THE SECRET DOCTRINE:
THE SYNTHESIS
OF
SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY.
by H. P. BLAVATSKY
XII.
ANCIENT THOUGHT IN MODERN DRESS.
MODERN SCIENCE IS ANCIENT THOUGHT
DISTORTED, and no more. We have seen, however, WHAT INTUITIONAL
SCIENTISTS THINK, and are busy about; and now the reader may be given a
few more proofs of the fact that more than one F.R.S. is unconsciously
approaching the derided Secret Sciences.
With regard to cosmogony and primeval matter, modern speculations are
undeniably ancient thought, improved by contradictory theories
of recent origin. But the whole foundation belongs to Grecian and Indian
Archaic astronomy and physics, in those days always called philosophy.
In all the Aryan and Greek speculations, one meets with the conception
of an all-pervading, unorganized, and homogeneous matter, or Chaos,
re-named by modern scientists "Nebular condition of the
world-stuff." What Anaxagoras called "Chaos" in his Homoiomeria
is now called "primitive fluid" by Sir W. Thomson. The Hindu and Greek
Atomists -- Kanada, Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, etc.,
etc., are now reflected as in a clear mirror, in the supporters of the
atomic theory of our modern days, beginning with Leibnitz's Monads,
and ending with the "Vortical Atoms" of Sir W. Thomson.* True, the
corpuscular theory of old is rejected, and the undulatory theory has
taken its place. But the question is, whether the latter is so
firmly established as not to be liable to be dethroned as was its
predecessor? Light from its metaphysical aspect was fully treated
of in "Isis Unveiled": --
"Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the
Supreme, and Light is Life, says the Evangelist and the Kabalist.
Both are electricity -- the life principle, the anima mundi,
pervading the universe, the electric vivifier of all things.
Light is the great Protean magician, and under the divine will of
the architect,** or rather the architects, the
"Builders" (called One collectively), its multifarious,
omnipotent waves gave birth to every form as well as to every living
being. From its swelling electric bosom, spring matter and
spirit. Within its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and
chemical action, and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena; it
vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and
from its primordial point gradually emerged into existence the
myriads of worlds, visible and invisible celestial bodies. It was at
the ray of this First mother, one in three, that "God,"
according to
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the Mind have not
been improved by their modern transformation.
** I have been often taken to task for using expressions in Isis
denoting belief in a personal and anthropomorphic God.
This is not my idea. Kabalistically speaking, the "Architect"
is the generic name for the Sephiroth, the Builders of
the Universe, as the "Universal Mind" represents the collectivity of the
Dhyan Chohanic Minds.
[[H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 580 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Plato, lighted a fire which we now call the sun,"* and which is
not the cause of either light or heat, but merely the focus, or,
as we might say, the lens, by which the rays of the primordial light
become materialised, are concentrate upon our Solar System, and
produce all the correlations of forces."
This is the Ether, as just explained in the views
of Metcalfe, repeated by Dr. Richardson, save the submission of the
former to some details of the modern undulatory theory. We do not say
that we deny the theory, but assert only that it needs completion and
re-arrangement. But the Occultists are by no means the only heretics
in this respect; for Mr. Robert Hunt, F.R.S., remarks, in his
Researches on Light in its Chemical Relations, that: --
. . . . "the undulatory theory does not account for the results of
his experiments. Sir David Brewster, in his Treatise on Optics,
showing 'that the colours of vegetable life arise . . . . from a
specific attraction which the particles of these bodies exercise
over the differently-coloured rays of light,' and that 'it is by the
light of the sun that the coloured juices of plants are elaborated,
that the colours of bodies are changed, etc. . . . .' remarks that
it is not easy to allow 'that such effects can be produced by the
mere vibration of an ethereal medium.' And he is forced,
he says, 'by this class of facts, to reason as if light was
material (?).' Professor Josiah P. Cooke, of Harvard University,
says that he 'cannot agree . . . . with those who regard the
wave-theory of light as an established principle of science.'**
Herschell's doctrine, that the intensity of light, in effect of each
undulation, 'is inversely as the square of the distance from the
luminous body,' if correct, damages a good deal, if it does not kill
the undulatory theory. That he is right, was proved repeatedly by
experiments with photometers; and though it begins to be much
doubted, the undulatory theory is still alive." ("Isis Unveiled.")
