Page 43 (part 3)

But see how closely Mr. Crookes brushes by the "Unknowable," and what "potentialities" there are for the acceptance of Occult truths in his discoveries. He continues, speaking of the evolution of atoms: -- ". . . . Let us pause at the end of the first complete vibration and examine the result. We have already found the elements of water, ammonia, carbonic acid, the atmosphere, plant and animal life, phosphorus for the brain, salt for the seas, clay for the solid earth . . . phosphates and silicates sufficient for a world and inhabitants not so very different from what we enjoy at the present day. True the human inhabitants would have to live in a state of more than Arcadian simplicity, and the absence of calcic phosphate would be awkward as far as the bone is concerned* . . . At the lower end of our curve . . . we see a great hiatus . . . This oasis, and the blanks which precede and follow it, may be referred with much probability to the particular way in which our Earth developed into a member of our solar system. If this be so, it may be that on our Earth only these blanks occur, and not generally throughout the universe." This justifies several assertions in the Occult works. Firstly , "that neither stars nor the sun can be said to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with which the chemist is familiar, though they are all present in the sun's outward robes -- and a host more of elements so far unknown to science." Secondly , that our globe has its own special laboratory on the far-away outskirts of its atmosphere, crossing which, every atom and molecule change and differentiate from their primordial nature. And Thirdly , that though no element present on our earth could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun, there are many others which have either not reached, or not as yet been discovered on, our globe. "Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly bodies in the process of formation; or, though present in them, these elements, on account of their present state, may not respond as yet to the usual scientific tests."** Mr. Crookes speaks of an element of still lower atomic weight than hydrogen, an element purely hypothetical as far as our earth is concerned . . . though existing in abundance in the chromosphere of the Sun -- the helium. Occult Science adds that not one of the elements regarded by chemistry as such really deserves the name. Again we find Mr. Crookes speaking with approbation of "Dr. Carnelly's weighty argument in favour of the compound nature of the so-called elements , from their analogy to the compound radicles! " Hitherto, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * It is just the existence of such worlds in other planes of consciousness that is claimed by the Occultist. The secret science teaches that the primitive race was boneless. (See Book II.); and that there are (to us) invisible worlds, peopled as our own, besides the populations of Dhyan Chohans. ** " Five Years of Theosophy ," p. 258 et seq. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 584 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. alchemy alone succeeded within the historical periods, and in the so-called civilized countries, in obtaining a real element , or a particle of homogeneous matter, the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus. But then it was before Lord Bacon's day.* ". . . Let us now turn to the upper portion of the scheme. With hydrogen of atomic weight = 1, there is little room for other elements, save, perhaps, for hypothetical Helium . But what if we get 'through the looking-glass,' and cross the zero line in search of new principles -- what shall we find on the other side of zero? Dr. Carnelly asks for an element of negative atomic weight; here is ample room and verge enough for a shadow series of such unsubstantialities. Helmholtz says that electricity is probably as atomic as matter; is electricity one of the negative elements, and the luminiferous ether another? Matter, as we now know it, does not here exist; the forms of energy which are apparent in the motions of matter are as yet only latent possibilities. A substance of negative weight is not inconceivable. ** But can we form a clear conception of a body which combines with other bodies in proportions expressible by negative qualities?"*** "A genesis of the elements such as is here sketched out would not be confined to our little solar system, but would probably follow the same general sequence of events in every centre of energy now visible as a star." "Before the birth of atoms to gravitate towards one another, no pressure could be exercised; but at the outskirts of the fire-mist sphere, within which all is protyle -- at the shell on which the tremendous forces involved in the birth of a chemical element exert full sway -- the fierce heat would be accompanied by gravitation sufficient to keep the newly-born elements from flying off into space. As temperature increases, expansion and molecular motion increase, molecules tend to fly asunder, and their chemical affinities become deadened; but the enormous pressure of the gravitation of the mass of atomic matter, outside what I may for brevity call the birth-shell, would counteract the action of heat." "Beyond the birth-shell would be a space in which no chemical action could take place, owing to the temperature there being above what is called the dissociation-point for compounds. In this space the lion and the lamb would lie down together; phosphorus and oxygen would mix without union; hydrogen and chlorine would show no tendency to closer bonds; and even fluorine, that [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Says Mr. Crookes in the same address: "The first riddle which we encounter in chemistry is: 'What are the elements?' Of the attempts hitherto made to define or explain an element, none satisfy the demands of the human intellect. The text books tell us that an element is 'a body which has not been decomposed ''that it is 'a something to which we can add, but from which we can take nothing,' or 'a body which increases in weight with every chemical change.' Such definitions are doubly unsatisfactory: they are provisional, and may cease to-morrow to be applicable in any given case. They take their stand, not on any attribute of the things to be defined, but on the limitations of human power: they are confessions of intellectual impotence." ** And the lecturer quotes Sir George Airy, who says ( in Faraday ' s Life and Letters Vol. II. , p. 354), "I can easily conceive that there are plenty of bodies about us not subject to this intermutual action, and therefore not subject to the law of gravitation. " *** The Vedantic philosophy conceives of such; but then it is not physics, but metaphysics, called by Mr. Tyndall "poetry" and "fiction." [[Vol. 1, Page]] 585 THE "SEVENTH" IN CHEMISTRY.