The Secret Doctrine

Voilà, certes, a voyage which has little in it of mechanical precision; at the utmost, one could compare it to a steamer, pulled to and fro and tossed on the waves, retarded or accelerated, all and each of which impediments might put off its arrival indefinitely, were there not the intelligence of a pilot and engineers to catch up the time lost, and to repair the damages.(852) The law of gravity, however, seems to be becoming an obsolete law in starry heaven. At any rate those long‐haired sidereal Radicals, called comets, appear to be very poor respecters of the majesty of that law, and to beard it quite impudently. Nevertheless, and though presenting in nearly every respect “phenomena not yet fully understood,” comets and meteors are credited by the believers in Modern Science with obeying the same laws and consisting of the same Matter, “as the suns, stars and nebulæ,” and even “the earth and its inhabitants.”(853) This is what one might call taking things on trust, aye, even to blind faith. But exact Science is not to be questioned, and he who rejects the hypotheses imagined by her students—gravitation, for instance—would be regarded as an ignorant fool for his pains; yet we are told by the just cited author a queer legend from the scientific annals.

The comet of 1811 had a tail 120 millions of miles in length and 25 millions of miles in diameter at the widest part, while the diameter of the nucleus was about 127,000 miles, more than ten times that of the earth. He tells us that: In order that bodies of this magnitude, passing near the earth, should not affect its motion or change the length of the year by even a single second, their actual substance must be inconceivably rare. It must be so indeed, yet:

The extreme tenuity of a comet’s mass is also proved by the phenomenon of the tail, which, as the comet approaches the sun, is thrown out sometimes to a length of 90 millions of miles in a few hours. And what is remarkable, this tail is thrown out against the force of gravity by some repulsive force, probably electrical, so that it always points away from the sun [!!!].... And yet, thin as the matter of comets must be, it obeys the common Law of Gravity [!?], and whether the comet revolves in an orbit within that of the outer planets, or shoots off into the abysses of space, and returns only after hundreds of years, its path is, at each instant, regulated by the same force as that which causes an apple to fall to the ground.(854) Science is like Cæsar’s wife, and must not be suspected—this is evident. But it can be respectfully criticized, nevertheless, and at all events, it may be reminded that the “apple” is a dangerous fruit. For the second time in the history of mankind, it may become the cause of the Fall—this time, of “exact” Science. A comet whose tail defies the law of gravity right in the Sun’s face can hardly be credited with obeying that law.

In a series of scientific works on Astronomy and the Nebular Theory, written between 1865 and 1866, the present writer, a poor tyro in Science, has counted in a few hours, no less than thirty‐nine contradictory hypotheses offered as explanations for the self‐generated, primitive rotatory motion of the heavenly bodies. The writer is no Astronomer, no Mathematician, no Scientist; but she was obliged to examine these errors in defence of Occultism, in general, and what is still more important, in order to support the Occult Teachings concerning Astronomy and Cosmology. Occultists were threatened with terrible penalties for questioning scientific truths. But now they feel braver; Science is less secure in its “impregnable” position than they were led to expect, and many of its strongholds are built on very shifting sands. Thus, even this poor and unscientific examination of it has been useful, and it has certainly been very instructive. We have learned a good many things, in fact, having especially studied with particular care those astronomical data, that would be the most likely to clash with our heterodox and “superstitious” beliefs.

Thus, for instance, we have found there, concerning gravitation, the axial and orbital motions, that synchronous movement having been once overcome, in the early stage, this was enough to originate a rotatory motion till the end of Manvantara. We have also come to know, in all the aforesaid combinations of possibilities with regard to incipient rotation, most complicated in every case, some of the causes to which it may have been due, as well as some others to which it ought and should have been due, but, in some way or other, was not. Among other things, we are informed that incipient rotation may be provoked with equal ease in a mass in igneous fusion, and in one that is characterized by glacial opacity.(855) That gravitation is a law which nothing can overcome, but which is, nevertheless, overcome, in and out of season, by the most ordinary celestial or terrestrial bodies—the tails of impudent comets, for instance. That we owe the universe to the holy Creative Trinity, called Inert Matter, Senseless Force and Blind Chance. Of the real essence and nature of any of these three, Science knows nothing, but this is a trifling detail. Ergo, we are told that, when a mass of cosmic or nebular Matter—whose nature is entirely unknown, and which may be in a state of fusion (Laplace), or dark and cold (Thomson), for “this intervention of heat is itself a pure hypothesis” (Faye)—decides to exhibit its mechanical energy under the form of rotation, it acts in this wise. It (the mass) either bursts into spontaneous conflagration, or it remains inert, tenebrous, and frigid, both states being equally capable of sending it, without any adequate cause, spinning through Space for millions of years. Its movements may be retrograde, or they may be direct, about a hundred various reasons being offered for both motions, in about as many hypotheses; anyhow, it joins the maze of stars, whose origin belongs to the same miraculous and spontaneous order—for:

The nebular theory does not profess to discover the ORIGIN of things, but only a stadium in material history.(856) Those millions of suns, planets, and satellites, composed of inert matter, will whirl on in most impressive and majestic symmetry round the firmament, moved and guided only, notwithstanding their inertia, “by their own internal motion.” Shall we wonder, after this, if learned Mystics, pious Roman Catholics, and even such learned Astronomers as were Chaubard and Godefroy,(857) have preferred the Kabalah and the ancient systems to the modern dreary and contradictory exposition of the Universe? The Zohar makes a distinction, at any rate, between “the Hajaschar [the ‘Light Forces’], the Hachoser [‘Reflected Lights’], and the simple phenomenal exteriority of their spiritual types.”(858) The question of “gravity” may now be dismissed, and other hypotheses examined. That Physical Science knows nothing of “Forces” is clear. We may close the argument, however, by calling to our help one more man of Science—Professor Jaumes, Member of the Academy of Medicine at Montpellier. Says this learned man, speaking of Forces:

A cause is that which is essentially acting in the genealogy of phenomena, in every production as in every modification. I said that activity (or force) was invisible.... To suppose it corporeal and residing in the properties of matter would be a gratuitous hypothesis.... To reduce all the causes to God, ... would amount to embarrassing oneself with a hypothesis hostile to many verities. But to speak of a plurality of forces proceeding from the Deity and possessing inherent powers of their own, is not unreasonable, ... and I am disposed to admit phenomena produced by intermediate agents called Forces or Secondary Agents. The distinction of Forces is the principle of the division of Sciences; so many real and separate Forces, so many mother‐ Sciences.... No; Forces are not suppositions and abstractions, but realities, and the only acting realities whose attributes can be determined with the help of direct observation and induction.(859)

If there is anything like progress on earth, Science will some day have to give up, nolens volens, such monstrous ideas as her physical, self‐ guiding laws, void of Soul and Spirit, and will then have to turn to the Occult Teachings. It has already done so, however altered may be the title‐pages and revised editions of the Scientific Catechism. It is now over half a century since, in comparing modern with ancient thought, it was found that, however different our Philosophy may appear from that of our ancestors, it is, nevertheless, composed only of additions and subtractions taken from the old Philosophy and transmitted drop by drop through the filter of antecedents.

This fact was well known to Faraday, and to other eminent men of Science. Atoms, Ether, Evolution itself—all come to Modern Science from ancient notions, all are based on the conceptions of the archaic nations. “Conceptions” for the profane, under the shape of allegories; plain truths taught during the Initiations to the Elect, which truths have been partially divulged through Greek writers and have descended to us. This does not mean that Occultism has ever had the same views on Matter, Atoms and Ether as may be found in the exotericism of the classical Greek writers. Yet, if we may believe Mr. Tyndall, even Faraday was an Aristotelean, and was more an Agnostic than a Materialist. In his Faraday, as a Discoverer,(860) the author shows the great Physicist using “old reflections of Aristotle” which are “concisely found in some of his works.” Faraday, Boscovitch, and all others, however, who see, in the Atoms and molecules, “centres of force,” and in the corresponding element, Force, an Entity by itself, are far nearer the truth, perchance, than those, who, denouncing them, denounce at the same time the “old corpuscular Pythagorean theory”—one, by the way, which never passed to posterity as the great Philosopher really taught it—on the ground of its “delusion that the conceptual elements of matter can be grasped as separate and real entities.”

The chief and most fatal mistake and fallacy made by Science, in the view of the Occultists, lies in the idea of the possibility of such a thing existing in Nature as inorganic, or dead Matter. Is anything dead or inorganic which is capable of transformation or change?—Occultism asks. And is there anything under the sun which remains immutable or changeless? For a thing to be dead implies that it had been at some time living. When, at what period of cosmogony? Occultism says that in all cases Matter is the most active, when it appears inert. A wooden or a stone block is motionless and impenetrable to all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, and de facto, its particles are in ceaseless eternal vibration which is so rapid that to the physical eye the body seems absolutely devoid of motion; and the spacial distance between those particles in their vibratory motion is—considered from another plane of being and perception—as great as that which separates snow flakes or drops of rain. But to Physical Science this will be an absurdity. This fallacy is nowhere better illustrated than in the scientific work of a German savant, Professor Philip Spiller. In this cosmological treatise, the author attempts to prove that:

No material constituent of a body, no atom, is in itself originally endowed with force, but that every such atom is absolutely dead, and without any inherent power to act at a distance.(861)

This statement, however, does not prevent Spiller from enunciating an Occult doctrine and principle. He asserts the independent substantiality of Force, and shows it as an “incorporeal stuff” (unkörperlicher Stoff) or Substance. Now Substance is not Matter in Metaphysics, and for argument’s sake it may be granted that it is a wrong expression to use. But this is due to the poverty of European languages, and especially to the paucity of scientific terms. Then this “stuff” is identified and connected by Spiller with the Æther. Expressed in Occult language it might be said with more correctness that this “Force‐Substance” is the ever‐ active phenomenal positive Ether—Prakriti; while the omnipresent all‐ pervading Æther is the Noumenon of the former, the substratum of all, or Âkâsha. Nevertheless, Stallo falls foul of Spiller, as he does of the Materialists. He is accused of “utter disregard of the fundamental correlation of Force and Matter,” of neither of which Science knows anything certain. For this “hypostasized half‐concept” is, in the view of all other Physicists, not only imponderable, but destitute of cohesive, chemical, thermal, electric, and magnetic forces, of all of which forces—according to Occultism—Æther is the Source and Cause.

