ready to do so, are they of the “Salvation Army?” Were not the strong hand of modern law efficient to repress these “red-hot, blood-and-fire soldiers,” they would not only menacingly hiss but might also burn.
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* [This is apparently a reference to “Basil” or “Basile,” and “Don Bazile,” in Beaumarchais' comedies, Le Barbier de Séville and Le Mariage de Figaro. In the former, Rosina is a Countess, and in the latter she is a young girl, the ward of don Bartolo. Don Bazile taught her singing in both plays. He is the personification of a calumniating, niggardly bigot, and a clerical humbug dealing largely in calumny and slander.––Compiler.]
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