The Secret Doctrine

... Let us now turn to the upper portion of the scheme. With hydrogen of atomic weight = 1, there is little room for other elements, save, perhaps, for hypothetical Helium. But what if we get “through the looking‐glass,” and cross the zero line in search of new principles—what shall we find on the other side of zero? Dr. Carnelly asks for an element of negative atomic weight; here is ample room and verge enough for a shadow series of such unsubstantialities. Helmholtz says that electricity is probably as atomic as matter; is electricity one of the negative elements, and the luminiferous ether another? Matter, as we now know it, does not here exist; the forms of energy which are apparent in the motions of matter are as yet only latent possibilities. A substance of negative weight is not inconceivable.(1005) But can we form a clear conception of a body which combines with other bodies in proportions expressible by negative qualities?(1006) A genesis of the elements such as is here sketched out would not be confined to our little solar system, but would probably follow the same general sequence of events in every centre of energy now visible as a star.

Before the birth of atoms to gravitate towards one another, no pressure could be exercised; but at the outskirts of the fire‐mist sphere, within which all is protyle—at the shell on which the tremendous forces involved in the birth of a chemical element exert full sway—the fierce heat would be accompanied by gravitation sufficient to keep the newly‐born elements from flying off into space. As temperature increases, expansion and molecular motion increase, molecules tend to fly asunder, and their chemical affinities become deadened; but the enormous: pressure of the gravitation of the mass of atomic matter, outside what I may for brevity call the birth‐shell, would counteract the action of heat. Beyond the birth‐shell would be a space in which no chemical action could take place, owing to the temperature there being above what is called the dissociation‐point for compounds. In this space the lion and the lamb would lie down together: phosphorus and oxygen would mix without union; hydrogen and chlorine would show no tendency to closer bonds; and even fluorine, that energetic gas which chemists have only isolated within the last month or two, would float about free and uncombined.

Outside this space of free atomic matter would be another shell, in which the formed chemical elements would have cooled down to the combination point, and the sequence of events so graphically described by Mr. Mattieu Williams in The Fuel of the Sun would now take place, culminating in the solid earth and the commencement of geological time (p. 19). This is, in strictly scientific, but beautiful language, the description of the evolution of the differentiated Universe in the Secret Teachings. The learned gentleman closes his address in words, every sentence of which is like a flash of light from beyond the dark veil of materiality, hitherto thrown upon the exact sciences, and is a step forward towards the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Occult. Thus he says:

We have glanced at the difficulty of defining an element; we have noticed, too, the revolt of many leading physicists and chemists against the ordinary acceptation of the term element; we have weighed the improbability of their eternal existence,(1007) or their origination by chance. As a remaining alternative, we have suggested their origin by a process of evolution like that of the heavenly bodies according to Laplace, and the plants and animals of our globe according to Lamarck, Darwin, and Wallace.(1008) In the general array of the elements, as known to us, we have seen a striking approximation to that of the organic world.(1009) In lack of direct evidence of the decomposition of any element, we have sought and found indirect evidence.... We have next glanced at the view of the genesis of the elements; and lastly we have reviewed a scheme of their origin suggested by Professor Reynolds’ method of illustrating the periodic classification(1010).... Summing up all the above considerations we cannot, indeed, venture to assert positively _that our so‐called elements have been evolved from one primordial matter; but we may contend that the balance of evidence, I think, fairly weighs in favour of this speculation_.

Thus inductive Science, in its branches of Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry, while advancing timidly towards the conquest of Nature’s secrets in her final effects on our terrestrial plane, recedes to the days of Anaxagoras and the Chaldees in its discoveries of (a) the origin of our phenomenal world, and (b) the modes of formation of the bodies that compose the Universe. And having, for their cosmogonical hypotheses to turn back to the beliefs of the earliest philosophers, and the systems of the latter—systems that were all based on the teachings of a universal Secret Doctrine with regard to primeval Matter, with its properties, functions, and laws—have we not the right to hope that the day is not far off when Science will show a better appreciation of the Wisdom of the Ancients than it has hitherto done?

No doubt Occult Philosophy could learn a good deal from exact Modern Science; but the latter, on the other hand, might profit by ancient learning in more than one way, and chiefly in Cosmogony. It might learn, for instance, the mystical signification, alchemical and transcendental, of the many imponderable substances that fill interplanetary space, and which, interpenetrating each, are the direct cause, at the lower end, of the production of natural phenomena manifesting through so‐called vibration. The knowledge of the real, not the hypothetical, nature of Ether, or rather of the Âkâsha, and other mysteries, in short, can alone lead to the knowledge of Forces. It is that Substance against which the Materialistic school of the Physicists rebels with such fury, especially in France,(1011) and which exact Science has to advocate notwithstanding. They cannot make away with it without incurring the risk of pulling down the pillars of the Temple of Science, like a modern Samson, and of getting buried under its roof.

The theories built upon the rejection of Force, outside and independent of Matter pure and simple, have all been shown to be fallacious. They do not, and cannot, cover the ground, and many of the scientific data are thus proved to be unscientific. “Ether produced Sound” is said in the Purânas, and the statement is laughed at. Sound is the result of the vibrations of the air, we are corrected. And what is air? Could it exist if there were no etheric medium in Space to buoy up its molecules? The case stands simply thus. Materialism cannot admit the existence of anything outside Matter, because with the acceptance of an imponderable Force—the source and head of all the physical Forces—other intelligent Forces would have to be virtually admitted, and that would lead Science very far. For it would have to accept as a sequel the presence in Man of a still more spiritual power—entirely independent, for once, of any kind of Matter about which Physicists know anything. Hence, apart from a hypothetical Ether of Space and gross physical bodies, the whole sidereal and unseen Space is, in the sight of Materialists, one boundless void in Nature—blind, unintelligent, useless.

And now the next question is: What is that Cosmic Substance, and how far can one go in suspecting its nature or in wrenching from it its secrets, thus feeling justified in giving it a name? How far, especially, has Modern Science gone in the direction of those secrets, and what is it doing to solve them? The latest hobby of Science, the Nebular Theory, may afford us some answer to this question. Let us then examine the credentials of this Nebular Theory.

Modern Nebular Theory. Of late, Esoteric Cosmogony has been frequently opposed by the phantom of this theory and its ensuing hypotheses. “Can this most scientific teaching be denied by your Adepts?” it is asked. “Not entirely,” is the reply, “but the admissions of the men of Science themselves kill it; and there remains nothing for the Adepts to deny.” To make of Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed, the study of spiritual and psychic, as well as of physical, Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the anatomy of man, discussed of old by the profane from the point of view of his shell‐side, and in ignorance of the interior work. Even Plato, the greatest Philosopher of his country, was guilty, before his Initiation, of such statements as that liquids pass into the stomach through the lungs. Without metaphysics, as Mr. H. J. Slack says, real Science is inadmissible.

The nebulæ exist; yet the Nebular Theory is wrong. A nebula exists in a state of entire elemental dissociation. It is gaseous and—something else besides, which can hardly be connected with gases as these are known to Physical Science; and it is self‐luminous. But that is all. The sixty‐two “coincidences” enumerated by Professor Stephen Alexander,(1012) confirming the Nebular Theory, may all be explained by Esoteric Science; though, as this is not an astronomical work, the refutations are not attempted at present. Laplace and Faye come nearer to the correct theory than any; but of the speculations of Laplace there remains little in the present theory beyond its general features. Nevertheless, says John Stuart Mill: There is in Laplace’s theory nothing hypothetical; it is an example of legitimate reasoning from present effect to its past cause; it assumes nothing more than that objects which really exist obey the laws which are known to be obeyed by all terrestrial objects resembling them.(1013) From such an eminent logician as was Mill, this would be valuable, if it could only be proved that “terrestrial objects resembling” celestial objects at such a distance as are the nebulæ, resemble those objects in reality, and not only in appearance.

Another of the fallacies, from the Occult standpoint, embodied in the modern theory as it now stands, is the hypothesis that the Planets were all detached from the Sun; that they are bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh; whereas the Sun and the Planets are only co‐uterine brothers, having the same nebular origin, but in a different mode from that postulated by modern Astronomy. The many objections raised by some opponents of the modern Nebular Theory against the homogeneity of original diffuse Matter, on the ground of the uniformity in the composition of the fixed Stars, do not affect the question of that homogeneity at all, but only the theory itself. Our solar nebula may not be completely homogeneous, or, rather, it may fail to reveal itself as such to the Astronomers, and yet be de facto homogeneous. The Stars do differ in their constituent materials, and even exhibit elements quite unknown on Earth; nevertheless, this does not affect the point that Primeval Matter—Matter as it appeared even in its first differentiation from its laya‐condition(1014)—is yet to this day homogeneous, at immense distances, in the depths of infinitude, and likewise at points not far removed from the outskirts of our Solar System.

Finally, there does not exist one single fact brought forward by the learned objectors against the Nebular Theory (false as it is, and hence, illogically enough, fatal to the hypothesis of the homogeneity of Matter), that can withstand criticism. One error leads to another. A false premiss will naturally lead to a false conclusion, although an inadmissible inference does not necessarily affect the validity of the major proposition of the syllogism. Thus, one may leave every side‐issue and inference from the evidence of spectra and lines, as simply provisional for the present, and abandon all matters of detail to Physical Science. The duty of the Occultist lies with the Soul and Spirit of Cosmic Space, not merely with its illusive appearance and behaviour. That of official Physical Science is to analyze and study its shell—the Ultima Thule of the Universe and Man, in the opinion of Materialism.

With the latter, Occultism has nought to do. It is only with the theories of such men of learning as Kepler, Kant, Oersted, and Sir William Herschell, who believed in a Spiritual World, that Occult Cosmogony might treat, and attempt a satisfactory compromise. But the views of those Physicists differed vastly from the latest modern speculations. Kant and Herschell had in their mind’s eye speculations upon the origin and the final destiny, as well as upon the present aspect, of the Universe, from a far more philosophical and psychic standpoint; whereas modern Cosmology and Astronomy now repudiate anything like research into the mysteries of Being. The result is what might be expected: complete failure and inextricable contradictions in the thousand and one varieties of so‐called Scientific Theories, and in this Theory as in all others. The nebular hypothesis, involving the theory of the existence of a Primeval Matter, diffused in a nebulous condition, is of no modern date in Astronomy, as everyone knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had already taught that the sidereal bodies were formed through the progressive condensation of a primordial pregenetic Matter, which had almost a negative weight, and was spread out through Space in an extremely sublimated condition.

