methods, the less dogmatic we have become. The present, although a time
of great fertility in the production of theories, is one of comparative
modesty in the putting forth of assertions that such a thing cannot
be, or that such another is against established laws and therefore not
to be investigated. We are seeing something similar in the affairs of
nations--new experiments in statecraft are being tried in apparently
unlikely places.
The wisdom of the ancients is being more justly estimated; the cheap
sneers against their scientific attainments are less often heard. The
newest Chemistry regards the much-derided Alchemy more sympathetically;
the latest Psychology finds that Mesmer was not the complete fraud
alleged by the materialism of the nineteenth century. A well-founded
suspicion is arising that our own civilization is not on the rightest
basis, and that it has neglected many of the sterling virtues of the
past in favor of luxury and ease. The claims of the older religions
of the world are more fully acknowledged as worthy of respect; the
Theosophical idea is dawning upon the people of Christendom that they
are not all foolishness.
In her presentation of the teachings of Theosophy, the ancient
Wisdom-Religion, H. P. Blavatsky had to devote a large amount of time
to a dissection of the dogmatic claims of the materialistic science
of the nineteenth century. It was only natural, of course, that the
leaders of scientific research, and a large number of the rank and
file, just emancipated from the fetters of dogmatic theology, should
have proclaimed their new theories of life in very positive terms,
and should have attributed greater finality to them than now seems
possible. In the latter quarter of the nineteenth century the reaction
towards the negation of the spiritual was going too far, so it became
part of H. P. Blavatsky's duty to show in what the materialistic
hypotheses were as deficient as the superstitious dogmas they were
trying to supplant, while admitting, of course, that as iconoclastic
weapons of destruction they served a necessary purpose. And who can
deny the far-reaching effect of her work. Almost every magazine
article or book on advanced lines offers palpable traces of the ideas
she had to bring to the attention of the Western world; not only
the principles, but often the very expressions originated in the
Theosophical literature, are becoming widely spread. The thinking world
is rapidly--more rapidly than the earlier students of Theosophy dared
to hope--reaching the place where some at least of the teachings of
Theosophy will be accepted among the unprejudiced everywhere, as the
only logical thing; when this is done we may reasonably expect further
clues to the understanding of natural law, from the source whence H. P.
Blavatsky drew her inspiration. At the present time it is the practical
demonstration of the basic principles of Theosophy in conduct, such
as is found in the lives of the Theosophical students under Katherine
Tingley, that is the greatest need of humanity. There is plenty of
theory; let us see it work out in the changed lives of the multitude.
It may prove interesting and not unprofitable to glance at a few of the
recent developments on scientific and philosophic lines which are now
moving in the Theosophical direction.
The enormous antiquity of man, which was until lately frowned upon
severely, is now a perfectly safe subject to teach: man's residence on
earth is no longer considered to be a matter of thousands of years but
of hundreds of thousands. The "Englishman's" skeleton of the Thames
valley of which we have lately heard so much is conservatively reckoned
to be 170,000 years old, and the "Gibraltar woman" is believed to have
flourished half a million years ago or more! Neither of these antique
personages represents the "missing link" in the least. The English
skull is well-developed and of modern type; the woman's is not quite so
good. Well, from 4004 B. C.--until lately the supposed date of man's
creation according to Western belief founded on false interpretation
of the Hebrew scriptures--to the five or six hundred thousand years
now accepted, is a big jump. It is bigger in proportion than that
from the half million to the eighteen millions of years that man has
been embodied, according to the Theosophical records, which yet has
to be made. We shall probably not have to wait long to see a further
extension of time demanded and granted.
It is noteworthy, and particularly interesting to students of
Theosophy, that an increasing number of biologists are inclining to
the belief that the human mind did not develop through an immensely
protracted series of years, but that it came almost to its present
perfection very quickly; that there was, in fact, _a sort of
incarnation of mind_ into the highest and most suitable animal form
available. The famous Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the "co-discoverer
of Darwinism," uses many convincing arguments in favor of the high
intelligence of "primitive" man. He says that
Our intellectual and moral nature has not advanced in any perceptible
degree.
