Footnotes:

1. Their intellection, of course, being of quite a different nature to any we can conceive of on Earth.

2. “Concepts of Modern Physics,” p. xi-xii., Introd. to the 2nd Edit.

3. “Recherches experimentales sur la relation qui existe entre la resistance de Pair et sa temperature,” p. 68.

4. From the criticism of “Concepts of Modern Physics” in Nature. See Stallo’s work, p. xvi. of Introduction.

5. Mr. Robert Ward, discussing the questions of Heat and Light in the November Journal of Science, 1881, shows us how utterly ignorant is Science about one of the commonest facts of nature — the heat of the sun. He says: — “The question of the temperature of the sun has been the subject of investigation with many scientists: Newton, one of the first investigators of this problem, tried to determine it, and after him all the scientists who have been occupied with calorimetry have followed his example. All have believed themselves successful, and have formulated their results with great confidence. The following, in the chronological order of the publication of the results, are the temperatures (in centigrade degrees) found by each of them: Newton, 1,699,300 deg.; Pouillet, 1,461 deg.; Tollner, 102,200 deg.; Secchi, 5,344,840 deg.; Ericsson, 2,726,700 deg.; Fizeau, 7,500 deg.; Waterston, 9,000,000 deg.; Spoeren, 27,000 deg.; Deville, 9,500 deg.; Soret, 5,801,846 deg.; Vicaire, 1,500 deg.; Rosetti, 20,000 deg. The difference is as 1,400 deg. against 9,000,000 deg., or no less than 8,998,600 deg.!! There probably does not exist in science a more astonishing contradiction than that revealed in these figures. And yet without doubt if an Occultist were to give out an estimate, each of these gentlemen would vehemently protest in the name of ‘Exact’ Science at the rejection of his special result.” (From the Theosophist.)

6. According to one atheistic idealist — Dr. Lewins — “When Sir Isaac, in 1687 . . . . showed mass and atom acted upon . . . . by innate activity . . . . he effectually disposed of Spirit, Anima, or Divinity, as supererogatory.”

7. Stallo’s above-cited work, “Concepts of Modern Physics,” a volume which has called forth the liveliest protests and criticisms, is recommended to anyone inclined to doubt this statement. “The professed antagonism of Science to metaphysics,” he writes, “has led the majority of scientific specialists to assume that the methods and results of empirical research are wholly independent of the control of the laws of thought. They either silently ignore, or openly repudiate, the simplest canons of logic, including the laws of non-contradiction and . . . resent with the utmost vehemence, every application of the rule of consistency to their hypotheses and theories . . . . and they regard an examination (of these) . . . . in the light of these laws as an impertinent intrusion of ‘a priori principles and methods’ into the domains of empirical science. Persons of this cast of mind find no difficulty in holding that atoms are absolutely inert, and at the same time asserting that these atoms are perfectly elastic; or in maintaining that the physical universe, in its last analysis, resolves itself into ‘dead’ matter and motion, and yet denying that all physical energy is in reality kinetic; or in proclaiming that all phenomenal differences in the objective world are ultimately due to the various motions of absolutely simple material units, and, nevertheless, repudiating the proposition that these units are equal” . . . . (p. xix.) “The blindness of eminent physicists to some of the most obvious consequences of their own theories is marvellous . . . . When Prof. Tait, in conjunction with Prof. Stewart, announces that ‘matter is simply passive’ (The Unseen Universe, sec. 104), and then, in connection with Sir W. Thomson, declares that ‘matter has an innate power of resisting external influences’ (Treat. on Nat. Phil., Vol. I., sec. 216), it is hardly impertinent to inquire how these statements are to be reconciled. When Prof. Du Bois Reymond . . . . insists upon the necessity of reducing all the processes of nature to motions of a substantial, indifferent substratum, wholly destitute of quality (‘Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens,’ p. 5), having declared shortly before in the same lecture that ‘resolution of all changes in the material world into motions of atoms caused by their constant central forces would be the completion of natural science,’ we are in a perplexity from which we have to be relieved.” (Pref. xliii.)

8. See Clerk Maxwell’s “Treatise on Electricity of Magnetism” and compare with Cauchy’s “Memoire sur la Dispersion de la lumiere.”

9. “Somewhat different!” exclaims Stallo. “The real import of this ‘somewhat’ is, that the medium in question is not, in any intelligible sense, material at all, having none of the properties of matter.” All the properties of matter depend upon differences and changes, and the “hypothetical” aether here defined is not only destitute of differences, but incapable of difference and change — (in the physical sense let us add). This proves that if aether is “matter” it is so only as something visible, tangible and existing, for spiritual senses alone; that it is a Being indeed — but not of our plane: Pater AEther, or Akasa.

10. Verae causae for physical science are mayavic or illusionary causes to the Occultist, and vice versa.

11. Very much “differentiated,” on the contrary, since the day it left its laya condition.

12. For the Occultists who say that the author of nature is nature itself, something indistinct and inseparable from the Deity, it follows that those who are conversant with the occult laws of nature, and know how to change and provoke new conditions in ether, may — not modify the laws, but work and do the same in accordance with those immutable laws.

13. “Attraction,” Le Couturier, a materialist, writes, “has now become for the public that which it was for Newton himself — a simple word, an idea” (Panorama des Mondes), since its cause is unknown. Herschell virtually says the same, when remarking, that whenever studying the motion of the heavenly bodies, and the phenomena of attraction, he feels penetrated at every moment with the idea of “the existence of causes that act for us under a veil, disguising their direct action.” (Musee des Sciences, August, 1856.)

14. If we are taken to task for believing in operating “Gods” and “Spirits” while rejecting a personal God, we answer to the Theists and Monotheists: “Admit that your Jehovah is one of the Elohim, and we are ready to recognise him. Make of him, as you do, the Infinite, the one and the Eternal God, and we will never accept him in this character.” Of tribal Gods there were many; the One Universal Deity is a principle, an abstract Root-Idea which has nought to do with the unclean work of finite Form. We do not worship the Gods, we only honour Them, as beings superior to ourselves. In this we obey the Mosaic injunction, while Christians disobey their Bible — Missionaries foremost of all. “Thou shalt not revile the gods,” says one of them — (Jehovah) — in Exodus xxii. 28); but at the same time in verse 20 it is commanded, “He that sacrificeth to any God, save unto the Lord, he shall be utterly destroyed.” Now in the original texts it is not “god” but Elohim, — and we challenge contradiction — and Jehovah is one of the Elohim, as proved by his own words in Genesis iii. 22, when “the Lord God said: Behold the Man has become as one of us,” etc. Hence both those who worship and sacrifice to the Elohim, the angels, and to Jehovah, those who revile the gods of their fellow-men, are far greater transgressors than the Occultists or any Theosophist. Meanwhile many of the latter prefer believing in some one “Lord” or other, and are quite welcome to do as they like.

15. To liken the “immateriate species to wooden iron,” and laugh at Spiller referring to them as “incorporeal matter” does not solve the mystery (See “Concepts of Modern Physics,” p. 165 et infra).

16. World-Life. Prof. Winchell, LL.D (pp. 49 and 50).

17. “Il n’est plus possible aujourd’hui, de soutenir comme Newton, que les corps celestes se mouvent au milieu du vide immense des espaces. . . . Parmi les consequences de la theorie du vide etablie par ce grand homme, il ne reste plus debout que le mot ‘attraction,’ et nous verrons le jour ou ce dernier mot disparaitra du vocabulaire scientifique.” (“Panorama des mondes,” pp. 47 and 53.)