Tycho Brahé, who viewed the Milky Way as an ethereal substance, thought the new star that appeared in Cassiopeia, in 1572, had been formed out of that Matter.(1015) Kepler believed that the star of 1606 had likewise been formed out of the ethereal substance that fills the universe.(1016) He attributed to that same Ether the apparition of a luminous ring round the Moon, during the total eclipse of the Sun observed at Naples in 1605.(1017) Still later, in 1714 the existence of a self‐luminous Matter was recognized by Halley in the Philosophical Transactions. Finally, the journal of this name published in 1811 the famous hypothesis of the eminent Astronomer, Sir William Herschell, on the transformation of the nebulæ into Stars,(1018) and after this the Nebular Theory was accepted by the Royal Academies. In Five Years of Theosophy, on p. 245, may be read an article headed, “Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?” The answer there given is: _No; they do not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative truth of the scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many so‐called __“__exploded__”__ old theories, which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid succession._

This was asserted at the time to be “an evasive answer.” Such disrespect to official Science, it was argued, must be justified by the replacement of the orthodox speculation by another theory more complete, and having a firmer ground to stand upon. To this there is but one reply: It is useless to give out isolated theories with regard to things embodied in a complete and consecutive system, for, when separated from the main body of the teaching, they would necessarily lose their vital coherence and would thus do no good when studied independently. To be able to appreciate and accept the Occult views on the Nebular Theory, we must study the whole Esoteric cosmogonical system. And the time has hardly arrived for the Astronomers to be asked to accept Fohat and the Divine Builders. Even the undeniably correct surmises of Sir William Herschell, which had nothing “supernatural” in them, as to the Sun’s being called a “globe of fire,” perhaps metaphorically, and his early speculations about the nature of that which is now called the Nasmyth Willow‐leaf Theory, only caused that most eminent of all Astronomers to be smiled at by other, far less eminent, colleagues, who saw and now see in his ideas purely “imaginative and fanciful theories.” Before the whole Esoteric System could be given out and

appreciated by the Astronomers, the latter would have to return to some of those “antiquated ideas,” not only to those of Herschell, but also to the dreams of the oldest Hindû Astronomers, and thus abandon their own theories, which are none the less “fanciful” because they have appeared nearly eighty years later than the one, and many thousands of years later than the others. Foremost of all they would have to repudiate their ideas of the Sun’s solidity and incandescence; the Sun “glowing” most undeniably, but not “burning.” Then the Occultists state, with regard to the “willow‐leaves,” that those “objects,” as Sir William Herschell called them, are the immediate sources of the solar light and heat. And though the Esoteric Teaching does not regard these as he did—namely, as “organisms” partaking of the nature of life, for the Solar “Beings” will hardly place themselves within telescopic focus—yet it asserts that the whole Universe is full of such “organisms,” conscious and active according to the proximity or distance of their planes to, or from, our plane of consciousness; and finally that the great Astronomer was right while speculating on those supposed “organisms,” in saying that “we do not know that vital action is incompetent to develop at once heat, light, and electricity.” For, at the risk of being laughed at by

the whole world of Physicists, the Occultists maintain that all the “Forces” of the Scientists have their origin in the Vital Principle, the One Life collectively of our Solar System—that “Life” being a portion, or rather one of the aspects, of the One Universal LIFE.

We may, therefore—as in the article under consideration, wherein, on the authority of the Adepts, it was maintained that it is “sufficient to make a résumé of what the solar Physicists do not know”—we may, we maintain, define our position with regard to the modern Nebular Theory and its evident incorrectness, by simply pointing out facts diametrically opposed to it in its present form. And to begin with, what does it teach? Summarizing the aforesaid hypotheses, it becomes plain that Laplace’s theory—now made quite unrecognizable, moreover—was an unfortunate one. He postulates in the first place Cosmic Matter, existing in a state of diffuse nebulosity “so fine that its presence could hardly have been suspected.” No attempt is made by him to penetrate into the Arcana of Being, except as regards the immediate evolution of our small Solar System.

Consequently, whether one accepts or rejects his theory in its bearing upon the immediate cosmological problems presented for solution, he can only be said to have thrown back the mystery a little further. To the eternal query: “Whence Matter itself; whence the evolutionary impetus determining its cyclic aggregations and dissolutions; whence the exquisite symmetry and order into which the primeval Atoms arrange and group themselves?” no answer is attempted by Laplace. All we are confronted with, is a sketch of the probable broad principles on which the actual process is assumed to be based. Well, and what is this now celebrated note on the said process? What has he given so wonderfully new and original, that its ground‐work, at any rate, should have served as a basis for the modern Nebular Theory? The following is what one gathers from various astronomical works.

Laplace thought that, in consequence of the condensation of the atoms of the primeval nebula, according to the “law” of gravity, the now gaseous, or perhaps, partially liquid mass, acquired a rotatory motion. As the velocity of this rotation increased, it assumed the form of a thin disc; finally, the centrifugal force overpowering that of cohesion, huge rings were detached from the edge of the whirling incandescent masses, and these rings contracted necessarily by gravitation (as accepted) into spheroidal bodies, which would necessarily still continue to preserve the orbit previously occupied by the outer zone from which they were separated.(1019) The velocity of the outer edge of each nascent planet, he said, exceeding that of the inner, there results a rotation on its axis. The more dense bodies would be thrown off last; and finally, during the preliminary state of their formation, the newly‐segregated orbs in their turn throw off one or more satellites. In formulating the history of the rupture and planetation of rings Laplace says:

Almost always each ring of vapours must have broken up into numerous masses, which, moving with a nearly uniform velocity, must have continued to circulate at the same distance around the sun. These masses must have taken a spheroidal form with a motion of rotation in the same direction as their revolution, since the inner molecules (those nearest the sun) would have less actual velocity than the exterior ones. They must then have formed as many planets in a state of vapour. But, if one of them was sufficiently powerful to unite successively, by its attraction, all the others around its centre, the ring of vapours must have been thus transformed into a single spheroidal mass of vapours circulating around the sun with a rotation in the same direction as its revolution. The latter case has been the more common, but the solar system presents us the first case, in the four small planets which move between Jupiter and Mars.

While few will be found to deny the “magnificent audacity of this hypothesis,” it is impossible not to recognize the insurmountable difficulties with which it is attended. Why, for instance, do we find that the satellites of Neptune and Uranus display a retrograde motion? Why, in spite of its closer proximity to the Sun, is Venus less dense than the Earth? Why, again, is the more distant Uranus denser than Saturn? How is it that there are so many variations in the inclination of their axes and orbits in the supposed progeny of the central orb; that such startling variations in the size of the Planets are noticeable; that the satellites of Jupiter are more dense by ·288 than their primary; that the phenomena of meteoric and cometary systems still remain unaccounted for? To quote the words of a Master:

They [the Adepts] _find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for every oblate spheroid, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How, indeed, can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only __“__about one‐third that of the Earth, and its density only about one‐fourth greater than the Earth,__”__ should have a polar compression more than ten times greater than the latter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be __“__twenty‐seven times greater, and its density only about one‐fifth that of the Earth__”__ should have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the Earth? Or why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty‐five times greater than Mercury for centripetal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury’s? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces, as taught by Modern Science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the Sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the Earth’s equatorial surface, and only about one‐fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the poles of the solar axis. In other and clearer words, the Sun, with only one‐fourth of our Earth’s density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily, so far as the __“__Adepts__”__ are aware._

Therefore, do they [the Adepts] _say, that the great men of Science of the West, knowing ... next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulæ, or the physical constitution of the Sun, the Stars, or even the Moon, are imprudent to speak so confidently as they do about the __“__central mass of the Sun,__”__ whirling out into space planets, comets, and what not.... We maintain that it_ [the Sun] _evolves out only the life‐principle, the Soul of these __ bodies, giving and receiving it back, in our little Solar System, as the __“__Universal Life‐Giver__”__ ... in the Infinitude and Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the Microcosm of the One Macrocosm as man is the former when compared with his own little Solar Cosmos._(1020)

The essential power of all the cosmic and terrestrial Elements to generate within themselves a regular and harmonious series of results, a concatenation of causes and effects, is an irrefutable proof that they are either animated by an Intelligence, ab extrâ or ab intrâ, or conceal such within or behind the “manifested veil.” Occultism does not deny the certainty of the mechanical origin of the Universe; it only claims the absolute necessity of mechanicians of some sort behind or within those Elements—a dogma with us. It is not the fortuitous assistance of the Atoms of Lucretius, as he himself knew well, that built the Kosmos and all in it. Nature herself contradicts such a theory. Celestial Space, containing Matter so attenuated as Ether, cannot be called on, with or without attraction, to explain the common motion of the sidereal hosts. Although the perfect accord of their inter‐revolution indicates clearly the presence of a mechanical cause in Nature, Newton, who of all men had most right to trust to his deductions, was nevertheless forced to abandon the idea of ever explaining the original impulse given to the millions of orbs, by merely the laws of known Nature and its material Forces. He recognized fully the limits that separate the action of natural Forces from that of the Intelligences that set the immutable laws in order and action. And if a Newton had to renounce such hope, which of the modern materialistic pigmies has the right of saying: “I know better?”

A cosmogonical theory, to become complete and comprehensible, has to start with a Primordial Substance diffused throughout boundless Space, of an intellectual and divine nature. That Substance must be the Soul and Spirit, the Synthesis and Seventh Principle of the manifested Kosmos, and, to serve as a spiritual Upâdhi to this, there must be the sixth, its vehicle—Primordial Physical Matter, so to speak, though its nature must escape for ever our limited normal senses. It is easy for an Astronomer, if endowed with an imaginative faculty, to build a theory of the emergence of the Universe out of Chaos, by simply applying to it the principles of mechanics. But such a Universe will always prove a Frankenstein’s monster with respect to its scientific human creator; it will lead him into endless perplexities. The application of mechanical laws only can never carry the speculator beyond the objective world; nor will it unveil to men the origin and final destiny of Kosmos. This is whither the Nebular Theory has led Science. In sober fact and truth this Theory is twin sister to that of Ether, and both are the offspring of necessity; one is as indispensable to account for the transmission of light, as is the other to explain the problem of the origin of the Solar Systems. The question with Science is, how the same homogeneous Matter(1021) could, obeying the laws of Newton, give birth to bodies—Sun, Planets, and their satellites—subject to conditions of identity of motion, and formed of such heterogeneous elements.

