Answers

It was not in contemplation, at the outset of the work begun in

Fragments, to deal as fully with the scientific problems of cosmic

evolution as now seems expected. A distinct promise was made, as Mr.

Sinnett is well aware, to acquaint the readers with the outlines of

Esoteric doctrines and--no more. A good deal would be given, much more

kept back.

This seeming unwillingness to share with the world some of Nature's

secrets that may have come into the possession of the few, arises from

causes quite different from the one generally assigned. It is not

SELFISHNESS erecting a Chinese wall between occult science and those who

would know more of it, without making any distinction between the simply

curious profane, and the earnest, ardent seeker after truth. Wrong and

unjust are those who think so; who attribute to indifference for other

people's welfare a policy necessitated, on the contrary, by a far-seeing

universal philanthropy; who accuse the custodians of lofty physical and

spiritual though long rejected truths, of holding them high above the

people's heads. In truth, the inability to reach them lies entirely

with the seekers. Indeed, the chief reason among many others for such a

reticence, at any rate, with regard to secrets pertaining to physical

sciences--is to be sought elsewhere.* It rests entirely on the

impossibility of imparting that the nature of which is at the present

stage of the world's development, beyond the comprehension of the

would-be learners, however intellectual and however scientifically

trained may be the latter. This tremendous difficulty is now explained

to the few, who, besides having read "Esoteric Buddhism," have studied

and understood the several occult axioms approached in it. It is safe

to say that it will not be even vaguely realized by the general reader,

but will offer the pretext for sheer abuse. Nay, it has already.

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* Needless to remind AN ENGLISH F.T.S. that what is said here, applies

only to secrets the nature of which when revealed will not be turned

into a weapon against humanity in general, or its units--men. Secrets

of such class could not be given to any one but a regular chela of many

years' standing and during his successive initiations; mankind as a

whole has first to come of age, to reach its majority, which will happen

but toward the beginning of its sixth race--before such mysteries can be

safely revealed to it. The vril is not altogether a fiction, as some

chelas and even "lay" chelas know.

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It is simply that the gradual development of man's seven principles and

physical senses has to be coincident and on parallel lines with Rounds

and Root-races. Our fifth race has so far developed but its five

senses. Now, if the Kama or Will-principle of the "Fourth-rounders" has

already reached that stage of its evolution when the automatic acts, the

unmotivated instincts and impulses of its childhood and youth, instead

of following external stimuli, will have become acts of will framed

constantly in conjunction with the mind (Manas), thus making of every

man on earth of that race a free agent, a fully responsible being--the

Kama of our hardly adult fifth race is only slowly approaching it. As

to the sixth sense of this, our race, it has hardly sprouted above the

soil of its materiality. It is highly unreasonable, therefore, to

expect for the men of the fifth to sense the nature and essence of that

which will be fully sensed and perceived but by the sixth--let alone the

seventh race--i.e., to enjoy the legitimate outgrowth of the evolution

and endowments of the future races with only the help of our present

limited senses. The exceptions to this quasi-universal rule have been

hitherto found only in some rare cases of constitutional, abnormally

precocious individual evolutions; or, in such, where by early training

and special methods, reaching the stage of the fifth rounders, some men

in addition to the natural gift of the latter have fully developed (by

certain occult methods) their sixth, and in still rarer cases their

seventh, sense. As an instance of the former class may be cited the

Seeress of Prevorst; a creature born out of time, a rare precocious

growth, ill adapted to the uncongenial atmosphere that surrounded her,

hence a martyr ever ailing and sickly. As an example of the other, the

Count St. Germain may be mentioned. Apace with the anthropological and

physiological development of man runs his spiritual evolution. To the

latter, purely intellectual growth is often more an impediment than a

help. An instance: radiant stuff--"the fourth state of matter"--has

been hardly discovered, and no one--the eminent discoverer himself not

excepted--has yet any idea of its full importance, its possibilities,

its connection with physical phenomena, or even its bearing upon the

most puzzling scientific problems. How then can any "Adept" attempt to

prove the fallacy of much that is predicated in the nebular and solar

theories when the only means by which he could successfully prove his

position is an appeal to, and the exhibition of, that sixth sense--

consciousness which the physicist cannot postulate? Is not this plain?

Thus, the obstacle is not that the "Adepts" would "forbid inquiry," but

rather the personal, present limitations of the senses of the average,

and even of the scientific man. To undertake the explanation of that

which at the outset would be rejected as a physical impossibility, the

outcome of hallucination, is unwise and even harmful, because premature.