18. When read in a fair and unprejudiced spirit, Sir Isaac Newton’s works are an ever ready witness to show how he must have hesitated between gravitation and attraction, impulse and some other unknown cause to explain the regular course of the planetary motion. But see Treatise on Colour (Vol. III., question 31.) We are told by Herschell that Newton left with his successors the duty of drawing all the scientific conclusions from his discovery. How modern Science abused the privilege of building its newest theories upon the law of gravitation, may be realised when one remembers how profoundly religious was that great man.

19. The materialistic notion that because, in physics real or sensible motion is impossible in pure space or vacuum, therefore, the eternal motion of and in Cosmos (regarded as infinite Space) is a fiction — only shows once more that such words as “pure space,” “pure Being,” “the Absolute,” etc., of Eastern metaphysics have never been understood in the West.

20. “Correl. Phys. Forces,” p. 173. This is precisely what Occultism maintains, and on the same principle that “where force is made to oppose force, and produce static equilibrium, the balance of pre-existing equilibrium is affected, and fresh motion is started equivalent to that which is withdrawn into a state of abeyance.” This process finds intervals in the pralaya, but is eternal and ceaseless as the “Breath,” even when the manifested Kosmos rests.

21. “Trans-solar space,” writes the great Humboldt, “does not hitherto show any phenomenon analogous to our solar system. It is a peculiarity of our System, that matter should have condensed within it in nebulous rings, the nuclei of which condense into earths and moons. I say again, heretofore, nothing of the kind has ever been observed beyond our planetary system.” (See Revue Germanique of the 31st Dec. 1860, art. “Lettres et conversations d’Alexandre Humboldt.”) True, that since 1860 the nebular theory has sprung up, and being better known, a few identical phenomena were supposed to be observed beyond the solar system. Yet the great man is quite right; and no earths or moons can be found — except in appearance — beyond, or of the same order of matter as found in our system. Such is the Occult teaching.

22. But see Astronomie du Moyen Age, by Delambre.

23. In the sense, of course, of matter existing in states unknown to Science.

24. We shall be taken to task for contradiction. It will be said that while we deny God, we admit Souls and operative Spirits, and quote from Roman Catholic bigoted writers in support of our argument. To this we reply: “We deny the anthropomorphic god of the Monotheists, but never the Divine Principle in nature. We combat Protestants and Roman Catholics on a number of dogmatic theological beliefs of human and sectarian origin. We agree with them in their belief in Spirits and intelligent operative powers, though we do not worship “Angels” as the Roman Latinists do.”

25. The terms “high” and “low” being only relative to the position of the observer in Space, any use of those terms tending to convey the impression that they stand for abstract realities, is necessarily fallacious.

26. Jacob Ennis, “The Origin of the Stars,” p. 221 et seq.

27. If such is the case, how does Science explain the comparatively small size of the planets nearest the Sun? The theory of meteoric aggregation is only a step farther from truth than the nebular conception, and has not even the quality of the latter — its metaphysical element.

28. And even on these figures Bischof disagrees with Thomson, and calculates that 350 million years would be required for the earth to cool from a temperature of 20,000 degrees to 200 degrees centigrade. This is, also, the opinion of Helmholtz.

29. For over a century all distinction between body and force is made away with. “Force is but the property of a body in motion,” say the physicists; and “life — the property of our animal organs — is but the result of their molecular arrangement,” answer the physiologists. “In the bosom of that aggregate which is named planet,” teaches Littre, “are developed all the forces immanent to matter . . . i.e., that matter possesses in itself and through itself the forces that are proper to it . . . and which are primary, not secondary. Such forces are the property of weight, the property of electricity, of terrestrial magnetism, the property of life. . . . Every planet can develop life . . . as earth, for instance, which had not always mankind on it, and now bears (produit) men” . . . (Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15,1860.)

30. Deuxieme memoire, “Manifestations Historiques,” p. 272.

31. L’Univers explique par la Reveation, and Cosmogonie de la Revelation. But see De Mirville’s Deuxieme Memoire. The author, a terrible enemy of Occultism, was yet one who wrote great truths.

32. Something dead implies that it had been at some time living. When, at what period of cosmogony? Occultism says that in all cases when matter appears inert, it is the most active. A wooden or a stone block is motionless and impenetrable to all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, and de facto, its particles are in ceaseless eternal vibration which is so rapid that to the physical eye the body seems absolutely devoid of motion; and the spacial distance between those particles in their vibratory motion is — considered from another plane of being and perception — as great as that which separates snow flakes or drops of rain. But to physical science this will be an absurdity.

33. See “Popular Science Review,” Vol. V., pp. 329-34.

34. The newest Authorities have rejected these explanations as “exploded theories,” and have now deified “Motion” as their sole Idol. But, surely, they and their idol will one day share the fate of their predecessors.

35. This ominous confession was made, we believe, at a Scientific Congress at Swansea. Faraday held a similar opinion, however, as stated by Tyndall: “What do we know of the atom apart from its force? You imagine a nucleus which may be called a and surround it by forces which may be called m; to my mind the a or nucleus vanishes and the substance consists of the powers m. And, indeed, what notion can we form of the nucleus independent of its powers? What thought remains on which to hang the imagination of an a independent of the acknowledged forces?”

36. Schelling, “Ideen,” etc., p. 18.

37. “Concepts of Modern Physics,” xxxi., Introductory to the 2nd edition.

38. Loc. cit.

39. J. P. Cooke, The New Chemistry, p. 13.

40. “It imports that equal volumes of all substances, when in the gaseous state, and under like conditions of pressure and temperature, contain the same number of molecules — whence it follows that the weights of the molecules are proportional to the specific gravities of the gases; that therefore, these being different, the weights of the molecules are different also; and inasmuch as the molecules of certain elementary substances are monatomic (consist of but one atom each) while the molecules of various other substances contain the same number of atoms, that the ultimate atoms of such substances are of different weights” (Concepts of Modern Physics, p. 34). As shown further on in the same volume, this cardinal principle of modern theoretical chemistry is in utter and irreconcilable conflict with the first proposition of the atomo-mechanical theory —namely, the absolute equality of the primordial units of mass.

41. Referring to the Aura, one of the Masters says in the “Occult World,” “How could you make yourself understood by, command in fact, those semi-intelligent forces, whose means of communication with us are not through spoken words but through sounds and colours in correlation between the vibrations of the two.” It is this “correlation” that is unknown to modern Science, yet was many times explained by the Alchemists.

42. The “substance” of the Occultist, however, is to the most refined substance of the physicist, what radiant matter is to the leather of the Chemist’s boots.

43. The names of the Seven Rays — which are, Sushumna, Harikesa, Viswakarman, Viswatryarchas, Sannaddha, Sarvavasu and Swaraj — are all mystical, and each has its distinct application in a distinct state of consciousness, for occult purposes. The Sushumna, which, as said in the Nirukta (11, 6), is only to light up the moon, is the ray nevertheless cherished by the initiated Yogis. The totality of the Seven Rays spread through the Solar system constitute, so to say, the physical Upadhi (basis) of the Ether of Science; in which Upadhi, light, heat, electricity, etc., etc., — the forces of orthodox science — correlate to produce their terrestrial effects. As psychic and spiritual effects, they emanate from, and have their origin in, the supra-solar Upadhi, in the ether of the Occultist — or Akasa.