A writer in _Records of the Past_, says:
A further evidence of the high intelligence of primeval man is found
in the manner in which he maintained himself against the swarms
of monstrous and ferocious beasts by which he was surrounded. Not
only did he hold his own against them, but even, so we are told,
exterminated many of them. We must remember also that man achieved
this astounding victory over these mighty animals by means of stone
weapons, which were of the rudest possible character. His triumph
therefore, was solely due to his wonderful intelligence.
The civilized inhabitants of modern India have not been able to
exterminate the devastating tigers and snakes, etc., whose toll of
human lives is still very heavy.
According to Theosophy, "primitive" man in Europe was as the successor
of a highly civilized man who lived ages before on the sunken continent
of Atlantis, passing through a cycle of degradation as a consequence
of his abuse of his opportunities in previous incarnations. Though
the cubic capacity of the skulls of the earliest primitive races,
so-called, is about the same as that of modern races, the possession
of a large brain does not imply that they had a high civilization.
This can be seen clearly in the case of the Eskimo, who have even more
capacious skulls than some highly civilized races. A low condition of
life amid a people who possess good brain development means either
the presence of undeveloped Egos of limited experience, or of those
who are suffering disabilities in consequence of past wrong-doing. In
either case they are necessarily using the physical vehicles provided
by heredity. H. P. Blavatsky says the evil Karma (the influence set in
motion by past actions) generated by the sins of the Atlanteans heavily
handicapped those Egos when they reappeared on the newly-forming
European and Asiatic (in part) continents, and prevented them for long
ages from rising out of the primitive conditions in which they found
themselves.
It is a fact that man's mind is an incarnation from something very
different from the material plane; it comes into humanity from its
own plane. The Theosophical teachings show how each of the complex
"principles" or constituents which compose the human personality, the
vehicle of the Immortal Ego, is derived from its own plane or source,
i. e., the physical body from the material, molecular world; the
body-center of passions and desires from the plane or world of Desire,
Kâma-Loka; and so forth. This is fully explained in the Theosophical
literature, especially, of course, in the writings of the Theosophical
Leaders. It is a most important clue, leading to many practical
consequences, owing to the better understanding it gives of the causes
of many of our human sufferings, of the rationale of the death-process,
of the spread of epidemics, both physical and mental, and so forth.
Theosophy does not fall into the materialistic error of imagining that
mind is the product of some jugglery of blind forces playing with the
molecules of inert matter--that the less can be the origin of the
greater. When our psychologists have learned how the mind comes from
its own plane, evolving in its own way, and incarnating in material
forms to help them on in _their_ evolution, they will find a new sphere
of research, and the text-books will have to be rewritten.
While the idea, now being dimly suspected by some anthropologists, that
man's mind is not the result of a _very long and slow_ development
from the beast, is correct according to the records of Theosophy, we
must remember that the incarnation of the "Manas" or Thinker, which
made incomplete man into the perfect septenary he is today, took place
long before the temporary decline of the "primitive" man after the
disappearance of Atlantis. One eminent scientist at least, Professor
F. Soddy, F. R. S., lecturer on physical chemistry and radio-activity
at Glasgow University, has lately suggested that in his opinion some
great civilization may have existed (long before the "primitive" Stone
Ages) which ruined itself and descended into barbarism by the abuse of
the power to disintegrate matter and so to release forces of terrible
potency whose existence the discovery of the properties of radium
has faintly revealed to us, but which we have, fortunately, not the
slightest idea how to unloose. Theosophy tells us that something of the
kind did happen; but the mind of man was even then long ages posterior
to the time when the "Sons of Mind" settled into the forms which only
then, properly, could be called mankind.