It is in consequence of such difficulties that the psychic production of

physical phenomena--save in exceptional cases--is strictly forbidden.

And now, "Adepts" are asked to meddle with astronomy--a science which,

of all the branches of human knowledge has yielded the most accurate

information, afforded the most mathematically correct data, and of the

achievements in which the men of science feel the most justly proud! It

is true that on the whole astronomy has achieved triumphs more brilliant

than those of most other sciences. But if it has done much in the

direction of satisfying man's straining and thirsting mind and his

noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important

particulars, it has ever laughed at man's puny efforts to wrest the

great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus.

While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial

and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously

progressed orbs of space have not been detected, nor proven to be

identical with those observed on our own planet. In this particular,

Esoteric Psychology may be useful. But who of the men of science would

consent to confront it with their own handiwork? Who of them would

recognise the superiority and greater trustworthiness of the Adept's

knowledge over their own hypotheses, since in their case they can claim

the mathematical correctness of their deductive reasonings based on the

alleged unerring precision of the modern instruments; while the Adepts

can claim but their knowledge of the ultimate nature of the materials

they have worked with for ages, resulting in the phenomena produced.

However much it may he urged that a deductive argument, besides being an

incomplete syllogistic form, may often be in conflict with fact; that

their major propositions may not always be correct, although the

predicates of their conclusions seem correctly drawn--spectrum analysis

will not be acknowledged as inferior to purely spiritual research. Nor,

before developing his sixth sense, will the man of science concede the

error of his theories as to the solar spectrum, unless he abjure, to

some degree at least, his marked weakness for conditional and

disjunctive syllogisms ending in eternal dilemmas. At present the

"Adepts" do not see any help for it. Were these invisible and unknown

profanes to interfere with--not to say openly contradict--the dicta of

the Royal Society, contempt and ridicule, followed by charges of crass

ignorance of the first elementary principles of modern science would be

their only reward; while those who would lend an ear to their

"vagaries," would be characterized immediately as types of the "mild

lunatics" of the age. Unless, indeed, the whole of that August body

should be initiated into the great Mysteries at once, and without any

further ado or the preliminary and usual preparations or training, the

F.R.S.'s could be miraculously endowed with the required sixth sense,

the Adepts fear the task would be profitless. The latter have given

quite enough, little though it may seem, for the purposes of a first

trial. The sequence of martyrs to the great universal truths has never

been once broken; and the long list of known and unknown sufferers,

headed with the name of Galileo, now closes with that of Zollner. Is the

world of science aware of the real cause of Zollner's premature death?

When the fourth dimension of space becomes a scientific reality like the

fourth state of matter, he may have a statue raised to him by grateful

posterity. But this will neither recall him to life, nor will it

obliterate the days and months of mental agony that harassed the soul of

this intuitional, far-seeing, modest genius, made even after his death

to receive the donkey's kick of misrepresentation and to be publicly

charged with lunacy.

Hitherto, astronomy could grope between light and darkness only with the

help of the uncertain guidance offered it by analogy. It has reduced to

fact and mathematical precision the physical motion and the paths of the

heavenly bodies, and--no more. So far, it has been unable to discover

with any approach to certainty the physical constitution of either sun,

stars, or even cometary matter. Of the latter, it seems to know no more

than was taught 5,000 years ago by the official astronomers of old

Chaldea and Egypt--namely, that it is vaporous, since it transmits the

rays of stars and planets without any sensible obstruction. But let the

modern chemist be asked to tell one whether this matter is in any way

connected with, or akin to, that of any of the gases he is acquainted

with; or again, to any of the solid elements of his chemistry. The

probable answer received will be very little calculated to solve the

world's perplexity; since, all hypotheses to the contrary

notwithstanding, cometary matter does not appear to possess even the

common law of adhesion or of chemical affinity. The reason for it is

very simple. And the truth ought long ago to have dawned upon the

experimentalists, since our little world (though so repeatedly visited

by the hairy and bearded travelers, enveloped in the evanescent veil of

their tails, and otherwise brought in contact with that matter) has

neither been smothered by an addition of nitrogen gas, nor deluged by an

excess of hydrogen, nor yet perceptibly affected by a surplus of oxygen.

The essence of cometary matter must be--and the "Adepts" say is--totally

different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with

which the greatest chemists and physicists of the earth are familiar--

all recent hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding. It is to be

feared that before the real nature of the elder progeny of Mula Prakriti

is detected, Mr. Crookes will have to discover matter of the fifth or

extra radiant state; et seq.

