They must be recognised as fit objects for the study of the Theosophist.

We must recognise frankly that our future literature depends on the development of these powers which can be utilised in the worlds beyond the physical; that we are not satisfied to be only receivers, but also desire to be investigators and students; that while we will check the observations of to-day by the observations of the past, and hold our conclusions lightly until they have been repeatedly verified, we will not be frightened back from investigation by the idea that psychism is a thing to be disliked, to be shrunk from, to be afraid of.

Some of you think that I have laid too much stress, when speaking of observations in the other worlds, on the probability of mistake.

Some have blamed me from time to time because I have guarded myself so much by saying: "It is likely that mistakes have come into these observations." But it is only by keeping that frame of mind, that reiterated observation can correct the blunders which we inevitably fall into in our earlier investigations.
There is no scientific man in the world who, when making experiments in a new branch of science, is not well aware that he may blunder, is likely to make mistakes, likely to have to correct himself, to find out that wider knowledge alters the proportion between his facts.

And I have tried to lay stress on the fact that these things are true as regards the astral plane as much as they are true of the physical; that it is not a question of revelation by some highly evolved being, but a question of observation by gradually developing beings--a very, very different thing.