Therefore Spiller, with all his mistakes, exhibits more intuition than does any other modern Scientist, with the exception, perhaps, of Dr. Richardson, the theorist on “Nerve‐Force,” or Nervous Ether, also on “Sun‐ Force and Earth‐Force.”(862) For Æther, in Esotericism, is the very quintessence of all possible energy, and it is certainly to this Universal Agent (composed of many agents) that are due all the manifestations of energy in the material, psychic and spiritual worlds. What, in fact, are electricity and light? How can Science know that one is a fluid and the other a “mode of motion”? Why is no reason given why a difference should be made between them, since both are considered as force‐correlations? Electricity is a fluid, we are told, immaterial and lion‐molecular—though Helmholtz thinks otherwise—and the proof of it is that we can bottle it up, accumulate it and store it away. Then, it must be simply Matter, and no peculiar “fluid.” Nor is it only “a mode of motion,” for motion could hardly be stored in a Leyden jar. As for light, it is a still more extraordinary “mode of motion”; since, “marvellous as it may appear, light [also] can actually be stored up for use,” as was demonstrated by Grove nearly half a century ago.

Take an engraving which has been kept for some days in the dark, expose it to full sunshine—that is, insulate it for 15 minutes; lay it on sensitive paper in a dark place, and at the end of 24 hours it will have left an impression of itself on the sensitive paper, the whites coming out as blacks.... There seems to be no limit for the reproduction of engravings.(863) What is it that remains fixed, nailed, so to say, on the paper? It is a Force certainly that fixed the thing, but what is that thing, the residue of which remains on the paper?

Our learned men will get out of this by some scientific technicality; but what is it that is intercepted, so as to imprison a certain quantity of it on glass, paper, or wood? Is it “Motion” or is it “Force”? Or shall we be told that what remains behind is only the effect of the Force or Motion? Then what is this Force? Force or Energy is a quality; but every quality must belong to a something, or a somebody. In Physics, Force is defined as “that which changes or tends to change any physical relation between bodies, whether mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic, etc.” But it is not that Force or that Motion which remains behind on the paper, when the Force or Motion has ceased to act; and yet something, which our physical senses cannot perceive, has been left there, to become a cause in its turn and to produce effects. What is it? It is not Matter, as defined by Science—i.e., Matter in any of its known states. An Alchemist would say it was a spiritual secretion—and he would be laughed at. But yet, when the Physicist said that electricity, stored up, is a fluid, or that light fixed on paper is still sunlight—that was Science. The newest authorities have, indeed, rejected these explanations as “exploded theories,” and have now deified “Motion” as their sole idol. But, surely, they and their idol will one day share the fate of their predecessors!

An experienced Occultist, one who has verified the whole series of Nidânas, of causes and effects, that finally project their last effect on to this our plane of manifestations, one who has traced Matter back to its Noumenon, holds the opinion that the explanation of the Physicist is like calling anger, or its effects—the exclamation provoked by it—a secretion or a fluid, and man, the cause of it, its material conductor. But, as Grove prophetically remarked, the day is fast approaching when it will be confessed that the Forces we know are but the phenomenal manifestations of Realities we know nothing about—but which were known to the Ancients, and by them worshipped.

He made one still more suggestive remark which ought to have become the motto of Science, but has not. Sir William Grove said that: “Science should have neither desires nor prejudices. Truth should be her sole aim.” Meanwhile, in our days, Scientists are more self‐opinionated and bigoted than even the Clergy. For they minister to, if they do not actually worship, “Force‐Matter,” which is their Unknown God. And how unknown it is, may be inferred from the many confessions of the most eminent Physicists and Biologists, with Faraday at their head. Not only, he said, could he never presume to pronounce whether Force was a property or function of Matter, but he actually did not know what was meant by the word Matter. There was a time, he added, when he believed he knew something of Matter. But the more he lived, and the more carefully he studied it, the more he became convinced of his utter ignorance of the nature of Matter.(864) This ominous confession was made, we believe, at a Scientific Congress at Swansea. Faraday held a similar opinion, however, as stated by Tyndall:

What do we know of the atom apart from its force? You imagine a nucleus which maybe called a and surround it by forces which may be called m; to my mind the a or nucleus vanishes and the substance consists of the powers m. And, indeed, what notion can we form of the nucleus independent of its powers? What thought remains on which to hang the imagination of an a independent of the acknowledged forces?

The Occultists are often misunderstood because, for lack of better terms, they apply to the Essence of Force, under certain aspects, the descriptive epithet of Substance. Now the names for the varieties of Substance on different planes of perception and being are legion. Eastern Occultism has a special appellation for each kind; but Science—like England, in the recollection of a witty Frenchman, blessed with thirty‐six religions and only one fish‐sauce—has but one name for all, namely “Substance.” Moreover, neither the orthodox Physicists nor their critics seem to be very certain of their premisses, and are as apt to confuse the effects as they are the causes. It is incorrect, for instance, to say, as Stallo does, that “Matter can no more be realized or conceived as mere positive spatial presence than as a concretion of forces,” or that “Force is nothing without mass, and mass is nothing without force”—for one is the Noumenon and the other the phenomenon. Again; Schelling, when saying that It is a mere delusion of the phantasy that something, we know not what, remains after we have denuded an object of all the predicates belonging to it,(865)

could never have applied the remark to the realm of transcendental Metaphysics. It is true that pure Force is nothing in the world of Physics; it is All in the domain of Spirit. Says Stallo: If we reduce the mass upon which a given force, however small, acts to its limit zero—or, mathematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely small—the consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is infinitely great, and that the “thing” ... is at any given moment neither here nor there, but everywhere—that there is no real presence; it is impossible, therefore, to construct matter by a synthesis of forces.(866)

This may be true in the phenomenal world, inasmuch as the illusive reflection of the One Reality of the supersensual world may appear true to the dwarfed conceptions of a Materialist. It is absolutely incorrect when the argument is applied to things in what the Kabalists call the supermundane spheres. Inertia, so‐called, is Force, according to Newton,(867) and for the student of Esoteric Sciences the greatest of the Occult Forces. A body can only conceptually, only on this plane of illusion, be considered divorced from its relations with other bodies—which, according to the physical and mechanical sciences, give rise to its attributes. In fact, it can never be so detached; death itself being unable to detach it from its relation with the Universal Forces, of which the One Force, or Life, is the synthesis: the inter‐relation simply continues on another plane. But what, if Stallo is right, can Dr. James Croll mean when, in speaking “On the Transformation of Gravity,” he brings forward the views advocated by Faraday, Waterston, and others? For he says very plainly that gravity Is a force pervading Space external to bodies, and that, on the mutual approach of the bodies, the force is not increased, as is generally supposed, but the bodies merely pass into a place where the force exists with greater intensity.(868)

No one will deny that a Force, whether gravity, electricity, or any other Force, which exists outside bodies and in open Space—be it Ether or a vacuum—must be something, and not a pure nothing, when conceived apart from a mass. Otherwise it could hardly exist in one place with a greater and in another with reduced “intensity.” G. A. Hirn declares the same in his Théorie Mécanique de l’Univers. He tries to demonstrate: That the atom of the chemists is not an entity of pure convention, or simply an explicative device, but that it exists really, that its volume is unalterable, and that consequently it is not elastic [!!]. Force, therefore, is not in the atom; it is in the space which separates the atoms from each other.

The above‐cited views, expressed by two men of Science of great eminence in their respective countries, show that it is not in the least unscientific to speak of the substantiality of the so‐called Forces. Subject to some future specific name, this Force is Substance of some kind, and can be nothing else; and perhaps one day Science will be the first to reädopt the derided name of phlogiston. Whatever may be the future name given to it, to maintain that Force does not reside in the Atoms, but only in the “space between them,” may be scientific enough; nevertheless it is not true. To the mind of an Occultist it is like saying that water does not reside in the drops of which the ocean is composed, but only in the space between those drops! The objection that there are two distinct schools of Physicists, by one of which This force is assumed to be an independent substantial entity, which is not a property of matter nor essentially related to matter,(869)

is hardly likely to help the profane to any clearer understanding. It is, on the contrary, more calculated to throw the question into still greater confusion than ever. For Force is, then, neither this nor the other. By viewing it as “an independent substantial entity,” the theory extends the right hand of fellowship to Occultism, while the strange contradictory idea that it is not “related to Matter otherwise than by its power to act upon it,”(870) leads Physical Science to the most absurd contradictory hypotheses. Whether “Force” or “Motion” (Occultism, seeing no difference between the two, never attempts to separate them), it cannot act for the adherents of the atomo‐mechanical theory in one way, and for those of the rival school in another. Nor can the Atoms be, in one case, absolutely uniform in size and weight, and in another, vary in their weight (Avogadro’s law). For, in the words of the same able critic:

While the absolute equality of the primordial units of mass is thus an essential part of the very foundations of the mechanical theory, the whole modern science of chemistry is based upon a principle directly subversive of it—a principle of which it has recently been said that “it holds the same place in chemistry that the law of gravitation does in astronomy.”(871) This principle is known as the law of Avogadro or Ampère.(872)

This shows that either modern Chemistry, or modern Physics, is entirely wrong in the respective fundamental principles. For if the assumption of Atoms of different specific gravities is deemed absurd, on the basis of the atomic theory in Physics; and if Chemistry, nevertheless, on this very assumption, meets with “unfailing experimental verification,” in the formation and transformation of chemical compounds; then it becomes apparent that it is the atomo‐mechanical theory which is untenable. The explanation of the latter, that “the differences of weight are only differences of density, and differences of density are differences of distance between the particles contained in a given space,” is not really valid, because, before a Physicist can argue in his defence that “as in the atom there is no multiplicity of particles and no void space, hence differences of density or weight are impossible in the case of atoms,” he must first know what an Atom is, in reality, and that is just what he cannot know. He must bring it under the observation of at least one of his physical senses—and that he cannot do: for the simple reason that no one has ever seen, smelt, heard, touched or tasted an Atom. The Atom belongs wholly to the domain of Metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction—at any rate for Physical Science—and has nought to do with Physics, strictly speaking, as it can never be brought to the test of retort or balance. The mechanical conception, therefore, becomes a jumble of the most conflicting theories and dilemmas, in the minds of the many Scientists who disagree on this, as on other subjects; and its evolution is beheld with the greatest bewilderment by the Eastern Occultist, who follows this scientific strife.

