There is a physical, an astral, and a super‐astral Universe in the three
chief divisions of the _Kabalah_; as there are terrestrial, super‐
terrestrial, and spiritual Beings. The “Seven Planetary Spirits” may be
ridiculed by Scientists to their hearts’ content, yet the need of
intelligent ruling and guiding Forces is so much felt to this day that
scientific men and specialists, who will not hear of Occultism or of
ancient systems, find themselves obliged to generate in their inner
consciousness some kind of semi‐mystical system. Metcalf’s “sun‐force”
theory, and that of Zaliwsky, a learned Pole, which made Electricity the
Universal Force and placed its storehouse in the Sun,(400) were revivals
of the Kabalistic teachings. Zaliwsky tried to prove that Electricity,
producing “the most powerful, attractive, calorific, and luminous
effects,” was present in the physical constitution of the Sun and
explained its peculiarities. This is very near the Occult teaching. It is
only by admitting the gaseous nature of the Sun‐reflector, and the
powerful Magnetism and Electricity of the solar attraction and repulsion,
that one can explain (_a_) the evident absence of any waste of power and
luminosity in the Sun—inexplicable by the ordinary laws of combustion; and
(_b_) the behaviour of the planets, so often contradicting every accepted
rule of weight and gravity. And Zaliwsky makes this “solar electricity”
“_differ from anything known on earth_.”
Father Secchi may be suspected of having sought to introduce
_Forces of quite a new order_ and quite foreign to gravitation,
which he had discovered in Space,(401)
in order to reconcile Astronomy with theological Astronomy. But Nagy, a
member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was no clerical, and yet he
develops a theory on the necessity of intelligent Forces whose complacency
“would lend itself to all the whims of the comets.” He suspects that:
Notwithstanding all the actual researches on the rapidity of
light—that _dazzling product of an unknown force_ ... which we see
too frequently to understand—_that light is motionless_ in
reality.(402)
C. E. Love, the well‐known railway builder and engineer in France, tired
of blind forces, made all the (then) “imponderable agents”—now called
“forces”—subordinates of Electricity, and declares the latter to be an
Intelligence—albeit molecular in nature and material.(403)
In the author’s opinion these Forces are atomistic agents, endowed with
intelligence, spontaneous will, and motion,(404) and he thus, like the
Kabalists, makes the causal Forces substantial, while the Forces that act
on this plane are only the effects of the former, as with him matter is
eternal, and the Gods also;(405) so is the Soul likewise, though it has
inherent in itself a still higher Soul [Spirit], preëxistent, endowed with
memory, and superior to Electric Force; the latter is subservient to the
higher Souls, those superior Souls forcing it to act according to the
eternal laws. The concept is rather hazy, but is evidently on the Occult
lines. Moreover, the system proposed is entirely pantheistic, and is
worked out in a purely scientific volume. Monotheists and Roman Catholics
fall foul of it, of course; but one who believes in the Planetary Spirits
and who endows Nature with living Intelligences, must always expect this.
In this connection, however, it is curious that after the moderns have so
laughed at the ignorance of the ancients,
Who, knowing only of seven planets [yet having an ogdoad which
_did not_ include the earth!], invented therefore seven Spirits to
fit in with the number,
Babinet should have vindicated the “superstition” unconsciously to
himself. In the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ this eminent French Astronomer
writes:
The ogdoad of the Ancients included the earth [which is an error],
_i.e._, eight or seven according to whether or not the earth was
comprised in the number.(406)
De Mirville assures his readers that:
M. Babinet was telling me but a few days ago that we had in
reality only eight big planets, including the earth, and so many
small ones between Mars and Jupiter.... Herschel offering to call
all those beyond the seven primary planets asteroids!(407)
There is a problem to be solved in this connection. How do Astronomers
know that Neptune is a planet, or even that it is a body belonging to our
system? Being found on the very confines of our Planetary World, so
called, the latter was arbitrarily expanded to receive it; but what really
mathematical and infallible proof have Astronomers that it is (_a_) a
planet, and (_b_) one of _our_ planets? None at all! It is at such an
immeasurable distance from us, the
Apparent diameter of the sun being to Neptune but one‐fortieth of
the sun’s apparent diameter to us,
and it is so dim and hazy when seen through the best telescope that it
looks like an astronomical romance to call it one of our planets.
