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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 1 [[Vol. 1, Page]] 490 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. IV. IS GRAVITATION A LAW? T HE corpuscular theory has been unceremoniously put aside; but gravitation -- the principle that all bodies attract each other with a force proportional directly to their masses, and inversely to the squares of the distances between them -- survives to this day and reigns, supreme as ever, in the alleged ethereal waves of Space. As a hypothesis, it had been threatened with death for its inadequacy to embrace all the facts presented to it; as a physical law , it is the King of the late and once all-potent "Imponderables." "It is little short of blasphemy . . . . an insult to Newton's grand memory to doubt it, . . . ." is the exclamation of an American reviewer of " Isis Unveiled. " Well; what is finally that invisible and intangible God in whom we should believe on blind faith? Astronomers who see in gravitation an easy-going solution for many things, and an universal force which allows them to calculate thereby planetary motions, care little about the Cause of Attraction. They call Gravity a law, a cause in itself. We call the forces acting under that name effects , and very secondary effects, too. One day it will be found that the scientific hypothesis does not answer after all; and then it will follow the corpuscular theory of light and be consigned to rest for many scientific aeons in the archives of all exploded speculations. Has not Newton himself expressed grave doubts about the Nature of Force and the corporeality of the "Agents," as they were then called? So has Cuvier, another scientific light shining in the night of research. He warns his readers, in the Revolution du Globe , about the doubtful nature of the so-called Forces, saying that "it is not so sure whether those agents were not Spiritual Powers after all ( des agents spirituels ) . At the outset of his "Principia," Sir Isaac Newton took the greatest care to impress upon his school that he did not use the word "attraction" with regard to the mutual action of bodies in a physical sense. To him it was, he said, a purely mathematical conception involving no consideration of real and primary physical causes. In one of the passages of his "Principia" ( Defin . 8, B. I. Prop. 69, " Scholium "), he tells us plainly that, physically considered, attractions are rather impulses. In section XI. ( Introduction ) he expresses the opinion that "there is some subtle spirit by the force and action of which all movements of matter are determined" (see Mod. Mater. , by Rev. W. F. Wilkinson ) ; and in his third Letter to Bentley he says: "It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material , operate upon and affect other matter, without mutual contact, as it must do if gravi- [[Vol. 1, Page]] 491 GRAVITY OR WHAT? tation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. . . . That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers." At this, even Newton's contemporaries got frightened -- at the apparent return of occult causes into the domain of physics. Leibnitz called his principle of attraction "an incorporeal and inexplicable power." The supposition of an attractive faculty and a perfect void was characterized by Bernoulli as "revolting," the principle of actio in distans finding thus no more favour then than it does now. Euler, on the other hand, thought the action of gravity was due to either a Spirit or some subtle medium. And yet Newton knew of, if he did not accept, the Ether of the Ancients. He regarded the intermediate space between the sidereal bodies as vacuum. Therefore he believed in "subtle spirit" and Spirits as we do, guiding the so-called attraction. The above-quoted words of the great man have produced poor results. The "absurdity" has now become a dogma in the case of pure materialism, which repeats, "No matter without force, no force without matter; matter and force are inseparable, eternal and indestructible (true); there can be no independent force, since all force is an inherent and necessary property of matter ( false ) ; consequently, there is no immaterial creative power." Oh, poor Sir Isaac! If, leaving aside all the other eminent men of Science who shared in the same opinion as Euler and Leibnitz, the Occultists claim as their authorities and supporters only Sir Isaac Newton and Cuvier, as above cited, they need fear little from modern Science, and may loudly and proudly proclaim their beliefs. But, the hesitation and doubts of the two before cited authorities, and of many others, too, whom we could name, did not in the least prevent scientific speculation from wool-gathering on the fields of brute matter just as before. First it was matter and an imponderable fluid distinct from it; then came the imponderable fluid so much criticised by Grove; and AEther, which was at first discontinuous and then became continuous; after which came the "mechanical" Forces. These have now settled in life as "modes of motion" and the aether has become more mysterious and problematical than ever. More than one man of Science objects to such crude materialistic views. But then since the days of Plato, who repeatedly asks his readers not to confuse incorporeal Elements with [[Vol. 1, Page]] 492 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. their P RINCIPLES -- transcendental or spiritual Elements; from those of the great Alchemists, who, like Paracelsus, made a great difference between phenomenon and its cause, or the Noumenon; and Grove, who, though he sees "no reason to divest universally diffused matter of the functions common to all matter," yet uses the term Forces where his critics, "who do not attach to the word any idea of a specific action ," say Force -- from those days to this nothing has proved competent to stem the tide of brutal materialism. Gravitation is the sole cause , the acting God, and matter is its prophet, said the men of science only a few years ago. They have changed their views several times since then. But do the men of Science understand the innermost thought of Newton, one of the most spiritual-minded and religious men of his day, any better now than they did then? It is certainly to be doubted.