To conclude, on the question of gravity. How can Science presume to know anything certain of it? How can it maintain its position and its hypotheses against those of the Occultists, who see in gravity only sympathy and antipathy, or attraction and repulsion, caused by physical polarity on our terrestrial plane, and by spiritual causes outside its influence? How can they disagree with the Occultists before they agree among themselves? Indeed one hears of the Conservation of Energy, and in the same breath of the perfect hardness and inelasticity of the Atoms; of the kinetic theory of gases being identical with “potential energy,” so called, and, at the same time, of the elementary units of mass being absolutely hard and inelastic! An Occultist opens a scientific work and reads as follows: Physical atomism derives all the qualitative properties of matter from the forms of atomic motion. The atoms themselves remain as elements utterly devoid of quality.(873) And further: Chemistry in its ultimate form must be atomic mechanics.(874) And a moment after he is told that: Gases consist of atoms which behave like solid, perfectly elastic spheres.(875) Finally, to crown all, Sir W. Thomson is found declaring that:

We are forbidden by the modern theory of the conservation of energy to assume inelasticity, or anything short of perfect elasticity of the ultimate molecules whether of ultra‐mundane or mundane matter.(876)

But what do the men of true Science say to all this? By the “men of true Science” we mean those who care too much for truth and too little for personal vanity to dogmatize on anything, as do the majority. There are several among them—perhaps more than dare openly publish their secret conclusions, for fear of the cry “Stone him to death!”—men, whose intuitions have made them span the abyss that lies between the terrestrial aspect of Matter, and the, to us, on our plane of illusion, subjective, i.e., transcendentally objective Substance, and have led them to proclaim the existence of the latter. Matter, to the Occultist, it must be remembered, is that totality of existences in the Kosmos, which falls within any of the planes of possible perception. We are but too well aware that the orthodox theories of sound, heat and light, are against the Occult Doctrines. But, it is not enough for the men of Science, or their defenders, to say that they do not deny dynamic power to light and heat, and to urge, as a proof, the fact that Mr. Crookes’ radiometer has unsettled no views. If they would fathom the ultimate nature of these Forces, they have first to admit their substantial nature, however supersensuous that nature may be. Neither do the Occultists deny the correctness of the vibratory theory.(877) Only they limit its functions to our Earth—declaring its inadequacy on other planes than ours, since Masters in the Occult Sciences perceive the Causes that produce ethereal vibrations. Were all these only the fictions of the Alchemists, or dreams of the Mystics, such men as Paracelsus, Philalethes, Van Helmont, and so many others, would have to be regarded as worse than visionaries; they would become impostors and deliberate mystificators.

The Occultists are taken to task for calling the Cause of light, heat, sound, cohesion, magnetism, etc., etc., a Substance.(878) Mr. Clerk Maxwell has stated that the pressure of strong sunlight on a square mile is about 3‐¼ lbs. It is, they are told, “the energy of the myriad ether waves”; and when they call it a Substance impinging on that area, their explanation is proclaimed unscientific.

There is no justification for such an accusation. In no way—as already more than once stated—do the Occultists dispute the explanations of Science, as affording a solution of the immediate objective agencies at work. Science only errs in believing that, because it has detected in vibratory waves the proximate cause of these phenomena, it has, therefore, revealed all that lies beyond the threshold of Sense. It merely traces the sequence of phenomena on a plane of effects, illusory projections from the region that Occultism has long since penetrated. And the latter maintains that those etheric tremors are not set up, as asserted by Science, by the vibrations of the molecules of known bodies, the Matter of our terrestrial objective consciousness, but that we must seek for the ultimate Causes of light, heat, etc., in Matter existing in supersensuous states—states, however, as fully objective to the spiritual eye of man, as a horse or a tree is to the ordinary mortal. Light and heat are the ghost or shadow of Matter in motion. Such states can be perceived by the Seer or the Adept during the hours of trance, under the Sushumnâ Ray—the first of the Seven Mystic Rays of the Sun.(879)

Thus, we put forward the Occult teaching which maintains the reality of a supersubstantial and supersensible essence of that Âkâsha—not Ether, which is only an aspect of the latter—the nature of which cannot be inferred from its remoter manifestations, its merely phenomenal phalanx of effects, on this terrene plane. Science, on the contrary, informs us that heat can never be regarded as Matter in any conceivable state. To cite a most impartial critic, one whose authority no one can call in question, as a reminder to Western dogmatists, that the question cannot be in any way considered as settled: There is no fundamental difference between light and heat ... each is merely a metamorphosis of the other.... Heat is light in complete repose. Light is heat in rapid motion. Directly light is combined with a body, it becomes heat; but when it is thrown off from that body it again becomes light.(880) Whether this is true or false we cannot tell, and many years, perhaps many generations, will have to elapse before we shall be able to tell.(881) We are also told that the two great obstacles to the fluid (?) theory of heat undoubtedly are: (1) The production of heat by friction—excitation of molecular motion. (2) The conversion of heat into mechanical motion.

The answer given is: There are fluids of various kinds. Electricity is called a fluid, and so was heat quite recently, but it was on the supposition that heat was some imponderable substance. This was during the supreme and autocratic reign of Matter. When Matter was dethroned, and Motion was proclaimed the sole sovereign ruler of the Universe, heat became a “mode of motion.” We need not despair; it may become something else to‐morrow. Like the Universe itself, Science is ever becoming, and can never say, “I am that I am.” On the other hand, Occult Science has its changeless traditions from prehistoric times. It may err in particulars; it can never become guilty of a mistake in questions of Universal Law, simply because that Science, justly referred to by Philosophy as the Divine, was born on higher planes, and was brought to Earth by Beings who were wiser than man will be, even in the Seventh Race of his Seventh Round. And that Science maintains that Forces are not what modern learning would have them; e.g., magnetism is not a “mode of motion”; and, in this particular case, at least, exact Modern Science is sure to come to grief some day. Nothing, at the first blush, can appear more ridiculous, more outrageously absurd than to say, for instance: The Hindû initiated Yogî knows really ten times more than the greatest European Physicist of the ultimate nature and constitution of light, both solar and lunar. Yet why is the Sushumnâ Ray believed to be that Ray which furnishes the Moon with its borrowed light? Why is it “the Ray cherished by the initiated Yogî”? Why is the Moon considered as the Deity of the Mind, by those Yogîs? We say, because light, or rather all its Occult properties, every combination and correlation of it with other forces, mental, psychic, and spiritual, was perfectly known to the old Adepts.

Therefore, although Occult Science may be less well‐informed than modern Chemistry as to the behaviour of compound elements in various cases of physical correlation, yet it is immeasurably higher in its knowledge of the ultimate Occult states of Matter, and of the true nature of Matter, than all the Physicists and Chemists of our modern day put together. Now, if we state the truth openly and in full sincerity, namely, that the ancient Initiates had a far wider knowledge of Physics, as a Science of Nature, than is possessed by our Academies of Science, all taken together, the statement will be characterized as an impertinence and an absurdity; for Physical Sciences are considered to have been carried in our age to the apex of perfection. Hence, the twitting query: Can the Occultists meet successfully the two points, namely (a) the production of heat by friction—excitation of molecular motion; and (b) the conversion of heat into mechanical force, if they hold to the old exploded theory of heat being a substance or a fluid?

To answer the question, it must first be observed that the Occult Sciences do not regard either electricity, or any of the Forces supposed to be generated by it, as Matter in any of the states known to Physical Science; to put it more clearly, none of these Forces, so‐called, is a solid, gas, or fluid. If it did not look pedantic, an Occultist would even object to electricity being called a fluid—as it is an effect and not a cause. But its Noumenon, he would say, is a Conscious Cause. The same in the cases of “Force” and the “Atom.” Let us see what an eminent Academician, Butlerof, the Chemist, had to say about these two abstractions. This great man of Science argues:

What is Force? What is it from a strictly scientific stand‐point, and as warranted by the law of conservation of energy? Conceptions of Force are resumed by our conceptions of this, that, or another mode of motion. Force is thus simply the passage of one state of motion into another state of the same; of electricity into heat and light, of heat into sound or some mechanical function, and so on.(882) The first time electric fluid was produced by man on earth it must have been by friction; hence, as well known, it is heat that produces it by disturbing its zero state,(883) and electricity exists no more on earth per se than heat or light, or any other force. They are all correlations, as Science says. When a given quantity of heat, assisted by a steam engine, is transformed into mechanical work, we speak of steam power (or force). When a falling body strikes an obstacle in its way, thereby generating heat and sound—we call it the power of collision. When electricity decomposes water or heats a platinum wire, we speak of the force of the electric fluid. When the rays of the sun are intercepted by the thermometer bulb and its quicksilver expands, we speak of the calorific energy of the sun. In short, when one state of a determined quantity of motion ceases, another state of motion equivalent to the preceding takes its place, and the result of such a transformation or correlation is—Force. In all cases where such a transformation, or the passage of one state of motion into another, is entirely absent, there no force is possible. Let us admit for a moment an absolutely homogeneous state of the Universe, and our conception of Force falls down to nought.

Therefore it becomes evident that the Force, which Materialism considers as the cause of the diversity that surrounds us, is in sober reality only an effect, a result of that diversity. From such point of view Force is not the cause of motion, but a result, while the cause of that Force, or forces, is not the Substance or Matter, but Motion itself. Matter thus must be laid aside, and with it the basic principle of Materialism, which has become unnecessary, as Force brought down to a state of motion can give no idea of the Substance. If Force is the result of motion, then it becomes incomprehensible why that motion should become witness to Matter and not to Spirit or a Spiritual essence. True, our reason cannot conceive of a motion minus something moving (and our reason is right); but the nature or esse of that something moving remains to Science entirely unknown; and the Spiritualist, in such case, has as much right to attribute it to a “Spirit,” as a Materialist to creative and all‐potential Matter. A Materialist has no special privileges in this instance, nor can he claim any. The law of the conservation of energy, as thus seen, is shown to be illegitimate in its pretensions and claims in this case. The “great dogma”—no force without matter and no matter without force—falls to the ground, and loses entirely the solemn significance with which Materialism has tried to invest it. The conception of Force still gives no idea of Matter, and compels us in no way to see in it “the origin of all origins.”(884)

We are assured that Modern Science is not Materialistic; and our own conviction tells us that it cannot be so, when its learning is real. There is good reason for this, well defined by some Physicists and Chemists themselves. Natural Sciences cannot go hand in hand with Materialism. To be at the height of their calling, men of Science have to reject the very possibility of Materialistic doctrines having aught to do with the Atomic Theory; and we find that Lange, Butlerof, Du Bois Reymond—the last probably unconsciously—and several others, have proved it. And this is, furthermore, demonstrated by the fact, that Kanâda in India, and Leucippus and Democritus in Greece, and after them Epicurus—the earliest Atomists in Europe—while propagating their doctrine of definite proportions, believed in Gods or supersensuous Entities, at the same time. Their ideas upon Matter thus differed from those now prevalent. We must be allowed to make our statement clearer by a short synopsis of the ancient and modern views of Philosophy upon Atoms, and thus prove that the Atomic Theory kills Materialism.

