Thus, for instance, we have found there, concerning gravitation, the axial and orbital motions, that synchronous movement having been once overcome, in the early stage, this was enough to originate a rotatory motion till the end of Manvantara. We have also come to know, in all the aforesaid combinations of possibilities with regard to [pg 550] incipient rotation, most complicated in every case, some of the causes to which it may have been due, as well as some others to which it ought and should have been due, but, in some way or other, was not. Among other things, we are informed that incipient rotation may be provoked with equal ease in a mass in igneous fusion, and in one that is characterized by glacial opacity.[855] That gravitation is a law which nothing can overcome, but which is, nevertheless, overcome, in and out of season, by the most ordinary celestial or terrestrial bodies—the tails of impudent comets, for instance. That we owe the universe to the holy Creative Trinity, called Inert Matter, Senseless Force and Blind Chance. Of the real essence and nature of any of these three, Science knows nothing, but this is a trifling detail. Ergo, we are told that, when a mass of cosmic or nebular Matter—whose nature is entirely unknown, and which may be in a state of fusion (Laplace), or dark and cold (Thomson), for “this intervention of heat is itself a pure hypothesis” (Faye)—decides to exhibit its mechanical energy under the form of rotation, it acts in this wise. It (the mass) either bursts into spontaneous conflagration, or it remains inert, tenebrous, and frigid, both states being equally capable of sending it, without any adequate cause, spinning through Space for millions of years. Its movements may be retrograde, or they may be direct, about a hundred various reasons being offered for both motions, in about as many hypotheses; anyhow, it joins the maze of stars, whose origin belongs to the same miraculous and spontaneous order—for:
The nebular theory does not profess to discover the origin of things, but only a stadium in material history.[856]
Those millions of suns, planets, and satellites, composed of inert matter, will whirl on in most impressive and majestic symmetry round the firmament, moved and guided only, notwithstanding their inertia, “by their own internal motion.”
Shall we wonder, after this, if learned Mystics, pious Roman Catholics, and even such learned Astronomers as were Chaubard and Godefroy,[857] have preferred the Kabalah and the ancient systems to the modern dreary and contradictory exposition of the Universe? The Zohar makes a distinction, at any rate, between “the Hajaschar [the [pg 551] ‘Light Forces’], the Hachoser [‘Reflected Lights’], and the simple phenomenal exteriority of their spiritual types.”[858]
The question of “gravity” may now be dismissed, and other hypotheses examined. That Physical Science knows nothing of “Forces” is clear. We may close the argument, however, by calling to our help one more man of Science—Professor Jaumes, Member of the Academy of Medicine at Montpellier. Says this learned man, speaking of Forces:
A cause is that which is essentially acting in the genealogy of phenomena, in every production as in every modification. I said that activity (or force) was invisible.... To suppose it corporeal and residing in the properties of matterwould be a gratuitous hypothesis.... To reduce all the causes to God, ... would amount to embarrassing oneself with a hypothesis hostile to many verities. But to speak of a plurality of forces proceeding from the Deity and possessing inherent powers of their own, is not unreasonable, ... and I am disposed to admit phenomena produced by intermediate agents called Forces or Secondary Agents. The distinction of Forces is the principle of the division of Sciences; so many real and separate Forces, so many mother-Sciences.... No; Forces are not suppositions and abstractions, but realities, and the only acting realities whose attributes can be determined with the help of direct observation and induction.[859]
Section V. The Masks of Science. Physics Or Metaphysics?
If there is anything like progress on earth, Science will some day have to give up, nolens volens, such monstrous ideas as her physical, self-guiding laws, void of Soul and Spirit, and will then have to turn to the Occult Teachings. It has already done so, however altered may be the title-pages and revised editions of the Scientific Catechism. It is now over half a century since, in comparing modern with ancient thought, it was found that, however different our Philosophy may appear from that of our ancestors, it is, nevertheless, composed only of additions and subtractions taken from the old Philosophy and transmitted drop by drop through the filter of antecedents.
This fact was well known to Faraday, and to other eminent men of Science. Atoms, Ether, Evolution itself—all come to Modern Science from ancient notions, all are based on the conceptions of the archaic nations. “Conceptions” for the profane, under the shape of allegories; plain truths taught during the Initiations to the Elect, which truths have been partially divulged through Greek writers and have descended to us. This does not mean that Occultism has ever had the same views on Matter, Atoms and Ether as may be found in the exotericism of the classical Greek writers. Yet, if we may believe Mr. Tyndall, even Faraday was an Aristotelean, and was more an Agnostic than a Materialist. In his Faraday, as a Discoverer,[860] the author shows the great Physicist using “old reflections of Aristotle” which are “concisely found in some of his works.” Faraday, Boscovitch, and all others, however, who see, in the Atoms and molecules, “centres of force,” and in the corresponding element, Force, an Entity by itself, are far nearer the truth, perchance, than those, who, denouncing them, denounce at the same time the “old corpuscular Pythagorean theory”—one, [pg 553] by the way, which never passed to posterity as the great Philosopher really taught it—on the ground of its “delusion that the conceptual elements of matter can be grasped as separate and real entities.”