Has the Nebular Theory helped to solve the problem, even if applied solely to bodies considered as inanimate and material? We say: most decidedly not. What progress has it made since 1811, when first Sir William Herschell’s paper, with its facts based on observation and showing the existence of nebular matter, made the sons of the Royal Society “shout for joy”? Since then a still greater discovery, through spectrum analysis, has permitted the verification and corroboration of Sir William Herschell’s conjecture. Laplace demanded some kind of primitive “world‐stuff” to prove the idea of progressive world‐evolution and growth. Here it is, as offered two millenniums ago.

The “world‐stuff,” now called nebulæ, was known from the highest antiquity. Anaxagoras taught that, upon differentiation, the resulting commixture of heterogeneous substances remained motionless and unorganized, until finally the “Mind”—the collective body of Dhyân Chohans, we say—began to work upon, and communicated to, them motion and order.(1022) This theory is now taken up, so far as concerns its first portion; the last, that of any “Mind” interfering, being rejected. Spectrum analysis reveals the existence of nebulæ formed entirely of gases and luminous vapours. Is this the primitive nebular Matter? The spectra reveal, it is said, the physical conditions of the Matter which emits cosmic light. The spectra of the resolvable and the irresolvable nebulæ are shown to be entirely different, the spectra of the latter showing their physical state to be that of glowing gas or vapour. The bright lines of one nebula reveal the existence of hydrogen, and of other material substances known and unknown. The same as to the atmospheres of the Sun and Stars. This leads to the direct inference that a Star is formed by the condensation of a nebula; hence that even the metals themselves are formed on earth by the condensation of hydrogen or of some other primitive matter, some ancestral cousin to helium, perhaps, or some yet unknown stuff. This does not clash with the Occult Teachings. And this is the problem that Chemistry is trying to solve; and it must succeed sooner or later in the task, accepting nolens volens, when it does, the Esoteric Teaching. But when this does happen, it will kill the Nebular Theory as it now stands.

Meanwhile Astronomy cannot accept in any way, if it is to be regarded as an exact Science, the present theory of the filiation of Stars—even if Occultism does so in its own way, seeing that it explains this filiation differently—because Astronomy has not one single physical datum to show for it. Astronomy could anticipate Chemistry in proving the existence of the fact, if it could show a planetary nebula exhibiting a spectrum of three or four bright lines, gradually condensing and transforming into a Star, with a spectrum all covered with a number of dark lines. But The question of the variability of the nebulæ, even as to their form, is yet one of the mysteries of Astronomy. The data of observation possessed so far are of too recent an origin, too uncertain, to permit us to affirm anything.(1023)

Since its discovery, the magic power of the spectroscope has revealed to its adepts only one single transformation of a Star of this kind; and even that showed directly the reverse of what is needed as proof in favour of the Nebular Theory; for it revealed a Star transforming itself into a planetary nebula. As related in The Observatory,(1024) the temporary Star, discovered by J. F. J. Schmidt in the constellation Cygnus, in November, 1876, exhibited a spectrum broken by very brilliant lines. Gradually, the continuous spectrum and most of the lines disappeared, leaving finally one single brilliant line, which appeared to coincide with the green line of the nebula.

Though this metamorphosis is not irreconcileable with the hypothesis of the nebular origin of the Stars, nevertheless this single solitary case rests on no observation whatever, least of all on direct observation. The occurrence may have been due to several other causes. Since Astronomers are inclined to think our Planets are tending toward precipitation into the Sun, why should not that Star have blazed up owing to a collision of such precipitated Planets, or, as many suggest, the appulse of a Comet? Be that as it may, the only known instance of star‐transformation since 1811 is not favourable to the Nebular Theory. Moreover, on the question of this Theory, as on all others, Astronomers disagree.

In our own age, and before Laplace ever thought of it, Buffon, being very much struck by the identity of motion in the Planets, was the first to propose the hypothesis that the Planets and their satellites originated in the bosom of the Sun. Forthwith and for this purpose, he invented a special Comet, supposed to have torn out, by a powerful oblique blow, the quantity of matter necessary for their formation. Laplace gave its dues to the “Comet” in his Exposition du Système du Monde.(1025) But the idea was seized and even improved upon by a conception of the alternate evolution, from the Sun’s central mass, of Planets apparently without weight or influence on the motion of the visible Planets—and as evidently without any more existence than the likeness of Moses in the Moon.

But the modern theory is also a variation on the systems elaborated by Kant and Laplace. The idea of both was that, at the origin of things, all that Matter which now enters into the composition of the planetary bodies was spread over all the space comprized in the Solar System—and even beyond. It was a nebula of extremely small density, and its condensation gradually gave birth, by a mechanism that has hitherto never been explained, to the various bodies of our System. This is the original Nebular Theory, an incomplete yet faithful repetition—a short chapter out of the large volume of universal Esoteric Cosmogony—of the teachings of the Secret Doctrine. And both systems, Kant’s and Laplace’s, differ greatly from the modern Theory, redundant with conflicting sub‐theories and fanciful hypotheses. Say the Teachers:

The essence of cometary matter [and of that which composes the Stars] ... _is totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest Chemists and Physicists of the earth are familiar.... While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity_ [owing to the chemical action of terrestrial light upon the intercepted rays] _of terrestrial and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space, have not been detected, nor proven to be identical with those observed on our own planet._(1026) Mr. Crookes says almost the same in the fragment quoted from his lecture, Elements and Meta‐Elements. C. Wolf, Member of the Institute, Astronomer of the Observatory, Paris, observes: At the utmost the nebular hypothesis can only show in its favour, with W. Herschell, the existence of planetary nebulæ in various degrees of condensation, and of spiral nebulæ, with nuclei of condensation on the branches and centre.(1027) But, in fact, the knowledge of the bond that unites the nebulæ to the stars is yet denied to us; and lacking as we do direct observation, we are even debarred from establishing it on the analogy of chemical composition.(1028)

Even if the men of Science—leaving aside the difficulty arising out of such undeniable variety and heterogeneity of matter in the constitution of nebulæ—did admit, with the Ancients, that the origin of all the visible and invisible heavenly bodies must be sought for in one primordial homogeneous world‐stuff, in a kind of Pre‐Protyle,(1029) it is evident that this would not put an end to their perplexities. Unless they admit also that our actual visible Universe is merely the Sthûla Sharîra, the gross body, of the sevenfold Kosmos, they will have to face another problem; especially if they venture to maintain that its now visible bodies are the result of the condensation of that one and single Primordial Matter. For mere observation shows them that the operations which produced the actual Universe are far more complex than could ever be embraced in that theory. First of all, there are two distinct classes of “irresolvable” nebulæ, as Science itself teaches. The telescope is unable to distinguish between these two classes, but the spectroscope can do so, and notices an essential difference between their physical constitutions.

The question of the resolvability of the nebulæ has been often presented in too affirmative a manner and quite contrary to the ideas expressed by the illustrious experimenter with the spectra of these constellations—Mr. Huggins. Every nebula whose spectrum contains only bright lines is gaseous, it is said, and hence is irresolvable; every nebula with a continuous spectrum must end by resolving into stars with an instrument of sufficient power. This assumption is contrary at once to the results obtained, and to spectroscopic theory. The “Lyra” nebula, the “Dumb‐bell” nebula, the central region of the nebula of Orion, appear resolvable, and show a spectrum of bright lines; the nebula of Canes Venatici is not resolvable, and gives a continuous spectrum. Because, indeed, the spectroscope informs us of the physical state of the constituent matter of the stars, but affords us no notions of their modes of aggregation. A nebula formed of gaseous globes (or even of nuclei, faintly luminous, surrounded by a powerful atmosphere) would give a spectrum of lines and be still resolvable; such seems to be the state of Huggins’ region in the Orion nebula. A nebula formed of solid or fluidic particles in a state of incandescence, a true cloud, will give a continuous spectrum and will be irresolvable. Some of these nebulæ, Wolf tells us,

Have a spectrum of three or four bright lines, others a continuous spectrum. The first are gaseous, the others formed of a pulverulent matter. The former must constitute a veritable atmosphere: it is among these that the solar nebula of Laplace has to be placed. The latter form an ensemble of particles that may be considered as independent, and the rotation of which obeys the laws of internal weight: such are the nebulæ adopted by Kant and Faye. Observation allows us to place the one as the other at the very origin of the planetary world. But when we try to go beyond and ascend to the primitive chaos which has produced the totality of the heavenly bodies, we have first to account for the actual existence of these two classes of nebulæ. If the primitive chaos were a cold luminous gas,(1030) one could understand how the contraction resulting from attraction could have heated it and made it luminous. We have to explain the condensation of this gas to the state of incandescent particles, the presence of which is revealed to us in certain nebulæ by the spectroscope. If the original chaos was composed of such particles, how did certain of their portions pass into the gaseous state, while others have preserved their primitive condition?

