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An Arraignment of Hermann Rudolph Before the Court of Honour
I
One of the most invaluable institutions of Germany, one which might well be copied by other countries, is the Court of Honour.
The law of the land, which has adequate powers to deal with a crude swindler like Heinrich Tränker of Hohenleuben, has no means of protecting its ignorant citizens against subtle imposters whose motives are rather vanity — self-agrandisement, and love of power, than the direct extraction of superfluous coin from the purses of dupes. A Court of Honour can stigmatize with authority and defeat by publicity such anti-social offenders.
Before such a court, it is today my unpleasant duty to arraign Hermann Rudolph.
Let it be distinctly understood in the first place that I do not in any way impute to him any actual criminal, or even any vile, motive. I regard him rather as a man muddle-headed and ignorant indeed, but sincere and even of lofty aspirations. But for that very reason his activities are the more dangerous. That he is well-meaning, that he honestly believes his own conduct to be honourable, as I do not doubt is the case, makes it all the more necessary to bring him face to face with what he had actually done in the clear and impartial light of this investigation.
At the same time, while firming my belief in the essential integrity of Hermann Rudolph, it would be useless to conceal from myself that he has been led, little by little, into great iniquity. Starting from what was most probably an almost imperceptible spiritual error, the fatal logic of events has forced him, step by step, to the commission of acts of the most revolting baseness.
I can well believe, as I sincerely trust, that Mr. Rudolph has seriously reviewed his conduct when brought to his notice: that, seeing clearly the necessary nexus of his acts (which bulk large) but failing to see the original error (which was minute) he is able to say with an absolutely clear conscience that he has been justified throughout.
The intensity of my desire to be more than just to him has betrayed me into something not far removed from an apology for him. I may add that I write this paper with no design that he be punished, or even condemned, but only brought to enlightenment. It is then even more to himself than to his hapless victims that I owe it to be unsparing—stern in this indictment.
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Hermann Rudolph's book entitled Meditations seems to be generally considered in certain circles as a master-piece. It is really on the strength of this book that he has come to be considered a great spiritual authority, and it is of course perfectly fair for him to plead that as he unquestionable wrote the book, that authority rests on an indefeasible basis.
It is, in fact, a very difficult and very invidious task to challenge an authority derived from the free consent of the people, merely on the ground that the people are incapable. To do so is really to deny the whole theory of democracy—which would be too sad.
Yet here we must indeed bring into question the whole psychology of popular delusion.
Consider the case of any of the numerous claimants to the title of Mahdi. The man is, no doubt, sincere no less than his fanatical followers; they prove it every time they fling themselves upon the array of machine guns and bayonets which await them.
But it would certainly be the duty of any enlightened observer to warn these enthusiasts that they are merely tumbling pell-mell into the jaws of death; were their leader a rational man, the most practical way of saving the people would be to persuade him that he has failed in honour toward them by not sufficiently examining his claim to be the destined prophet.
Such, then, is my function in this present paper. I ask Hermann Rudolph whether it is fair to the readers of his book to allow them to suppose that he has any knowledge whatever of the subjects of which he writes so eloquently.
I must make precise the accusation by pointing out the grossness of the ignorance displayed in his book.
Let me first premise that I have no objection to any individual writing nonsense as such. I cannot take exception to anyone who chooses to offer a cabbage-bouquet of Sunday-school morality to a world which has been taught by Blake, Ibsen and Nietzche. It is contemptible, but it is negligible. There is nothing dishonourable in the thought of an anemic charwoman.
It seems to me, however that anyone who habitually uses Sanskrit expressions, and obviously (if only implicity) bases his claim to be regarded as a teacher on his study of the classes of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, should show ay least sufficient familiarity with them not to reduce the thought contained in them to a jumble of pompous pretentious, nonsensical and self-contradictory balderdash. I need not labour this point: Mr. Gerard Aumont's masterly criticism is more than adequate demonstration of my position.
I will, however, lay stress on one outrage. We read in Note I to page 5 of the English edition, and again as paragraph 6 of the "Directions for Meditation", that Atma is equivalent (among other things) to "God, Allah, Brahma, Christos, Logos, Ormuzd, Wodan, Tao, Karma, etc".