44. To cite a most impartial critic, one whose authority no one can call in question, as a reminder to Western Dogmatists, that the question cannot be in any way considered as settled: “There is no fundamental difference between light and heat . . . each is merely a metamorphosis of the other. . . . Heat is light in complete repose. Light is heat in rapid motion. Directly light is combined with a body, it becomes heat; but when it is thrown off from that body it again becomes light.” (Leslie’s Fluid Theory of Light and Heat.) “Whether this is true or false we cannot tell, and many years, perhaps many generations, will have to elapse before we shall be able to tell.” (Buckle’s History of Civilization, Vol. III., p. 384.)

45. On the plane of manifestation and illusionary matter it may be so; not that it is nothing more, for it is vastly more.

46. Neutral, or zero.

47. “Scientific Letters,” Butlerof.

48. Called the “drinker of waters,” solar heat causing water to evaporate.

49. The Gandharva of the Veda is the deity who knows and reveals the secrets of heaven and divine truths to mortals. Cosmically — the Gandharvas are the aggregate powers of the solar-fire, and constitute its Forces; psychically —the intelligence residing in the Sushumna, Solar ray, the highest of the seven rays; mystically —the occult force in the Soma (the moon, or lunar plant) and the drink made of it; physically — the phenomenal, and spiritually — the noumenal causes of Sound and the “Voice of Nature.” Hence, they are called the 6,333 “heavenly Singers” and musicians of Indra’s loka who personify (even in number) the various and manifold sounds in Nature, both above and below. In the latter allegories they are said to have mystic power over women, and to be fond of them. The esoteric meaning is plain. They are one of the forms, if not the prototypes, of Enoch’s angels, the Sons of God, who saw that the daughters of men were fair (Gen. vi.) who married them, and taught the daughters of the Earth the secrets of Heaven.

50. Not only “through space,” but filling every point of our solar system, for it is the physical residue, so to say, of Ether, its lining on our plane; Ether having to serve other cosmic and terrestrial purposes besides being the “agent” for transmitting light. It is the astral fluid or “Light” of the Kabalists, and the “Seven rays” of Sun-Vishnu.

51. What need, then, of etheric waves for the transmission of light, heat, etc., if this substance can pass through vacuum?

52. And how can it be otherwise? Gross ponderable matter is the body, the Shell of matter or Substance, the female passive principle; and this Fohatic force is the second principle, prana — the male and the active? On our globe this Substance is the second principle of the septenary Element — Earth; in the atmosphere, it is that of air, which is the cosmic gross body; in the Sun it becomes the Solar body and that of the Seven rays; in sidereal space it corresponds with another principle, and so on. The whole is a homogeneous Unity alone, the parts are all differentiations.

53. Or the reverberation, and for sound, repercussion on our plane of that which is a perpetual motion of that Substance on higher planes. Our world and senses are victims of Maya, ceaselessly.

54. An honest admission, that.

55. Yet it is not Ether, but only one of the principles of Ether, the latter being itself one of the principles of Akasa.

56. And so does prana (Jiva) pervade the whole living body of man; but alone, without having an atom to act upon, it would be quiescent — dead; i.e., would be in laya, or as Mr. Crookes has it, “locked in protyle.” It is the action of Fohat upon a compound or even a simple body that produces life. When a body dies it passes into the same polarity as its male energy and repels therefore the active agent, which, losing hold of the whole, fastens on the parts or molecules, this action being called chemical. Vishnu, the Preserver, transforms himself into Rudra-Siva, the Destroyer — a correlation seemingly unknown to Science.

57. Verily, unless the occult terms of the Kabalists are adopted!

58. “Unchangeable” only during Manvantaric periods, after which it merges once more into Mulaprakriti; “invisible” for ever, in its own essence, but seen in its reflected coruscations, called the Astral light by the modern Kabalists. Yet, conscious and grand Beings clothed in that same Essence move in it.

59. One has to add (ponderable), to distinguish it from that Ether which is matter still, though a substratum.

60. The Occult Sciences reverse the statement, and say that it is the sun, and all the suns that are from it, which emanate at the Manvantaric dawn from the Central Sun.

61. Here, we decidedly beg to differ with the learned gentleman. Let us remember that this AEther, whether Akasa is meant by the term, or its lower principle, Ether — is septenary. Akasa is Aditi in the allegory, and the mother of Marttanda (the sun), the Deva-matri — “Mother of the gods.” In the solar system, the sun is her Buddhi and Vahan, the Vehicle, hence the 6th principle; in Kosmos all the suns are the Kama rupa of Akasa and so is ours. It is only when regarded as an individual Entity in his own Kingdom that Surya (the sun) is the 7th principle of the great body of matter.

62. Brutal but frank materialism is more honest than Janus-faced agnosticism in our days. Monism is the Pecksniff of modern philosophy, turning a pharisaical face to psychology and idealism, and its natural face of a Roman Augur, swelling his cheek with his tongue — to Materialism. The Monists are worse than the Materialists; because, while looking at the Universe and psycho-spiritual man from the same negative stand-point, the latter put their case far less plausibly than sceptics of Mr. Tyndall’s or even Mr. Huxley’s stamp. Herbert Spencer, Bain and Lewes are more dangerous to universal truths than Buchner.

63. “Geology,” by Professor A. Winchell.

64. See Five Years of Theosophy — Articles: “Do the Adepts deny the nebular theory?” and “Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?” — for the true Occult teaching.

65. And the central mass, too, as will be found, or rather the centre of the reflection.

66. That “matter” is just like the reflection in a mirror of the flame from a “photogenic” lamp-wick.

67. See “Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 258 — answer to this speculation of Herschell’s.

68. Paracelsus for one, who called it liquor vitae, and Archaeus.

69. Rather alchemical — “composition.”

70. “This vital force . . . radiates around man like a luminous sphere” . . . says Paracelsus in Paragranum.

71. This does not mean that every bush, tree or stone is God or a god; but only that every speck of the manifested material of Kosmos belongs to and is the substance of “God,” however low it may have fallen in its cyclic gyration through the Eternities of the ever becoming,; and also that every such speck individually, and Kosmos collectively, is an aspect and a reminder of that universal One Soul — which philosophy refuses to call God, thus limiting the eternal and ever-present root and essence.

72. The division of the physical senses into five, comes to us from great antiquity. But while adopting the number, no modern philosopher has asked himself how these senses could exist, i.e., be perceived and used in a self-conscious way, unless there was the sixth sense, mental perception to register and record them; and (this for the Metaphysicians and Occultists) the Seventh to preserve the spiritual fruition and remembrance thereof, as in a Book of Life which belongs to Karma. The ancients divided the senses into five, simply because their teachers (the Initiates) stopped at the hearing, as being that sense which developed in the physical plane (got dwarfed rather, limited to this plane) only at the beginning of the Fifth Race. (The Fourth Race already had begun to lose the spiritual condition, so pre-eminently developed in the Third Race.)