Such is the synopsis of the objections and difficulties in the way of the acceptance of the Nebular Theory, brought forward by the French savant, who concludes this interesting argument by declaring that: The first part of the cosmogonical problem—what is the primitive matter of chaos; and how did that matter give birth to the sun and stars?—thus remains to this day in the domain of romance and of mere imagination.(1031) If this is the last word of Science upon the subject, whither then should we turn in order to learn what the Nebular Theory is supposed to teach? What, in fact, is this theory? What it is, no one seems to know for certain. What it is not—we learn from the erudite author of World‐Life. He tells us that it: i. Is not a theory of the evolution of the Universe. It is primarily a genetic explanation of the phenomena of the solar system, and accessorily a co‐ordination in a common conception of the principal phenomena in the stellar and nebular firmament, as far as human vision has been able to penetrate.

ii. It does not regard the comets as involved in that particular evolution which has produced the Solar System. [The Esoteric Doctrine does, because it, too, “recognizes the comets as forms of cosmic existence co‐ordinated with earlier stages of nebular evolution”; and it actually assigns to them chiefly the formation of all worlds.] iii. It does not deny an antecedent history of the luminous fire mist—[the secondary stage of evolution in the Secret Doctrine] [and] ... makes no claim to having reached an absolute beginning. [And even it allows that this] fire mist may have previously existed in a cold, non‐luminous and invisible condition. iv. [And that finally] it does not profess to discover the ORIGIN of things, but only a stadium in material history.... [leaving] the philosopher and the theologian as free as they ever were to seek the origin of the modes of being.(1032) But this is not all. Even the greatest philosopher of England—Mr. Herbert Spencer—arrayed himself against this fantastic theory by saying that (a) “The problem of existence is not resolved” by it; (b) the nebular hypothesis “throws no light upon the origin of diffused matter”; and (c) that “the nebular hypothesis (as it now stands) implies a First Cause.”(1033)

The latter, we are afraid, is more than our modern Physicists have bargained for. Thus, it seems that the poor “hypothesis” can hardly expect to find help or corroboration even in the world of the Metaphysicians. Considering all this, the Occultists believe they have a right to present their Philosophy, however misunderstood and ostracized it may be at present. And they maintain that this failure of the Scientists to discover the truth is entirely due to their Materialism and their contempt for transcendental Sciences. Yet although the scientific minds in our century are as far from the true and correct doctrine of Evolution as ever, there may be still some hope left for the future, for even now we find another Scientist giving us a faint glimmer of it. In an article in the Popular Science Review on “Recent Researches in Minute Life,” we find Mr. H. J. Slack, F.C.S., Sec. R.M.S., saying:

There is an evident convergence of all sciences, from physics to chemistry and physiology, toward some doctrine of evolution and development, of which the facts of Darwinism will form part, but what ultimate aspect this doctrine will take, there is little, if any, evidence to show, and perhaps it will not be shaped by the human mind until metaphysical as well as physical inquiries are much more advanced.(1034) This is a happy forecast indeed. The day may come, then, when “Natural Selection,” as taught by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, will, in its ultimate modification, form only a part of our Eastern doctrine of Evolution, which will be Manu and Kapila Esoterically explained.

This is, then, the last word of Physical Science up to the present year, 1888. Mechanical laws will never be able to prove the homogeneity of Primeval Matter, except inferentially and as a desperate necessity, when there will remain no other issue—as in the case of Ether. Modern Science is secure only in its own domain and region; within the physical boundaries of our Solar System, beyond which everything, every particle of Matter, is different from the Matter it knows, and where Matter exists in states of which Science can form no idea. This Matter, which is truly homogeneous, is beyond human perception, if perception is tied down merely to the five senses. We feel its effects through those INTELLIGENCES which are the results of its primeval differentiation, whom we name Dhyân Chohans, called in the Hermetic works the “Seven Governors”; those to whom Pymander, the “Thought Divine,” refers as the “Building Powers,” and whom Asklepios calls the “Supernal Gods.” This Matter—the real Primordial Substance, the Noumenon of all the “matter” we know of—some of our Astronomers even have been led to believe in, for they despair of the possibility of ever accounting for rotation, gravitation, and the origin of any mechanical physical laws, unless these INTELLIGENCES be admitted by Science. In the above‐quoted work upon Astronomy by Wolf,(1035) the

author endorses fully the theory of Kant, and the latter theory, if not in its general aspect, at any rate in some of its features, reminds one strongly of certain Esoteric Teachings. Here we have the world’s system “reborn from its ashes,” through a nebula—the emanation from the bodies, dead and dissolved in Space, resultant of the incandescence of the Solar Centre—reänimated by the combustible matter of the Planets. In this theory, generated and developed in the brain of a young man hardly twenty‐ five years of age, who had never left his native place, Königsberg, a small town of Northern Prussia, one can hardly fail to recognize either the presence of an inspiring external power, or an evidence of the reïncarnation which the Occultists see in it. It fills a gap which Newton, with all his genius, failed to bridge. And surely it is our Primeval Matter, Âkâsha, that Kant had in view, when he postulated a universally pervading primordial Substance, in order to solve Newton’s difficulty, and his failure to explain, by natural forces alone, the primitive impulse imparted to the Planets. For, as he remarks in Chapter viii, if it is once admitted that the perfect harmony of the Stars and Planets and the coincidence of their orbital planes prove the existence of a natural Cause, which

would thus be the Primal Cause, “that Cause cannot really be the matter which fills to‐day the heavenly spaces.” It must be that which filled Space—was Space—originally, whose motion in differentiated Matter was the origin of the actual movements of the sidereal bodies; and which, “in condensing itself in those very bodies, thus abandoned the space that is to‐day found void.” In other words, it is of that same Matter that are now composed the Planets, Comets, and the Sun himself, and that Matter, having originally formed itself into those bodies, has preserved its inherent quality of motion; which quality, now centred in their nuclei, directs all motion. A very slight alteration of words in this is needed, and a few additions, to make of it our Esoteric Doctrine.

The latter teaches that it is this original, primordial Prima Materia, divine and intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind, the Daiviprakriti—the Divine Light(1036) emanating from the Logos—which formed the nuclei of all the “self‐moving” orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever‐present moving‐power and life‐principle, the Vital Soul of the Suns, Moons, Planets, and even of our Earth; the former latent, the latter active—the invisible Ruler and Guide of the gross body attached to, and connected with, its Soul, which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of these respective Planetary Spirits. Another quite Occult Doctrine is the theory of Kant, that the Matter of which the inhabitants and the animals of other Planets are formed is of a lighter and more subtle nature and of a more perfect conformation, in proportion to their distance from the Sun. The latter is too full of Vital Electricity, of the physical, life‐giving principle. Therefore, the men on Mars are more ethereal than we are, while those on Venus are more gross, though far more intelligent, if less spiritual.

The last doctrine is not quite ours—yet these Kantian theories are as metaphysical, and as transcendental as any Occult Doctrines; and more than one man of Science would, if he but dared speak his mind, accept them as Wolf does. From this Kantian Mind and Soul of the Suns and Stars to the Mahat (Mind) and Prakriti of the Purânas there is but a step. After all, the admission of this by Science would be only the admission of a natural cause, whether it would or would not stretch its belief to such metaphysical heights. But then Mahat, the Mind, is a “God,” and Physiology admits “mind” only as a temporary function of the material brain, and no more. The Satan of Materialism now laughs at all alike, and denies the visible as well as the invisible. Seeing in light, heat, electricity, and even in the phenomenon of life, only properties inherent in Matter, it laughs whenever life is called the Vital Principle, and derides the idea of its being independent of and distinct from the organism.

But here again scientific opinions differ as in everything else, and there are several men of Science who accept views very similar to ours. Consider, for instance, what Dr. Richardson, F.R.S. (elsewhere quoted at length) says of that “Vital Principle,” which he calls “Nervous Ether”: I speak only of a veritable material agent, refined, it may be, to the world at large, but actual and substantial: an agent having quality of weight and of volume, an agent susceptible of chemical combination, and thereby of change of physical state and condition, an agent passive in its action, moved always, that is to say, by influences apart from itself,(1037) obeying other influences, an agent possessing no initiative power, no vis or energeia naturæ,(1038) but still playing a most important, if not a primary part in the production of the phenomena resulting from the action of the energeia upon visible matter.(1039)

As Biology and Physiology now deny, in toto, the existence of a Vital Principle, this extract, together with De Quatrefages’ admission, is a clear confirmation that there are men of Science who take the same views about “things Occult” as do Theosophists and Occultists. These recognize a distinct Vital Principle independent of the organism—material, of course, as physical Force cannot be divorced from Matter, but of a Substance existing in a state unknown to Science. Life for them is something more than the mere interaction of molecules and atoms. There is a Vital Principle without which no molecular combinations could ever have resulted in a living organism, least of all in the so‐called “inorganic” Matter of our plane of consciousness. By “molecular combinations” are meant, of course, those of the Matter of our present illusive perceptions, which Matter energizes only on this, our plane. And this is the chief point at issue.(1040)

Thus the Occultists are not alone in their beliefs. Nor are they so foolish, after all, in rejecting even the “gravity” of Modern Science along with other physical laws, and in accepting instead attraction and repulsion. They see, moreover, in these two opposite Forces only the two aspects of the Universal Unit, called Manifesting Mind; in which aspects, Occultism, through its great Seers, perceives an innumerable Host of operative Beings: cosmic Dhyân Chohans, Entities, whose essence, in its dual nature, is the Cause of all terrestrial phenomena. For that essence is con‐substantial with the universal Electric Ocean, which is LIFE; and being dual, as said—positive and negative—it is the emanations of that duality that act now on Earth under the name of “modes of motion”; even Force having now become objectionable as a word, for fear it should lead someone, even in thought, to separate it from Matter! It is, as Occultism says, the dual effects of that dual essence, which have now been called centripetal and centrifugal forces, now negative and positive poles, or polarity, heat and cold, light and darkness, etc.

And it is further maintained that even the Greek and Roman Catholic Christians are wiser in believing, as they do—even if blindly connecting and tracing them all to an anthropomorphic God—in Angels, Archangels, Archons, Seraphs, and Morning Stars, in all those theological deliciæ humani generis, in short, that rule the Cosmic Elements, than Science is, in disbelieving in them altogether, and in advocating its mechanical Forces. For these act very often with more than human intelligence and pertinency. Nevertheless, that intelligence is denied and attributed to blind chance. But, as De Maistre was right in calling the law of gravitation merely a word which replaced “the thing unknown,” so are we right in applying the same remark to all the other Forces of Science. And if it is objected that the Count was an ardent Roman Catholic, then we may cite Le Couturier, as ardent a Materialist, who said the same thing, as did also Herschell and many others.(1041)

From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a Star to a rush‐light, from the Sun to the vital heat of the meanest organic being—the world of Form and Existence is an immense chain, the links of which are all connected. The Law of Analogy is the first key to the world‐problem, and these links have to be studied coördinately in their Occult relations to each other. When, therefore, the Secret Doctrine—postulating that conditioned or limited space (location) has no real being except in this world of illusion, or, in other words, in our perceptive faculties—teaches that every one of the higher, as of the lower worlds, is interblended with our own objective world; that millions of things and beings are, in point of localization, around and in us, as we are around, with, and in them; this is no mere metaphysical figure of speech, but a sober fact in Nature, however incomprehensible to our senses.