To this remark of Sir W. Brewster -- "forced to reason as if light
was material" -- there is a good deal to reply. Light, in one sense, is
certainly as material as electricity itself is. And if electricity is
not material, if it is only "a mode of motion," how is it that
it can be stored up in Faure's accumulators? Helmholtz says
that electricity must be as atomic as matter; and Mr. W. Crookes,
F.R.S., supported the view in his address to the Chemical Section of the
British Association, of which he was President (at Birmingham, 1886).
This is what Helmholtz says (in his Faraday Lectures,
1881): --
"If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are
composed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also,
positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary
portions, which behave like atoms of electricity."
Here we have to repeat that which was already said in Section IX:
there is but one science that can henceforth direct modern research into
the one path which will lead to the discovery of the whole, hitherto
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Timaeus."
** Modern Chemistry.
[[H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 581 A CHASE AFTER THE PRIMAL MATTER.
occult, truth, and it is the youngest of all -- chemistry,
as it now stands reformed. There is no other, not excluding
astronomy, that can so unerringly guide scientific intuition, as
chemistry can. Two proofs of it are to be found in the world of Science
-- two great chemists, each among the greatest in his own country, and
these are Mr. Crookes and the late Professor Butlerof: one, a thorough
believer in abnormal phenomena; the other, as fervid a Spiritualist as
he was great in natural Sciences. It becomes evident that while
pondering over the ultimate divisibility of matter, and in the hitherto
fruitless chase after the element of negative atomic weight,
the scientifically trained mind of the chemist must feel irresistibly
drawn towards those ever-shrouded worlds, to the mysterious beyond,
whose measureless depths seem to close against the approach of the too
materialistic hand that would fain draw aside its veil. "It is the
unknown and the ever unknowable," warns the
Monist-Agnostic. Not so; answers the persevering chemist: -- "We are on
the track and are not daunted, and fain would we enter the mysterious
region which ignorance tickets unknown."*
A few lines at the very close of his lecture on the Genesis of
the Elements -- two or three sentences -- showed the
eminent Scientist to be on the royal road to the greatest discoveries.
He has been overshadowing for some time "the original protyle,"
and came to the conclusion that "he who grasps the Key will be
permitted to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of creation." The
protyle, as that great chemist explains: --
". . . is a word analogous to protoplasm, to express the idea of the
original primal matter existing before the evolution of the chemical
elements. The word I have ventured to use for this purpose is
compounded of [[pro]] (earlier than) and [[hyle]]
(the stuff of which things are made). The word is scarcely a new
coinage, for 600 years ago Roger Bacon wrote in his Arte Chymiae,
"The elements are made out of [[hyle]] and every
element is converted into the nature of another element."
The Knowledge of Roger Bacon did not come to this wonderful
old magician** by inspiration, but because he studied ancient works on
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Mr. Crookes' "Presidential Address" at Birmingham. "There is but
one unknown -- the ultimate substratum of Spirit (Space). That
which is not the Absolute and the One is, in virtue of that
very differentiation, however far removed from the physical senses,
always accessible to the spiritual human mind, which is a coruscation of
the undifferentiable Integral." -- (Practical Lessons on the Occult.)