Thus, while the astronomer has achieved marvels in the elucidation of

the visible relations of the orbs of space, he has learnt nothing of

their inner constitution. His science has led him no farther towards a

reading of that inner mystery than has that of the geologist, who can

tell us only of the earth's superficial layers, and that of the

physiologist, who has until now been able to deal only with man's outer

shell, or Sthula Sarira. Occultists have asserted, and go on asserting

daily, the fallacy of judging the essence by its outward manifestations,

the ultimate nature of the life-principle by the circulation of the

blood, mind by the gray matter of the brain, and the physical

constitution of sun, stars and comets by our terrestrial chemistry and

the matter of our own planet. Verily and indeed, no microscopes,

spectroscopes, telescopes, photometers, or other physical apparatuses

can ever be focused on either the macro-or micro-cosmical highest

principles, nor will the mayavirupa of either yield its mystery to

physical inquiry. The methods of spiritual research and psychological

observation are the only efficient agencies to employ. We have to

proceed by analogy in everything to be sure. Yet the candid men of

science must very soon find out that it is not sufficient to examine a

few stars--a handful of sand, as it were, from the margin of the

shoreless, cosmic ocean--to conclude that these stars are the same as

all other stars--our earth included; that, because they have attained a

certain very great telescopic power, and gauged an area enclosed in the

smallest of spaces when compared with what remains, they have,

therefore, concurrently perfected the survey of all that exists within

even that limited space. For, in truth, they have done nothing of the

kind. They have had only a superficial glance at that which is made

visible to them under the present conditions, with the limited power of

their vision. And even though it were helped by telescopes of a

hundred-fold stronger power than that of Lord Rosse, or the new Lick

Observatory, the case would not alter. No physical instrument will ever

help astronomy to scan distances of the immensity of which that of

Sirius, situated at the trifle of 130,125,000,000,000 miles away from

the outer boundary of the spherical area, or even that of (a) Capella,

with its extra trifle of 295,355,000,000,000* miles still farther away,

can give them, as they themselves are well aware, the faintest idea.

For, though an Adept is unable to cross bodily (i.e., in his astral

shape) the limits of the solar system, yet he knows that, far

stretching beyond the telescopic power of detection, there are systems

upon systems, the smallest of which would, when compared with the system

of Sirius, make the latter seem like an atom of dust imbedded in the

great Shamo desert. The eye of the astronomer, who thinks he also knows

of the existence of such systems, has never rested upon them, has never

caught of them, even that spectral glimpse, fanciful and hazy as the

incoherent vision in a slumbering mind that he has occasionally had of

other systems, and yet he verily believes he has gauged INFINITUDE! And

yet these immeasurably distant worlds are brought as clear and near to

the spiritual eye of the astral astronomer as a neighbouring bed of

daisies may be to the eye of the botanist.

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* The figures are given from the mathematical calculations of exoteric

Western astronomy. Esoteric astronomy may prove them false some day.

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Thus, the "Adepts" of the present generation, though unable to help the

profane astronomer by explaining the ultimate essence, or even the

material constitution, of star and planet, since European science,

knowing nothing as yet of the existence of such substances, or more

properly of their various states or conditions, has neither proper terms

for, nor can form any adequate idea of them by any description, they

may, perchance, be able to prove what this matter is not--and this is

more than sufficient for all present purposes. The next best thing to

learning what is true is to ascertain what is not true.

Having thus anticipated a few general objections, and traced a limit to

expectations, since there is no need of drawing any veil of mystery

before "An English F.T.S.," his few questions may be partially answered.

The negative character of the replies draws a sufficiently strong line

of demarcation between the views of the Adepts and those of Western

science to afford some useful hints at least.

Question 1.--Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?

Answer:--No; they do not deny its general propositions, nor the

approximative truths of the scientific hypotheses. They only deny the

completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many

so-called "exploded" old theories, which, during the last century, have

followed each other in such rapid succession. For instance: while

denying, with Laplace, Herschel and others, that the variable patches of

light perceived on the nebulous background of the galaxy ever belonged

to remote worlds in the process of formation; and agreeing with modern

science that they proceed from no aggregation of formless matter, but

belong simply to clusters of "stars" already formed; they yet add that

many of such clusters, that pass in the opinion of the astro-physicists

for stars and worlds already evoluted, are in fact but collections of

the various materials made ready for future worlds. Like bricks already

baked, of various qualities, shapes and colour, that are no longer

formless clay but have become fit units of a future wall, each of them

having a fixed and distinctly assigned space to occupy in some

forthcoming building, are these seemingly adult worlds. The astronomer

has no means of recognizing their relative adolescence, except perhaps

by making a distinction between the star clusters with the usual orbital

motion and mutual gravitation, and those termed, we believe, irregular

star-clusters of very capricious and changeful appearances. Thrown

together as though at random, and seemingly in utter violation of the

law of symmetry, they defy observation: such, for instance, are 5 M.