But one has to understand the phraseology of Occultism before criticizing what it asserts. For example, the Doctrine refuses—as Science does, in one sense—to use the words “above” and “below,” “higher” and “lower,” in reference to invisible spheres, since here they are without meaning. Even the terms “East” and “West” are merely conventional, necessary only to aid our human perceptions. For though the Earth has its two fixed points in the poles, North and South, yet both East and West are variable relatively to our own position on the Earth’s surface, and in consequence of its rotation from West to East. Hence, when “other worlds” are mentioned—whether better or worse, more spiritual or still more material, though both invisible—the Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside or inside our Earth, as the theologians and the poets do; for their location is nowhere in the space known to, or conceived by, the profane. They are, as it were, blended with our world—interpenetrating it and interpenetrated by it. There are millions and millions of worlds and firmaments visible to us; there are still greater numbers beyond those visible to the telescope, and many of the latter kind do not belong to our objective sphere of existence. Although as invisible as if they were millions of miles beyond our Solar System, they are yet with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to their respective inhabitants as ours is to us.

But, again, the relation of these worlds to ours is not that of a series of egg‐shaped boxes enclosed one within the other, like the toys called Chinese nests; each is entirely under its own special laws and conditions, having no direct relation to our sphere. The inhabitants of these, as already said, may be, for all we know, or feel, passing through and around us as if through empty space, their very habitations and countries being interblended with ours, though not disturbing our vision, because we have not yet the faculties necessary for discerning them. Yet by their spiritual sight the Adepts, and even some seers and sensitives, are always able to discern, whether in a greater or smaller degree, the presence and close proximity to us of Beings pertaining to other spheres of life. Those of the spiritually higher worlds communicate only with those terrestrial mortals who ascend to them, through individual efforts, on to the higher plane they are occupying.

“Educated people,” so‐called, deride the idea of Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines, and Gnomes; the men of Science regard any mention of such superstitions as an insult; and with a contempt of logic and common good sense, that is often the prerogative of “accepted authority,” they allow those, whom it is their duty to instruct, to labour under the absurd impression that in the whole Kosmos, or at any rate in our own atmosphere, there are no other conscious, intelligent beings, save ourselves.(1043) Any other humanity (composed of distinct human beings) save a mankind with two legs, two arms, and a head with man’s features on it, would not be called human; though the etymology of the word would seem to have little to do with the general appearance of a creature. Thus, while Science sternly rejects even the possibility of there being such (to us, generally) invisible creatures, Society, while believing in it all secretly, is made to deride the idea openly. It hails with mirth such works as the Comte de Gabalis, and fails to understand that open satire is the securest mask.

Nevertheless, such invisible worlds do exist. Inhabited as thickly as is our own, they are scattered throughout apparent Space in immense numbers; some far more material than our own world, others gradually etherealizing until they become formless and are as “breaths.” The fact that our physical eye does not see them, is no reason for disbelieving in them. Physicists cannot see their Ether, Atoms, “modes of motion,” or Forces. Yet they accept and teach them.

If we find, even in the natural world with which we are acquainted, Matter affording a partial analogy to the difficult conception of such invisible worlds, there seems little difficulty in recognizing the possibility of such a presence. The tail of a Comet, which, though attracting our attention by virtue of its luminosity, yet does not disturb or impede our vision of objects, which we perceive through and beyond it, affords the first stepping‐stone toward a proof of the same. The tail of a Comet passes rapidly across our horizon, and we should neither feel it, nor be cognizant of its passage, but for the brilliant coruscation, often perceived only by a few interested in the phenomenon, while everyone else remains ignorant of its presence and of its passage through, or across, a portion of our globe. This tail may, or may not, be an integral portion of the being of the Comet, but its tenuity subserves our purpose as an illustration. Indeed, it is no question of superstition, but simply a result of transcendental Science, and of logic still more, to admit the existence of worlds formed of even far more attenuated Matter than the tail of a Comet. By denying such a possibility, Science has for the last century played into the hands of neither Philosophy nor true Religion, but simply into those of Theology. To be able to dispute the better the plurality of even material worlds, a belief thought by many churchmen incompatible with the teachings and doctrines of the Bible,(1044) Maxwell had to calumniate the memory of Newton, and to try and convince his public that the principles contained in the Newtonian philosophy are those “which lie at the foundation of all atheistical systems.”(1045)

“Dr. Whewell disputed the plurality of worlds by appeal to scientific evidence,” writes Professor Winchell.(1046) And if even the habitability of physical worlds, of Planets, and distant Stars which shine in myriads over our heads is so disputed, how little chance is there for the acceptance of invisible worlds within the apparently transparent space of our own!

But, if we can conceive of a world composed of Matter still more attenuated to our senses than the tail of a Comet, hence of inhabitants in it who are as ethereal, in proportion to their Globe, as we are in comparison with our rocky, hard‐crusted Earth, no wonder if we do not perceive them, nor sense their presence or even existence. Only, in what is the idea contrary to Science? Cannot men and animals, plants and rocks, be supposed to be endowed with quite a different set of senses from those we possess? Cannot their organisms be born, develop, and exist, under other laws of being than those that rule our little world? Is it absolutely necessary that every corporeal being should be clothed in “coats of skin” like those that Adam and Eve were provided with in the legend of Genesis? Corporeality, we are told, however, by more than one man of Science, “may exist under very divergent conditions.” Professor A. Winchell—arguing upon the plurality of worlds—makes the following remarks:

It is not at all improbable that substances of a refractory nature might be so mixed with other substances, known or unknown to us, as to be capable of enduring vastly greater vicissitudes of heat and cold than is possible with terrestrial organisms. The tissues of terrestrial animals are simply suited to terrestrial conditions. Yet even here we find different types and species of animals adapted to the trials of extremely dissimilar situations.... That an animal should be a quadruped or a biped is something not depending on the necessities of organization, or instinct, or intelligence. That an animal should possess just five senses is not a necessity of percipient existence. There may be animals on the earth with neither smell nor taste. There may be beings on other worlds, and even on this, who possess more numerous senses than we. The possibility of this is apparent when we consider the high probability that other properties and other modes of existence lie among the resources of the Cosmos, and even of terrestrial matter. There are animals which subsist where rational man would perish—in the soil, in the river, and the sea ... [and why not human beings of different organizations, in such case?].... Nor is incorporated rational existence conditioned on warm blood, nor on any temperature which does not change

the forms of matter of which the organism may be composed. There may be intelligences corporealized after some concept not involving the processes of injection, assimilation, and reproduction. Such bodies would not require daily food and warmth. They might be lost in the abysses of the ocean, or laid up on a stormy cliff through the tempests of an Arctic winter, or plunged in a volcano for a hundred years, and yet retain consciousness and thought. It is conceivable. Why might not psychic natures be enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum? These substances are no further from the nature of intelligence than carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and lime. But, not to carry the thought to such an extreme [?], might not high intelligence be embodied in frames as indifferent to external conditions as the sage of the western plains, or the lichens of Labrador, the rotifers which remain dried for years, or the bacteria which pass living through boiling water.... These suggestions are made simply to remind the reader how little can be argued respecting the necessary conditions of intelligent, organized existence, from the standard of corporeal existence found upon the earth. Intelligence is, from its nature, as universal and as uniform as the laws of the universe. Bodies are merely the local fitting of intelligence to particular modifications of universal

Do not we know through the discoveries of that same all‐denying Science that we are surrounded by myriads of invisible lives? If these microbes, bacteria and the tutti quanti of the infinitesimally small, are invisible to us by virtue of their minuteness, cannot there be, at the other pole, beings as invisible owing to the quality of their texture or matter—to its tenuity, in fact? Conversely, as to the effects of cometary matter, have we not another example of a half visible form of Life and Matter? The ray of sunlight entering our apartment reveals in its passage myriads of tiny beings living their little life and ceasing to be, independent and heedless of whether they are or are not perceived by our grosser materiality. And so again, of the microbes and bacteria and such‐ like unseen beings in other elements. We passed them by, during those long centuries of dreary ignorance, after the lamp of knowledge in the heathen and highly philosophical systems had ceased to throw its bright light on the ages of intolerance and bigotry of early Christianity; and we would fain pass them by again now.

And yet these lives surrounded us then as they do now. They have worked on, obedient to their own laws, and it is only as they have been gradually revealed by Science that we have begun to take cognizance of them and of the effects produced by them.

How long has it taken the world to become what it now is? If it can be said that even up to the present day cosmic dust, “which has never belonged to the earth before,”(1048) reaches our Globe, how much more logical is it to believe—as the Occultists do—that through the countless millions of years that have rolled away since that dust aggregated and formed the Globe we live in round its nucleus of intelligent Primeval Substance, many humanities—differing from our present mankind as greatly as the humanity which will evolve millions of years hence will differ from our races—appeared but to disappear from the face of the Earth, as will our own. These primitive and far‐distant humanities are denied, because, as Geologists think, they have left no tangible relics of themselves. All trace of them is swept away, and therefore they have never existed. Yet their relics—though very few of them, truly—are to be found, and they must be discovered by geological research. But, even if they were never to be met with, there would be no reason to say that no men could have ever lived in the geological periods to which their presence on earth is assigned. For their organisms needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, no feeding; the author of World‐Life is right, and there is no extravagance in believing as we do, that as, on scientific hypotheses, there may be to this day “psychic natures enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum,” so there were psychic natures enshrined in forms of equally indestructible Primeval Matter—the real forefathers of our Fifth Race.

When, therefore, as in Volume II, we speak of men who inhabited this Globe 18,000,000 years ago, we have in mind neither the men of our present races, nor the present atmospheric laws, thermal conditions, etc. The Earth and Mankind, like the Sun, Moon, and Planets, all have their growth, changes, development, and gradual evolution in their life‐periods; they are born, become infants, then children, adolescent, grown‐up, they grow old, and finally die. Why should not Mankind be also under this universal law? Says Uriel to Enoch: Behold, I have showed thee all things, O Enoch.... Thou seest the sun, the moon, and those which conduct the stars of heaven, which cause all their operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. In the days of sinners the years shall be shortened ... everything done on earth shall be subverted ... the moon shall change its laws.(1049)

The “days of sinners” meant the days when Matter would be in its full sway on Earth, and man would have reached the apex of physical development in stature and animality. That came to pass during the period of the Atlanteans, about the middle point of their Race, the Fourth, which was drowned, as prophesied by Uriel. Since then man has been decreasing in physical stature, strength, and years, as will be shown in Volume II. But as we are at the mid‐point of our sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race—the acme of materiality in each—the animal propensities, though more refined, are none the less developed; and this is most marked in civilized countries.