73. The modern commentators, failing to comprehend the subtle meaning of the ancient Scholiasts, take this sentence, “causes of the agents,” to mean “that the powers of smelling, etc., when attributed to the Self, make him appear as an agent, as an active principle” (!), which is entirely fanciful. These “seven” are understood to be the causes of the Agents, because “the objects are causes, as their enjoyment causes an impression.” It means esoterically that they, these seven senses, are caused by the Agents, which are the “deities,” for what does, or can, the sentence which follows this one mean? “Thus,” it is said, “these seven (senses) are the causes of emancipation” (i.e., when these causes are made ineffectual). “And among the learned (the wise Initiates) who understand the qualities which are in the position (in the nature, rather) of the deities, each in its place,” means simply that the “learned” understand the nature of the noumenoi of the various phenomena; and that “qualities,” in this instance, mean the qualities of the high planetary or Elementary gods or Intelligences, which rule the elements and their products, and not at all “the senses,” as the modern commentator thinks. For the “learned do not suppose their senses to have aught to do with them, any more than with their Self.” (Vide pp. 278 and 279 of the VIII. Vol. of “The Sacred Books of the East.” Anugita.)

74. Ahamkara, I suppose, that Egoship (or Ahamship) which leads to every error.

75. The elements are the five tanmatras of earth, water, fire, air and ether, the producers of the grosser elements.

76. The conductor in the sense of Upadhi — a material or physical basis; but, as the second principle of the universal Soul and Vital Force in Nature, it is intelligently guided by the fifth principle thereof.

77. And too great an exuberance of it in the nervous system leads as often to disease and death. If it were the animal system which generated it, such would not be the case, surely. Hence, the latter emergency shows its independence of the system, and connection with the Sun-Force, as Metcalfe and Professor Hunt explain it.

78. In a recent work on the Symbolism in Buddhism and Christianity (in Buddhism and Roman Catholicism, rather, many later rituals and dogmas in Northern Buddhism in its popular exoteric form, being identical with those of the Latin Church) some curious facts are to be found. The author of this volume, with more pretensions than erudition, has indiscriminately crammed into his work ancient and modern Buddhist teachings, and sorely confused Lamaism with Buddhism. On page 404 of this volume, called “Buddhism in Christendom, or Jesus the Essene,” our pseudo-Orientalist devotes himself to criticizing the “Seven Principles” of the Esoteric Buddhists, and attempts to ridicule them. On page 405, the closing page, he speaks enthusiastically of the Vidyadharas, “the seven great legions of dead men made wise.” Now, these “Vidyadharas,” whom some Orientalists call “demi-gods,” are in fact, exoterically, a kind of Siddhas, “affluent in devotion,” and, esoterically, they are identical with the seven classes of Pitris, one class of which endow man in the Third Race with Self-Consciousness by incarnating in the human shells. The “Hymn to the Sun,” at the end of his queer volume of mosaic, which endows Buddhism with a personal god (!!), is an unfortunate thrust at the very proofs so elaborately collected by the unlucky author.

Theosophists are fully aware that Mr. Rhys Davids has expressed his opinion on their beliefs likewise. He said that the theories propounded by the author of Esoteric Buddhism “were not Buddhism, and were not Esoteric.” The remark is the result of (a) the unfortunate mistake of writing “Buddhism” instead of “Budhaism,” or Budhism, i.e., of connecting the system with Gautama’s religion instead of with the Secret Wisdom taught by Krishna, Sankaracharya, and by many others, as much as by Buddha; and (b) of the impossibility of Mr. Rhys Davids knowing anything of true esoteric teachings. But he is, at all events, the greatest Pali and Buddhist scholar of the day, and whatever he may say is entitled to respectful hearing. But when one who knows no more of exoteric Buddhism on scientific and materialistic lines, than he knows of esoteric philosophy, defames those whom he honours with his spite, and assumes with the Theosophists the airs of a profound scholar, one can only smile and — heartily laugh at him.

79. "The Human Species," p. 11.

80. Not only does it not deny the occurrence, though attributing it to a wrong cause, as always, each theory contradicting every other, (see the theories of Secchi, of Faye, and of Young), the spots depending on the superficial accumulation of vapours cooler than the photosphere (?), etc., etc., but we have men of science who astrologize upon the spots. Professor Jevons attributes all the great periodical commercial crises to the influence of the Sun spots every eleventh cyclic year. (See his “Investigations into Currency and Finance.”) This is worthy of praise and encouragement surely.

81. Unfortunately, as these pages are being written the “archebiosis of terrestrial existence” has turned, under a somewhat stricter chemical analysis, into a simple precipitate of sulphate of lime — hence from the scientific standpoint not even an organic substance!!! Sic transit gloria mundi!

82. In his “World-Life” — page 48 — in the appended foot notes, Professor Winchell says: — “It is generally admitted that at excessively high temperatures matter exists in a state of dissociation — that is, no chemical combination can exist;” and would appeal, to prove the unity of matter, to the spectrum, which in every case of homogeneity will show a bright line, whereas in the case of several molecular arrangements existing — in the nebulae say, or a star — “the spectrum should consist of two or three bright lines!” This would be no proof either way to the physicist-Occultist, who maintains that beyond a certain limit of visible matter, no spectrum, no telescope and no microscope are of any use. The unity of matter, of that which is real cosmic matter to the Alchemist, or “Adam’s Earth” as the Kabalists call it, can hardly be proved or disproved, by either the French savant Dumas, who suggests “the composite nature of the “elements” on certain relations of atomic weights,” or even by Mr. Crookes’s “radiant matter,” though his experiments may seem “to be best understood on the hypothesis of the homogeneity of the elements of matter, and the continuity of the states of matter.” For all this does not go beyond material matter, so to say, even in what is shown by the spectrum, that modern “eye of Siva” of physical experiments. It is of this matter only, that H. St. Claire Deville could say that “when bodies, deemed to be simple, combine with one another, they vanish, they are individually annihilated”; simply because he could not follow those bodies in their further transformation in the world of spiritual cosmic matter. Verily modern science will never be able to dig deep enough into the cosmological formations to find the roots of the world-stuff or matter, unless she works on the same lines of thought as the medieval alchemist did.

83. “World-Life,” Ibid.

84. Book I. ch. II. Vishnu Purana, Fitzedward Hall’s Translation.

85. Vide preceding Section IX., “Life, Force, and Gravity,” quotation from Anugita.

86. The word “supernatural” implies above or outside of nature. Nature and Space are one. Now Space for the metaphysician exists outside of any act of sensation, and is a purely subjective representation; materialism, which would connect it forcibly with one or the other datum of sensation, notwithstanding. For our senses, it is fairly subjective when independent of anything within it. How then can any phenomenon, or anything else, step outside of or be performed beyond that which has no limits? But when spacial extension becomes simply conceptual, and is thought of in an idea connected with certain actions, as by the materialists and the physicists, then again they have hardly a right to define and claim that which can or cannot be produced by Forces generated within even limited spaces, as they have not even an approximate idea of what those forces are.

87. It is not correct, when speaking of idealism, to show it based upon “the old ontological assumptions that things or entities exist independently of each other, and otherwise than as terms of relations” (Stallo). At any rate, it is incorrect to say so of idealism in Eastern philosophy and its cognition, for it is just the reverse.

88. Independent, in a certain sense, but not disconnected with it.

89. “By Fohat, more likely,” would be an Occultist’s reply.

90. The reason for such psychic capacities is given farther on.

91. The above was written two years ago, at a time when hopes of success for the “Keely Motor” were at their highest. What was then said by the writer proved true, in every word, and now only a few remarks are added to it with regard to the failure of his expectations, so far, which has now been admitted by the discoverer himself. Though, however, the word failure is here used the reader should understand it in a relative sense, for as Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore explains: “What Mr. Keely does admit is that, baffled in applying vibratory force to mechanics, upon his first and second lines of experimental research, he was obliged either to confess a commercial failure, or to try a third departure from his base or principle; seeking success through another channel.”
. . And this “channel” is on the physical plane.