Lyrae, 5 2 M. Cephei, Dumb-Bell, and some others. Before an emphatic

contradiction of what precedes is attempted, and ridicule offered

perchance, it would not be amiss to ascertain the nature and character

of those other so-called "temporary" stars, whose periodicity, though

never actually proven, is yet allowed to pass unquestioned. What are

these stars which, appearing suddenly in matchless magnificence and

splendour, disappear as mysteriously as unexpectedly, without leaving a

single trace behind? Whence do they appear? Whither are they engulfed?

In the great cosmic deep--we say. The bright "brick" is caught by the

hand of the mason--directed by that Universal Architect which destroys

but to rebuild. It has found its place in the cosmic structure and will

perform its mission to its last Manvantaric hour.

Another point most emphatically denied by the "Adepts" is, that there

exist in the whole range of visible heavens any spaces void of starry

worlds. There are stars, worlds and systems within as without the

systems made visible to man, and even within our own atmosphere, for all

the physicist knows. The "Adept" affirms in this connection that

orthodox, or so-called official science, uses very often the word

"infinitude" without attaching to it any adequate importance; rather as

a flower of speech than a term implying an awful, a most mysterious

Reality. When an astronomer is found in his Reports "gauging

infinitude," even the most intuitional of his class is but too often apt

to forget that he is gauging only the superficies of a small area and

its visible depths, and to speak of these as though they were merely the

cubic contents of some known quantity. This is the direct result of the

present conception of a three-dimensional space. The turn of a

four-dimensional world is near, but the puzzle of science will ever

continue until their concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible

and invisible space--in its septenary completeness. "The Infinite and

the Absolute are only the names for two counter-imbecilities of the

human (uninitiated) mind;" and to regard them as the transmuted

"properties of the nature of things--of two subjective negatives

converted into objective affirmatives," as Sir W. Hamilton puts it, is

to know nothing of the infinite operations of human liberated spirit, or

of its attributes, the first of which is its ability to pass beyond the

region of our terrestrial experience of matter and space. As an

absolute vacuum is an impossibility below, so is it a like impossibility

above. But our molecules, the infinitesimals of the vacuum "below," are

replaced by the giant-atom of the Infinitude "above." When

demonstrated, the four-dimensional conception of space may lead to the

invention of new instruments to explore the extremely dense matter that

surrounds us as a ball of pitch might surround--say, a fly, but which,

in our extreme ignorance of all its properties save those we find it

exercising on our earth, we yet call the clear, the serene, and the

transparent atmosphere. This is no psychology, but simply occult

physics, which can never confound "substance" with "centres of Force,"

to use the terminology of a Western science which is ignorant of Maya.

In less than a century, besides telescopes, microscopes, micrographs and

telephones, the Royal Society will have to offer a premium for such an

etheroscope.

It is also necessary in connection with the question under reply that

"An English F.T.S." should know that the "Adepts" of the Good Law reject

gravity as at present explained. They deny that the so-called "impact

theory" is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis.

They say, that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with

ether, in order to explain electric and magnetic distance-action have

hitherto proved complete failures, it is again due to the race ignorance

of the ultimate states of matter in Nature, and, foremost of all, of the

real nature of the solar stuff. Believing but in the law of mutual

magneto-electric attraction and repulsion, they agree with those who

have come to the conclusion that "Universal gravitation is a weak

force," utterly incapable of accounting for even one small portion of

the phenomena of motion. In the same connection they are forced to

suggest that science may he wrong in her indiscriminate postulation of

centrifugal force, which is neither a universal nor a consistent law.

To cite but one instance this force is powerless to account for the

spheroidal oblateness of certain planets. For if the bulge of planetary

equators and the shortening of their polar axes is to be attributed to

centrifugal force, instead of being simply the result of the powerful

influence of solar electro-magnetic attraction, "balanced by concentric

rectification of each planet's own gravitation achieved by rotation on

its axis," to use an astronomer's phraseology (neither very clear nor

correct, yet serving our purpose to show the many flaws in the system),

why should there be such difficulty in answering the objection that the

differences in the equatorial rotation and density of various planets

are directly in opposition to this theory? How long shall we see even

great mathematicians bolstering up fallacies to supply an evident

hiatus! The "Adepts" have never claimed superior or any knowledge of

Western astronomy and other sciences. Yet turning even to the most

elementary textbooks used in the schools of India, they find that the

centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground.