From the standpoint of Materialism, which reduces the beginnings of all to Matter, the Universe consists, in its fulness, of Atoms and vacuity. Even leaving aside the axiom taught by the Ancients, and now absolutely demonstrated by telescope and microscope, that Nature abhors a vacuum, what is an Atom? Professor Butlerof writes: It is, we are answered by Science, the limited division of Substance, the indivisible particle of Matter. To admit the divisibility of the atom, amounts to an admission of an infinite divisibility of Substance, which is equivalent to reducing Substance to nihil, or nothingness. Owing to a feeling of self‐ preservation alone, Materialism cannot admit infinite divisibility; otherwise, it would have to bid farewell for ever to its basic principle and thus sign its own death‐warrant.(885) Büchner, for instance, like a true dogmatist in Materialism declares that: To accept infinite divisibility is absurd, and amounts to doubting the very existence of Matter. The Atom is indivisible then, saith Materialism? Very well. Butlerof answers:

See now what a curious contradiction this fundamental principle of the Materialists is leading them into. The atom is indivisible, and at the same time we know it to be elastic. An attempt to deprive it of elasticity is unthinkable; it would amount to an absurdity. Absolutely non‐elastic atoms could never exhibit a single one of those numerous phenomena that are attributed to their correlations. Without any elasticity, the atoms could not manifest their energy, and the Substance of the Materialists would remain weeded of every force. Therefore, if the Universe is composed of atoms, then those atoms must be elastic. It is here that we meet with an insuperable obstacle. For, what are the conditions requisite for the manifestation of elasticity? An elastic ball, when striking against an obstacle, is flattened and contracts, which it would be impossible for it to do, were not that ball to consist of particles, the relative position of which experiences at the time of the blow a temporary change. This may be said of elasticity in general; no elasticity is possible without change with respect to the position of the compound particles of an elastic body. This means that the elastic body is changeful and consists of particles, or, in other words, that elasticity can pertain only to those bodies that are divisible. And the atom is elastic.(886)

This is sufficient to show how absurd are the simultaneous admissions of the non‐divisibility and of the elasticity of the Atom. The Atom is elastic, ergo, the Atom is divisible, and must consist of particles, or of sub‐atoms. And these sub‐atoms? They are either non‐elastic, and in such case they represent no dynamic importance, or, they are elastic also; and in that case, they, too, are subject to divisibility. And thus ad infinitum. But infinite divisibility of Atoms resolves Matter into simple centres of Force, i.e., precludes the possibility of conceiving Matter as an objective substance. This vicious circle is fatal to Materialism. It finds itself caught in its own nets, and no issue out of the dilemma is possible for it. If it says that the Atom is indivisible, then it will have Mechanics asking it the awkward question: How does the Universe move in this case, and how do its forces correlate? A world built on absolutely non‐elastic atoms, is like an engine without steam, it is doomed to eternal inertia.(887)

Accept the explanations and teachings of Occultism, and—the blind inertia of Physical Science being replaced by the intelligent active Powers behind the veil of Matter—motion and inertia become subservient to those Powers. It is on the doctrine of the illusive nature of Matter, and the infinite divisibility of the Atom, that the whole Science of Occultism is built. It opens limitless horizons to Substance, informed by the divine breath of its Soul in every possible state of tenuity, states still undreamed of by the most spiritually disposed Chemists and Physicists.

The above views were enunciated by an Academician, the greatest Chemist in Russia, and a recognized authority even in Europe, the late Professor Butlerof. True, he was defending the phenomena of the Spiritualists, the materializations, so‐called, in which he believed, as Professors Zöllner and Hare did, as Mr. A. Russel Wallace, Mr. W. Crookes, and many another Fellow of the Royal Society, do still, whether openly or secretly. But his argument with regard to the nature of the Essence that acts behind the physical phenomena of light, heat, electricity, etc., is no less scientific and authoritative for all that, and applies admirably to the case in hand. Science has no right to deny to the Occultists their claim to a more profound knowledge of the so‐called Forces, which, they say, are only the effects of causes generated by Powers, substantial, yet supersensuous, and beyond any kind of Matter with which Scientists have hitherto become acquainted. The most Science can do is to assume and to maintain the attitude of Agnosticism. Then it can say: Your case is no more proven than is ours; but we confess to knowing nothing in reality either about Force or Matter, or about that which lies at the bottom of the so‐called correlation of Forces. Therefore, time alone can prove who is right and who is wrong. Let us wait patiently, and meanwhile show mutual courtesy, instead of scoffing at each other.

But to do this requires a boundless love of truth and the surrender of that prestige—however false—of infallibility, which the men of Science have acquired among the ignorant and flippant, though cultured, masses of the profane. The blending of the two Sciences, the Archaic and the Modern, requires first of all the abandonment of the actual Materialistic lines. It necessitates a kind of religious Mysticism and even the study of old Magic, which our Academicians will never take up. The necessity is easily explained. Just as in old Alchemical works the real meaning of the Substances and Elements mentioned is concealed under the most ridiculous metaphors, so are the physical, psychic, and spiritual natures of the Elements (say of Fire) concealed in the Vedas;, and especially in the Purânas, under allegories comprehensible only to the Initiates. Had they no meaning, then indeed all these long legends and allegories about the sacredness of the three types of Fire, and the Forty‐Nine original Fires—personified by the Sons of Daksha’s Daughters and the Rishis, their Husbands, “who with the first Son of Brahmâ and his three descendants constitute the Forty‐nine Fires”—would be idiotic verbiage and no more. But it is not so. Every Fire has a distinct function and meaning in the worlds of the physical and the spiritual. It has, moreover, in

its essential nature a corresponding relation to one of the human psychic faculties, besides its well determined chemical and physical potencies when coming in contact with terrestrially differentiated Matter. Science has no speculations to offer upon Fire per se; Occultism and ancient religious Science have. This is shown even in the meagre and purposely veiled phraseology of the Purânas, where, as in the Vâyu Purâna, many of the qualities of the personified Fires are explained. Thus, Pâvaka is Electric Fire, or Vaidyuta; Pavamâna, the Fire produced by Friction, or Nirmathya: and Shuchi is Solar Fire, or Saura(888)—all these three being the sons of Abhimânin, the Agni (Fire), eldest son of Brahmâ and of Svâhâ. Pâvaka, moreover, is made parent to Kavyavâhana, the Fire of the Pitris: Shuchi to Havyaváhana, the Fire of the Gods; and Pavamâna to Saharaksha, the Fire of the Asuras. Now all this shows that the writers of the Purânas were perfectly conversant with the Forces of Science and their correlations, as well as with the various qualities of the latter in their bearing upon those psychic and physical phenomena which receive no credit and are now unknown to Physical Science. Very naturally, when an Orientalist, especially one with materialistic tendencies, reads that these are only appellations of Fire employed in the invocations and rituals, he calls

this “Tântrika superstition and mystification”; and he becomes more careful to avoid errors in spelling than to give attention to the secret meaning attached to the personifications, or to seek their explanation in the physical correlations of Forces, so far as these are known. So little credit, indeed, is given to the ancient Âryans for knowledge, that even such glaring passages as that in Vishnu Purâna, are left without any notice. Nevertheless, what can this sentence mean?

Then ether, air, light, water, and earth, severally united with the properties of sound and the rest, existed as distinguishable according to their qualities, ... but, possessing many and various energies and being unconnected, they could not, without combination, create living beings, not having blended with each other. Having combined therefore with one another, they assumed through their mutual association, the character of one mass of entire unity; and, from the direction of Spirit, etc.(889) This means, of course, that the writers were perfectly acquainted with correlation, and were well posted about the origin of Kosmos from the “Indiscrete Principle,” Avyaktânugrahena, as applied to Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti conjointly, and not to “Avyakta, either First Cause, or Matter,” as Wilson gives it. The old Initiates knew of no “miraculous creation,” but taught the evolution of Atoms, on our physical plane, and their first differentiation from Laya into Protyle, as Mr. Crookes has suggestively named Matter, or primordial substance, beyond the zero‐ line—there where we place Mûlaprakriti, the Root‐Principle of the World‐ Stuff and of all in the World.

This can be easily demonstrated. Take, for instance, the newly‐published catechism of the Vishishthâdvaita Vedântins, an orthodox and exoteric system, yet fully enunciated and taught in the XIth century(890) at a time when European “Science” still believed in the squareness and flatness of the Earth of Cosmas Indicopleustes of the VIth century. It teaches that before Evolution began, Prakriti, Nature, was in a condition of Laya, or of absolute homogeneity, as “Matter exists in two conditions, the Sûkshma, or latent and undifferentiated, and the Sthûla, or differentiated, condition.” Then it became Anu, atomic. It teaches of Suddasattva—“a substance not subject to the qualities of Matter, from which it is quite different,” and adds that out of that Substance the bodies of the Gods, the inhabitants of Vaikunthaloka, the Heaven of Vishnu, are formed. That every particle or atom of Prakriti contains Jîva (divine life), and is the Sharîra (body) of that Jîva which it contains, while every Jîva is in its turn the Sharîra of the Supreme Spirit, as “Parabrahman pervades every Jîva, as well as every particle of Matter.” Dualistic and anthropomorphic as may be the philosophy of the Vishishthâdvaita, when compared with that of the Advaita—the non‐dualists—it is yet supremely higher in logic and philosophy than the Cosmogony accepted either by Christianity or by its great opponent, Modern Science. The followers of one of the greatest minds that ever appeared on Earth, the Advaita Vedântins are called Atheists, because they regard all save Parabrahman, the Secondless, or the Absolute Reality as an illusion. Yet the wisest Initiates came from their ranks, as also the greatest Yogîs. The Upanishads show that they most assuredly knew not only what is the causal substance in the effects of friction, and that their forefathers were acquainted with the conversion of heat into mechanical force, but that they were also acquainted with the Noumenon of every spiritual as well as of every cosmic phenomenon.

Truly the young Brâhman who graduates in the Universities and Colleges of India with the highest honours; who starts in life as an M.A. and an LL.B., with a tail initialed from Alpha to Omega after his name, and a contempt for his national Gods proportioned to the honours received in his education in Physical Science; truly he has but to read in the light of the latter, and with an eye to the correlation of physical Forces, certain passages in his Purânas, if he would learn how much more his ancestors knew than he will ever know—unless he becomes an Occultist. Let him turn to the allegory of Purûravas and the celestial Gandharva,(891) who furnished the former with a vessel full of heavenly fire. The primeval mode of obtaining fire by friction has its scientific explanation in the Vedas, and is pregnant with meaning for him who reads between the lines. The Tretâgni (sacred triad of fires) obtained by the attrition of sticks made of the wood of the Ashvattha tree, the Bo‐tree of Wisdom and Knowledge, sticks “as many finger‐breadths long as there are syllables in the Gâyatrî,” must have a secret meaning, or else the writers of the Vedas and Purânas were no sacred writers but mystificators. That it has such a meaning, the Hindu Occultists are a proof, and they alone are able to enlighten Science, as to why and how the Fire, that was primevally One, was made three‐fold (tretâ) in our present Manvantara, by the Son of Ilâ (Vâch), the Primeval Woman after the Deluge, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu. The allegory is suggestive, in whatever Purâna it may be read and studied.