** Thus, what the writer of the present work said ten years ago in "Isis
Unveiled" (Vol. I.) was prophetic, it
seems. These are the words: "Many of these mystics, by following what
they were taught by some treatises, secretly preserved from one
generation to another, achieved discoveries which would not
be despised even in our modern days of exact sciences. Roger Bacon,
the friar, was laughed at as a quack, and is now generally numbered
among 'pretenders' to magic art; but his discoveries were nevertheless
accepted, and are now used by those who ridicule him the most. Roger
Bacon belonged by right, if not by fact, to that Brotherhood which
includes all those who [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 582 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
magic and alchemy, having a key to the real meaning of words. But see
what Mr. Crookes says of protyle, next neighbour to
the unconscious Mulaprakriti of the Occultists: --
. . . . . "Let us start at the moment when the first element came
into existence. Before this time, matter, as we know it, was not. It
is equally impossible to conceive of matter without energy, as of
energy without matter; from one point of view both are convertible
terms. Before the birth of atoms, all those forms of energy, which
become evident when matter acts upon matter, could not have existed*
-- they were locked up in the protyle as latent
potentialities only. Coincident with the creation of atoms, all
those attributes and properties, which form the means of
discriminating one chemical element from another, start into
existence fully endowed with energy." (Presidential Address,
p. 16.)
With every respect due to the great knowledge of the lecturer, the
Occultist would put it otherwise. They would say that no atom is ever
"created," for the atoms are eternal within the bosom of the One
Atom, -- "the atom of atoms" -- viewed during
Manvantara as the Jagad-Yoni the material causative
womb of the world. Pradhana (unmodified matter), that which is
the first form of Prakriti, or material visible, as
well as invisible nature, and Purusha,
spirit, are eternally one; and they are Nirupadhi,
(without adventitious qualities or attributes) only during Pralaya,
and when beyond any of the planes of consciousness of
existence. The atom, as known to modern science, is inseparable from
Purusha, which is spirit, but is now called "Energy" in
Science. The protyle atom has not been comminuted or
subtilized: it has simply passed into that plane, which is no plane, but
the eternal state of everything beyond the planes of illusion. Both
Purusha and Pradhana are immutable and unconsumable, or
Aparinamin and Avyaya, in eternity; and both
during the Mayavic periods may be referred to as Vyaya and
Parinamin, or that which can expand, pass away and
disappear, and is "modifiable." In this sense Purusha,
must of course, be held distinct in our conceptions from Parabrahmam.
Nevertheless that, which is called "energy" or "force" in Science and
has been explained as a dual Force by Metcalfe, is never, in
fact, and cannot be energy alone; for it is the substance of
the world, its soul, the all-permeant "Sarvaga," in
conjunction with Kala "time." The three are the trinity in one,
during Manvantara, the all-potential Unity, which acts on the plane of
illusion (Maya) as three distinct things. In Orphic
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] study the occult sciences.
Living in the thirteenth century, almost a contemporary, therefore, of
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, his discoveries -- such as gunpowder
and optical glasses, and his mechanical achievements -- were considered
by everyone as so many miracles. He was accused of having made a compact
with the Evil One."
* Just so; "those forms of energy . . . which become evident
. . ." in the laboratory of the chemist and physicist; but there are
other forms of energy wedded to other forms of matter, --
which are supersensuous, yet known to the adepts.
[[H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 583 ALL-POTENTIAL UNITY.
philosophy in Greece they were called Phanes, Chaos,
and Chronos -- the triad of the Occult philosophers of
that period.
But see how closely Mr. Crookes brushes by the "Unknowable," and what
"potentialities" there are for the acceptance of Occult truths in his
discoveries. He continues, speaking of the evolution of atoms: --
". . . . Let us pause at the end of the first complete vibration and
examine the result. We have already found the elements of water,
ammonia, carbonic acid, the atmosphere, plant and animal life,
phosphorus for the brain, salt for the seas, clay for the solid
earth . . . phosphates and silicates sufficient for a world and
inhabitants not so very different from what we enjoy at the present
day. True the human inhabitants would have to live in a state of
more than Arcadian simplicity, and the absence of calcic phosphate
would be awkward as far as the bone is concerned* . . . At the lower
end of our curve . . . we see a great hiatus . . . This oasis, and
the blanks which precede and follow it, may be referred with much
probability to the particular way in which our Earth developed into
a member of our solar system. If this be so, it may be that on our
Earth only these blanks occur, and not generally throughout the
universe."
This justifies several assertions in the Occult works.
Firstly, "that neither stars nor the sun can be
said to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with which the
chemist is familiar, though they are all present in the sun's outward
robes -- and a host more of elements so far unknown to science."