92. We learn that these remarks are not applicable to Mr. Keely’s latest discovery; time alone can show the exact limit of his achievements.

93. This also is the division, made by the Occultists, under other names.

94. Quite so, since there is the seventh beyond, which begins the same enumeration, from the first to the last, on another and higher plane.

95. In this case the American “Substantialists” are not wrong (though too anthropomorphic and material in their views to be accepted by the Occultists) when arguing through Mrs. M. S. Organ, M.D., that “there must be positive entitative properties in objects which have a constitutional relation to the nerves of animal sensations, or there can be no perception. No impression of any kind can be made upon brain, nerve, or mind — no stimulus to action — unless there is an actual and direct communication of a substantial force.” (“Substantial” as far as it appears in the usual sense of the word in this universe of illusion and maya, of course; not so in reality.) “That force may be the most refined and sublimated immaterial Entity (?). Yet it must exist; for no sense, element, or faculty of the human being can have a perception, or be stimulated into action, without some substantial force coming in contact with it. This is the fundamental law pervading the whole organic and mental world. In the true philosophical sense there is no such thing as independent action: for every force or substance is correlated to some other force or substance. We can with just as much truth and reason assert that no substance possesses any inherent gustatory property or any olfactory property — that taste and odour are simply sensations caused by vibrations; and hence mere illusions of animal perceptions. . . .”

96. In answer to a friend, that eminent geologist writes: . . . .” I can only say, in reply to your letter, that it is at present, and perhaps always will be, impossible to reduce, even approximately, geological time into years, or even into millenniums.” (Signed William Pengelly, F.R.S.)

97. Plato speaking of the irrational, turbulent Elements “composed of fire, air, water, and earth,” means Elementary Daemons. (See Timaeus.)

98. Plato uses the words “secretions” of turbulent Elements (Timaeus).

99. Valentinus’ Esoteric Treatise on the Doctrine of Gilgul.

100. Surely no educated Jew ever believed the literal sense of this allegory — namely, that “the bodies of Jews deposited in foreign lands contain within them a principle of Soul which cannot rest, until by a process called the “whirling of the Soul” the immortal particle reaches once more the sacred Soil of the “Promised land.” The meaning is evident to an occultist. The process was supposed to be accomplished by a kind of metempsychosis, the psychic spark being conveyed through bird, beast, fish, and the most minute insect. (See Royal Masonic Cyclo. Mackenzie.) The Allegory relates to the atoms of the body, which have each to pass through every form before all reach the final state, which is the first starting point of the departure of every atom — its primitive laya State. But the primitive meaning of Gilgoolem, or “Revolution of Souls,” was the idea of the re-incarnating Souls or Egos. “All the Souls go into the gilgoolah, “into a cyclic or revolving process; i.e., they all proceed on the cyclic path of re-births. Some Kabalists interpret this doctrine to mean only a kind of purgatory for the souls of the wicked. But this is not so.

101. Translated for the Theosophist, by Mohini M. Chatterji as “Crest Jewel of Wisdom,” 1886. (See Theosophist, July and August numbers).

102. Now that the revised version of the gospels has been published and the most glaring mistranslations of the old versions are corrected, one will understand better the words in St. John v., vi., and vii.: “It is the Spirit that beareth witness because the Spirit is the truth.” The words that follow in the mistranslated version about the “three witnesses,” — hitherto supposed to stand for “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost” — show the real meaning of the writer (St. John) very clearly, thus still more forcibly identifying his teaching in this respect with that of Sankaracharya. For what can the sentence, “there are three who bear witness: the Spirit and the Water and the Blood” — mean, if they bear no relation to, or connection with, the more philosophical statement of the great Vedanta teacher, who, speaking of the sheaths (the principles in man) Jiva, Vignanamaya, etc., which are, in their physical manifestation, “water and blood” or life, adds that atma (spirit) alone is what remains after the subtraction of the sheaths and that it is the only witness, or synthesized unity. The less spiritual and philosophical school, solely with an eye to a trinity made three witnesses out of “one,” thus connecting it more with earth than with heaven.

103. The Tanmatras are literally the type or rudiment of an element devoid of qualities; but esoterically, they are the primeval noumenoi of that which becomes in the progress of evolution a Cosmic element in the sense given to the term in antiquity, not in that of physics. They are the logoi, the seven emanations or rays of the logos.

104. Hence the seven chief planets, the spheres of the indwelling seven spirits, under each of which is born one of the human groups which is guided and influenced thereby. There are only seven planets (specially connected with earth), and twelve houses, but the possible combinations of their aspects are countless. As each planet can stand to each of the others in twelve different aspects, their combinations must, therefore, be almost infinite; as infinite, in fact, as the spiritual, psychic, mental, and physical capacities in the numberless varieties of the genus homo, each of which varieties is born under one of the seven planets and one of the said countless planetary combinations. See Theosophist, for August, 1886.

105. The now universal error of attributing to the ancients the knowledge of only seven planets, simply because they mentioned no others, is based on the same general ignorance of their occult doctrines. The question is not whether they were, or were not, aware of the existence of the later discovered planets; but whether the reverence paid by them to the four exoteric and three secret great gods — the star-angels, had not some special reason. The writer ventures to say there was such a reason, and it is this. Had they known of as many planets as we do now (and this question can hardly be decided at present, either way), they would have still connected with their religious worship only the seven, because these seven are directly and specially connected with our earth, or, using esoteric phraseology, with our septenary ring of spheres. (See supra.)

106. It is the same, only still more metaphysical idea, as that of the Christian Trinity — “Three in One” — i.e., the Universal “over-Spirit,” manifesting on the two higher planes, those of Buddhi and Mahat; and these are the three hypostases, metaphysical, but never personal.

107. The identity, and at the same time the illusive differentiation of the Angel-Monad and the Human-Monad is shown by the following sentences: “My Father is greater than I” (John xiv. 26) ; “Glorify your Father who is in Heaven” (Matt. v. 16); “The righteous will shine in the kingdom of their Father” (not our Father) (Matt. xiii. 43) “Know ye not ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (I Cor. iii. 16); “I ascend to my Father,” etc., etc.

108. These are planets accepted for purposes of judicial astrology only. The astrotheogonical division differed from this one. The Sun, being a central star and no planet, stands in more occult and mysterious relations with its seven planets of our globe than is generally known. The Sun was, therefore, considered the great Father of all the Seven “Fathers,” which accounts for the variations found between seven and eight great gods of the Chaldean and other countries. Neither the earth nor the moon — its satellite — nor yet stars, for another reason — were anything else than substitutes for esoteric purposes. Yet, even with the Sun and the Moon thrown out of the calculation, the ancients seem to have known of seven planets. How many more are known to us, so far, if we throw out the Earth and Moon? Seven, and no more: Seven primary or principal planets, the rest planetoids rather than planets.

109. When one remembers that under the powerful telescope of Sir W. Herschell, that eminent astronomer, gauging merely that portion of heaven in the equatorial plane, the approximate centre of which is occupied by our Earth — saw pass in one quarter of an hour, 16,000 stars; and applying this calculation to the totality of the “Milky Way” he found in it no less than 18 (eighteen) millions of Suns — one wonders no longer that Laplace, in conversation with Napoleon I. should have called God a hypothesis — perfectly useless to speculate upon for exact physical Science, at any rate. Occult metaphysics and transcendental philosophy will alone be able to lift the smallest corner of the impenetrable veil in this direction.

