Physical atomism derives all the qualitative properties of matter from the forms of atomic motion. The atoms themselves remain as elements utterly devoid of quality.[873]
And further:
Chemistry in its ultimate form must be atomic mechanics.[874]
And a moment after he is told that:
Gases consist of atoms which behave like solid, perfectly elastic spheres.[875]
Finally, to crown all, Sir W. Thomson is found declaring that:
We are forbidden by the modern theory of the conservation of energy to assume inelasticity, or anything short of perfect elasticity of the ultimate molecules whether of ultra-mundane or mundane matter.[876]
But what do the men of true Science say to all this? By the “men of true Science” we mean those who care too much for truth and too little for personal vanity to dogmatize on anything, as do the majority. There are several among them—perhaps more than dare openly publish their secret conclusions, for fear of the cry “Stone him to death!”—men, whose intuitions have made them span the abyss that lies between the terrestrial aspect of Matter, and the, to us, on our plane of illusion, subjective, i.e., transcendentally objective Substance, and have led them to proclaim the existence of the latter. Matter, to the Occultist, it must be remembered, is that totality of existences in the Kosmos, which falls within any of the planes of possible perception. We are but too well aware that the orthodox theories of sound, heat and light, are against the Occult Doctrines. But, it is not enough for the men of Science, or their defenders, to say that they do not deny dynamic power to light and heat, and to urge, as a proof, the fact that Mr. Crookes' radiometer has unsettled no views. If they would fathom the ultimate nature of these Forces, they have first to admit their substantial nature, however supersensuous that nature may be. Neither do the Occultists deny the correctness of the vibratory theory.[877] Only they limit its functions to our Earth—declaring its inadequacy on other planes than ours, since Masters in the Occult Sciences perceive the Causes that produce ethereal vibrations. Were all these only the fictions of the Alchemists, or dreams of the Mystics, such men as Paracelsus, Philalethes, Van Helmont, and so many others, would have to be regarded as worse than visionaries; they would become impostors and deliberate mystificators.
The Occultists are taken to task for calling the Cause of light, heat, sound, cohesion, magnetism, etc., etc., a Substance.[878] Mr. Clerk Maxwell has stated that the pressure of strong sunlight on a square mile is about 3-¼ lbs. It is, they are told, “the energy of the myriad ether [pg 561] waves”; and when they call it a Substance impinging on that area, their explanation is proclaimed unscientific.
There is no justification for such an accusation. In no way—as already more than once stated—do the Occultists dispute the explanations of Science, as affording a solution of the immediate objective agencies at work. Science only errs in believing that, because it has detected in vibratory waves the proximate cause of these phenomena, it has, therefore, revealed all that lies beyond the threshold of Sense. It merely traces the sequence of phenomena on a plane of effects, illusory projections from the region that Occultism has long since penetrated. And the latter maintains that those etheric tremors are not set up, as asserted by Science, by the vibrations of the molecules of known bodies, the Matter of our terrestrial objective consciousness, but that we must seek for the ultimate Causes of light, heat, etc., in Matter existing in supersensuous states—states, however, as fully objective to the spiritual eye of man, as a horse or a tree is to the ordinary mortal. Light and heat are the ghost or shadow of Matter in motion. Such states can be perceived by the Seer or the Adept during the hours of trance, under the Sushumnâ Ray—the first of the Seven Mystic Rays of the Sun.[879]