Much harm has already been done by attempting hypothetically to dissect matter and to discuss the shapes, sizes, and numbers of atoms, and their atmospheres of heat, ether, or electricity. Whether the regarding electricity, light, magnetism, etc., as simply motions of ordinary matter, be or be not admissible, certain it is that all past theories have resolved, and all existing theories do resolve, the action of these forces into motion. Whether it be that, on account of our familiarity with motion, we refer other affections to it, as to a language which is most easily construed, and most capable of explaining them, or whether it be that it is in reality the only mode in which our minds, as contra-distinguished from our senses, are able to conceive material agencies, certain it is that since the period at which the mystic notions of spiritual or preternatural powers were applied to account for physical phenomena, all hypotheses framed to explain them have resolved them into motion.
And then the learned gentleman states a purely Occult tenet:
The term perpetual motion, which I have not infrequently used in these pages, is itself equivocal. If the doctrines here advanced be well founded, all motion is, in one sense, perpetual. In masses, whose motion is stopped by mutual concussion, heat or motion of the particles is generated; and thus the motion continues, so that if we could venture to extend such thoughts to the universe, we should assume the same amount of motion affecting the same amount of matter for ever.[825]
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the balance of preëxisting equilibrium is affected, and fresh motion is started equivalent to that which is withdrawn into a state of abeyance.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.
Thus, supposing attraction or gravitation should be given up in favour of the Sun being a huge magnet—a theory already accepted by some Physicists—a magnet that acts on the planets as attraction is now supposed to do, whereto, or how much farther, would it lead the Astronomers from where they are now? Not an inch farther. Kepler came to this “curious hypothesis” nearly 300 years ago. He had not discovered the theory of attraction and repulsion in Kosmos, for it was known from the days of Empedocles, by whom the two opposite forces were called “love” and “hate”—words implying the same idea. But Kepler gave a pretty fair description of cosmic magnetism. That such magnetism exists in Nature, is as certain as that gravitation does not; not at any rate, in the way in which it is taught by Science, which has never taken into consideration the different modes in which the dual Force, that Occultism calls attraction and repulsion, may act within our Solar System, the Earth's atmosphere and beyond in the Kosmos.
As the great Humboldt writes:
Trans-solar space has not hitherto shown 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.[826]
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.