Neptune’s heat and light are reduced to 1/900 part of the heat and light
received by the earth. His motion and that of his satellites have always
looked suspicious. They do not agree—in appearance, at least—with those of
the other planets. His system is retrograde, etc. But even the latter
abnormal fact resulted only in the creation of new hypotheses by our
Astronomers, who forthwith suggested a probable overturn of Neptune, his
collision with another body, etc. Was Adams’ and Leverrier’s discovery so
welcomed because Neptune was as necessary as was Ether to throw a new
glory upon astronomical prevision, upon the certitude of modern scientific
data, and principally upon the power of mathematical analysis? It would so
appear. A new planet that widens our planetary domain by more than four
hundred million leagues is worthy of annexation. Yet, as in the case of
terrestrial annexation, scientific authority may be proved “right” only
because it has “might.” Neptune’s motion happens to be dimly perceived:
Eureka! it is a planet! A mere motion, however, proves very little. It is
now an ascertained fact in Astronomy that there are no absolutely fixed
stars in Nature,(408) even though such stars should continue to exist in
astronomical parlance, while they have passed from the scientific
imagination. Occultism, however, has a strange theory of its own with
regard to Neptune.
Occultism says that if several hypotheses resting on mere assumption—which
have been accepted only because they have been taught by eminent men of
learning—are taken away from the Science of Modern Astronomy, to which
they serve as props, then even the presumably universal law of gravitation
will be found to be contrary to the most ordinary truths of mechanics. And
really one can hardly blame Christians—foremost of all the Roman
Catholics—however scientific some of these may themselves be, for refusing
to quarrel with their Church for the sake of scientific beliefs. Nor can
we even blame them for accepting in the secresy of their hearts—as some of
them do—the theological “Virtues” and “Archons” of Darkness, instead of
all the blind forces offered them by Science.
Never can there be intervention of any sort in the marshalling and
the regular precession of the celestial bodies! The law of
gravitation is the law of laws; who ever witnessed a stone rising
in the air against gravitation? The permanence of the universal
law is shown in the behaviour of the sidereal worlds and globes
eternally faithful to their primitive orbits; never wandering
beyond their respective paths. Nor is there any intervention
needed, as it could only be disastrous. Whether the first sidereal
incipient rotation took place owing to an intercosmic chance, or
to the spontaneous development of latent primordial forces; or
again, whether that impulse was given once for all by God or
Gods—it does not make the slightest difference. At this stage of
cosmic evolution no intervention, superior or inferior, is
admissible. Were any to take place, the universal clock‐work would
stop, and Kosmos would fall into pieces.
Such are stray sentences, pearls of wisdom, fallen from time to time from
scientific lips, and now chosen at random to illustrate a query. We lift
our diminished heads and look heavenward. Such seems to be the fact:
worlds, suns, and stars, the shining myriads of the heavenly hosts, remind
the Poet of an infinite, shoreless ocean, whereon move swiftly numberless
squadrons of ships, millions upon millions of cruisers, large and small,
crossing each other, whirling and gyrating in every direction; and Science
teaches us, that though they be without rudder or compass or any beacon to
guide them, they are nevertheless secure from collision—almost secure, at
any rate, save in chance accidents—as the whole celestial machine is built
upon and guided by an immutable, albeit blind, law, and by constant and
accelerating force or forces. “Built upon” by whom? “By self‐evolution,”
is the answer. Moreover, as dynamics teach that
A body in motion tends to continue in the same state of relative
rest or motion unless acted upon by some external force,
this force has to be regarded as self‐generated—even if not eternal, since
this would amount to the recognition of perpetual motion—and so well self‐
calculated and self‐adjusted as to last from the beginning to the end of
Kosmos. But “self‐generation” has still to generate from something,
generation _ex‐nihilo_ being as contrary to reason as it is to Science.