For many years the existence of hundreds of giant portrait-statues on
the wild volcanic Easter Island, two thousand miles from the coast of
South America, has been known, and their origin and meaning is still
one of the greatest of the world's enigmas. What was the mysterious
race that carved them? How is it that such works, which obviously
required the presence of a large and intelligent population, should
be found on such a small island, so far from the continental lands?
Archaeologists in general seem to avoid the problem; certainly no
adequate theory has been advanced by the recognized authorities to
meet the case. H. P. Blavatsky gave us the key to the mystery when she
briefly described parts of the pre-Atlantean continent of Lemuria:
Easter Island is an Atlantean vestige of that really primitive land
whose truly primeval inhabitants were of larger proportions than
ourselves. Well, lately we have seen three or four articles in
different American and other magazines discussing the problem and
trying to explain it upon the very lines of the Theosophical teachings,
no other being considered reasonable.
During the past ten years the trend toward the Theosophical
interpretations of some of the most pressing astronomical problems
has been very marked. The re-opening of questions hither considered
closed or else insoluble, has been an interesting feature of recent
times. For instance, the belief that gravitation alone explained the
movements of the stars has been seriously shaken lately, and, if we
may venture to prophesy, it looks as if physics will have to return to
the ancient and Theosophical acceptance of dual forces, attraction and
repulsion--perhaps magnetic--to explain the new problem of astronomy,
having found that gravitation is only a half-understood truth, as
Theosophy teaches. In his inaugural address, Professor Bergstrand,
newly appointed to the chair of astronomy at the university of Upsala,
Sweden, made a special point of the fact that some utterly unknown
force or forces besides gravitation must be operating to explain
some of the newest discoveries in stellar physics. He was alluding
particularly to the binding together of certain groups of stars in
connected drifts across the depths of space. Several of such drifting
collections of stars moving together across the vast depths of
kosmos at equal speed are now known. There would not be anything so
extraordinary in this, and nothing that might call for the postulate
of some unknown law, but for the fact that in some cases members of
the same star-group are found _at far distant parts of the heavens_
separated from each other by many other stars drifting in various
directions between them--our sun for one. What is the mysterious
binding tie, and how may it be reconciled with the known action of
gravitation? One of the fundamental principles in nature, according
to Theosophy, is the Duality of manifested forces: in _The Secret
Doctrine_ H. P. Blavatsky treats of this very fully, plainly declaring
that the _other half_ of gravitation will have to be reckoned with
before long by physical science in the West. In the East there is
practical knowledge of it, among a chosen few.
The newest speculations about the processes of solar and planetary
development from nebulae are bound to lead to the discovery of the
truth of the Theosophical teaching that there is an archetypal world, a
world of causes, lying concealed behind all manifested material forms.
Once this is admitted by scientists, once a sane metaphysical basis
for the universe is found logically necessary, there will be a great
change in the way of looking at phenomena, including the problem of
human life, and we know that what the most advanced thinkers proclaim
will be followed before long by the great mass; see, for instance, the
strong effect the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, incomplete
and materialistic as it is, has already made in every department of
modern thought. Of course the acceptance of a merely metaphysical
foundation for the facts recorded by our ordinary senses does not mean
the acceptance of the reality of a _spiritual_ world; that is a far
deeper problem, and has to be approached through the experience of the
intuition, trained and untrained, but a long step will be made when
it is thoroughly realized that the material plane is not the plane of
ultimate causes.