Now it requires only the most rudimentary degree of scholarship to know that this identification is most grossly false. Let us proceed to definition: in the rough.
1) It is difficult to discuss the term God, which means anything or nothing—usually nothing in most people's minds. The connotation varies with every writer. We must therefore pass on.
2) Allah is said to be "without equal, son or companion". But he is quite definitely a person, except in certain schools (of very doubtful orthodoxy) of Mohammedan mystics.
3) Brahma, on the contrary, is the first person of a trinity, in very much the Christian sense of the word.
4) Christos is either a special aspect of the second person of the Christian Trinity, or the divine essence in man. In either case he partakes of the dual nature of God and man.
5) Logos takes us into an entirely different theogony. He is a mystic emanation of the Pleroma, the second principle. He is only identified with Christos in an attempt to square the Gnostic with the Jewish and Pagan traditions.
6) Ormuzd is one of a dyad in the Manichaean system.
7) Wodan is a perfectly regular Pagan God in a polytheistic system.
8) Tao is not a God at all: it is a philosophical conception too obscure to explain in this place.
9) Karma is a conception belonging to a totally different order of ideas. It is quite simply, a law of Nature, like that of inverse squares or of combining weight.
Now I appeal to any man of sense if it is possible for any human being to have mixed up a more comprehensively different set of ideas; whether it is not really carrying the joke a little far to dismiss them all with a graceful wave of the hand as being identical.
And I ask the Court of Honour whether the man who uses all these names does not claim thereby implicitly to be a scholar; one, that being so, whether he does not owe it in honour to his public to assure himself in using such names that he has a clear idea in his mind of what they connote.
I further ask the Court of Honour whether a man who purports to explain to the European public a system of Eastern philosophy is not bound in honour to acquaint himself with at least the fundamentals, not only of the philosophy which he proposes to expound, but also with the philosophy presumably familiar to his intended readers.
For in this case the ignorance and the charlatanism of Hermann Rudolph is peculiarly gross, because he wrote this book primarily for the German public, and if he had understood anything of the subject, he could have made himself clear in the simplest possible way. For it so happens that Atma, while resembling only in the remotest degree any one of those terms with which he light-heartedly declares it identical, is really (at least in its analysed philosophical value) hardly distinguishable from as exceedingly well understood conception of German thinkers, the Ding an sich.
I shall waste no further words on the jumble of pretentious ignorance, cheap morality, and nauseating pseudo piety which make his book one of the most disgusting compilations which it has ever been my misfortune to attempt to peruse.
Any reasonable person, the moment he releases himself from the hypnosis of its strings of blustering dithyrambs, can perceive for himself the insolence of the imposture. It is a catch-penny attempt to make capital out of a study, in which nothing is profound except his misunderstanding, of a casual and unsystematic reading of a few handy popular translations of Eastern classics.
He must now proceed to follow the fate of his arrogance—to track the dark and sinister windings of his course through the marsh-lands of meanness, cowardice and duplicity, until the moment of his foundering in the bog of infamy.
This relatively harmless if lamentable jeu d'esprit was but the first false step upon the path which ends only, metaphorically, with the gallows.
I shall confine my remarks strictly to the facts which have come under my personal observation since my visit to Germany at the Summer Solstice of last year. They will be complemented by the dossier accompanying this arraignment.
On meeting certain leading Theosophists, I was immediately struck by the fact that those who wished to do serious work for the Society on the lines laid down in its Articles of Association, were being impeded by what appeared to me entirely petty disputes concerning the rules of procedure, jurisdiction, and the like empty formalities. I had neither the time nor the inclination to go into the rights and the wrongs of these pedantic pruderies; but one thing was quite clear, that there was a very general complaint the Hermann Rudolph had arrogated to himself supreme and arbitrary power in the Society.