Some years ago we remarked that: The Esoteric Doctrine may well be called ... the “Thread Doctrine,” since, like Sûtrâtmâ [in the Vedânta Philosophy](1050), it passes through and strings together all the ancient philosophical religious systems, and ... reconciles and explains them.(1051) We now say it does more. It not only reconciles the various and apparently conflicting systems, but it checks the discoveries of modern exact Science, showing some of them to be necessarily correct, since they are found corroborated in the Ancient Records. All this will, no doubt, be regarded as terribly impertinent and disrespectful, a veritable crime of lèse‐science; nevertheless, it is a fact.

Science is, undeniably, ultra‐materialistic in our days; but it finds, in one sense, its justification. Nature behaving ever esoterically in actu, and being, as the Kabalists say, in abscondito, can only be judged by the profane through her appearance, and that appearance is always deceitful on the physical plane. On the other hand, the Naturalists refuse to blend Physics with Metaphysics, the Body with its informing Soul and Spirit. They prefer to ignore the latter. This is a matter of choice with some, while the minority very sensibly strive to enlarge the domain of Physical Science by trespassing on the forbidden grounds of Metaphysics, so distasteful to some Materialists. These Scientists are wise in their generation. For all their wonderful discoveries will go for nothing, and remain for ever headless bodies, unless they lift the veil of Matter and strain their eyes to see beyond. Now that they have studied Nature in the length, breadth, and thickness of her physical frame, it is time to remove the skeleton to the second plane, and search within the unknown depths for the living and real entity, for its sub‐stance—the noumenon of evanescent Matter. It is only by acting along such lines that some truths, now called “exploded superstitions,” will be discovered to be facts, and the relics of ancient knowledge and wisdom.

One of such “degrading” beliefs—degrading in the opinion of the all‐ denying Sceptic—is found in the idea that Kosmos, besides its objective planetary inhabitants, its humanities in other inhabited worlds, is full of invisible, intelligent Existences. The so‐called Arch‐Angels, Angels and Spirits, of the West, copies of their prototypes, the Dhyân Chohans, the Devas and Pitris, of the East, are not real Beings, but fictions. On this point materialistic Science is inexorable. To support its position, it upsets its own axiomatic law of uniformity and of continuity in the laws of Nature, and all the logical sequence of analogies in the evolution of Being. The masses of the profane are asked, and are made to believe that the accumulated testimony of History—which shows even the “Atheists” of old, such men as Epicurus and Democritus, as believers in Gods—is false; and that Philosophers like Socrates and Plato, asserting such existences, were mistaken enthusiasts and fools. If we hold our opinions merely on historical grounds, on the authority of legions of the most eminent Sages, Neo‐Platonists, and Mystics in all ages, from Pythagoras down to the eminent Scientists and Professors of the present century, who, if they reject “Gods,” believe in “Spirits,” are we to consider such authorities to be as weak‐minded and foolish as any Roman Catholic peasant, who believes in

and prays to his once human Saint, or the Archangel St. Michael? But is there no difference between the belief of the peasant and that of the Western heirs of the Rosicrucians and Alchemists of the Middle Ages? Is it the Van Helmonts, the Khunraths, the Paracelsuses and Agrippas, from Roger Bacon down to St. Germain, who were all blind enthusiasts, hysteriacs or cheats, or is it the handful of modern Sceptics—the “leaders of thought”—who are struck with the cecity of negation? The latter is the case, we opine. It would indeed be a miracle, quite an abnormal fact in the realm of probabilities and logic, were that handful of negators to be the sole custodians of truth, while the million‐strong hosts of believers in Gods, Angels, and Spirits—in Europe and America alone—namely, Greek and Latin Christians, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc., should be no better than deluded fanatics and hallucinated mediums, and often no higher than the victims of deceivers and impostors! However varying in their external presentations and dogmas, beliefs in the Hosts of invisible Intelligences of various grades have all the same foundation. Truth and error are mixed in all. The exact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries of Nature are to be found only in Eastern Esoteric Science. So vast and so profound are these

that scarcely even a few, a very few of the highest Initiates—those whose very existence is known but to a small number of Adepts—are capable of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it is all there, and one by one facts and processes in Nature’s workshops are permitted to find their way into exact Science, while mysterious help is given to rare individuals in unravelling its arcana. It is at the close of great Cycles, in connection with racial development, that such events generally take place. We are at the very close of the cycle of 5,000 years of the present Âryan Kali Yuga; and between this time and 1897 there will be a large rent made in the Veil of Nature, and materialistic Science will receive a death‐blow.

Without throwing any discredit upon time‐honoured beliefs, in any direction, we are forced to draw a marked line between blind faith, evolved by theologies, and knowledge due to the independent researches of long generations of Adepts; between, in short, faith and Philosophy. There have been, in all ages, undeniably learned and good men who, having been reared in sectarian beliefs, died in their crystallized convictions. For Protestants, the garden of Eden is the primeval point of departure in the drama of Humanity, and the solemn tragedy on the summit of Calvary is the prelude to the hoped‐for Millennium. For Roman Catholics, Satan is at the foundation of Kosmos, Christ in its centre, and Antichrist at its apex. For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within the narrow frames of their respective theologies: one self‐created personal God, and an empyrean ringing with the Hallelujas of created Angels; the rest, false Gods, Satan and fiends.

Theo‐Philosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of æons—in time and space in our Round and Globe—the mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which it is lawful for our Races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those same, now invisible, “Heavenly Men,” in geometrical figures and symbols. The keys thereto passed from one generation of “Wise Men” to another. Some of the symbols thus passed from the East to the West, brought from the Orient by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous “Triangle.” The latter figure, along with the square and circle, are more eloquent and scientific descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic, as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed “Geneses.” The ten Points inscribed within that “Pythagorean Triangle” are worth all the theogonies and angelologies ever emanated from the theological brain. For he who interprets these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden)—on their very face, and in the order given—will find in them the uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to Terrestrial Man. And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were evolved the Kosmos, our Earth, and the primordial Elements by which the latter was generated. Begotten in the invisible “Depths,” and in the Womb of the same “Mother” as its fellow‐globes—he who masters the mysteries of our own Earth will have mastered those of all others.

Whatever ignorance, pride or fanaticism may suggest to the contrary, Esoteric Cosmology can be shown to be inseparably connected with both Philosophy and Modern Science. The Gods and Monads of the Ancients—from Pythagoras down to Leibnitz—and the Atoms of the present materialistic schools (as borrowed by them from the theories of the old Greek Atomists) are only a compound unit, or a graduated unity like the human frame, which begins with body and ends with Spirit. In the Occult Sciences they can be studied separately, but they can never be mastered unless they are viewed in their mutual correlations during their life‐cycle, and as a Universal Unity during Pralayas. La Pluche shows sincerity, but gives a poor idea of his philosophical capacities, when declaring his personal views on the Monad or the Mathematical Point. He says: A point is enough to put all the schools in the world in a combustion. But what need has man to know that point, since the creation of such a small being is beyond his power? À fortiori, philosophy acts against probability when, from that point which absorbs and disconcerts all her meditations, she presumes to pass on to the generation of the world.

Philosophy, however, could never have formed its conception of a logical, universal, and absolute Deity, if it had had no Mathematical Point within the Circle upon which to base its speculations. It is only the manifested Point, lost to our senses after its pregenetic appearance in the infinitude and incognizability of the Circle, that makes a reconciliation between Philosophy and Theology possible—on condition that the latter should abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is because Christian theology has so unwisely rejected the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical figures, that it has evolved its self‐created human and personal God, the monstrous Head whence flow in two streams the dogmas of Salvation and Damnation. This is so true, that even those clergymen who are Masons, and who would be Philosophers, have, in their arbitrary interpretations, fathered upon the Ancient Sages the queer idea that: The Monad represented [with them] the throne of the Omnipotent Deity, placed in the centre of the empyrean to indicate T.G.A.O.T.U. [read the “Great Architect of the Universe”].(1052) A curious explanation this, more Masonic than strictly Pythagorean.

Nor did the “Hierogram within a Circle, or equilateral Triangle,” ever mean “the exemplification of the unity of the divine Essence”; for this was exemplified by the plane of the boundless Circle. What it really meant was the triune coëqual Nature of the first differentiated Substance, or the con‐substantiality of the (manifested) Spirit, Matter and the Universe—their “Son”—which proceeds from the Point, the real, Esoteric Logos, or Pythagorean Monad. For the Greek Monas signifies “Unity” in its primary sense. Those unable to seize the difference between the Monad—the Universal Unit—and the Monads or the manifested Unity, as also between the ever‐hidden and the revealed Logos, or the Word, ought never to meddle with Philosophy, let alone with the Esoteric Sciences. It is needless to remind the educated reader of Kant’s Thesis to demonstrate his second Antinomy.(1053) Those who have read and understood it will see clearly the line we draw between the absolutely ideal Universe and the invisible though manifested Kosmos. Our Gods and Monads are not the Elements of extension itself, but only those of the invisible Reality which is the basis of the manifested Kosmos. Neither Esoteric Philosophy, nor Kant, to say nothing of Leibnitz, would ever admit that extension can be composed of simple or unextended parts. But theologian‐philosophers will not grasp this. The Circle and the Point—the latter retiring into and merging with the former, after having emanated the first three Points and connected them with lines, thus forming the first noumenal basis of the Second Triangle in the Manifested World—have ever been an insuperable obstacle to theological flights into dogmatic empyreans. On the authority of this Archaic Symbol, a male, personal God, the Creator and Father of all, becomes a third‐rate emanation, the Sephira standing fourth in descent, and on the left hand of Ain Suph, in the Kabalistic Tree of Life. Hence, the Monad is degraded into a Vehicle—a “Throne”!

