Hitherto, it has been considered that if the atomic weight of a metal, determined by different observers, setting out from different compounds, was always found to be constant ... then such metal must rightly take rank among the simple or elementary bodies. We learn ... that this is no longer the case. Again, we have here wheels within wheels. Gadolinium is not an element but a compound. ... We have shown that yttrium is a complex of five or more new constituents. And who shall venture to gainsay that each of these constituents, if attacked in some different manner, and if the result were submitted to a test more delicate and searching than the radiant-matter test, might not be still further divisible? Where, then, is the actual ultimate element? As we advance it recedes like the tantalizing mirage lakes and groves seen by the tired and thirsty traveller in the desert. Are we in our quest for truth to be thus deluded and baulked? The very idea of an element, as something absolutely primary and ultimate, seems to be growing less and less distinct.[1078]
In Isis Unveiled, we said:
This mystery of first creation, which was ever the despair of Science, is unfathomable unless we accept the doctrine of Hermes. Could he [Darwin] remove his quest from the visible universe into the invisible, he might find himself on the right path. But then, he would be following in the footsteps of the Hermetists.[1079]
Our prophecy begins to assert itself.
But between Hermes and Huxley there is a middle course and point. Let the men of Science only throw a bridge half-way, and think seriously over the theories of Leibnitz. We have shown our [pg 686] theories with regard to the evolution of Atoms—their last formation into compound chemical molecules being produced within our terrestrial workshops in the Earth's atmosphere and not elsewhere—as strangely agreeing with the evolution of Atoms shown on Mr. Crookes' plates. Several times already it has been stated in this volume that Mârttânda, the Sun, had evolved and aggregated, together with his seven smaller Brothers, from his Mother Aditi's bosom, that bosom being Prima Mater-ia—the lecturer's primordial Protyle. Esoteric Doctrines teach the existence of
An antecedent form of energy having periodic cycles of ebb and swell, rest and activity.[1080]
And behold a great scholar in Science now asking the world to accept this as one of his postulates! We have shown the “Mother,” fiery and hot, becoming gradually cool and radiant, and this same Scientist claims as his second postulate—a scientific necessity, it would seem—
An internal action, akin to cooling, operating slowly in the protyle.
Occult Science teaches that the “Mother” lies stretched in Infinity, during Pralaya, as the great Deep, the “dry Waters of Space,” according to the quaint expression in the Catechism, and becomes wet only after the separation and the moving over its face of Nârâyana, the
Spirit which is invisible Flame, which never burns, but sets on fire all that it touches, and gives it life and generation.[1081]