According to one of the nebular hypotheses of today the collision of
two suns, (dark and "dead" or otherwise) crashing into each other
at tremendous speed, results in a vast nebula, in which, owing to
the enormous heat produced, the atoms would be reduced to the state
of "corpuscles," the root of matter on our plane, all alike, and
without any of the characteristics of the elements, even in the most
rudimentary form; there would be no metallic vapors, no gases, not
even helium or coronium, nothing but the primitive corpuscular basis
of matter. Then, as the nebula formed by the collision condensed
and perhaps cooled, it would begin to rebuild its substance into
the well-known elements, combinations would take place, and the
evolution of a new solar system would be started. But now arises the
important question: What causes the perfectly homogeneous or uniform
"corpuscular" substance, the mass of _sub-atoms_ of unknown nature, to
perform the astonishing feat of transforming itself into the marvelous
complexity we find even in the simplest star? The problem is similar to
that of the egg. In a new-laid egg the great mass of its constituent
materials is structureless, but in a short time of incubation the
eggshell is completely filled with a most complicated living organism.
Is it not clear that behind both nebula and egg there must be an
archetype or model form, invisible to ordinary eyesight, which is
being used as the pattern into which the simple materials are being
woven? and that there are Builders, who know the plan and work it out
in a conscious harmony that we call the correlation of "natural laws"?
"Blind forces," "necessity," "unconscious laws," are meaningless terms
which only disguise ignorance, or _stave off_ the anti-materialistic
and dreaded so-called "teleological" view that there must be "a
Divinity that shapes our ends."
Theosophy offers as a fact, demonstrable from the very presence within
of the higher, divine nature, that men in time will attain the stature
of Creative powers, Builders of future world-systems, just as the
Higher Beings who are the guides and directors of the present evolution
were once men and lower than men in past aeons. Evolution of men will
not stop with the perfecting of the mental and moral nature; once the
godlike nature of the Higher Self is admitted, it follows that there
can not be a limit assigned beyond which man may not go.
There may be some truth in the collision-theory of the origin of
certain nebulae; it seems to explain the sudden appearance of
"temporary stars," at least; but, by its very nature, it cannot
explain the origin of the universe of suns as a whole. Again, after
each collision the speed of the new body formed from the material of
the two colliding spheres would be less than their combined speed,
because much or all of their motion would be arrested and transformed
into the energy which would be needed to scatter their substance in
all directions. If two equal bodies, moving at equal speed, met in a
line joining their centers, the resulting nebula would have no motion
at all. It has been pointed out that if the collision theory alone is
relied upon to explain the structure of the universe it must fail,
because during the infinity of past time a condition of absolute
stagnation would have been attained, the universe would have "run
down," nothing being left but one gigantic dead and dark globe!
In this idea of "running down" there is a paradox, which is apparent
enough, and we need not trouble to follow it further. We have to
seek a reasonable hypothesis--a theory such as Theosophy presents
of a universe which can wind itself up again after it has finished
its cyclic career--a theory which does not overlook the fact that
the material cosmos is the manifestation of intelligent Mind. The
impressive system which was worked out in the Orient (and before that
elsewhere) ages ago, of the transformation of energies from visible
to invisible planes under Cyclic or Periodic Law, the universality
of alternations of manifestation and rest, clears up the primary
difficulties of the case. It is to H. P. Blavatsky, the great
Theosophist, that we are indebted for making this reasonable hypothesis
clear. Fortunately, the time-spirit of science in this century is
less atheistic than that of the nineteenth, and the broad principle
of Theosophy, that there are great spiritual Beings, the glorious
efflorescence of past ages of development, guiding and controlling the
formation and maintenance of the worlds, is becoming the subject of
serious consideration among some of the most advanced thinkers, for
the atheistic hypothesis that matter "runs itself" is almost at its
last gasp.