Not content with wielding the authority which acknowledged leadership necessarily confers upon distinguished personality, he was endeavouring to impose upon the Society his own views. He was issuing all sorts of orders forbidding the members to do this and then—in fact, he was in every way displaying the well known attributes of the little tin God. He was trying to turn the Society into a narrow sect. Finding himself confronted with statutes which made his operations utterly illegal, subversive as they were of every principle of the Foundation, he actually found the impudence and bad faith necessary to sneak through bye laws which would render the constitution of the Society null and void!
His intrigues had already succeeded in causing a serious split in the Society, and even the remnant which remained with him, except those who were mere spiritual cattle, were protesting bitterly against his usurpation, and his abuse of authority to destroy the most vital principles of their Brotherhood.
Unfortunately, these people were too well-intentioned to take effective action; they were foolishly over-anxious not to cause any further schism. They trusted that the very weakness and wickedness of Rudolph's manoeuvres would diminish his influence to zero in due course.
At the period of my arrival, therefore, Rudolph was triumphing over the better elements in the Society by virtue of that law by which unscrupulous and violent action always triumphs over tolerant and dis-united integrity.
But that arrival alarmed him. He felt instinctively that his power was threatened. He had babbled gaily of the coming World Saviour: but being himself, a spiritual humbug, he did not really believe that anyone of the kind would appear, any more than a Christian pastor believed in the Second Advent of Christ which he prophesied daily. And just as the Christian pastor knows in his heart that if Christ did come, it could only mean that he himself, who had stolen his living by preaching him without a moment's belief in "any such nonsense", would be cast instantly and irrevocably into Hell; so the last thing that Hermann Rudolph expected, was the appearance of a World-Teacher, because that person would most certainly see through his shallow pretences, and expose his inordinate and unworthy ambitions.
As it is written
In all men, however they harden their hearts and sear their consciences, their lives an internal monitor, and that internal monitor said to Hermann Rudolph, in no uncertain terms: "You are going to be found out".
Had Hermann Rudolph possessed one spark of even the work-a-day wisdom of the world, if he had within him one particle of belief in the doctrine which he had preached so untiringly, if his career of smug ambition had left him with a grain of honesty, he would have gone straight to the World-Teacher and examined frankly into his claim to that title.
He did nothing of the sort; he adopted a cowardly and criminal course. He made no investigation, though he had every facility for doing so. When those members of the Society, among them the oldest, the most respected, and the best beloved, who had examined finally and impartially the claim of the World-Teacher, and affirmed his right to that title, he attempted hastily and brutally to suppress their right of free speech. When he found that they were not to be bullied and brow-beaten, he drew in his horns and pretended that he had noticed nothing, at the same time secretly plunging into a welter of political intrigues so ignoble that my pen refuses to transcribe the disgusting details. Those of stronger stomach for iniquity will find them in the dossier attached to this indictment.
Having thus decided to await events, Hermann Rudolph became still more alarmed by the intense awakening of interest all over Germany of the coming of the World-Teacher. It is probable that he began to se sorry that he had not faced the situation calmly from the start. He saw too late the disadvantage of being ignorant of the nature of the forces which he had only too good reason to anticipate would make an end of him and his pretensions. He accordingly dispatched a spy—a purblind, shifty-eyed, doddering, stammering invertebrate who bore his nameless infamy writ large in every line of his countenance. But the World-Teacher only recognized in this unspeakable abortion a member of the race that he had come to save. Well knowing his foul mission, he treated him with every courtesy and kindness; he explained the Law to him as simply as if he had been an honest enquirer. Having nothing to conceal or to distort, he could not fall into any of the cunning traps of the spy, who shortly put his tail between his legs and disappeared into the trackless forest. (More prosaically, he missed his train).
What happened to him on his return, I do not pretend to know; but I imagine it was not anything very pleasant. The baffled spy does not commonly obtain the heartiest welcome from the even more unfortunate wretch who has been coward and fool enough to employ him.
We now see Rudolph at his wit's end, like a hunted beast, though nobody was hunting him! As it is written
The worst intrigues took a new lease of life.
Now several people took advantage of the presence of the World-Teacher in their neighbourhood to hear his message.
Rudolph got hold of these people and proceeded to cross-examine them behind closed doors, to find out what he could about the World-Teacher from them.
