Chapter XLIII: Section XI: 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 shall 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. The whole foundation belongs to Grecian and Indian Archaic Astronomy and Physics, in those days called always Philosophy. In all the Âryan and Greek speculations, we meet 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 William Thomson. The Hindû and Greek Atomists—Kanâda, Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, 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 William Thomson.(991) 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 like its predecessor? Light, from its metaphysical aspect, has been fully treated 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(992) [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
Plato, “lighted a Fire which we now call the Sun,”(993) 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 materialized, are concentrated upon our Solar System,
and produce all the correlations of forces.(994)

This is the Ether, as just explained in the views of Metcalfe, repeated by Dr. Richardson, save for the submission of the former to some details of the modern undulatory theory. We do not say that we deny the theory; we assert only that it needs completion and reärrangement. But the Occultists are by no means the only heretics in this respect; for Mr. Robert Hunt, F.R.S. finds that:

The undulatory theory does not account for the results of his
experiments.(995) 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.”(996)
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.(997)

To this remark of Sir David 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 is electricity itself. 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 at Birmingham, in 1886, to the Chemical Section of the British Association, of which he was President. This is what Helmholtz says:

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.(998)

Here we have to repeat that which was already said in Section VIII, that 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 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 can Chemistry. Two proofs of this are to be found in the world of Science—two great Chemists, each among the greatest in his own country, namely, Mr. Crookes and the late Professor Butlerof: the one is a thorough believer in abnormal phenomena; the other was as fervid a Spiritualist, as he was great in the 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 that 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 we are not daunted, and fain would we enter the mysterious region which ignorance tickets unknown.”

In his Presidential Address at Birmingham Mr. Crookes said:

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.

Two or three sentences, at the very close of his lecture on the _Genesis of the Elements_, showed the eminent Scientist to be on the royal road to the greatest discoveries. He has been for some time overshadowing “the original protyle,” and he has come to the conclusion that “he who grasps the Key will be permitted to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of creation.” Protyle, as the 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 πρὸ (earlier than) and ὕλη (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 ὕλη and every element is converted into
the nature of another element.”

The _knowledge_ of Roger Bacon did not come to this wonderful old magician(999) by inspiration, but because he studied ancient works on Magic and Alchemy, and had a key to the real meaning of their language. But see what Mr. Crookes says of Protyle, next neighbour to the unconscious Mûlaprakriti 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(1000)—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.(1001)

With every respect due to the great knowledge of the lecturer, the Occultist would put it otherwise. He 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. Pradhâna, 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 Nirupâdhi, 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 Pradhâna are immutable and unconsumable, or Aparinâmin and Avyaya, in eternity; and both may be referred to during the Mâyâvic periods as Vyaya and Parinâmin, or that which can expand, pass away and disappear, and which is “modifiable.” In this sense Purusha, must, of course, be held distinct in our conceptions from Parabrahman. Nevertheless that, which is called “energy” or “force” in Science, and which 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 Kâla, Time. The three are the trinity in one, during Manvantara, the all‐potential Unity, which acts as three distinct things on Mâyâ, the plane of illusion. In the Orphic philosophy of ancient Greece they were called Phanes, Chaos, and Chronos—the triad of the Occult Philosophers of that period.

But see how closely Mr. Crookes brushes 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.(1002)... 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 the 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—as well as 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 changes and differentiates from its primordial nature.

And thirdly, that though no element present on our Earth could ever possibly be found wanting in the Sun, there are many others there 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.(1003)

Mr. Crookes speaks of helium, 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. Occult Science adds that not one of the elements regarded as such by Chemistry 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, Alchemy alone, within the historical period, and in the so‐ called civilized countries, has succeeded in obtaining a real _element_, or a particle of homogeneous Matter, the _Mysterium Magnum_ of Paracelsus. But then that was before Lord Bacon’s day.(1004)

... 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.