Clip of the Day 1/25/2022

A report about the “conversion” to hinduism of one Marie Louise Davitt, erstwhile socialist and Manhattan socialite, published in the San Francisco Call in 1911:

"Among the passengers on board the Peninsular and Oriental steamship Carthage, which arrived at Bombay recently, was an American lady of French extraction, who is known as Swami Abhayananda and who is the first European, if we may call her, to be actually and practically converted to Hindooism"

"There is little known of her to-day in New York, though she was so prominent among the Socialists some ten years ago…For a quarter of a century she had been known as a materialist, socialist-- some say anarchist-- a friend of Emma Goldman and others of that ilk. Twelve months before she became converted to Hindooism she was a prominent member of the Manhattan Liberal Club. "Then she was known in the press and on the platform as Mme. Maria Louise, a fearless, progressive, advanced woman, whose boast it was that she was always in the front of the battle and ahead of her times"

"In contemplating the step she had taken and in considering the future this woman has chosen to adopt, one can not but be reminded of Schopenhauer's strange prediction when he said in reference to the ethics and philosophy of Hindooism: 'The world is about to see a revolution in thought more extensive and more powerful than that which was witnessed by the Renaissance of Greek literature’”