At this moment he was actually staying in Leipzig within five minutes walk of Hermann Rudolph, on whom he had called, and, finding him absent, had left a message assuring him of his friendly attitude and suggesting an interview to talk over informally matters of common interest.
I appeal to the Court of Honour as to whether any honest man would not have accepted this manly alternative instead of resorting to this backstairs gossip and intrigue.
The case is even more gross, because the very people from whom Rudolph derived the whole of his first-hand information, gave him an account of the World-Teacher uniformly favourable to his claim. His hostility was therefore purely malicious, being in entire contradiction with every single item of first-hand evidence which he had obtained.
But the moment that the World-Teacher had left Germany, avowedly for a retirement in a remote and secluded district of the earth, the Hermann Rudolph recovered the courage of the cornered rat; and, in his spasm of insane fear, proceeded to bite the very hands that had fed him. He intrigued to expel from the Society just those people whose innocent and uninformed admiration of his talents had enabled him to usurp the authority which he possessed. Being a coward to the bone, he dare not act openly; he did his filthy work by means of instructions sent round secretly to various branches, with all sorts of dastardly precautions against their falling into the hands of those who would have exposed the atrocity of his conduct.
But, thanks be to the immortal gods, the coward always turns out in the long run to be a fool. His trickery was immediately detected.
The World-Teacher gave him a last chance; he addressed to him an Open Letter in language of studied moderation, reproaching him mildly with lack of judgment is carrying out his work of helping the Theosophical Society to fulfill their spiritual aspirations. But Hermann Rudolph did not dare to reply; he hoped that the matter would be allowed to drop. The fact of the matter probably is that his disbelief in the principles which he professes so unctuously is so complete that he cannot conceive of the existence of Masters or even of sincere students.
He thinks he knows all about Theosophy.
Error No. 1. He thinks it is all humbug.
Error No. 2. And imagining himself the biggest possible humbug in the world, one dare hardly claim this as an error: he argues that he must be unchallengably chief.
Perhaps, he thought himself safe as soon as the Master's back was turned. In any case, he proceeded to the most insolent and arbitrary violations of the laws of the Society. He did not reckon with determined opposition; because in the past he had overborne all protest with tyrannical brutality.
If he had understood for one moment that the World-Teacher had really appeared, he would also have understood—if he had any intelligence at all—that that appearance made all the difference in the world to the Society. From the moment of their acceptance of the Master and his message, they were ready to die in their tracks.
It is most unfortunately needful to make a special effort to dig this mangy fox out of his earth. During the whole of the proceedings outlined above, and explained in detail in the dossier accompanying this indictment, Hermann Rudolph has consistently tried to throw the responsibility of whatever was done on to other people, despite the fact of his notorious despotism: there is always ready the explanation that any given act is the work of this Committee, or that Board, or the other Council. It is never Brer Rudolph whole stole the chicken; it is that bad nigger down the road.
However there is a sound old legal maxim: Cui proguerit?
(I pray Mr. Voss and his crew of ochlocrats to pardon this excursion into so unheard-of a language as Latin).
And when we find Hermann Rudolph with his mouth full of chicken feathers, we don't have to go all that way down the road to look for the other nigger.
We therefore see on the semi-final stage that, in order to put into execution his desperate and abominable plan for stifling the Truth, he was compelled to enter into correspondence with his victims whose public-action can only reveal him to the regretful but awakened gaze of his quondam followers as a vile and perjured wretch void of all moral worth.
I cannot leave him stripped naked in his deformity before this Court of Honour without some antiseptic precautions. The cloak of charity may cover even Hermann Rudolph. Let him slink forth from the company of honest men, unharrassed by the hoots of the fickle populace that once acclaimed him their teacher. Let us remember, rather, that he has done for many years good honest spade-work for the Theosophical Society in Germany; and let us sedulously refrain from inquiring into the motive which induced him to do it.
Let us dismiss him unpursued to his dishonourable oblivion; and in the limbo of lost hopes, let no man seek to decipher among the cenotaphs of spiritual corpses the hieroglyphics of the name Hermann Rudolph.
[Yorke Collection NS 94] |