That, unaided, it can neither account for every spheroid oblate, 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 greater than 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 centrifugal 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 out at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at 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 say that the great men of science of the West, knowing

nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and

centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical

constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak

so confidently as they do about the "central mass of the sun" whirling

out into space planets, comets, and whatnot. Our humble opinion being

wanted, we maintain: that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the

soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar

system, as the "Universal Life-giver," the ONE LIFE gives and receives

it in the 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.

What are the proofs of science? The solar spots (a misnomer, like much

of the rest)? But these do not prove the solidity of the "central

mass," any more than the storm-clouds prove the solid mass of the

atmosphere behind them. Is it the non-coextensiveness of the sun's

body with its apparent luminous dimensions, the said "body" appearing

"a solid mass, a dark sphere of matter confined within a fiery

prison-house, a robe of fiercest flames?" We say that there is indeed a

"prisoner" behind, but that having never yet been seen by any physical,

mortal eye, what he allows to be seen of him is merely a gigantic

reflection, an illusive phantasma of "solar appendages of some sort," as

Mr. Proctor honestly calls it. Before saying anything further, we will

consider the next interrogatory.

Question II.--Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?

Such is the accepted theory of modern science: it is not what the

"Adepts" teach. The former says--the sun "derives no important

accession of heat from without:"--the latter answer--"the sun needs it

not." He is quite as self dependent as he is self-luminous; and for

the maintenance of his heat requires no help, no foreign accession of

vital energy; for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not

cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come. Were the sun "a

cooling mass," our great life-giver would have indeed grown dim with age

by this time, and found some trouble to keep his watch-fires burning for

the future races to accomplish their cycles, and the planetary chains to

achieve their rounds. There would remain no hope for evoluting

humanity; except perhaps in what passes for science in the astronomical

textbooks of Missionary Schools--namely, that "the sun has an orbital

journey of a hundred millions of years before him, and the system yet

but seven thousand years old!" (Prize Book, "Astronomy for General

Readers.")

The "Adepts," who are thus forced to demolish before they can

reconstruct, deny most emphatically (a) that the sun is in combustion,

in any ordinary sense of the word; or (b) that he is incandescent, or

even burning, though he is glowing; or (c) that his luminosity has

already begun to weaken and his power of combustion may be exhausted

within a given and conceivable time; or even (d) that his chemical and

physical constitution contains any of the elements of terrestrial

chemistry in any of the states that either chemist or physicist is

acquainted with. With reference to the latter, they add that, properly

speaking, though the body of the sun--a body that was never yet

reflected by telescope or spectroscope that man invented--cannot be said

to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with the state of which

the chemist is familiar, yet that these elements are all present in the

sun's outward robes, and a host more of elements unknown so far to

science. There seems little need, indeed, to have waited so long for

the lines belonging to these respective elements to correspond with dark

lines of the solar spectrum to know that no element present on our earth

could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun; although, on the other

hand, there are many others in the sun which have either not reached or

not as yet been discovered on our globe. Some may be missing in certain

stars and heavenly bodies still in the process of formation; or,

properly speaking, though present in them, these elements on account of

their undeveloped state may not respond as yet to the usual scientific

tests. But how can the earth possess that which the sun has never had?

The "Adepts" affirm as a fact that the true Sun--an invisible orb of

which the known one is the shell, mask, or clothing--has in him the

spirit of every element that exists in the solar system; and his

"Chromosphere," as Mr. Lockyer named it, has the same, only in a far

more developed condition, though still in a state unknown on earth; our

planet having to await its further growth and development before any of

its elements can be reduced to the condition they are in within that

chromosphere. Nor can the substance producing the coloured light in the

latter be properly called solid, liquid, or even "gaseous," as now

supposed, for it is neither. Thousands of years before Leverrier and

Padri Secchi, the old Aryans sung of Surya .... "hiding behind his

Yogi,* robes his head that no one could see;" the ascetic's dress

being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring

matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital

principle in man's blood--the symbol of the vital principle in the sun,

or what is now called chromosphere. The "rose-coloured region!" How

little astronomers will ever know of its real nature, even though

hundreds of eclipses furnish them with the indisputable evidence of its

presence. The sun is so thickly surrounded by a shell of this "red

matter," that it is useless for them to speculate with only the help of

their physical instruments, upon the nature of that which they can never

see or detect with mortal eye behind that brilliant, radiant zone of

matter.