Thus we are placed once more between the horns of a dilemma: are we to
believe in perpetual motion or in self‐generation _ex‐nihilo_? And if in
neither, who or what is that something, which first produced that force or
those forces?
There are such things in mechanics as superior levers, which give the
impulse and act upon secondary or inferior levers. The former, however,
need an impulse and occasional renovation, otherwise they would themselves
very soon stop and fall back into their original status. What is the
external force which puts and retains them in motion? Another dilemma!
As to the law of cosmical _non‐intervention_, it could be justified only
in one case, namely, if the celestial mechanism were perfect; but it is
not. The so‐called unalterable motions of celestial bodies alter and
change incessantly; they are very often disturbed, and the wheels of even
the sidereal locomotive itself occasionally jump off their invisible
rails, as may be easily proved. Otherwise why should Laplace speak of the
probable occurrence at some future time of an out‐and‐out reform in the
arrangement of the planets;(409) or Lagrange maintain the gradual
narrowing of the orbits; or our modern Astronomers, again, declare that
the fuel in the sun is slowly disappearing? If the laws and forces which
govern the behaviour of the celestial bodies are immutable, such
modifications and wearing‐out of substance or fuel, of force and fluids,
would be impossible; yet they are not denied. Therefore one has to suppose
that such modifications will have to rely upon the laws of forces, which
will have to self‐regenerate themselves once more on such occasions, thus
producing an astral antinomy, and a kind of physical palinomy, since, as
Laplace says, one would then see fluids disobeying themselves and reäcting
in a way contrary to all their attributes and properties.
Newton felt very uncomfortable about the moon. Her behaviour in
progressively narrowing the circumference of her orbit around the earth
made him nervous, lest it should end one day in our satellite falling upon
the earth. The world, he confessed, needed repairing, and that very
often.(410) In this he was corroborated by Herschel.(411) He speaks of
real and quite considerable deviations, besides those which are only
apparent, but gets some consolation from his conviction that somebody or
something will probably see to things.
We may be answered that the personal beliefs of some pious Astronomers,
however great they may be as scientific characters, are no proofs of the
actual existence and presence in space of intelligent supramundane Beings,
of either Gods or Angels. It is the behaviour of the stars and planets
themselves that has to be analysed and inferences must be drawn therefrom.
Renan asserts that nothing that we know of the sidereal bodies warrants
the idea of the presence of any Intelligence, whether internal or external
to them.
Let us see, says Reynaud, if this is a fact, or only one more empty
scientific assumption.
The orbits traversed by the planets are far from being immutable.
They are, on the contrary, subject to perpetual mutation in
position, as in form. Elongations, contractions, and orbital
widenings, oscillations from right to left, slackening and
quickening of speed ... and all this on a plane which seems to
vacillate.(412)
As is very pertinently observed by des Mousseux:
Here is a path having little of the mathematical and mechanical
precision claimed for it; for we know of no clock which, having
gone slow for several minutes should catch up the right time _of
itself_ and _without a turn of the key_.
So much for blind law and force. As for the physical impossibility—a
miracle indeed in the sight of Science—of a stone raised in the air
against the law of gravitation, this is what Babinet—the deadliest enemy
and opponent of the phenomena of levitation—(cited by Arago) says:
Everyone knows the theory of _bolides_ [meteors] and
aerolithes.... In Connecticut an immense aerolith was seen [a mass
of eighteen hundred feet in diameter], bombarding a whole American
zone and returning to the spot [in mid‐air] from which it had
started.(413)
Thus we find in both of the cases above cited—that of self‐correcting
planets and of meteors of gigantic size flying back into the air—a “blind
force” regulating and resisting the natural tendencies of “blind matter,”
and even occasionally repairing its mistakes and correcting its failures.
This is far more miraculous and even “extravagant,” one would say, than
any “Angel‐guided” Element.
Bold is he who laughs at the idea of Von Haller, who declares that:
The stars are perhaps an abode of glorious Spirits; as here Vice
reigns, there is Virtue master.(414)