Science. The wise words of several English men of Science have now to be quoted in our favour. Ostracized for “principle’s sake” by the few, they are tacitly approved of by the many. That one of them preaches almost Occult doctrines—in some things identical with, and often amounting to a public recognition of, our “Fohat and his seven Sons,” the Occult Gandharva of the Vedas—will be recognized by every Occultist, and even by some profane readers. If such readers will open Volume V of the Popular Science Review,(892) they will find in it an article on “Sun‐Force and Earth‐Force,” by Dr. E. W. Richardson, F.R.S., which reads as follows:

At this moment, when the theory of mere motion as the origin of all varieties of force is again becoming the prevailing thought, it were almost heresy to reöpen a debate, which for a period appears, by general consent, to be virtually closed; but I accept the risk, and shall state, therefore, what were the precise views of the immortal heretic, whose name I have whispered to the readers, (Samuel Metcalfe,) respecting Sun‐Force. Starting with the argument on which nearly all physicists are agreed, that there exist in nature two agencies—matter which is ponderable, visible, and tangible, and a something which is imponderable, invisible, and appreciable only by its influence on matter—Metcalfe maintains that the imponderable and active agency which he calls “caloric” is not a mere form of motion, not a vibration amongst the particles of ponderable matter, but itself a material substance flowing from the sun through space,(893) filling the voids between the particles of solid bodies, and conveying by sensation the property called heat. The nature of caloric, or Sun‐Force, is contended for by him on the following grounds: (i) That it may be added to, and abstracted from other bodies and measured with mathematical precision. (ii) That it augments the volume of bodies, which are again reduced in size by its abstraction.

(iii) That it modifies the forms, properties, and conditions of all other bodies. (iv) That it passes by radiation through the most perfect vacuum(894) that can be formed, in which it produces the same effects on the thermometer as in the atmosphere. (v) That it exerts mechanical and chemical forces which nothing can restrain, as in volcanoes, the explosion of gunpowder, and other fulminating compounds. (vi) That it operates in a sensible manner on the nervous system, producing intense pain; and when in excess, disorganization of the tissues.

As against the vibratory theory, Metcalfe further argues that if caloric were a mere property or quality, it could not augment the volume of other bodies; for this purpose it must itself have volume, it must occupy space, and it must, therefore, be a material agent. If caloric were only the effect of vibratory motion amongst the particles of ponderable matter, it could not radiate from hot bodies without the simultaneous transition of the vibrating particles; but the fact stands out that heat can radiate from material ponderable substance without loss of weight of such substance.... With this view as to the material nature of caloric or sun‐force; with the impression firmly fixed on his mind that “everything in Nature is composed of two descriptions of matter, the one essentially active and ethereal, the other passive and motionless,”(895) Metcalfe based the hypothesis that the sun‐ force, or caloric, is a self‐active principle. For its own particles, he holds, it has repulsion; for the particles of all ponderable matter it has affinity; it attracts the particles of ponderable matter with forces which vary inversely as the squares of the distance. It thus acts through ponderable matter. If universal space were filled with caloric, sun‐force, alone (without ponderable matter), caloric would also be inactive and would constitute a boundless ocean of powerless or quiescent ether, because it would then have nothing on which to act, while ponderable matter, however inactive of itself, has “certain properties by which it modifies and controls the actions of caloric, both of which are governed by immutable laws that have their origin in the mutual relations and specific properties of each.”

And he lays down a law which he believes is absolute, and which is thus expressed: “By the attraction of caloric for ponderable matter, it unites and holds together all things; by its self‐repulsive energy it separates and expands all things.” This, of course, is almost the Occult explanation of cohesion. Dr. Richardson continues: As I have already said, _the tendency of modern teaching is to rest upon the hypothesis __ ... that heat is motion_, or, as it would, perhaps, be better stated, a specific force or form of motion.(896) But this hypothesis, popular as it is, is not one that ought to be accepted to the exclusion of the simpler views of the material nature of sun‐force, and of its influence in modifying the conditions of matter. We do not yet know sufficient to be dogmatic.(897)

The hypothesis of Metcalfe respecting sun‐force and earth‐force is not only very simple, but most fascinating.... Here are two elements in the universe, the one is ponderable matter.... The second element is the all‐pervading ether, solar fire. It is without weight, substance, form, or colour; it is matter infinitely divisible, and its particles repel each other; its rarity is such that we have no word, except ether,(898) by which to express it. It pervades and fills space, but alone it too is quiescent—dead.(899) We bring together the two elements, the inert matter, the self‐repulsive ether [?] and thereupon dead [?] ponderable matter is vivified; [Ponderable matter may be inert but never dead—this is Occult Law.] ... through the particles of the ponderable substance the ether [Ether’s second principle] penetrates, and, so penetrating, it combines with the ponderable particles and holds them in mass, holds them together in bond of union; they are dissolved in the ether.

This distribution of solid ponderable matter through ether extends, according to the theory before us, to everything that exists at this moment. The ether is all‐pervading. The human body itself is charged with the ether [Astral Light rather]; its minute particles are held together by it; the plant is in the same condition; the most solid earth, rock, adamant, crystal, metal, all are the same. But there are differences in the capacities of different kinds of ponderable matter to receive sun‐force, and upon this depends the various changing conditions of matter; the solid, the liquid, the gaseous condition. Solid bodies have attracted caloric in excess over fluid bodies, and hence their firm cohesion; when a portion of molten zinc is poured upon a plate of solid zinc, the molten zinc becomes as solid because there is a rush of caloric from the liquid to the solid, and in the equalization the particles, previously loose or liquid, are more closely brought together.... Metcalfe himself, dwelling on the above‐named phenomena, and accounting for them by the unity of principle of action, which has already been explained, sums up his argument in very clear terms, in a comment on the densities of various bodies. “Hardness and softness,” he says, “solidity and liquidity, are not essential conditions of bodies, but depend on the relative proportions of ethereal and ponderable matter of which they are composed. The most elastic gas may be reduced to the liquid form by the abstraction of caloric, and again converted into a firm solid, the particles of which would cling together with a force proportional to their augmented affinity for caloric. On the other hand, by adding a sufficient quantity of the same principle to the densest metals, their attraction for it is diminished when they are expanded into the gaseous state, and their cohesion is destroyed.”

Having thus quoted at length the heterodox views of the great “heretic”—views that to be correct, need only a little alteration of terms here and there—Dr. Richardson, undeniably an original and liberal thinker, proceeds to sum up these views, and continues: I shall not dwell at great length on this unity of sun‐force and earth‐force, which this theory implies. But I may add that out of it, or out of the hypothesis of mere motion as force, and of virtue without substance, we may gather, as the nearest possible approach to the truth on this, the most complex and profound of all subjects, the following inferences: (a) Space, inter‐stellary, inter‐planetary, inter‐material, inter‐organic, is not a vacuum, but is filled with a subtle fluid or gas, which for want of a better term(900) we may still call, as the ancients did, Aith‐ur—Solar Fire—Æther. This fluid, unchangeable in composition, indestructible, invisible,(901) pervades everything and all [ponderable] matter,(902) the pebble in the running brook, the tree overhanging, the man looking on, is charged with the ether in various degrees; the pebble less than the tree, the tree less than man. All in the planet is in like manner so charged! A world is built up in ethereal fluid, and moving through a sea of it.

(b) The ether, whatever its nature is, is from the sun and from the suns:(903) the suns are the generators of it, the store‐houses of it, the diffusers of it.(904) (c) Without the ether there could be no motion; without it particles of ponderable matter could not glide over each other; without it there could be no impulse to excite those particles into action. (d) Ether determines the constitution of bodies. Were there no ether there could be no change of constitution in substance; water, for instance, could only exist as a substance, compact and insoluble beyond any conception we could form of it. It could never even be ice, never fluid, never vapour, except for ether. (e) Ether connects sun with planet, planet with planet, man with planet, man with man. Without ether there could be no communication in the Universe; no light, no heat, no phenomenon of motion.

Thus we find that Ether and elastic Atoms are, in the alleged mechanical conception of the Universe, the Spirit and Soul of Kosmos, and that the theory—put it in any way and under any disguise—always leaves a more widely opened issue for men of Science to speculate upon beyond the line of modern Materialism(905) than the majority avails itself of. Atoms, Ether, or both, modern speculation cannot get out of the circle of ancient thought; and the latter was soaked through with archaic Occultism. Undulatory or corpuscular theory—it is all one. It is speculation from the aspects of phenomena, not from the knowledge of the essential nature of the cause and causes. When Modern Science has explained to its audience the late achievements of Bunsen and Kirchoff; when it has shown the seven colours, the primary of a ray which is decomposed in a fixed order on a screen; and has described the respective lengths of luminous waves, what has it proved? It has justified its reputation for exactness in mathematical achievement by measuring even the length of a luminous wave—“varying from about seven hundred and sixty millionths of a millimètre at the red end of the spectrum to about three hundred and ninety‐three millionths of a millimètre at the violet end.” But when the exactness of the calculation with regard to the effect on the light‐wave is thus vindicated, Science is forced to admit that the Force, which is the supposed cause, is believed to produce “inconceivably minute undulations” in some medium—“generally regarded as identical with the ethereal medium”(906)—and that medium itself is still only—a “hypothetical agent”!

Auguste Comte’s pessimism with respect to the possibility of knowing some day the chemical composition of the Sun, has not, as has been averred, been belied thirty years later by Kirchoff. The spectroscope has helped us to see that the elements, with which the modern Chemist is familiar, must in all probability be present in the Sun’s outward “robes”—not in the Sun itself; and, taking these “robes,” the solar cosmic veil, for the Sun itself, the Physicists have declared its luminosity to be due to combustion and flame, and mistaking the vital principle of that luminary for a purely material thing, have called it “chromosphere.”(907) We have only hypotheses and theories so far, not law—by any means.

The imponderable fluids have had their day; mechanical Forces are less talked about; Science has put on a new face for this last quarter of a century; but gravitation has remained, owing its life to new combinations after the old ones had nearly killed it. It may answer scientific hypotheses very well, but the question is whether it answers as well to truth, and represents a fact in nature. Attraction by itself is not sufficient to explain even planetary motion; how can it then presume to explain the rotatory motion in the infinitudes of Space? Attraction alone will never fill all the gaps, unless a special impulse is admitted for every sidereal body, and the rotation of every planet with its satellites is shown to be due to some one cause combined with attraction. And even then, says an Astronomer,(908) Science would have to name that cause. Occultism has named it for ages, and so have all the ancient Philosophers; but then all such beliefs are now proclaimed exploded superstitions. The extra‐cosmic God has killed every possibility of belief in intra‐cosmic intelligent Forces; yet who, or what, is the original “pusher” in that motion? Says Francœur:(909) When we have learned the cause, unique et speciale, that pushes, we will be ready to combine it with the one which attracts.