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* There is an interesting story in the Puranas relating to this subject.

The Devas, it would appear, asked the great Rishi Vasishta to bring the

sun into Satya Loka. The Rishi requested the Sun-god to do so. The

Sun-god replied that all the worlds would be destroyed if he were to

leave his place. The Rishi then offered to place his red-coloured cloth

(Kashay Vastram) in the place of the sun's disk, and did so. The

visible body of the sun is this robe of Vasishta, it would seem.

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If the "Adepts" are asked: "What then, in your views, is the nature of

our sun and what is there beyond that cosmic veil?"--they answer:

beyond rotates and beats the heart and head of our system; externally is

spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid,

liquid, or gaseous, such as you are acquainted with, but vital

electricity, condensed and made visible.*

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* If the "English F.T.S." would take the trouble of consulting p. 11 of

the "Magia Adamica" of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he

would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible

planet is clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron

claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh

from heretic bones. "The earth is invisible," says he, .... "and which

is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen

without art. To make this element visible is the greatest secret in

magic .... As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is

a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the

elements are visible but one, namely, the earth: and when thou hast

attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth

in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God

himself, and how he is visible, how invisible," The italics are the

author's, it being the custom of the Alchemists to emphasize those words

which had a double meaning in their code. Here "God himself" visible

and invisible, relates to their lapis philosophorum--Nature's seventh

principle.

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And if the statement is objected to on the grounds that were the

luminosity of the sun due to any other cause than combustion and flame,

no physical law of which Western science has any knowledge could account

for the existence of such intensely high temperature of the sun without

combustion; that such a temperature, besides burning with its light and

flame every visible thing in our universe, would show its luminosity of

a homogeneous and uniform intensity throughout, which it does not; that

undulations and disturbances in the photosphere, the growing of the

"protuberances," and a fierce raging of elements in combustion have been

observed in the sun, with their tongues of fire and spots exhibiting

every appearance of cyclonic motion, and "solar storms," &c. &c.; to

this the only answer that can be given is the following: the

appearances are all there, yet it is not combustion. Undoubtedly were

the "robes," the dazzling drapery which now envelopes the whole of the

sun's globe, withdrawn, or even "the shining atmosphere which permits us

to see the sun" (as Sir William Herschel thought) removed so as to allow

one trifling rent, our whole universe would be reduced to ashes.

Jupiter Fulminator revealing himself to his beloved would incinerate her

instantly. But it can never be. The protecting shell is of a thickness

and at a distance from the universal HEART that call hardly be ever

calculated by your mathematicians. And how can they hope to see the

sun's inner body once that the existence of that "chromosphere" is

ascertained, though its actual density may be still unknown, when one of

the greatest, if not the greatest, of their authorities--Sir W.

Herschel--says the following: "The sun, also, has its atmosphere, and

if some of the fluids which enter into its composition should be of a

shining brilliancy, while others are merely transparent, any temporary

cause which may remove the lucid fluid will permit us to see the body of

the sun through the transparent ones." The underlined words, written

nearly eighty years ago, embody the wrong hypothesis that the body of

the sun might be seen under such circumstances, whereas it is only the

far-away layers of "the lucid fluid" that would be perceived. And what

the great astronomer adds invalidates entirely the first portion of his

assumption: "If an observer were placed on the moon, he would see the

solid body of our earth only in those places where the transparent

fluids of the atmosphere would permit him. In others, the opaque

vapours would reflect the light of the sun without permitting his view

to penetrate to the surface of our globe." Thus, if the atmosphere of

our earth, which in its relation to the "atmosphere" (?) of the sun is

like the tenderest skin of a fruit compared with the thickest husk of a

cocoa-nut, would prevent the eye of an observer standing on the moon

from penetrating everywhere "to the surface of our globe," how can an

astronomer ever expect his sight to penetrate to the sun's surface, from

our earth and at a distance of from 85 to 95 million miles,* whereas,

the moon, we are told, is only about 238,000 miles!

--------

* Verily, "absolute accuracy in the solution of this problem (of

distances between the heavenly bodies and the earth) is simply out of

the question."

----------

The proportionately larger size of the sun does not bring it any the

more within the scope of our physical vision. Truly remarks Sir W.