Secondly, that our globe has its own special
laboratory on the far-away outskirts of its atmosphere, crossing which,
every atom and molecule change and differentiate from their primordial
nature.
And Thirdly, that though no element present on our
earth could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun, there are many
others which have either not reached, or not as yet been discovered on,
our globe. "Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly bodies in
the process of formation; or, though present in them, these elements, on
account of their present state, may not respond as yet to the usual
scientific tests."** Mr. Crookes speaks of an element of still lower
atomic weight than hydrogen, an element purely hypothetical as
far as our earth is concerned . . . though existing in abundance in the
chromosphere of the Sun -- the helium. Occult Science adds that
not one of the elements regarded by chemistry as such really
deserves the name.
Again we find Mr. Crookes speaking with approbation of "Dr.
Carnelly's weighty argument in favour of the compound nature of the
so-called elements, from their analogy to the compound
radicles! " Hitherto,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is just the existence of such worlds in other planes of
consciousness that is claimed by the Occultist. The secret science
teaches that the primitive race was boneless. (See Book II.);
and that there are (to us) invisible worlds, peopled as our own, besides
the populations of Dhyan Chohans.
** "Five Years of Theosophy," p. 258
et seq.
[[H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 584 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
alchemy alone succeeded within the historical periods, and in the
so-called civilized countries, in obtaining a real element,
or a particle of homogeneous matter, the Mysterium Magnum
of Paracelsus. But then it was before Lord Bacon's day.*
". . . 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.** But can we form a
clear conception of a body which combines with other bodies in
proportions expressible by negative qualities?"***
"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
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Says Mr. Crookes in the same address: "The first riddle which we
encounter in chemistry is: 'What are the elements?' Of the attempts
hitherto made to define or explain an element, none satisfy the demands
of the human intellect. The text books tell us that an element is 'a
body which has not been decomposed ''that it is 'a something to which we
can add, but from which we can take nothing,' or 'a body which increases
in weight with every chemical change.' Such definitions are doubly
unsatisfactory: they are provisional, and may cease to-morrow to be
applicable in any given case. They take their stand, not on any
attribute of the things to be defined, but on the limitations of human
power: they are confessions of intellectual impotence."
** And the lecturer quotes Sir George Airy, who says (in Faraday's
Life and Letters Vol. II., p. 354), "I can easily conceive
that there are plenty of bodies about us not subject to this intermutual
action, and therefore not subject to the law of gravitation."
*** The Vedantic philosophy conceives of such; but then it is not
physics, but metaphysics, called by Mr. Tyndall "poetry" and "fiction."
[[H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 585 THE "SEVENTH" IN CHEMISTRY.
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 a 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 a step forward towards the Sanctum Sanctorum of
the Occult. (Vide § XV., "Gods,
Monads, and Atoms.") 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,* 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.** In the
general array of the elements, as known to us, we have seen a
striking approximation to that of the organic world.*** 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 Reynold's method of
illustrating the periodic classification**** . . . Summing up all
the above considerations we cannot,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In the form they are now, we conceive?
** And to Kapila and Manu -- especially and originally.
*** Here is a scientific corroboration of the eternal law of
correspondences and analogy.
**** This method of illustrating the periodic law in the
classification of elements is, in the words of Mr. Crookes, proposed by
Professor Emerson Reynolds, of Dublin University, who . . . . "points
out that in each period, the general properties of the elements vary
from one to another, with approximate regularity until we reach the
seventh member, which is in more or less striking contrast
with the first element of the same period, as well as with the first of
the next. Thus chlorine, the seventh member of Mendeleef's third period,
contrasts sharply with both sodium, the first member of the same series,
and with potassium, the first member of the next series; whilst on the
other hand, sodium and potassium are closely analogous. The six
elements, whose atomic weights intervene between sodium and potassium,
vary in properties, step by step, until chlorine, the contrast to
sodium, is reached. But from chlorine to potassium, the analogue of
sodium, there is a change in properties per saltum. . . . . If
we thus recognise a contrast in properties -- more or less decided --
between the first and the last members of each series, we can scarcely
help admitting the existence of a point of mean variation within each
system. In general the fourth element of each series possesses
the property we might expect a transition-element to exhibit. . . . .