In another subject, the nature of Light, many new and interesting
speculations are being advanced as the result of the discoveries of
the extraordinary properties of radium and the _x_-rays. To students
of Theosophy these are significant, for H. P. Blavatsky, in _The
Secret Doctrine_, goes deeply into the question whether light is an
actual substance of some kind, or a mere undulation of an ethereal
medium. She points out some of the difficulties of both theories,
giving special attention to Sir W. Grove's celebrated lecture in 1842
wherein he considered he proved that light and heat must be affections
of matter itself, and not the effects of an imponderable fluid--a
finer state of matter--penetrating it. Sir Isaac Newton held to the
Pythagorean theory that light was made of almost infinitely minute
corpuscles, but the phenomenon of diffraction is supposed to have
upset this. H. P. Blavatsky does not reject the wave theory as part of
the explanation, but she contends that the ultimate causes of light,
heat, and electricity must be sought in a form of matter existing
in supersensuous states, states, though, "as fully objective to the
spiritual eye of man as a horse or a tree to the ordinary mortal";
and, above all, that these forces and others are "propelled and guided
by Intelligences." She devotes many chapters of the third part of the
first volume of _The Secret Doctrine_ to this subject, throwing an
entirely new light upon it in its deeper bearings, and showing the
enormous importance of a proper understanding of it if we are ever to
learn our true relationship with the external universe. She says:
To know what light is, and whether it is an actual substance or a mere
undulation of the "ethereal medium," Science has first to learn what
are in reality Matter, Atom, Ether, Force. Now, the truth is, that _it
knows nothing of any of these_, and admits it. (_The Secret Doctrine_,
Vol. I p. 482)
Since she wrote _The Secret Doctrine_, though hardly twenty-three
years have elapsed, several discoveries in physics and chemistry have
been made which have greatly modified the scientific view as to the
nature of the atom, of the electric current, and of matter in general;
all these modifications are leading straight in the direction of her
teachings. It is even claimed that
Matter can vanish without return.... Force and matter are two
different forms of one and the same thing.... By the dissociation of
matter, the stable form of energy termed matter is simply changed
into those unstable forms known by the name of light, heat, etc.
(_Evolution of Matter_, by Gustave Le Bon)
This leads to the startling suggestion that what is force on this
plane may be substantial on another, and we are now seeing, as a
result of the study of the _x_-rays, and the [alpha], [beta], [gamma]
rays of radium, all of which can pass through ordinary matter with
ease, a revival of the ancient and supposedly extinct theory held
by Newton, and others before him, that light is a body composed of
corpuscles--whatever they may be. Professor Bragg, of the Leeds
University (England), has been investigating the problem with great
care, with the result that he has come to the conclusion, as he
announced to the members of the Royal Institution, London, the other
day, that the "gamma" rays of radium and the _x_-rays are corpuscular,
and not merely pulsations in the ether. He thinks they are probably
electrons, corpuscles of negative electricity
which have assumed a cloak of darkness in the form of sufficient
positive electricity to neutralize them.
It seems also that as ultra-violet light, which exists in ordinary
sunlight, possesses many of the properties of the above rays, Professor
Bragg may not be far wrong in his further suggestion that it also may
be corpuscular in its nature. He asked, very pertinently, that if this
light be corpuscular, why may not all other forms of light be so? When
we recollect that the "corpuscles" themselves are a purely metaphysical
concept, it is plain that science is moving rapidly towards a very
different and far more reasonable and Theosophical idea of the universe
than the materialistic one. _Vivat!_
THE BRIDGES OF PARIS: by G. K.
The Bridges of Paris are of distinctive interest and their very
names suggest in part the fascinating panorama of French history and
legend--Tolbiac, Bercy, Austerlitz, Sully, Marie and Louis Philippe,
Notre Dame, Pont San Michel, Solferino, La Concorde, Alma, Iéna, Passy,
etc. The Seine flows for seven miles through the city and is at its
widest (nearly 1000 feet) at the extremity of the island called La
Cité. This island communicates with the right bank of the Seine by the
bridges of Notre Dame and Au Change. The latter, as is evident from
the familiar device sculptured above the piers (see illustration), was
built by the first Napoleon.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. PARIS: THE PONT AU
CHANGE AND THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. PARIS AND THE SEINE]
The Palais de Justice is located in La Cité and the Greek façade by
Duc is considered one of the finest examples of this style in modern
architecture.