And again: Attraction between the celestial bodies is only repulsion: it is the sun that drives them incessantly onward; for otherwise, their motion would stop. If ever this theory of the Sun‐Force being the primal cause of all life on earth, and of all motion in heaven, is accepted, and if that other far bolder theory of Herschell, about certain organisms in the Sun, is accepted even as a provisional hypothesis, then will our teachings be vindicated, and Esoteric allegory will be shown to have anticipated Modern Science by millions of years, probably, for such are the Archaic Teachings. Mârttânda, the Sun, watches and threatens his seven brothers, the planets, without abandoning the central position to which his Mother, Aditi, relegated him. The Commentary(910) says: _He pursues them, turning slowly around himself, ... following from afar the direction in which his brothers move, on the path that encircles their houses_—or the orbit.

It is the sun‐fluids or emanations that impart all motion, and awaken all into life, in the Solar System. It is attraction and repulsion, but not as understood by modern Physics or according to the law of gravity, but in harmony with the laws of manvantaric motion designed from the early Sandhyâ, the Dawn of the rebuilding and higher reformation of the System. These laws are immutable; but the motion of all the bodies—which motion is diverse and alters with every minor Kalpa—is regulated by the Movers, the Intelligences within the Cosmic Soul. Are we so very wrong in believing all this? Well, here is a great and modern man of Science who, speaking of vital electricity, uses language far more akin to Occultism than to modern Materialistic thought. We refer the sceptical reader to an article on “The Source of Heat in the Sun,” by Robert Hunt, F.R.S.,(911) who, speaking of the luminous envelope of the Sun and its “peculiar curdy appearance,” says:

Arago proposed that this envelope should be called the Photosphere, a name now generally adopted. By the elder Herschell, the surface of this photosphere was compared to mother‐of‐ pearl.... It resembles the ocean on a tranquil summer‐day, when its surface is slightly crisped by a gentle breeze.... Mr. Nasmyth has discovered a more remarkable condition than any that had previously been suspected, ... objects which are peculiarly lens‐ shaped ... like “willow leaves,” ... different in size ... not arranged in any order, ... crossing each other in all directions ... with an irregular motion among themselves.... They are seen approaching to and receding from each other, and sometimes assuming new angular positions, so that the appearance ... has been compared to a dense shoal of fish, which, indeed, they resemble in shape.... The size of these objects gives a grand idea of the gigantic scale upon which physical (?) operations are carried out in the sun. They cannot be less than 1,000 miles in length, and from two to three hundred miles in breadth. The most probable conjecture which has been offered respecting those leaf or lens‐like objects, is that the photosphere(912) is an immense ocean of gaseous matter [what kind of “matter”?] ... in a state of intense [apparent] incandescence, and that they are perspective projections of the sheets of flame.

Solar “flames” seen through telescopes are reflections, says Occultism. But the reader has already seen what Occultists have to say to this. Whatever they [those sheets of flame] may be, it is evident they are the immediate sources of solar heat and light. Here we have a surrounding envelope of photogenic matter,(913) which pendulates with mighty energies, and by communicating its motion to the ethereal medium in stellar space, produces heat and light in far distant worlds. We have said that those forms have been compared to certain organisms, and Herschell says, “Though it would be too daring to speak of such organizations as partaking of life [why not?],(914) yet we do not know that vital action is competent to develop heat, light, and electricity.”... Can it be that there is truth in this fine thought? May the pulsing of vital matter in the central sun of our system be the source of all that life which crowds the earth, and without doubt overspreads the other planets, to which the sun is the mighty minister? Occultism answers these queries in the affirmative; and Science will find this to be the case, one day. Again, Mr. Hunt writes:

But regarding Life—Vital Force—as a power far more exalted than either light, heat, or electricity, and indeed capable of exerting a controlling power over them all [this is absolutely Occult] ... we are certainly disposed to view with satisfaction that speculation which supposes the photosphere to be the primary seat of vital power, and to regard with a poetic pleasure that hypothesis which refers the solar energies to Life.(915) Thus, we have an important scientific corroboration for one of our fundamental dogmas—namely, that (a) the Sun is the store‐house of Vital Force, which is the Noumenon of Electricity; and (b) that it is from its mysterious, never‐to‐be‐fathomed depths, that issue those life‐currents which thrill through Space, as through the organisms of every living thing on Earth. For see what another eminent Physician says, who calls this, our life‐fluid, “Nervous Ether.” Change a few sentences in the article, extracts from which now follow, and you have another quasi‐Occult treatise on Life‐Force. It is again Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S., who gives his views as follows on “Nervous Ether,” as he has on “Sun‐Force” and “Earth‐ Force”:

The idea attempted to be conveyed by the theory is, that between the molecules of the matter, solid or fluid, of which the nervous organisms, and, indeed, of which all the organic parts of a body are composed, there exists a refined subtle medium, vaporous or gaseous, which holds the molecules in a condition for motion upon each other, and for arrangement and reärrangement of form; a medium by and through which all motion is conveyed; by and through which the one organ or part of the body is held in communion with the other parts, by which and through which the outer living world communicates with the living man; a medium, which, being present, enables the phenomena of life to be demonstrated, and which, being universally absent, leaves the body actually dead. And the whole Solar System falls into Pralaya—the author might have added. But let us read further:

I use the word ether in its general sense as meaning a very light, vaporous or gaseous matter; I use it, in short, as the astronomer uses it when he speaks of the ether of Space, by which he means a subtle but material medium.... When I speak of a nervous ether, I do not convey that the ether is existent in nervous structure only: I believe truly that it is a special part of the nervous organization; but, as nerves pass into all structures that have capacities for movement and sensibilities, so the nervous ether passes into all such parts; and as the nervous ether is, according to my view, a direct product from blood, so we may look upon it as a part of the atmosphere of the blood.... The evidence in favour of the existence of an elastic medium pervading the nervous matter and capable of being influenced by simple pressure is all‐ convincing.... In nervous structure there is, unquestionably, a true nervous fluid, as our predecessors taught.(916) The precise chemical (?)(917) composition of this fluid is not yet well known; the physical characters of it have been little studied. Whether it moves in currents, we do not know; whether it circulates, we do not know; whether it is formed in the centres and passes from them to the nerves, or whether it is formed everywhere where blood enters nerve, we do not know. The exact uses of the fluid we do not consequently know.

It occurs to my mind, however, that the veritable fluid of nervous matter is not of itself sufficient to act as the subtle medium that connects the outer with the inner universe of man and animal. I think—and this is the modification I suggest to the older theory—there must be another form of matter present during life; a matter which exists in the condition of vapour or gas, which pervades the whole nervous organism, surrounds as an enveloping atmosphere(918) each molecule of nervous structure, and is the medium of all motion, communicated to and from the nervous centres.... When it is once fairly presented to the mind that during life there is in the animal body a finely diffused form of matter, a vapour filling every part—and even stored in some parts; a matter constantly renewed by the vital chemistry; a matter as easily disposed of as the breath, after it has served its purpose—a new flood of light breaks on the intelligence.(919)

A new flood of light is certainly thrown on the wisdom of ancient and mediæval Occultism and its votaries. For Paracelsus wrote the same thing more than three hundred years ago, in the sixteenth century, as follows: The whole of the Microcosm is potentially contained in the Liquor Vitæ, a nerve fluid ... in which is contained the nature, quality, character, and essence of beings.(920) The Archæus is an essence that is equally distributed in all parts of the human body.... The Spiritus Vitæ takes its origin from the Spiritus Mundi. Being an emanation of the latter, it contains the elements of all cosmic influences, and is therefore the cause by which the action of the stars [cosmic forces] upon the invisible body of man [his vital Linga Sharîra] may be explained.(921) Had Dr. Richardson studied all the secret works of Paracelsus, he would not have been obliged to confess so often, “we do not know,” “it is not known to us,” etc. Nor would he ever have written the following sentence, recanting the best portions of his independent rediscovery.

It may be urged that in this line of thought is included no more than the theory of the existence of the ether ... supposed to pervade space.... It may be said that this universal ether pervades all the organism of the animal body as from without, and as part of every organization. This view would be Pantheism physically discovered, if it were true [!!]. It fails to be true because it would destroy the individuality of every individual sense.(922)

We fail to see this, and we know it is not so. Pantheism may be “physically rediscovered.” It was known, seen, and felt by the whole of antiquity. Pantheism manifests itself in the vast expanse of the starry heavens, in the breathing of the seas and oceans, and in the quiver of life of the smallest blade of grass. Philosophy rejects one finite and imperfect God in the universe, the anthropomorphic deity of the Monotheist as represented by his followers. It repudiates, in its name of Philo‐theo‐sophia, the grotesque idea that Infinite, Absolute Deity should, or rather could, have any direct or indirect relation to finite illusive evolutions of Matter, and therefore it cannot imagine a universe outside that Deity, or the absence of that Deity from the smallest speck of animate or inanimate Substance. This does not mean that every bush, tree or stone is God or a God; but only that every speck of the manifested material of Kosmos belongs to, and is the Substance of, God, however low it may have fallen in its cyclic gyration through the Eternities of the Ever‐Becoming; and also that every such speck individually, and Kosmos collectively, is an aspect and a reminder of that universal One Soul—which Philosophy refuses to call God, thus limiting the eternal and ever‐present Root and Essence.

Why either the Ether of Space or “Nervous Ether” should “destroy the individuality of every sense,” seems incomprehensible to one acquainted with the real nature of that “Nervous Ether” under its Sanskrit, or rather Esoteric and Kabalistic name. Dr. Richardson agrees that: If we did not individually produce the medium of communication between ourselves and the outer world, if it were produced from without and adapted to one kind of vibration alone, there were fewer senses required than we possess: for, taking two illustrations only—ether of light is not adapted for sound, and yet we hear as well and see; while air, the medium of motion of sound, is not the medium of light, and yet we see and hear.

This is not so. The opinion that Pantheism “fails to be true because it would destroy the individuality of every individual sense” shows that all the conclusions of the learned doctor are based on the modern physical theories, though he would fain reform them. But he will find it impossible to do this unless he allows the existence of spiritual senses to replace the gradual atrophy of the physical. “We see and hear,” in accordance (of course, in Dr. Richardson’s mind) with the explanations of the phenomena of sight and hearing, afforded by that same Materialistic Science which postulates that we cannot see and hear otherwise. The Occultists and Mystics know better. The Vedic Âryans were as familiar with the mysteries of sound and colour on the physical plane as are our Physiologists, but they had also mastered the secrets of both on planes inaccessible to the Materialist. They knew of a double set of senses; spiritual and material. In a man who is deprived of one or more senses, the remaining senses become the more developed; for instance, the blind man will recover his sight through the senses of touch, of hearing, etc., and he who is deaf will be able to hear through sight, by seeing audibly the words uttered by the lips and mouth of the speaker. But these are cases that belong to the world of Matter still. The spiritual senses, those that act on a higher plane of consciousness, are rejected à priori by Physiology, because the latter is ignorant of the Sacred Science.

