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energetic gas which chemists have only isolated within the last month or two, would float about free and uncombined." "Outside this space of free atomic matter would be another shell, in which the formed chemical elements would have cooled down to the combination point, and the sequence of events so graphically described by Mr. Mattieu Williams in " The Fuel of the Sun " would now take place, culminating in the solid earth and the commencement of geological time" (p. 19). This is, in a strictly scientific , but beautiful language, the description of the evolution of the differentiated Universe in the secret teachings. The learned gentleman closes his address in words, every sentence of which is like a flash of light from beyond the dark veil of materiality, hitherto thrown upon the exact sciences, and a step forward towards the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Occult. ( Vide § XV. , " Gods , Monads , and Atoms. ") Thus he says: -- "We have glanced at the difficulty of defining an element; we have noticed, too, the revolt of many leading physicists and chemists against the ordinary acceptation of the term element; we have weighed the improbability of their eternal existence,* or their origination by chance. As a remaining alternative, we have suggested their origin by a process of evolution like that of the heavenly bodies according to Laplace, and the plants and animals of our globe according to Lamarck, Darwin, and Wallace.** In the general array of the elements, as known to us, we have seen a striking approximation to that of the organic world.*** In lack of direct evidence of the decomposition of any element, we have sought and found indirect evidence . . . . We have next glanced at the view of the genesis of the elements; and lastly we have reviewed a scheme of their origin suggested by Professor Reynold's method of illustrating the periodic classification**** . . . Summing up all the above considerations we cannot, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * In the form they are now, we conceive? ** And to Kapila and Manu -- especially and originally. *** Here is a scientific corroboration of the eternal law of correspondences and analogy. **** This method of illustrating the periodic law in the classification of elements is, in the words of Mr. Crookes, proposed by Professor Emerson Reynolds, of Dublin University, who . . . . "points out that in each period, the general properties of the elements vary from one to another, with approximate regularity until we reach the seventh member , which is in more or less striking contrast with the first element of the same period, as well as with the first of the next. Thus chlorine, the seventh member of Mendeleef's third period, contrasts sharply with both sodium, the first member of the same series, and with potassium, the first member of the next series; whilst on the other hand, sodium and potassium are closely analogous. The six elements, whose atomic weights intervene between sodium and potassium, vary in properties, step by step, until chlorine, the contrast to sodium, is reached. But from chlorine to potassium, the analogue of sodium, there is a change in properties per saltum . . . . . If we thus recognise a contrast in properties -- more or less decided -- between the first and the last members of each series, we can scarcely help admitting the existence of a point of mean variation within each system. In general the fourth element of each series possesses the property we might expect a transition-element to exhibit. . . . . Thus for the purpose of graphic translation, Professor Reynolds considers that the fourth member of a period -- silicon, for example -- may be placed at the apex of a symmetrical [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol. 1, Page]] 586 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. indeed, venture to assert positively that our so-called elements have been evolved from one primordial matter; but we may contend that the balance of evidence, I think, fairly weighs in favour of this speculation ." Thus inductive Science, in its Branches of Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry, while advancing timidly towards the conquest of Nature's secrets in her final effects on our terrestrial plane, recedes to the days of Anaxagoras and the Chaldees in its discoveries of (a) the origin of our phenomenal world, and (b) the modes of formation of the bodies that compose the universe. And having to turn back for their cosmogonical hypotheses to the beliefs of the earliest philosophers, and the systems of the latter -- systems that were all based on the teachings of a universal secret doctrine with regard to the primeval matter with its properties, functions, and laws, -- have we not the right to hope that the day is not far off when Science will show a better appreciation of the wisdom of the ancients than it has hitherto done? No doubt Occult philosophy could learn a good deal from exact modern science; but the latter, on the other hand, might profit by ancient learning in more than one way, and chiefly in Cosmogony. For [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] curve, which shall represent for that particular period, the direction in which the properties of the series of elements vary with rising atomic weights. Now, the writer humbly confesses complete ignorance of modern chemistry and its mysteries. But she is pretty well acquainted with the Occult doctrine with regard to correspondences of types and antitypes in nature, and perfect analogy as a fundamental law in Occultism. Hence she ventures a remark which will strike every Occultist, however it may be derided by orthodox Science. This method of illustrating the periodic law in the behaviour of elements, whether or not still a hypothesis in chemistry, is a law in Occult Sciences. Every well-read Occultist knows that the seventh and fourth members -- whether in a septenary chain of worlds, the septenary hierarchy of angels, or in the constitution of man, animal, plant, or mineral atom -- that the seventh and fourth members, we say, in the geometrically and mathematically uniform workings of the immutable laws of Nature, always play a distinct and specific part in the septenary system. From the stars twinkling high in heaven, to the sparks flying asunder from the rude fire built by the savage in his forest; from the hierarchies and the essential constitution of the Dhyan Chohans -- organized for diviner apprehensions and a loftier range of perception than the greatest Western psychologist ever dreamed of, down to Nature's classification of species among the humblest insects; finally from worlds to atoms, everything in the universe, from great to small, proceeds in its spiritual and physical evolution, cyclically and septennially, showing its seventh and fourth number (the latter the turning point) behaving in the same way as shown in that periodic law of atoms. Nature never proceeds per saltum. Therefore, when Mr.