Herschel that the sun "has been called a globe of fire, perhaps

metaphorically!" It has been supposed that the dark spots were solid

bodies revolving near the sun's surface. "They have been conjectured to

be the smoke of volcanoes the scum floating upon an ocean of fluid

matter.... They have been taken for clouds .... explained to be opaque

masses swimming in the fluid matter of the sun...." When all his

anthropomorphic conceptions are put aside, Sir John Herschel, whose

intuition was still greater than his great learning, alone of all

astronomers comes near the truth--far nearer than any of those modern

astronomers who, while admiring his gigantic learning, smile at his

"imaginative and fanciful theories." His only mistake, now shared by

most astronomers, was that he regarded the "opaque body" occasionally

observed through the curtain of the "luminous envelope" as the sun

itself. When saying in the course of his speculations upon the Nasmyth

willow-leaf theory--"the definite shape of these objects, their exact

similarity one to another.... all these characters seem quite repugnant

to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid

nature"--his spiritual intuition served him better than his remarkable

knowledge of physical science. When he adds: "Nothing remains but to

consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes.... having some

sort of solidity.... Be they what they may, they are evidently the

immediate sources of the solar light and heat"--he utters a grander

physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer. And

when, furthermore, we find him postulating--"looked at in this point of

view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and

amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of such

organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that

vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and

electricity," Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an

occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar

physics. These "wonderful objects" are not, as a modern astronomer

interprets Sir J. Herschel's words, "solar inhabitants, whose fiery

constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole

solar system," but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the

vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and

breathes, and has its being. The sun is, as we say, the storehouse of

our little cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving a

much as it gives out. Were the astronomers to be asked--what definite

and positive fact exists at the root of their solar theory--what

knowledge they have of solar combustion and atmosphere--they might,

perchance, feel embarrassed when confronted with all their present

theories. For it is sufficient to make a resume of what the solar

physicists do not know, to gain conviction that they are as far as ever

from a definite knowledge of the constitution and ultimate nature of the

heavenly bodies. We may, perhaps, be permitted to enumerate:--

Beginning with, as Mr. Proctor wisely calls it, "the wildest assumption

possible," that there is, in accordance with the law of analogy, some

general resemblance between the materials in, and the processes at work

upon, the sun, and those materials with which terrestrial chemistry and

physics are familiar, what is that sum of results achieved by

spectroscopic and other analyses of the surface and the inner

constitution of the sun, which warrants any one in establishing the

axiom of the sun's combustion and gradual extinction? They have no

means, as they themselves daily confess, of experimenting upon, hence of

determining, the sun's physical condition; for (a) they are ignorant of

the atmospheric limits; (b) even though it were proved that matter,

such as they know of, is continuously falling upon the sun, being

ignorant of its real velocity and the nature of the material it falls

upon, they are unable "to discuss of the effect of motions wholly

surpassing in velocity .... enormously exceeding even the inconceivable

velocity of many meteors;" (c) confessedly--they "have no means of

learning whence that part of the light comes which gives the continuous

spectrum".... hence no means of determining how great a depth of the

solar substance is concerned in sending out that light. This light "may

come from the surface layers only;" and, "it may be but a shell" ....

(truly!); and finally, (d) they have yet to learn "how far combustion,

properly so-called, can take place within the sun's mass;" and "whether

these processes, which we (they) recognize as combustion, are the only

processes of combustion which can actually take place there."

Therefore, Mr. Proctor for one comes to the happy and prudent idea after

all "that what had been supposed the most marked characteristic of

incandescent solid and liquid bodies, is thus shown to be a possible

characteristic of the light of the glowing gas." Thus, the whole basis

of their reasoning having been shaken (by Frankland's objection), they,

the astronomers, may yet arrive at accepting the occult theory, viz.,

that they have to look to the 6th state of matter, for divulging to them

the true nature of their photospheres, chromospheres, appendages,

prominences, projections and horns. Indeed, when one finds one of the

authorities of the age in physical science--Professor Tyndall--saying

that "no earthly substance with which we are acquainted, no

substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth--would

be at all competent to maintain the sun's combustion;" and

again:--".... multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do

not reach the sun's expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this

enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a

diminution of his store ...."--after reading this, to see the men of

science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may

be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency. Verily is that

great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as "a speck in infinite

extension--a mere drop in the Universal sea;" and saying that, "to

Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the

sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit

of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to

shift the constituents of the never-varying total. The law of

conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation .... the

flux of power is eternally the same." Mr. Tyndall speaks here as

though he were an Occultist. Yet, the memento mori--"the sun is

cooling .... it is dying!" of the Western Trappists of Science resounds

as loud as it ever did.