110. C. W. King, identifies it with “that summum bonum of Oriental aspiration, the Buddhist Nirvana,” perfect repose, the Epicurean Indolentia, which looks flippant enough in its expression, though not quite untrue.

111. Abraham and Saturn are identical in astro-symbology, and he is the forefather of the Jehovistic Jews.

112. The Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the Mind have not been improved by their modern transformation.

113. 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.

114. “Timaeus.”

115. Modern Chemistry.

116. 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.)

117. 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 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.”

118. 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.

119. 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.

120. “Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 258 et seq.

121. 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.”

122. 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.”

123. The Vedantic philosophy conceives of such; but then it is not physics, but metaphysics, called by Mr. Tyndall “poetry” and “fiction.”

124. In the form they are now, we conceive?

125. And to Kapila and Manu — especially and originally.

126. Here is a scientific corroboration of the eternal law of correspondences and analogy.

127. 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 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.

128. 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!

128. “Smithsonian Contributions,” xxi., Art. 1, pp. 79-97.

130. Beyond the zero-line of action.

131. “World-Life.” Prof. Winchell points to a good many mistakes of Laplace in his work; but as a geologist he is not infallible himself in his “astronomical speculations.”

132. “Five Years of Theosophy,” pp. 249-50. Art. “Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?”

133. Had astronomers held simply, in their present state of knowledge, to the hypothesis of Laplace, which was simply the formation of the planetary system, it might in time have resulted in something like an approximate truth. But the two parts of the general problem, that of the formation of the universe, or the formation of the suns and stars from the primitive matter, and then the development of the planets around their sun, rest on quite different facts in nature and are even so viewed by Science itself. They are at the opposite poles of being.

134. Member of the Institute, Astronomer of the Observatory, Paris, “Cosmogonical Hypotheses.”

135. But the spectra of these nebulae have never yet been ascertained. When they are found with bright lines, then only may they be cited.

136. Mr. Crookes’ “Protyle” must not be regarded as the primary stuff, out of which the Dhyan Chohans, in accordance with the immutable laws of nature, wove our solar system. This protyle cannot even be the first prima-materia of Kant, which that great mind saw used up in the formation of the worlds, and thus existing no longer in a diffused state. It is a mediate phase in the progressive differentiation of cosmic substance from its normal undifferentiated state. Protyle is then the aspect assumed by matter in its middle passage into full objectivity.

137. “The question of the resolvability of the nebulae 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 Canis 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 but will be irresolvable.” (C. Wolf, Cosmogonical Hypotheses.)

138. See Stanza III. about “Light, or the cold Flame,” and Commentary Number 8, where it is explained that the “mother” (Chaos) is a cold Fire, a cool Radiance, colourless, formless, devoid of every quality. “Motion is the One Eternal is, and contains the potentialities of every quality in the Manvantaric Worlds,” it is said.

139. Hypotheses Cosmogoniques, C. Wolf, 1886.

140. “World-Life,” p. 196.

141. Westminster Review, XX., July 27, 1868.

142. “Les Hypotheses Cosmogoniques. Examen des Theories Scientifiques modernes sur l’Origine des Mondes, suivi de la Traduction de la Theorie du Ciel de Kant.”

143. Which “Light” we call Fohat.

144. This is a mistake, which implies a material agent, distinct from the influences which move it, i.e. blind matter and perhaps “God” again, whereas this one Life is the very God and Gods “Itself.”

1445 The same error.

146. “Is the Jiva a myth, as science says, or is it not?” ask some Theosophists, wavering between materialistic and idealistic Science. The difficulty of really grasping esoteric problems concerning the “ultimate state of matter” is again the old crux of the objective and the subjective. What is matter? Is the matter of our present objective consciousness anything but our sensations? True, the sensations we receive come from without, but can we really (except in terms of phenomena) speak of the “gross matter” of this plane as an entity apart from and independent of us? To all such arguments Occultism answers: True, in reality matter is not independent of, or existent outside, our perceptions. Man is an illusion: granted. But the existence and actuality of other, still more illusive, but not less actual, entities than we are, is not a claim which is lessened, but rather strengthened by this doctrine of Vedantic and even Kantian Idealism.

147. Even the question of the plurality of worlds inhabited by sentient creatures is rejected or approached with the greatest caution! And yet see what the great astronomer, Camille Flammarion, says in his “Pluralite des Mondes.”

148. Nevertheless, it will be shown on the testimony of the Bible itself, and of such good Christian theologians as Cardinal Wiseman, that this plurality is taught in both the Old and the New Testaments.

149. See “The Plurality of the Worlds,” wherein the list of many men of Science, who wrote to prove the theory, is given.

150. Professor A. Winchell — arguing upon the plurality of the 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 Kosmos, 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 intelligences be embodied in frames as indifferent to external conditions as the sage of the western plains, or the lichens of Labrador, the rotifers that remain dried for years, or the spores of 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 matter or Force.” (World-Life, or Comparative Geology, pp. 496-498 et seq.)

151. “The Septenary Principle,” art. in “Five Years of Theosophy,” p. 197.

152. The Atman or Spirit (the Spiritual Self) passing like a thread through the five subtle bodies (or principles, Koshas) is called “thread-soul,” or Sutratman in Vedantic philosophy.

153. “Science of Numbers,” by the Rev. G. Oliver (p. 36).

154. See Kant’s Critique de la Raison pure (Barni’s transl., Vol. II., p. 54).

155. In the Greek and Latin churches — which regard marriage as one of the sacraments — the officiating priest during the marriage ceremony represents the apex of the triangle; the bride its left feminine side and the bridegroom the right one, while the horizontal line is symbolised by the row of witness, the bridesmaids and best-men. But behind the priest there is the altar with its mysterious containments and symbolic meaning, inside of which no one but the consecrated priests ought to enter. In the early days of Christianity the marriage ceremony was a mystery and a true symbol. Now, however, even the churches have lost the true meaning of this symbolism.

156. See Von Hartmann’s and Herbert Spencer’s works.

157. “New Aspects of Life,” by Henry Pratt, M.D.

158. In the world of Form, having found its expression in the Pyramids, Symbolism has in them both a triangle and a square, with their four co-equal triangles or surfaces, the four basic points, and the fifth — the apex.

159. “New Aspects of Life.”

160. Such recent works as the Qabbalah of Mr. Isaac Myer and of Mr. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, fully justify our attitude towards the Jehovistic Deity. It is not the transcendental, philosophical, and highly metaphysical abstraction of the original Kabalistic thought — Ain-Soph-Shekinah-Adam-Kadmon, and all that follows — that we oppose, but the crystallization of all these into the highly unphilosophical, repulsive, and anthropomorphic Jehovah, the androgynous and finite deity for which eternity, omnipotence, and omniscience are claimed. We do not war against the ideal Reality, but the hideous theological Shadow.

161. Let not the word “psychology” cause the reader to carry his thought by an association of ideas to modern “Psychologists,” so-called, whose idealism is another name for uncompromising materialism, and whose pretended Monism is no better than a mask to conceal the void of final annihilation — even of consciousness. Here Spiritual psychology is meant.

162. T. Subba Row, see Theosophist for Feb., 1887.

163. “Vishwanara is not merely the manifested objective world, but the one physical basis (the horizontal line of the triangle) from which the whole objective world starts into existence.” And this is the Cosmic Duad, the androgynous Substance. Beyond only, is the true Protyle.

