The latter, we are afraid, is more than our modern Physicists have bargained for. Thus, it seems that the poor “hypothesis” can hardly expect to find help or corroboration even in the world of the Metaphysicians.
Considering all this, the Occultists believe they have a right to present their Philosophy, however misunderstood and ostracized it may be at present. And they maintain that this failure of the Scientists to discover the truth is entirely due to their Materialism and their contempt for transcendental Sciences. Yet although the scientific minds in our century are as far from the true and correct doctrine of Evolution as ever, there may be still some hope left for the future, for even now we find another Scientist giving us a faint glimmer of it.
In an article in the Popular Science Review on “Recent Researches in Minute Life,” we find Mr. H. J. Slack, F.C.S., Sec. R.M.S., saying:
There is an evident convergence of all sciences, from physics to chemistry and physiology, toward some doctrine of evolution and development, of which the facts of Darwinism will form part, but what ultimate aspect this doctrine will take, there is little, if any, evidence to show, and perhaps it will not be shaped by the human mind until metaphysical as well as physical inquiries are much more advanced.[1034]
This is a happy forecast indeed. The day may come, then, when “Natural Selection,” as taught by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, will, in its ultimate modification, form only a part of our Eastern doctrine of Evolution, which will be Manu and Kapila Esoterically explained.
Section XIII. Forces—Modes of Motion or Intelligences?
This is, then, the last word of Physical Science up to the present year, 1888. Mechanical laws will never be able to prove the homogeneity of Primeval Matter, except inferentially and as a desperate necessity, when there will remain no other issue—as in the case of Ether. Modern Science is secure only in its own domain and region; within the physical boundaries of our Solar System, beyond which everything, every particle of Matter, is different from the Matter it knows, and where Matter exists in states of which Science can form no idea. This Matter, which is truly homogeneous, is beyond human perception, if perception is tied down merely to the five senses. We feel its effects through those Intelligences which are the results of its primeval differentiation, whom we name Dhyân Chohans, called in the Hermetic works the “Seven Governors”; those to whom Pymander, the “Thought Divine,” refers as the “Building Powers,” and whom Asklepios calls the “Supernal Gods.” This Matter—the real Primordial Substance, the Noumenon of all the “matter” we know of—some of our Astronomers even have been led to believe in, for they despair of the possibility of ever accounting for rotation, gravitation, and the origin of any mechanical physical laws, unless these Intelligences be admitted by Science. In the above-quoted work upon Astronomy by Wolf,[1035] the author endorses fully the theory of Kant, and the latter theory, if not in its general aspect, at any rate in some of its features, reminds one strongly of certain Esoteric Teachings. Here we have the world's system “reborn from its ashes,” through a nebula—the emanation from the bodies, dead and dissolved in Space, resultant of the incandescence of the Solar Centre—reänimated by the combustible matter of the Planets. In this theory, generated and developed in the [pg 659] brain of a young man hardly twenty-five years of age, who had never left his native place, Königsberg, a small town of Northern Prussia, one can hardly fail to recognize either the presence of an inspiring external power, or an evidence of the reïncarnation which the Occultists see in it. It fills a gap which Newton, with all his genius, failed to bridge. And surely it is our Primeval Matter, Âkâsha, that Kant had in view, when he postulated a universally pervading primordial Substance, in order to solve Newton's difficulty, and his failure to explain, by natural forces alone, the primitive impulse imparted to the Planets. For, as he remarks in Chapter viii, if it is once admitted that the perfect harmony of the Stars and Planets and the coincidence of their orbital planes prove the existence of a natural Cause, which would thus be the Primal Cause, “that Cause cannot really be the matter which fills to-day the heavenly spaces.” It must be that which filled Space—was Space—originally, whose motion in differentiated Matter was the origin of the actual movements of the sidereal bodies; and which, “in condensing itself in those very bodies, thus abandoned the space that is to-day found void.” In other words, it is of that same Matter that are now composed the Planets, Comets, and the Sun himself, and that Matter, having originally formed itself into those bodies, has preserved its inherent quality of motion; which quality, now centred in their nuclei, directs all motion. A very slight alteration of words in this is needed, and a few additions, to make of it our Esoteric Doctrine.
The latter teaches that it is this original, primordial Prima Materia, divine and intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind, the Daiviprakriti—the Divine Light[1036] emanating from the Logos—which formed the nuclei of all the “self-moving” orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever-present moving-power and life-principle, the Vital Soul of the Suns, Moons, Planets, and even of our Earth; the former latent, the latter active—the invisible Ruler and Guide of the gross body attached to, and connected with, its Soul, which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of these respective Planetary Spirits.
Another quite Occult Doctrine is the theory of Kant, that the Matter of which the inhabitants and the animals of other Planets are formed is of a lighter and more subtle nature and of a more perfect conformation, in proportion to their distance from the Sun. The latter is too full of Vital Electricity, of the physical, life-giving principle. Therefore, the men [pg 660] on Mars are more ethereal than we are, while those on Venus are more gross, though far more intelligent, if less spiritual.