If such faculties exist, as is very possible, it is clearly no more than common sense that they should be exercised to the full in the solution of problems which present especial difficulties to the more normal methods of investigation. The results might be of the very highest possible value. Indeed, it may well be that the cultivation of such faculties is by far the best way of attacking the whole question. I am by no means prepared dogmatically to deny it. None the less I think we are entitled to expect that those who claim to have attained knowledge by these means should take some pains to make their results continuous with existing knowledge and to eliminate needless obscurities.
At present the application of the word "Science" to the utterances of the Occult schools—as commonly presented—is a complete misnomer.
In Theosophical literature, for instance, we are confronted with a scheme of things built up of such terms as "Astral Plane," "Etheric Double," "Causal Body," "Karma" and so forth.
With all due deference to my Theosophical friends I submit that this is not scientific explanation and cannot be so unless its exponents are prepared to tell us what is the relation between the astral plane and the physical world, between the etheric double and the body as known to physiologists.
Thus it is intellectually unsatisfying and little calculated to arouse the sympathetic interest of the strictly logical thinker.
I do not mean to say that none of the words of the type quoted have any real significance. On the contrary I think it very probable that many of them have and that they do represent real parts of the actual scheme of things. The trouble is that they are only names; and to name a thing is not the same as to explain it. In common fairness I ought, however, to admit that in several passages Mr. Leadbeater—one of the best known Theosophical writers—makes a distinct effort to escape from this tendency and it has further been opined by a very eminent Occultist that the bulk of contemporary literature on the subject will be out of date in a few years.
I am inclined to suspect that this failing was the cause he had in mind.
I repeat that my primary quarrel is not with the accuracy or otherwise of the statements made. Every word of them may be perfectly correct, but so long as they are expressed in terms wholly unrelated to pre-existing concepts I must, qua scientist, remain unconvinced.
The third school which includes the Orthodox Theologians sometimes resembles the Occultists in the use of unintelligible terms but their chief weakness is their failure to recognise and to cater for the intellectual demand for coherent explanation.
They never weary of insisting, quite rightly, on the paramount importance of Spiritual things, but no effort is made to show the continuity which must, in a sane Cosmos, exist between Matter and Spirit, or to state the "common factor," so to speak, which unites them as parts of a coherent whole.