164. By W. Crookes, F.R.S., V.P.C.S., delivered at the Royal Institution, London, on Friday, February 18th, 1887.

165. How true it is will be fully demonstrated only on that day when his discovery of radiant matter will have resulted in a further elucidation with regard to the true source of light, and revolutionized all the present speculations. Further familiarity with the northern streamers of the aurora borealis may help the recognition of this truth.

166. Corresponding on the cosmic scale with the Spirit, Soul-mind, Life, and the three Vehicles — the astral, the Mayavic and the physical bodies (of mankind) whatever division is made.

167. “The Lord is a consuming fire.” . . . “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

168. Which if separated alchemically would yield the Spirit of Life, and its Elixir.

169. Foremost of all, the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature as inorganic substances or bodies. Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical “atoms” are simply organic units in profound lethargy. Their coma has an end and their inertia becomes activity.

170. The real spelling of the name — as spelt by himself — is Leibniz. He was of Slavonian descent though a German by birth.

171. “Leibnitz’s Dynamism,” says Professor Lachelier, “would offer but little difficulty if, with him, the Monad had remained a simple atom of blind force. But . . . .” One perfectly understands the perplexity of modern materialism!

172. Leibnitz was an absolute Idealist in maintaining that “material atoms are contrary to reason” (Systeme nouveau, Erdmann, p. 126. col. 2). For him matter was a simple representation of the monad, whether human or atomic. Monads, he thought (as we do), are everywhere. Thus the human soul is a monad, and every cell in the human body has its monad, as every cell in animal, vegetable, and even in the (so-called) inorganic bodies. His atoms are the molecules of modern Science, and his monads those simple atoms that materialistic Science takes on faith, though it will never succeed in interviewing them — except in imagination. But Leibnitz is rather contradictory in his views about Monads. He speaks of his Metaphysical Points and Formal Atoms, at one time as realities, occupying space; at another as pure Spiritual ideas; then again endows them with objectivity and aggregates and positions in their co-relations.

173. The atoms of Leibnitz have, in truth, nothing but the name in common with the atoms of the Greek Materialists, or even the molecules of modern Science. He calls them formal atoms, and compares them to the substantial forms of Aristotle. (See Systeme Nouveau, § 3.)

174. Leibnitz, like Aristotle, calls the created or emanated monads (the Elementals issued from Cosmic Spirits or Gods) — Entelechies, [[Entelecheia]] — and “incorporeal automata.” (§ 18, Monadologie.)

175. These three “rough divisions” correspond to spirit, mind (or soul), and body, in the human constitution.

176. Brother C. H. A. Bjerregaard, in his lecture (already mentioned), warns his audience not to regard the Sephiroth too much as individualities, but to avoid at the same time seeing in them abstractions. “We shall never arrive at the truth,” he says, “much less the power of associating with those celestials, until we return to the simplicity and fearlessness of the primitive ages, when men mixed freely with the gods, and the gods descended among men and guided them in truth and holiness” (No. 10, Path) . . . . “There are several designations for ‘angels’ in the Bible which clearly show that beings like the Elementals of the Kabala and the monads of Leibnitz, must be understood by that term rather than that which is commonly understood. They are called ‘morning stars,’ ‘flaming fires,’ ‘the mighty ones,’ and St. Paul sees them in his cosmogonic vision as ‘Principalities and Powers.’ Such names as these preclude the idea of personality, and we find ourselves compelled to think of them as impersonal Existences . . . as an influence, a spiritual substance, or conscious Force.” (Path, No. 11, p. 322.)

177. Vide Stanza VI. (Book I.) and Commentary.

178. Buddhist Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society.

179. We refer those who would regard the statement as an impertinence or irreverence against accepted Science, to Mr. James Hutchinson Stirling’s work concerning “Protoplasm,” which is a defence of a vital Principle versus the Molecularists — Huxley, Tyndall, Vogt, and Co. — and request them to examine whether it is true or not to say that the scientific premises may not be always correct, but that they are accepted, nevertheless, to fill up a gap or a hole in some beloved materialistic hobby. Speaking of protoplasm and the organs of man, as “viewed by Mr. Huxley,” the author says: “Probably then, in regard to any continuity in protoplasm of power, of form, or of substance, we have seen lacunae enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley himself can be adduced in evidence on the same side. Not rarely do we find in his essay admissions of probability, where it is certainty that is alone in place. He says, for example: ‘It is more than probable that when the vegetable world is thoroughly explored we shall find all plants in possession of the same powers.’ When a conclusion is decidedly announced, it is rather disappointing to be told, as here, that the premisses are still to collect’ (!!) . . . . . Again, here is a passage in which he is seen to cut his own ‘basis’ from beneath his own feet. After telling us that all forms of protoplasm consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen ‘in very complex union,’ he continues: ‘To this complex combination, the nature of which has never been determined with exactness (!!), the name of protein has been applied.’ This, plainly, is an identification, on Mr. Huxley’s own part, of protoplasm and protein; and what is said of one, being necessarily true of the other, it follows that he admits the nature of protoplasm never to have been determined with exactness, and that even in his eyes the lis is still sub judice. This admission is strengthened by the words, too, ‘If we use this term — protein — with such caution as may properly arise out of our comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands . . . etc., etc. (p. 33 and 34, in reply to Mr. Huxley in “Yeast”).

This is the eminent Huxley, the king of physiology and biology, who is proven playing at blind man’s buff with premisses and facts. What may not the “smaller fry” of science do after this!

180. “The Cycles of Matter,” a name given by Professor Winchell to an Essay of his written in 1860.

181. Men of science will say: We deny, because nothing of the kind has ever come within the scope of our experience. But, as argued by Charles Richet, the physiologist: “So be it, but have you at least demonstrated the contrary? . . . Do not, at any rate, deny a priori. Actual Science is not sufficiently advanced to give you such right.” (“La suggestion mentale et le calcul des probabilites.”)

182. “On World History” in “Philosophy of History,” p. 26. (Sibree’s Eng. Transl.).

183. This symbolism does not prevent these now seemingly mythic personages from having ruled the earth once upon a time under the human form of actual living, though truly divine and god-like man. The opinion of Colonel Vallancey (and also of Count de Gobelin) that the names of the Kabiri appear to be all allegorical, and to have signified no more (?) than an almanac of the vicissitudes of the seasons — calculated for the operations of agriculture” (Collect. de Reb. Hibern., No. 13, Praef. Sect. 5) is as absurd as his assertion that OEon, Kronos, Saturn and Dagon are all one, namely, the “patriarch Adam.” The Kabiri were the instructors of mankind in agriculture, because they were the regents over the seasons and Cosmic cycles. Hence it was they who regulated, as planetary Spirits or “Angels” (messengers), the mysteries of the art of agriculture.

184. Who dread Karma-Nemesis would be better.

185. Dryden.

186. Not all, however, for there are men of Science awakening to truth. This is what we read: “Whatever way we turn our eyes we encounter a mystery . . . . all in Nature for us is the unknown. . . Yet they are numerous, those superficial minds for whom nothing can be produced by natural forces outside of facts observed long ago, consecrated in books and grouped more or less skilfully with the help of theories whose ephemeral duration ought, by this time, to have demonstrated their insufficiency, . . . . I do not pretend to contest the possibility of invisible Beings, of a nature different from ours and susceptible of moving matter to action. Profound philosophers have admitted it in all epochs as a consequence of the great law of continuity which rules the Universe. That intellectual life, which we see starting in some way from non-being (neant) and gradually reaching man, can it stop abruptly at man to reappear only in the infinite, in the sovereign regulator of the world? This is little probable.” Therefore . . “I no more deny the existence of Spirits than I deny soul while trying to explain certain facts without their hypothesis . . .” “The Non-Defined Forces,” Historical and Experimental Researches, p. 3. The above is written by A. de Rochas, a well-known man of science in France, his work being one of the signs of the time. (Paris: Masson, Boulevard St. Germain, 1887.)