Thus for the purpose of graphic translation, Professor Reynolds
considers that the fourth member of a period -- silicon, for example --
may be placed at the apex of a symmetrical [[Footnote continued on next
page]]
[[H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 586 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
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 to turn back for their
cosmogonical hypotheses 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 the 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. For
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] curve, which shall
represent for that particular period, the direction in which the
properties of the series of elements vary with rising atomic weights.
Now, the writer humbly confesses complete ignorance of modern
chemistry and its mysteries. But she is pretty well acquainted with the
Occult doctrine with regard to correspondences of types and
antitypes in nature, and perfect analogy as a fundamental law in
Occultism. Hence she ventures a remark which will strike every
Occultist, however it may be derided by orthodox Science. This method of
illustrating the periodic law in the behaviour of elements, whether or
not still a hypothesis in chemistry, is a law in Occult
Sciences. Every well-read Occultist knows that the seventh
and fourth members -- whether in a septenary chain of worlds,
the septenary hierarchy of angels, or in the constitution of man,
animal, plant, or mineral atom -- that the seventh and
fourth members, we say, in the geometrically and mathematically
uniform workings of the immutable laws of Nature, always play a distinct
and specific part in the septenary system. From the stars twinkling high
in heaven, to the sparks flying asunder from the rude fire built by the
savage in his forest; from the hierarchies and the essential
constitution of the Dhyan Chohans -- organized for diviner apprehensions
and a loftier range of perception than the greatest Western psychologist
ever dreamed of, down to Nature's classification of species
among the humblest insects; finally from worlds to atoms, everything in
the universe, from great to small, proceeds in its spiritual and
physical evolution, cyclically and septennially, showing its seventh and
fourth number (the latter the turning point) behaving in the same way as
shown in that periodic law of atoms. Nature never proceeds per
saltum. Therefore, when Mr. Crookes remarks to this that he does
not "wish to infer that the gaps in Mendeleef's table, and in this
graphic representation of it (the diagram showing the evolution of
atoms) necessarily mean that there are elements actually existing to
fill up the gaps; these gaps may only mean that at the birth of the
elements there was an easy potentiality of the formation of an element
which would fit into the place" -- an Occultist would respectfully
remark to him that the latter hypothesis can only hold good, if the
septenary arrangement of atoms is not interfered with. This is the
one law, and an infallible method that must always lead to
success, one who follows it.
[[H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 587 PURANAS VERSUS ROYAL SOCIETY.
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
vibration (so-called). The knowledge of the real (not
the hypothetical) nature of Ether, or rather of the Akasa,
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,* and which
exact Science has to advocate notwithstanding. They cannot make away
with it without incurring the risk, like a modern Samson, of pulling
down the pillars of the Temple of Science, and getting buried under its
roof.
The theories built upon the rejection of Force outside and
independent of Matter pure and simple, have been all
shown fallacious. They do not, and cannot, cover the ground, and many of
the scientific data are thus proved unscientific. "Ether
produced Sound" is said in the Puranas, and the statement is laughed at.
It is the vibrations in 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 admitted virtually, 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
physicists know anything about. Hence, apart from an hypothetical ether
of Space and gross physical bodies, the whole Sidereal and unseen Space
is, in the sight of the 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 to suspect its nature or to wrench from it its secrets,
and thus feel justified in giving it a NAME? How far, especially, has
modern Science gone in the direction of those secrets, and what it is
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 the NEBULAR THEORY.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* A group of electricians has just protested against the new theory
of Clausius, the famous professor of the University of Bonn. The
character of the protest is shown in the signature, which has "Jules
Bourdin, in the name of the group of Electricians, which had the honour
of being introduced to Professor Clausius in 1881, and whose war-cry
(cri de ralliement) is A bas l'Ether" -- down
with ether, even; they want Universal Void, you see!
[[H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, Page]] 588 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
from
The Secret Doctrine,
by H. P. Blavatsky
**
**
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