The Monad—the emanation and reflection only of the Point, or Logos, in the phenomenal World—becomes, as the apex of the manifested equilateral Triangle, the “Father.” The left side or line is the Duad, the “Mother,” regarded as the evil, counteracting principle;(1054) the right side represents the “Son,” “his Mother’s Husband” in every Cosmogony, as being one with the apex; the base line is the universal plane of productive Nature, unifying on the phenomenal plane Father‐Mother‐Son, as these were unified in the apex, in the supersensuous World.(1055) By mystic transmutation they became the Quaternary—the Triangle became the Tetraktys. This transcendental application of geometry to cosmic and divine theogony—the Alpha and the Omega of mystical conception—was dwarfed after Pythagoras by Aristotle. By omitting the Point and the Circle, and taking no account of the apex, he reduced the metaphysical value of the idea, and thus limited the doctrine of magnitude to a simple Triad—the line, the surface, and the body. His modern heirs, who play at Idealism, have interpreted these three geometrical figures as Space, Force, and Matter—“the potencies of an interacting Unity.” Materialistic Science, perceiving but the base line of the manifested Triangle—the plane of Matter—translates it practically as (Father)‐Matter, (Mother)‐Matter, and (Son)‐Matter, and theoretically as Matter, Force, and Correlation. But to the average Physicist, as remarked by a Kabalist:

Space, and Force, and Matter, are what signs in Algebra are to the Mathematician, merely conventional symbols, or Force as Force, and Matter as Matter, are as absolutely unknowable as is the assumed empty space in which they are held to interact.(1056) Symbols represent abstractions, and on these The physicist bases reasoned hypotheses of the origin of things ... he sees three needs in what he terms creation: A place wherein to create. A medium by which to create. A material from which to create. And in giving a logical expression to this hypothesis through the terms space, force, matter, he believes he has proved the existence of that which each of these represents as he conceives it to be.(1057) The Physicist who regards Space merely as a representation of our mind, or extension unrelated to things in it, which Locke defined as capable of neither resistance nor motion; the paradoxical Materialist, who would have a void there, where he can see no Matter, would reject with the utmost contempt the proposition that Space is A substantial though [apparently an absolutely] unknowable living Entity.(1058)

Such is, nevertheless, the Kabalistic teaching, and it is that of Archaic Philosophy. Space is the real World, while our world is an artificial one. It is the One Unity throughout its infinitude: in its bottomless depths as on its illusive surface; a surface studded with countless phenomenal Universes, Systems and mirage‐like Worlds. Nevertheless, to the Eastern Occultist, who is an objective Idealist at bottom, in the real World, which is a Unity of Forces, there is “a connection of all Matter in the Plenum,” as Leibnitz would say. This is symbolized in the Pythagorean Triangle. It consists of Ten Points inscribed pyramid‐like (from one to four) within its three sides, and it symbolizes the Universe in the famous Pythagorean Decad. The upper single point is a Monad, and represents a Unit‐Point, which is the Unity whence all proceeds. All is of the same essence with it. While the ten points within the equilateral Triangle represent the phenomenal world, the three sides enclosing the pyramid of points are the barriers of noumenal Matter, or Substance, that separate it from the world of Thought.

Pythagoras considered a point to correspond in proportion to unity; a line to 2; a superfice to 3; a solid to 4; and he defined a point as a monad having position, and the beginning of all things; a line was thought to correspond with duality, because it was produced by the first motion from indivisible nature, and formed the junction of two points. A superfice was compared to the number three because it is the first of all causes that are found in figures; for a circle, which is the principal of all round figures, comprises a triad, in centre—space—circumference. But a triangle, which is the first of all rectilineal figures, is included in a ternary, and receives its form according to that number; and was considered by the Pythagoreans to be the author of all sublunary things. The four points at the base of the Pythagorean triangle correspond with a solid or cube, which combines the principles of length, breadth, and thickness, for no solid can have less than four extreme boundary points.(1059)

It is argued that “the human mind cannot conceive an indivisible unit short of the annihilation of the idea with its subject.” This is an error, as the Pythagoreans have proved, and a number of Seers before them, although there is a special training needed for the conception, and although the profane mind can hardly grasp it. But there are such things as “Meta‐mathematics” and “Meta‐geometry.” Even Mathematics pure and simple proceed from the universal to the particular, from the mathematical indivisible point to solid figures. The teaching originated in India, and was taught in Europe by Pythagoras, who, throwing a veil over the Circle and the Point—which no living man can define except as incomprehensible abstractions—laid the origin of the differentiated cosmic Matter in the base of the Triangle. Thus the latter became the earliest of geometrical figures. The author of New Aspects of Life, dealing with the Kabalistic Mysteries, objects to the objectivization, so to speak, of the Pythagorean conception and the use of the equilateral triangle, and calls it a “misnomer.” His argument that a solid equilateral body— One whose base, as well as each of its sides, form equal triangles—must have four co‐equal sides or surfaces, while a triangular plane will as necessarily possess five,(1060)

—demonstrates on the contrary the grandeur of the conception in all its Esoteric application to the idea of the pregenesis, and the genesis of Kosmos. Granted, that an ideal Triangle, depicted by mathematical, imaginary lines, Can have no sides at all, being simply a phantom of the mind to which, if sides be imputed, these must be the sides of the object it constructively represents.(1061)

But in such case most of the scientific hypotheses are no better than “phantoms of the mind”; they are unverifiable, except on inference, and have been adopted merely to answer scientific necessities. Furthermore, the ideal Triangle—“as the abstract idea of a triangular body, and, therefore, as the type of an abstract idea”—accomplished and carried out to perfection the double symbolism intended. As an emblem applicable to the objective idea, the simple triangle became a solid. When repeated in stone, facing the four cardinal points, it assumed the shape of the Pyramid—the symbol of the phenomenal merging into the noumenal Universe of thought, at the apex of the four triangles; and, as an “imaginary figure constructed of three mathematical lines,” it symbolized the subjective spheres—these lines “enclosing a mathematical space—which is equal to nothing enclosing nothing.” And this because, to the senses and the untrained consciousness of the Profane and the Scientist, everything beyond the line of differentiated Matter—i.e., outside of, and beyond the realm of even the most Spiritual Substance—has to remain for ever equal to nothing. It is the Ain Suph—the No Thing.

Yet these “phantoms of the mind” are in truth no greater abstractions than the abstract ideas in general as to evolution and physical development—e.g., Gravity, Matter, Force, etc.—on which the exact Sciences are based. Our most eminent Chemists and Physicists are earnestly pursuing the not hopeless attempt of finally tracing to its hiding‐place the Protyle, or the basic line of the Pythagorean Triangle. The latter is, as we have said, the grandest conception imaginable, for it symbolizes both the ideal and the visible universes.(1062) For if The possible unit is only a possibility as an actuality of nature, as an individual of any kind, [and as] every individual natural object is capable of division, and by division loses its unity, or ceases to be a unit,(1063)

this is true only of the realm of exact Science in a world as deceptive as it is illusive. In the realm of Esoteric Science the Unit divided ad infinitum, instead of losing its unity, approaches with every division the planes of the only eternal REALITY. The eye of the Seer can follow it and behold it in all its pregenetic glory. This same idea of the reality of the subjective, and the unreality of the objective Universe, is found at the bottom of the Pythagorean and Platonic Teachings—limited to the Elect alone; for Porphyry, speaking of the Monad and the Duad, says that the former only was considered substantial and real, “that most simple Being, the cause of all unity and the measure of all things.”

But the Duad, although the origin of Evil, or Matter—hence unreal in Philosophy—is still Substance during Manvantara, and is often called the Third Monad, in Occultism, and the connecting line as between two Points, or Numbers, which proceeded from THAT, “which was before all Numbers,” as expressed by Rabbi Barahiel. And from this Duad proceeded all the Scintillas of the three Upper and the four Lower Worlds or Planes—which are in constant interaction and correspondence. This is a teaching which the Kabalah has in common with Eastern Occultism. For in the Occult Philosophy there is the “ONE Cause” and the “Primal Cause,” the latter thus becoming, paradoxically, the Second, as is clearly expressed by the author of the Qabbalah, from the Philosophical Writings of Ibn Gabirol, who says: In the treatment of the Primal Cause, two things must be considered, the Primal Cause per se, and the relation and connection of the Primal Cause with the visible and unseen universe.(1064) Thus he shows the early Hebrews, as the later Arabians, following in the steps of the Oriental Philosophy, such as the Chaldean, Persian, Hindû, etc. Their Primal Cause was designated at first, By the triadic שדי Shaddaï, the [triune] Almighty, subsequently by the Tetragrammaton, יהוה, YHVH symbol of the Past, Present, and Future,(1065)

and, let us add, of the eternal IS, or the I AM. Moreover, in the Kabalah the name YHVH (or Jehovah) expresses a He and a She, male and female, two in one, or Chokmah and Binah, and his, or rather their Shekinah or synthesizing Spirit (or Grace), which again makes of the Duad a Triad. This is demonstrated in the Jewish Liturgy for Pentecost, and the prayer: “In the name of Unity, of the Holy and Blessed Hû [He], and His She’keenah, the Hidden and Concealed Hû, blessed be YHVH [the Quaternary] for ever.” Hû is said to be masculine and YaH feminine, together they make the יהוה אחד i.e., one YHVH. One, but of a male‐female nature. The She’keenah is always considered in the Qabbalah as feminine.(1066) And so it is considered in the exoteric Purânas, for Shekinah is no more than Shakti—the female double of any God—in such case. And so it was with the early Christians, whose Holy Spirit was feminine, as Sophia was with the Gnostics. But in the transcendental Chaldean Kabalah, or Book of Numbers, Shekinah is sexless, and the purest abstraction, a state, like Nirvâna, neither subject nor object, nor anything except an absolute PRESENCE.

Thus it is only in the anthropomorphized systems—such as the Kabalah has now for the most part become—that Shekinah‐Shakti is feminine. As such she becomes the Duad of Pythagoras, the two straight lines which can form no geometrical figure and are the symbol of Matter. Out of this Duad, when united in the basic line of the Triangle on the lower plane (the upper Triangle of the Sephirothal Tree), emerge the Elohim, or Deity in Cosmic Nature, with the true Kabalists the lowest designation, translated in the Bible “God.”(1067) Out of these (the Elohim) issue the Scintillas. The Scintillas are the “Souls,” and these Souls appear in the three‐fold form of Monads (Units), Atoms and Gods—according to our Teaching. As says the Esoteric Catechism: Every Atom becomes a visible complex unit [a molecule], _and once attracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man_. Again: God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body [Âtmâ, Manas, and Sthûla Sharîra] in man. In their septenary aggregation they are the “Heavenly Man,” in the Kabalistic sense; thus, terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. Once again:

The Monads [Jîvas] are the Souls of the Atoms; both are the fabric in which the Chohans [Dhyânîs, Gods] clothe themselves when a form is needed. This relates to cosmic and sub‐planetary Monads, not to the super‐cosmic Monads, the Pythagorean Monad, as it is called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. The Monads of the present dissertation are treated, from the standpoint of their individuality, as Atomic Souls, before these Atoms descend into pure terrestrial form. For this descent into concrete Matter marks the medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality, they begin to ascend through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is firmly established between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, however, we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but with their life and behaviour in Space, on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional Chemist and Physicist cannot reach them—unless, indeed, he develops in himself highly clairvoyant faculties.