It limits the action of Ether to vibrations, and, dividing it from air—though air is simply differentiated and compound Ether—makes it assume functions to fit in with the special theories of the Physiologist. But there is more real Science in the teachings of the Upanishads, when these are correctly understood, than the Orientalists, who do not understand them at all, are ready to admit. Mental as well as physical correlations of the seven senses—seven on the physical and seven on the mental planes—are clearly explained and defined in the Vedas, and especially in the Upanishad called Anugîtâ:

The indestructible and the destructible, such is the double manifestation of the Self. Of these the indestructible is the existent [the true essence or nature of Self, the underlying principles], the manifestation as an individual (entity) is called the destructible.(923) Thus speaks the Ascetic in the Anugîtâ, and also: Every one who is twice‐born [initiated] knows such is the teaching of the ancients.... Space is the first entity.... Now Space [Âkâsha, or the Noumenon of Ether] has one quality ... and that is stated to be sound only ... [and the] qualities of sound [are] Shadja, Rishabha, together with Gândhâra, Madhyama, Panchama, and beyond these [should be understood to be] Nishâda and Dhaivata [the Hindû gamut].(924) These seven notes of the scale are the principles of sound. The qualities of every Element, as of every sense, are septenary, and to judge and dogmatize on them from their manifestation on the material or objective plane—likewise sevenfold in itself—is quite arbitrary. For it is only by the SELF emancipating itself from these seven causes of illusion, that we can acquire the knowledge (Secret Wisdom) of the qualities of objects of sense on their dual plane of manifestation, the visible and the invisible. Thus it is said:

Hear me ... state this wonderful mystery.... Hear also the assignment of causes exhaustively. The nose, and the tongue, and the eye, and the skin, and the ear as the fifth [organ of sense] mind and understanding,(925) these seven [senses] should be understood to be the causes of (the knowledge of) qualities. Smell, and taste, and colour, sound, and touch as the fifth, the object of the mental operation, and the object of the understanding [the highest spiritual sense or perception], these seven are causes of action. He who smells, he who eats, he who sees, he who speaks, and he who hears as the fifth, he who thinks, and he who understands, these seven should be understood to be the causes of the agents. These [the agents] being possessed of qualities (sattva, rajas, tamas), enjoy their own qualities, agreeable and disagreeable.(926)

The modern commentators, failing to comprehend the subtle meaning of the ancient Scholiasts, take the sentence, “causes of the agents,” to mean “that the powers of smelling, etc., when attributed to the Self, make him appear as an agent, as an active principle” (!), which is entirely fanciful. These “seven” are understood to be the causes of the agents, because “the objects are causes, as their enjoyment causes an impression.” It means esoterically that they, these seven senses, are caused by the agents, which are the “deities,” for otherwise what does, or can, the following sentence mean? “Thus,” it is said, “these seven [senses] are the causes of emancipation”—i.e., when these causes are made ineffectual. And, again, the sentence, “among the learned [the wise Initiates] who understand everything, the qualities which are in the position [in the nature, rather] of the deities, each in its place,” etc., means simply that the “learned” understand the nature of the Noumena of the various phenomena; and that “qualities,” in this instance, mean the qualities of the high Planetary or Elementary Gods or Intelligences, which rule the elements and their products, and not at all the “senses,” as the modern commentator thinks. For the learned do not suppose their senses to have aught to do with them, any more than with their SELF.

Then we read in the Bhagavadgîtâ of Krishna, the Deity, saying: Only some know me truly. Earth, water, fire, air, space [or Âkâsha, Æther], mind, understanding and egoism [or the perception of all the former on the illusive plane], ... this is a lower form of my nature. Know (that there is) another (form of my) nature, and higher than this, which is animate, O you of mighty arms! and by which this universe is upheld.... All this is woven upon me, like numbers of pearls upon a thread.(927) I am the taste in the water, O son of Kuntî! I am the light of the sun and moon. I am ... sound (“i.e., the occult essence which underlies all these and the other qualities of the various things mentioned”—Transl.), in space ... the fragrant smell in the earth, refulgence in the fire ... etc.(928) Truly, then, one should study Occult Philosophy before one begins to seek for and verify the mysteries of Nature on its surface alone, as he alone “who knows the truth about the qualities of Nature, who understands the creation of all entities ... is emancipated” from error. Says the Preceptor:

Accurately understanding the great (tree) of which the unperceived [Occult Nature, the root of all] is the sprout from the seed [Parabrahman], which consists of the understanding [Mahat, or the Universal Intelligent Soul] as its trunk, the branches of which are the great egoism,(929) in the holes of which are the sprouts, namely, the senses, of which the great [occult, or invisible] elements are the flower‐bunches,(930) the gross elements [the gross objective matter], the smaller boughs, which are always possessed of leaves, always possessed of flowers ... which is eternal and the seed of which is the Brahman [the Deity]; and cutting it with that excellent sword—knowledge [Secret Wisdom]—one attains immortality and casts off birth and death.(931) This is the Tree of Life, the Ashvattha tree, after the cutting of which only, Man, the slave of life and death, can be emancipated.

But the men of Science know nought, nor will they hear of the “Sword of Knowledge” used by the Adepts and Ascetics. Hence the one‐sided remarks of even the most liberal among them, based on and flowing from undue importance given to the arbitrary divisions and classification of Physical Science. Occultism heeds them very little, and Nature heeds them still less. The whole range of physical phenomena proceeds from the Primary of Æther—Âkâsha, as dual‐natured Âkâsha proceeds from undifferentiated Chaos, so‐called, the latter being the primary aspect of Mûlaprakriti, the Root‐ Matter and the first abstract Idea one can form of Parabrahman. Modern Science may divide its hypothetically conceived Ether in as many ways as it likes; the real Æther of Space will remain as it is throughout. It has its seven “principles,” as all the rest of Nature has, and where there was no Æther there would be no “sound,” as it is the vibrating sounding‐ board in Nature in all its seven differentiations. This is the first mystery the Initiates of old have learned. Our present normal physical senses were, from our present point of view, abnormal in those days of slow and progressive downward evolution and fall into Matter. And there was a day when all that in our modern times is regarded as exceptional, so puzzling to the Physiologists now compelled to believe in them—such as thought‐transference, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.; in short, all that is now called “wonderful and abnormal”—when all that and much more belonged to the senses and faculties common to all humanity.

We are, however, cycling back and cycling forward; that is to say, that having lost in spirituality what we acquired in physical development until almost the end of the Fourth Race, we are now as gradually and imperceptibly losing in the physical all that we regain once more in the spiritual reëvolution. This process must go on, until the period which will bring the Sixth Root‐Race on a line parallel with the spirituality of the Second Race, a long extinct mankind.

But this will hardly be understood at present. We must return to Dr. Richardson’s hopeful, though somewhat incorrect hypothesis about “Nervous Ether.” Under the misleading translation of the word as “Space,” Âkâsha has just been shown in the ancient Hindû system as the “first born” of the One, having but one quality, “Sound,” which is septenary. In Esoteric language this One is the Father‐Deity, and Sound is synonymous with the Logos, Verbum, or Son. Whether consciously or otherwise, it must be the latter; and Dr. Richardson, while preaching an Occult doctrine, chooses the lowest form of the septenary nature of that Sound, and speculates upon it, adding: The theory, I offer, is that the nervous ether is an animal product. In different classes of animals it may differ in physical quality so as to be adapted to the special wants of the animal, but essentially it plays one part in all animals, and is produced, in all, in the same way.

Herein lies the nucleus of error leading to all the resultant mistaken views. This “Nervous Ether” is the lowest principle of the Primordial Essence which is Life. It is Animal Vitality diffused in all Nature, and acting according to the conditions it finds for its activity. It is not an “animal product,” but the living animal, the living flower and plant, are its products. The animal tissues only absorb it according to their more or less morbid or healthy state—as do physical materials and structures (in their primogenial state, nota bene)—and, from the moment of the birth of the Entity, are regulated, strengthened, and fed by it. It descends in a larger supply to vegetation in the Sushumnâ Sun‐Ray which lights and feeds the Moon, and it is through her beams that it pours its light upon, and penetrates man and animal, more during their sleep and rest, than when they are in full activity. Therefore Dr. Richardson errs again in stating that:

The nervous ether is not, according to my idea of it, in itself active, nor an excitant of animal motion in the sense of a force; but it is essential as supplying the conditions by which the motion is rendered possible. [It is just the reverse.].... It is the conductor of all vibrations of heat, of light, of sound, of electrical action, of mechanical friction.(932) It holds the nervous system throughout in perfect tension, during states of life [true]. By exercise it is disposed of [rather generated] ... and when demand for it is greater than the supply, its deficiency is indicated by nervous collapse or exhaustion.(933) It accumulates in the nervous centres during sleep, bringing them, if I may so speak, to their due tone, and therewith raising the muscles to awakening and renewed life. Just so; this is quite correct and comprehensible. Therefore: The body fully renewed by it, presents capacity for motion, fulness of form, life. The body bereft of it presents inertia, the configuration of shrunken death, the evidence of having lost something physical that was in it when it lived.

Modern Science denies the existence of a “vital principle.” This extract is a clear proof of its grand mistake. But this “physical something,” that we call life‐fluid—the Liquor Vitæ of Paracelsus—has not deserted the body, as Dr. Richardson thinks. It has only changed its state from activity to passivity, and has become latent, owing to the too morbid state of the tissues, on which it has hold no longer. Once the rigor mortis is absolute, the Liquor Vitæ will reäwaken into action, and will begin its work on the atoms chemically. Brahmâ‐Vishnu, the Creator and the Preserver of Life, will have transformed himself into Shiva the Destroyer. Lastly Dr. Richardson writes: The nervous ether may be poisoned; it may, I mean, have diffused through it, by simple gaseous diffusion, other gases or vapours derived from without; it may derive from within products of substances swallowed and ingested, or gases of decomposition produced during disease in the body itself.(934) And the learned gentleman might have added on the same Occult principle: That the “Nervous Ether” of one person can be poisoned by the “Nervous Ether” of another person or by his “auric emanations.” But see what Paracelsus said of this “Nervous Ether”:

The Archæus is of a magnetic nature, and attracts or repulses other sympathetic or antipathetic forces belonging to the same plane. The less power of resistance for astral influences a person possesses, the more will he be subject to such influences. The vital force is not enclosed in man, but radiates [within and] around him like a luminous sphere [aura] and it may be made to act at a distance.... It may poison the essence of life [blood] and cause diseases, or it may purify it after it has been made impure, and restore the health.(935) That the two, “Archæus” and “Nervous Ether,” are identical, is shown by the English Scientist, who says that generally the tension of it may be too high or too low; that it may be so: Owing to local changes in the nervous matter it invests.... Under sharp excitation it may vibrate as if in a storm and plunge every muscle under cerebral or spinal control into uncontrolled motion—unconscious convulsions.