187. Astronomie Antique.

188. The Pleiades, as all know, are the seven stars beyond the Bull, which appear at the beginning of spring. They have a very occult meaning in the Hindu esoteric philosophy, and are connected with sound and other mystic principles in Nature.

189. Whether many nations have seen that identical star, or not, we all know that the sepulchres of “the three Magi,” who rejoice in the quite Teutonic names of Kaspar and Melchior, Balthazar being the only exception, and the two having little of the Chaldean ring in them — are shown by the priests in the famous cathedral of Cologne, where the Magian bodies are not only supposed, but firmly believed to have been buried.

190. This tradition about the seventy planets that preside over the destinies of nations, is based on the occult cosmogonical teaching that besides our own septenary chain of world-planets, there are many more in the solar system.

191. Every scholar is aware, of course, that the Chaldeans claimed the same figures (432) or (432,000) for their divine dynasties as the Hindus do for their Mahayuga, namely, 4,320,000. Therefore has Dr. Sepp, of Munich, undertaken to support Kepler and Wilford in their charge that the Hindus had borrowed them from the Christians, and the Chaldeans from the Jews, who, as claimed, expected their Messiah in the lunar year of the world 4,320!!! As these figures, according to ancient writers, were based by Berosus on the 120 Saroses — each of the divisions meaning six neroses of 600 years each, making a sum total of 432,000 years — they do not thus appear peremptory. But the pious professor of Munich undertook to explain them in the correct way. He claims to have solved the riddle by showing that “the saros being composed according to Pliny of 222 synodial months, to wit, 18 years 6/10,” the calculator naturally fell back into the figures “given by Suidas,” who affirmed that the 120 saroses made 2,222 sacerdotal and cyclic years, which equalled 1,656 solar years.” (Vie de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, Vol. II., p. 417.)

Suidas said nothing of the kind, and, if he had, he would prove little, if anything, by it. The neroses and saroses were the same thorn in the side of uninitiated ancient writers, as the apocalyptic 666 of the “great Beast” is in that of the modern, and they have found their unlucky Newtons as the latter figures have.

192. The reader has to bear in mind that the phrase “climacteric year” has more than the usual significance, when used by Occultists and Mystics. It is not only a critical period, during which some great change is periodically expected, whether in human or cosmic constitution, but it likewise pertains to spiritual universal changes. The Europeans called every 63rd year “the grand climacteric,” and perhaps justly supposed those years to be the years produced by multiplying 7 into the odd numbers 3, 5, 7 and 9. But seven is the real scale of nature, in Occultism, and 7 has to be multiplied in quite a different way and method, unknown as yet to European nations.

193. For a detailed scientific proof of this conclusion, see page 121 of Mr. Bailly’s work, where the subject is discussed technically.

194. Why it should be “fictitious” can never be made plain by European scientists.

195. The following is an answer to those men of science who might suspect that our Astronomy was carried to India and communicated to the Hindus by our Missionaries. 1st. Hindu astronomy has its own peculiar forms, characterized by their originality; if it had been our astronomy translated, great skill and knowledge would have been needed to disguise the theft. 2nd. When adopting the mean movement of the moon, they would have adopted also the inclination of the ecliptic, the equation of the sun’s centre, the length of the year; these elements differ completely from ours, and are remarkably accurate as applying to the epoch of 3102; while they would be exceedingly erroneous if they had been calculated for last century. 3rd, finally, our missionaries could not have communicated to the Hindus in 1687 the tables of Cassini, which were not then in existence; they could have known only the mean motions of Tycho, Riccioli, Copernicus, Bouilland, Kepler, Longomontanus, and those of the tables of Alphonso. I will now give a tabular view of these mean motions for 4383 years and 94 days: —

Table. —————————————— Mean Motion. — Difference from Hindu.

Alphonso ..............9d 7h 2m 47s ... - 0h 42m 14s
Copernicus .......... 9d 6h 2m 13s .... - 1h 42m 48s
Tycho .................. 9d 7h 54m 40s .. + 0h 9m 39s
Kepler ................. 9d 6h 57m 35s .. - 0h 47m 26s
Longomontanus ... 9d 7h 2m 13s .... - 0h 42m 48s
Bouilland ............. 9d 6h 48m 8s .... - 0h 58m 53s
Riccioli ................ 9d 7h 53m 57s .. + 0h 8m 56s
Cassini ................ 9d 7h 44m 11s ... - 0h 0m 50s
Indian .................. 9d 7h 45m 1s

None of these mean motions, except Cassini’s, agrees with that of the Hindus, who therefore, did not borrow their mean motions, since their figures agree only with those of Cassini, whose tables were not in existence in 1687. This mean motion of the moon belongs, therefore, to the Hindus, who could only have obtained it by observation.” — Bailly’s “Traite de l’Astronomie Indienne et Orientale.”

196. “Le Mystere et la Science,” Conferences, Pere Felix de Notre Dame; des Mousseaux: “Hauts Phen. Magiques.”

197. Behold the work of Cycles and their periodical return! Those who denied such “Entities” (Forces) to be bodies, and called them “Spaces,” were the prototypes of our modern “Science-struck” public, and their official teachers, who speak of the Forces of nature as the imponderable energy of matter and modes of motion, and yet bold electricity (for one) as being as atomic as matter itself — (Helmholtz). Inconsistency and contradiction reign as much in official as in heterodox Science.

198. “Hermes here includes as gods the sensible Forces of nature, the elements and the phenomena of the Universe,” remarks Mrs. A. Kingsford in a foot-note explaining it very correctly. So does Eastern philosophy.

199. “Oh Toum, Toum! issued from the great (female) which is in the bosom of the waters” (the great Deep or Space). . . “Thou, luminous through the two Lions” (the dual Force or power of the two solar eyes, or the electro-positive and the electro-negative forces. (See Book of the Dead, III., and Egyptian Pantheon, chapter ii.)

200. An image expressing the succession of divine functions, the substitution from one form into another, or the correlation of forces. Aam is the electro-positive force, devouring all others as Saturn devoured his progeny.

201. Aanroo is in the domain of Osiris, a field divided into fourteen sections “surrounded with an iron enclosure, within which grows the corn of life seven cubits high,” the Kama-loka of the Egyptians. Those only of the dead, who know the names of the janitors of the “seven halls,” will be admitted into Amenti for ever; i.e., those who have passed through the seven races of each round — otherwise they will rest in the lower fields; “and it represents also the seven successive Devachans, or lokas. In Amenti, one becomes pure spirit for the eternity (xxx. 4.); while in Aanroo “the soul of the spirit,” or the defunct, is devoured each time by Uraeus — the Serpent, Son of the earth (in another sense the primordial vital principles in the Sun), i.e., the Astral body of the deceased or the “Elementary” fades out and disappears in the “Son of the earth,” limited time. The soul quits the fields of Aanroo and goes on earth under any shape it likes to assume. (See chapter xcix., Book of the Dead.)

202. Revue des Deux Mondes, 1865, pp. 157 and 158.

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