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The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 1 [[Vol. 1, Page]] 506 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. [[This page continued from previous section ]] VI. THE MASKS OF SCIENCE. PHYSICS OR METAPHYSICS? I F there is anything on earth like progress, Science will some day have to give up, nolens volens , such monstrous ideas as her physical, self-guiding laws -- void of soul and Spirit, -- and then turn to the occult teachings. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 507 ACADEMICAL MISNOMERS. It has done so already, however altered are the title-page and revised editions of the Scientific Catechism. It is now over half a century since, in comparing modern with ancient thought, it has been found that, however different our philosophy may appear from that of our ancestors, it is, nevertheless, composed only of additions and subtractions taken from the old philosophy and transmitted drop by drop through the filter of antecedents. This fact was well known to Faraday, and other eminent men of Science. Atoms, Ether, evolution itself -- all comes to modern Science from ancient notions, all is based on the conceptions of the archaic nations. "Conceptions" for the profane, under the shape of allegories; plain truths taught during the Initiations to the elect, which truths have been partially divulged through Greek writers and have descended to us. This does not mean that Occultism has ever had the same views on matter, atoms and ether as found in the exotericism of the classical Greek writers. Yet, if we believe Mr. Tyndall, even Faraday was an Aristotelean, and an Agnostic more than a materialist. In his "Faraday, as a Discoverer" (p. 123) the author shows the great physicist using "old reflections of Aristotle" which are "concisely found in some of his works." Faraday, Boscovitch, and all others, however, who see, in the atoms and molecules, "centres of force," and in the corresponding element force , an ENTITY BY ITSELF, are far nearer the truth, perchance, than those, who, denouncing them, denounce at the same time the "old corpuscular Pythagorean theory" (one, by the way, which has never passed to posterity as the great philosopher really taught it), on the ground of its "delusion that the conceptual elements of matter can be grasped as separate and real entities." The chief and most fatal mistake and fallacy made by Science, in the view of the Occultists, lies in the idea of the possibility of such a thing as inorganic, or dead matter, in nature. Is anything dead or inorganic capable of transformation or change? Occultism asks. And is there anything under the sun which remains immutable or changeless? This fallacy is nowhere better illustrated than in the scientific work of a German savant , Professor Philip Spiller ( Der Weltaether als Kosmische Kraft ) . In this cosmological treatise, the author attempts to prove that "no material constituent of a body, no atom, is in itself originally endowed with force , but that every such atom is absolutely dead , * and without any power to act at a distance" (p. 4). [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Something dead implies that it had been at some time living. When, at what period of cosmogony? Occultism says that in all cases when matter appears inert, it is the most active. A wooden or a stone block is motionless and impenetrable to all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, and de facto , its particles are in ceaseless eternal vibration which is so rapid that to the physical eye the body seems absolutely devoid of motion; [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol. 1, Page]] 508 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. This statement, however, does not prevent Spiller from enunciating an occult doctrine and principle. He asserts the independent substantiality of force , and shows it as an "incorporeal stuff" ( unkoerperlicher stoff ) or substance. Now substance is not matter in metaphysics, and for argument's sake it may be granted that it is a wrong expression to use. But this is due to the poverty of European languages, and especially to that of scientific terms. Then this "stuff" is identified and connected by Spiller with the aether. Expressed in occult language it might be said with more correctness that this "force-substance" is the ever-active phenomenal positive aether -- prakriti; while the omnipresent all pervading ether is the noumenon of the former, the substratum of all, or Akasa. Nevertheless, Stallo falls foul of Spiller, as he does of the materialists. He is accused of "utter disregard of the fundamental correlation of force and matter" (of neither of which Science knows anything certain). For this "hypostasized half-concept" is, in the view of all other physicists, not only imponderable , but destitute of cohesive, chemical, thermal, electric, and magnetic forces -- of all of which forces -- according to occultism -- aether is the source and cause. Therefore Spiller, with all his mistakes, exhibits more intuition than any other modern Scientist, with the exception of Dr. Richardson, perhaps, the theorist on the "nerve force," or Nervous Ether, also on "Sun Force and Earth Force."* For AE THER, in Esotericism, is the very quintessence of all possible energy, and it is certainly to this universal agent (composed of many agents ) that all the manifestations of energy in the material, psychic and spiritual worlds are due. What are Electricity and Light, in fact? How can Science know that one is a fluid and the other a "mode of motion"? Why is it not made clear why a difference should be made between them, since both are considered force-correlations. Electricity is a fluid, we are told, immaterial and non-molecular (though Helmholtz thinks otherwise), and the proof of it is that we can bottle it up, accumulate and store it away. Then, it must be simply matter, and no peculiar "fluid." Nor is it only "a mode of motion," for motion could hardly be stored in a Leyden jar. As for light, it is a still more extraordinary "mode of motion;" since, "marvellous as it may appear, light (also) can actually be stored up for use ," as demonstrated by Professor Grove nearly half a century ago. "Take an engraving which has been kept for some days in the dark, expose it to full sunshine -- that is, insulate it for 15 minutes; lay it on [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] and the spacial distance between those particles in their vibratory motion is -- considered from another plane of being and perception -- as great as that which separates snow flakes or drops of rain. But to physical science this will be an absurdity. * See "Popular Science Review," Vol.