KATHERINE TINGLEY, EDITOR
VOL. I
NO. 2
AUGUST, 1911
I produced the golden key of Pre-existence only at a dead lift, when no other method could satisfy me touching the ways of God, that by this hypothesis I might keep my heart from sinking.—Henry More
THEOSOPHY AND MODERN SCIENTIFIC
DISCOVERIES: by Charles J. Ryan
THE attitude of the leaders of science and philosophy concerning the significance and probable causes of natural phenomena has greatly changed since 1888 when H. P. Blavatsky wrote her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine. The comfortable feeling that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is ripe for our picking, or at least very nearly so, has largely disappeared with the widening of our perceptions gained through the surprising discoveries in physics, chemistry, psychology, etc., of the intervening period. Happily for the world, the truly leading minds of the present day in science and philosophy are escaping from the crass materialism into which they seemed to be sinking not so long ago; the "camp followers" are also catching up.
Paradoxically, and yet naturally, the more we have learned of Nature's methods, the less dogmatic we have become. The present, although a time of great fertility in the production of theories, is one of comparative modesty in the putting forth of assertions that such a thing cannot be, or that such another is against established laws and therefore not to be investigated. We are seeing something similar in the affairs of nations—new experiments in statecraft are being tried in apparently unlikely places.
The wisdom of the ancients is being more justly estimated; the cheap sneers against their scientific attainments are less often heard. The newest Chemistry regards the much-derided Alchemy more sympathetically; the latest Psychology finds that Mesmer was not the complete fraud alleged by the materialism of the nineteenth century. A well-founded suspicion is arising that our own civilization is not on the rightest basis, and that it has neglected many of the sterling virtues of the past in favor of luxury and ease. The claims of the older religions of the world are more fully acknowledged as worthy of respect; the Theosophical idea is dawning upon the people of Christendom that they are not all foolishness.