This is called nervous excitation, but no one, except the Occultist, knows the reason of such nervous perturbation, or explains the primary causes of it. The principle of Life may kill when too exuberant, as much as when there is too little of it. But this “principle” on the manifested plane, that is to say, our plane, is but the effect and the result of the intelligent action of the “Host,” or collective Principle, the manifesting Life and Light. It is itself subordinate to, and emanates from, the ever‐ invisible, eternal and Absolute One Life, in a descending and reäscending scale of hierarchic degrees, a true septenary ladder, with Sound, the Logos, at the upper end, and the Vidyâdharas(936), the inferior Pitris, at the lower. Of course, the Occultists are fully aware of the fact that the vitalist “fallacy,” so derided by Vogt and Huxley, is, nevertheless, still countenanced in very high scientific quarters, and, therefore, they are happy to feel that they do not stand alone. Thus, Professor de Quatrefages writes:

It is very true that we do not know what life is; but no more do we know what the force is that set the stars in motion.... Living beings are heavy, and therefore subject to gravitation; they are the seat of numerous and various physico‐chemical phenomena which are indispensable to their existence, and which must be referred to the action of etherodynamy [electricity, heat, etc.]. But these phenomena are here manifested under the influence of another force.... Life is not antagonistic to the inanimate forces, but it governs and rules their action by its laws.(937)

A SHORT ANALYSIS OF THE COMPOUND AND SINGLE ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE AS AGAINST THE OCCULT TEACHINGS. HOW FAR THIS THEORY, AS GENERALLY ACCEPTED, IS SCIENTIFIC. In his reply to Dr. Gull’s attack on the theory of Vitality, which is inseparably connected with the Elements of the Ancients in the Occult Philosophy, Professor Beale, the great Physiologist, has a few words as suggestive as they are beautiful: There is a mystery in life—a mystery which has never been fathomed, and which appears greater, the more deeply the phenomena of life are studied and contemplated. In living centres—far more central than the centres seen by the highest magnifying powers, in centres of living matter, where the eye cannot penetrate, but towards which the understanding may tend—proceed changes of the nature of which the most advanced physicists and chemists fail to afford us the conception: nor is there the slightest reason to think that the nature of these changes will ever be ascertained by physical investigation, inasmuch as they are certainly of an order or nature totally distinct from that to which any other phenomenon known to us can be relegated. This “mystery,” or the origin of the Life Essence, Occultism locates in the same Centre as the nucleus of prima materia of our Solar System, for they are one.

As says the Commentary: _The Sun is the heart of the Solar World [System] and its brain is hidden behind the [visible] Sun. Thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve‐ centre of the great body, and the waves of the life‐essence flow into each artery and vein.... The planets are its limbs and pulses._ It has been stated elsewhere(938) that Occult philosophy denies that the Sun is a globe in combustion, but defines it simply as a world, a glowing sphere, the real Sun being hidden behind, and the visible Sun being only its reflection, its shell. The Nasmyth willow leaves, mistaken by Sir John Herschell for “solar inhabitants,” are the reservoirs of solar vital energy; “the vital electricity that feeds the whole system; the sun in abscondito being thus the storehouse of our little Cosmos, self‐ generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out,” and the visible Sun only a window cut into the real solar palace and presence, which, however, shews without distortion the interior work.

Thus, during the manvantaric solar period, or life, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our System, of which the Sun is the heart—like the circulation of the blood in the human body; the Sun contracting as rhythmically as the human heart does at every return of it. Only, instead of performing the round in a second or so, it takes the solar blood ten of its years to circulate, and a whole year to pass through its auricle and ventricle before it washes the lungs, and passes thence back to the great arteries and veins of the System.

This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of eleven years when the number of solar spots increases,(939) the increase being due to the contraction of the Solar Heart. The Universe, our World in this case, breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the Earth; and as our Globe itself breathes every twenty‐four hours. The dark region is not due to the “absorption exerted by the vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun, and interposed between the observer and the photosphere,” as Father Secchi would have it,(940) nor are the spots formed “by the matter [heated gaseous matter] itself which the irruption projects upon the solar disk.” The phenomenon is similar to the regular and healthy pulsation of the heart, as the life fluid passes through its hollow muscles. Could the human heart be made luminous, and the living and throbbing organ made visible, so as to have it reflected upon a screen, such as is used by lecturers on Astronomy to show the moon, for instance, then every one would see the sun‐spot phenomena repeated every second, and that they were due to contraction and the rushing of the blood. We read in a work on Geology that it is the dream of Science that:

All the recognized chemical elements will one day be found but modifications of a single material element.(941)

Occult Philosophy has taught this since the existence of human speech and language, adding, however, on the principle of the immutable law of analogy, “as it is above, so it is below,” another of its axioms, that there is neither Spirit nor Matter, in reality, but only numberless aspects of the One ever‐hidden Is, or Sat. The homogeneous primordial Element is simple and single, only on the terrestrial plane of consciousness and sensation, since Matter, after all, is nothing more than the sequence of our own states of consciousness, and Spirit an idea of psychic intuition. Even on the next higher plane, that single element which is defined on our Earth by current Science, as the ultimate undecomposable constituent of some kind of Matter, would be pronounced in the world of a higher spiritual perception to be something very complex indeed. Our purest water would be found to yield, instead of its two declared simple elements of oxygen and hydrogen, many other constituents, undreamed of by our modern terrestrial Chemistry. As in the realm of Matter, so in the realm of Spirit, the shadow of that which is cognized on the plane of objectivity exists on that of pure subjectivity. The speck of the perfectly homogeneous Substance, the sarcode of the Hæckelian Moneron, is now viewed as the archebiosis of terrestrial existence (Mr. Huxley’s protoplasm)(942); and Bathybius Hæckelii has to be traced to its pre‐ terrestrial archebiosis. This is first perceived by the Astronomers at its third stage of evolution, and in the “secondary creation,” so‐called. But the students of Esoteric Philosophy understand well the secret meaning of the Stanza:

Brahmâ ... has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both evolved and unevolved.... Spirit, O Twice‐born [Initiate], is the leading aspect of Brahmâ. The next is a two‐fold aspect [of Prakriti and Purusha] ... both evolved and unevolved; and Time is the last!(943) Anu is one of the names of Brahmâ, as distinct from Brahman, and it means “atom”; anîyâmsam anîyasâm, “the most atomic of the atomic,” the “immutable and imperishable (achyuta) Purushottama.” Surely, then, the elements now known to us—be their number whatever it may—as they are understood and defined at present, are not, nor can they be, the primordial Elements. Those were formed from “the curds of the cold radiant Mother” and “the fire‐seed of the hot Father,” who “are one,” or, to express it in the plainer language of Modern Science, those Elements had their genesis in the depths of the primordial Fire‐mist, the masses of incandescent vapour of the irresolvable nebulæ; for, as Professor Newcomb shows,(944) resolvable nebulæ do not constitute a class of proper nebulæ. More than half of those, he thinks, which were at first mistaken for nebulæ, are what he calls “starry clusters.”

The elements now known have arrived at their state of permanency in this Fourth Round and Fifth Race. They have a short period of rest before they are propelled once more on their upward spiritual evolution, when the “living fire of Orcus” will dissociate the most irresolvable, and scatter them again into the primordial One. Meanwhile the Occultist goes further, as has been shown in the Commentaries on the Seven Stanzas. Hence he can hardly hope for any help or recognition from Science, which will reject both his “anîyâmsam anîyasâm,” the absolutely spiritual Atom, and his Mânasaputras or Mind‐ born Men. In resolving the “single material element” into one absolute irresolvable Element, Spirit, or Root‐Matter, thus placing it at once outside the reach and province of Physical Philosophy—he has, of course but little in common with the orthodox men of Science. He maintains that Spirit and Matter are two Facets of the unknowable Unity, their apparently contrasted aspects depending, (a) on the various degrees of differentiation of Matter, and (b) on the grades of consciousness attained by man himself. This is, however, Metaphysics, and has little to do with Physics—however great in its own terrestrial limitation that physical Philosophy may now be.

Nevertheless, once that Science admits, if not the actual existence, at any rate, the possibility of the existence, of a Universe with its numberless forms, conditions, and aspects built out of a “single Substance,”(945) it has to go further. Unless it also admits the possibility of One Element, or the One Life of the Occultists, it will have to hang up that “single Substance,” especially if limited to only the solar nebulæ, in mid air, like the coffin of Mahomet, though minus the attractive magnet that sustained that coffin. Fortunately for the speculative Physicists, if we are unable to state with any degree of precision what the nebular theory does imply, we have, thanks to Professor Winchell, and several dissident Astronomers, been able to learn what it does not imply.

Unfortunately, this is far from clearing even the most simple of the problems that have vexed, and do still vex, the men of learning in their search after truth. We have to proceed with our enquiries, starting with the earliest hypotheses of Modern Science, if we would discover where and why it sins. Perchance it may be found that Stallo is right, after all, and that the blunders, contradictions and fallacies made by the most eminent men of learning are simply due to their abnormal attitude. They are, and want to remain Materialistic quand même, and yet “the general principles of the atomo‐mechanical theory—the basis of modern Physics—are substantially identical with the cardinal doctrines of ontological Metaphysics.” Thus, “the fundamental errors of ontology become apparent in proportion to the advance of physical science.”(946) Science is honeycombed with metaphysical conceptions, but the Scientists will not admit the charge, and fight desperately to put atomo‐mechanical masks on purely incorporeal and spiritual laws in Nature, on our plane—refusing to admit their substantiality even on other planes, the bare existence of which they reject à priori.

It is easy to show, however, how Scientists, wedded to their materialistic views, have, ever since the days of Newton, endeavoured to put false masks on fact and truth. But their task is becoming every year more difficult; and every year also, Chemistry, beyond all the other sciences, approaches nearer and nearer the realm of the Occult in Nature. It is assimilating the very truths taught by the Occult Sciences for ages, but hitherto bitterly derided. “Matter is eternal,” says the Esoteric Doctrine. But the Matter the Occultists conceive of in its laya, or zero state, is not the matter of Modern Science, not even in its most rarefied gaseous state. Mr. Crookes’ “radiant matter” would appear Matter of the grossest kind in the realm of the beginnings, as it becomes pure Spirit before it returns back even to its first point of differentiation. Therefore, when the Adept or Alchemist adds that, though Matter is eternal, for it is Pradhâna, yet Atoms are born at every new Manvantara, or reconstruction of the universe, it is no such contradiction as a Materialist, who believes in nothing beyond the Atom, might think. There is a difference between manifested and unmanifested Matter, between Pradhâna, the beginningless and endless cause, and Prakriti, or the manifested effect. Says the Shloka: