Page 44 (part 3)

These masses must have taken a spheroidal form with a motion of rotation in the same direction as their revolution, since the inner molecules (those nearer to the Sun) would have less actual velocity than the exterior ones. They must then have formed as many planets in a state of vapour. But, if one of them was sufficiently powerful to unite successively, by its attraction, all the others around its centre, the ring of vapours must have been thus transformed into a single spheroidal mass of vapours circulating around the Sun with a rotation in the same direction as its revolution. The latter case has been the more common, but the solar system presents us the first case, in the four small planets which move between Jupiter and Mars." While few will be found to deny "the magnificent audacity of this [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * "World-Life." Prof. Winchell points to a good many mistakes of Laplace in his work; but as a geologist he is not infallible himself in his "astronomical speculations." [[Vol. 1, Page]] 593 UNANSWERABLE QUERIES. hypothesis," it is impossible not to recognise the insurmountable difficulties with which it is attended. Why, for instance, do we find that the satellites of Neptune and Uranus display a retrograde motion; that, in spite of its closer proximity to the Sun, Venus is less dense than the Earth? Similarly, the more distant Uranus is more dense than Saturn? How is it that so many variations in the inclination of their axes and orbits are present in the supposed progeny of the central orb; that such startling variations in the size of the planets is noticeable; that the Satellites of Jupiter are more dense by .288 than their primary -- that the phenomena of meteoric and cometic systems still remain unaccounted for? To quote the words of a Master: "They (the Occultists) find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for every oblate spheroid, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How, indeed, can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only about one-fourth greater than the Earth, should have a polar compression more than ten times as great as the latter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be 'twenty-seven times greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the earth' should have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the earth? Or why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury for centripetal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury's? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces, as taught by Modern Science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the Sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the Earth's equatorial surface, and only about one-fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge at the Solar equator, nor shown the least flattening of the poles of the Solar axis. In other and clearer words, the Sun, with only one fourth of our Earth's density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far as the 'Adepts' are aware." "Therefore, do they (the Adepts) say, that the great men of science of the West, knowing . . . . . next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of the Sun, the Stars, or even the Moon, are imprudent to speak as confidently as they do about the 'central mass of the Sun' whirling out into space planets, comets, and what not . . . ." "We maintain that it (the Sun) evolves out only the life -principle, the [[Vol. 1, Page]] 594 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. Soul of those bodies, giving and receiving it back, in our solar system, as the 'Universal Life-Giver' . . . . in infinitude and Eternity; that the solar system is as much the microcosm of the ONE Macrocosm as man is the former when compared with his own little Solar Cosmos."* The essential faculty possessed by all the cosmic and terrestrial elements, of generating within themselves a regular and harmonious series of results, a concatenation of causes and effects, is an irrefutable proof that they are either animated by an extra or intra INTELLIGENCE, or conceal such within or behind the manifested veil. Occultism does not deny the certainty of the mechanical origin of the Universe; it only claims the absolute necessity of mechanicians of some sort behind those Elements (or within ) -- a dogma with us. It is not the fortuitous assistance of the atoms of Lucretius, who himself knew better, that built the Kosmos and all in it. Nature herself contradicts such a theory. Celestial space, containing matter so attenuated as is Ether, cannot be called on, with or without attraction, to explain the common motion of the sidereal hosts. Although the perfect accord of their mutual revolution indicates clearly the presence of a mechanical cause in Nature, Newton, who of all men had best right to trust to his deductions and views, was nevertheless forced to abandon the idea of ever explaining, by the laws of known Nature and its Material forces, the original impulse given to the millions of orbs. He recognised fully the limits that separate the action of natural Forces from that of the I NTELLIGENCES that set the immutable laws into order and action. And if a N EWTON had to renounce such hope, which of the modern materialistic pigmies has the right of saying: "I know better"? To become complete and comprehensible, a cosmogonical theory has to start with a primordial Substance diffused throughout boundless Space, of an intellectual and divine Nature. That substance must be the Soul and Spirit, the Synthesis and Seventh Principle of the manifested Kosmos, and, to serve as a spiritual Upadhi to this, there must be the sixth, its vehicle -- primordial physical matter , so to speak, though its nature must escape for ever our limited normal senses. It is easy for an astronomer, if endowed with an imaginative faculty, to build a theory of the emergence of the universe out of chaos, by simply applying to it the principles of mechanics. But such a universe will always prove, with respect to its scientific human creator, a Frankenstein's monster; it will lead him into endless perplexities. The application of the mechanical laws only can never carry the speculator beyond the objective world; nor will it unveil to men the origin and final destiny of Kosmos.