It is well known that Leibnitz came very near the truth several times, but he defined Monadic Evolution incorrectly, a thing not to be wondered at, since he was not an Initiate, nor even a Mystic, but only a very intuitional Philosopher. Yet no Psycho‐physicist ever came nearer than has he to the Esoteric general outline of evolution. This evolution—viewed from its several standpoints, i.e., as the Universal and the Individualized Monad, and the chief aspects of the Evolving Energy after differentiation, the purely Spiritual, the Intellectual, the Psychic and the Physical—may be thus formulated as an invariable law: a descent of Spirit into Matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a reäscent from the depths of materiality towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete form and substance up to the Laya‐state, or what Science calls the “zero‐point,” and beyond.

These states—once the spirit of Esoteric Philosophy is grasped—become absolutely necessary from simple logical and analogical considerations. Physical Science having now ascertained, through its department of Chemistry, the invariable law of this evolution of Atoms—from their “protylean” state down to that of a physical and then a chemical particle, or molecule—cannot well reject these states as a general law. And once it is forced by its enemies—Metaphysics and Psychology(1068)—out of its alleged impregnable strongholds, it will find it more difficult than it now appears to refuse room in the Spaces of SPACE to Planetary Spirits (Gods), Elementals, and even the Elementary Spooks or Ghosts, and others. Already Figuier and Paul D’Assier, two Positivists and Materialists, have succumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still greater Scientists will follow in that intellectual “Fall.” They will be driven out of their position not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other physical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous gaps and chasms that open daily and will still be opening before them, as one discovery follows the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet by the ninth wave of simple common sense.

We may take as an example, Mr. W. Crookes’ latest discovery of what he has named Protyle. In the Notes on the Bhagavad Gîtâ, by one of the best metaphysicians and Vedântic scholars in India, the lecturer, referring cautiously to “things Occult” in that great Indian Esoteric work, makes a remark as suggestive as it is strictly correct. He says: Into the details of the evolution of the solar system itself, it is not necessary for me to enter. You may gather some idea as to the way in which the various elements start into existence from these three principles into which Mûlaprakriti [the Pythagorean Triangle] is differentiated, by examining the lecture delivered by Professor Crookes a short time ago upon the so‐called elements of modern chemistry. This lecture will give you some idea of the way in which these so‐called elements spring from Vishvânara,(1069) the most objective of these three principles, which seems to stand in the place of the protyle mentioned in that lecture. Except in a few particulars, this lecture seems to give the outlines of the theory of physical evolution on the plane of Vishvânara, and is, so far as I know, the nearest approach made by modern investigators to the real occult theory on the subject.(1070)

These words will be reëchoed and approved by every Eastern Occultist. Much from the lectures by Mr. Crookes has already been quoted in Section XI. A second lecture has been delivered by him, as remarkable as the first, on the “Genesis of the Elements,”(1071) and also a third one. Here we have almost a corroboration of the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy concerning the mode of primeval evolution. It is, indeed, as near an approach, made by a great scholar and specialist in Chemistry,(1072) to the Secret Doctrine, as could be made apart from the application of the Monads and Atoms to the dogmas of pure transcendental Metaphysics, and their connection and correlation with “Gods and intelligent conscious Monads.” But Chemistry is now on its ascending plane, thanks to one of its highest European representatives. It is impossible for it to go back to that day when Materialism regarded its sub‐elements as absolutely simple and homogeneous bodies, which it had raised, in its blindness, to the rank of Elements. The mask has been snatched off by too clever a hand for there to be any fear of a new disguise. And after years of pseudology, of bastard molecules parading under the name of Elements, behind and beyond which there could be nought but void, a great professor of Chemistry asks once more:

What are these elements, whence do they come, what is their signification?... These elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch like an unknown sea before us—mocking, mystifying, and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities.(1073) Those who are heirs to primeval revelations have taught these “possibilities” in every century, but have never found a fair hearing. The truths inspired into Kepler, Leibnitz, Gassendi, Swedenborg, etc., were ever alloyed with their own speculations in one or another predetermined direction—hence were distorted. But now one of the great truths has dawned upon an eminent professor of exact Modern Science, and he fearlessly proclaims as a fundamental axiom that Science has not made itself acquainted, so far, with real simple Elements. For Mr. Crookes tells his audience:

If I venture to say that our commonly received elements are not simple and primordial, that they have not arisen by chance or have not been created in a desultory and mechanical manner, but have been evolved from simpler matters—or perhaps, indeed, from one sole kind of matter—I do but give formal utterance to an idea which has been, so to speak, for some time “in the air” of science. Chemists, physicists, philosophers of the highest merit, declare explicitly their belief that the seventy (or thereabouts) elements of our text‐books are not the pillars of Hercules which we must never hope to pass.... Philosophers in the present as in the past—men who certainly have not worked in the laboratory—have reached the same view from another side. Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer records his conviction that “the chemical atoms are produced from the true or physical atoms by processes of evolution under conditions which chemistry has not yet been able to produce.”... And the poet has forestalled the philosopher. Milton (Paradise Lost, Book V.) makes the Archangel Raphael say to Adam instinct with the evolutionary idea, that the Almighty had created ... “One first matter, all Indued with various forms, various degrees Of substance.”

Nevertheless, the idea would have remained crystallized “in the air of Science,” and would not have descended into the thick atmosphere of Materialism and profane mortals for years to come, perhaps, had not Mr. Crookes bravely and fearlessly reduced it to its simple constituents, and thus publicly forced it on scientific notice. Says Plutarch: An idea is a Being incorporeal, which has no subsistence by itself, but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of the manifestation.(1074)

The revolution produced in old Chemistry by Avogadro was the first page in the volume of “New Chemistry.” Mr. Crookes has now turned the second page, and is boldly pointing to what may be the last. For Protyle once accepted and recognized—as invisible Ether was, both being logical and scientific necessities—Chemistry will have virtually ceased to live: it will reäppear in its reïncarnation as—“New Alchemy,” or “Meta‐chemistry.” The discoverer of radiant matter will have vindicated in time the Archaic Âryan works on Occultism, and even the Vedas and Purânas. For what are the manifested “Mother,” the “Father‐Son‐Husband” (Aditi and Daksha, a form of Brahmâ, as Creators), and the “Son”—the three “First‐born”—but simply Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which in its terrestrial manifestation is called Nitrogen. Even the exoteric descriptions of the “First‐born” Triad give all the characteristics of these three “gases.” Priestley, the “discoverer” of Oxygen, or of that which was known in the highest antiquity!

Yet all the ancient, mediæval, and modern Poets and Philosophers have been anticipated even in the exoteric Hindû books as to the Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the Universal Mind—Descartes’ “Plenum” of Matter differentiated into particles; Leibnitz’s “ethereal fluid”; and Kant’s “primitive fluid” dissolved into its elements; Kepler’s solar vortex and systemic vortices; in short, through Anaxagoras, down to Galileo, Torricelli, and Swedenborg, and after them to the latest speculations by European Mystics—all this is found in the Hindû Hymns, or Mantras, to the “Gods, Monads and Atoms,” in their Fulness, for they are inseparable. In Esoteric Teachings, the most transcendental conceptions of the Universe and its mysteries, as also the most seemingly materialistic speculations, are found reconciled, because these Sciences embrace the whole scope of evolution from Spirit to Matter. As declared by an American Theosophist: The Monads [of Leibnitz] may from one point of view be called force, from another matter. To Occult Science, force and matter are only two sides of the same substance.(1075) Let the reader remember these “Monads” of Leibnitz, every one of which is a living mirror of the Universe, every Monad reflecting every other, and compare this view and definition with certain Sanskrit Shlokas translated by Sir William Jones, in which it is said that the creative source of the Divine Mind,

Hidden in a veil of thick darkness, formed mirrors of the atoms of the world, and cast reflection from its own face on every atom. When, therefore, Mr. Crookes declares that: If we can show how the so‐called chemical elements might have been generated we shall be able to fill up a formidable gap in our knowledge of the universe, the answer is ready. The theoretical knowledge is contained in the Esoteric meaning of every Hindû cosmogony in the Purânas; the practical demonstration thereof—is in the hands of those who will not be recognized in this century, save by the very few. The scientific possibilities of various discoveries, that must inexorably lead exact Science into the acceptation of Eastern Occult views, which contain all the requisite material for the filling of those “gaps,” are, so far, at the mercy of Modern Materialism. It is only by working in the direction taken by Mr. William Crookes that there is any hope for the recognition of a few, hitherto Occult, truths.

Meanwhile, any one thirsting to have a glimpse at a practical diagram of the evolution of primordial Matter—which, separating and differentiating under the impulse of cyclic law, divides itself on a general view into a septenary gradation of Substance—can do no better than examine the plates attached to Mr. Crookes’ lecture, Genesis of the Elements, and ponder well over some passages of the text. In one place he says: Our notions of a chemical element have expanded. Hitherto the molecule has been regarded as an aggregate of two or more atoms, and no account has been taken of the architectural design on which these atoms have been joined. We may consider that the structure of a chemical element is more complicated than has hitherto been supposed. Between the molecules we are accustomed to deal with in chemical reactions and ultimate atoms as first created, come smaller molecules or aggregates of physical atoms; these sub‐ molecules differ one from the other, according to the position they occupy in the yttrium edifice.

Perhaps this hypothesis can be simplified if we imagine yttrium to be represented by a five‐shilling piece. By chemical fractionation I have divided it into five separate shillings, and find that these shillings are not counterparts, but like the carbon atoms in the benzol ring, have the impress of their position, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, stamped on them.... If I throw my shillings into the melting‐ pot or dissolve them chemically, the mint stamp disappears and they all turn out to be silver.(1076)