No, we say; no, while there is one man left on the globe, the sun will

not be extinguished. Before the hour of the "Solar Pralaya" strikes on

the watch-tower of Eternity, all the other worlds of our system will be

gliding in their spectral shells along the silent paths of Infinite

Space. Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and

the nursling of Aether, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden

and--died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon

awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them--to die themselves for

their father's loss. And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have

to shift his place in heavens and erect his own funeral pile. Then only,

surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of

the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general

conflagration, bring on likewise the death of our sun: he will have

unveiled by moving off the "CENTRAL SUN"--the mysterious, the

ever-hidden centre of attraction of our sun and system. Fables? Mere

poetical fiction? Yet, when one knows that the most exact sciences, the

greatest mathematical and astronomical truths went forth into the world

among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the

Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise

of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths

even under the patches of fiction's harlequinade. This fable about the

Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in

subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu books, and has

likewise the same occult meaning. But then like the Ramayana "borrowed

from the Greek Iliad" and the Bhagavat-Gita and Krishna plagiarized from

the Gospel--in the opinion of the great Sanskritist, Prof. Weber, the

Aryans may have also borrowed the Pleiades and their Hercules from the

same source! When the Brahmins can be shown by the Christian

Orientalists to be the direct descendants of the Teutonic Crusaders,

then only, perchance, will the cycle of proofs be completed, and the

historical truths of the West vindicated!

Question III.--Are the great nations to be swept away in an hour?

No such absurdity was ever postulated. The cataclysm that annihilated

the choicest sub-races of the Fourth race, or the Atlanteans, was slowly

preparing its work for ages; as any one can read in "Esoteric Buddhism"

(page 54). "Poseidonis," so called, belongs to historical times, though

its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now. What was said is

still asserted: every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a

cataclysm--the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later

on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or

savage, under the names of "deluges," "showers of fire," and such like.

That no "appreciable trace is left of such high civilization" is due to

several reasons. One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability,

and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual

blindness of this our age!) of the modern archeologist to distinguish

between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign

to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric

times. For the latter the archeologist is not responsible--for what

criterion, what sign has he to lead him to infer the true date of an

excavated building bearing no inscription; and what warrant has the

public that the antiquary and specialist has not made an error of some

20,000 years? A fair proof of this we have in the scientific and

historic labeling of the Cyclopean architecture. Traditional archeology

bearing directly upon the monumental is rejected. Oral literature,

popular legends, ballads and rites, are all stifled in one word--

superstition; and popular antiquities have become "fables" and

"folk-lore." The ruder style of Cyclopean masonry, the walls of Tyrius,

mentioned by Homer, are placed at the farthest end--the dawn of

pre-Roman history; the walls of Epirus and Mycenae--at the nearest. The

latter are commonly believed the work of the Pelasgi and probably of

about 1,000 years before the Western era. As to the former, they were

hedged in and driven forward by the Noachian deluge till very lately--

Archbishop Usher's learned scheme, computing that earth and man "were

created 4,004 B.C.," having been not only popular but actually forced

upon the educated classes until Mr. Darwin's triumphs. Had it not been

for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystics, Platonists, and

heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on

those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses. And, as among the

few that escaped the dire fate not all by any means were trustworthy--

hence, perhaps, the secret of their preservation--Western scholars got

early into the habit of rejecting all heathen testimony, whenever truth

clashed with the dicta of their churches. Then, again, the modern

Archeologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans; and they

are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise. However it may be,

most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate

the supposed antiquity of the Jewish records. This is a ditch into

which most have slipped.

The traces of ancient civilizations exist, and they are many. Yet, it is

humbly suggested, that so long as there are reverend gentlemen mixed up

unchecked in archaeological and Asiatic societies; and Christian

bishops to write the supposed histories and religions of non-Christian

nations, and to preside over the meetings of Orientalists--so long will

Archaism and its remains be made subservient in every branch to ancient

Judaism and modern Christianity.

So far, archeology knows nothing of the sites of other and far older

civilizations, except the few it has stumbled upon, and to which it has

assigned their respective ages, mostly under the guidance of biblical

chronology. Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal

History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe

and reject, at the same time, every datum as every other tradition

furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian

nations, is questionable. At any rate, had it accepted as willingly data

coming from other sources, it might have assured itself by this time,

that not only in Italy and other parts of Europe, but even on sites not

very far from those it is accustomed to regard as the hotbed of ancient

relics--Babylonia and Assyria--there are other sites where it could

profitably excavate. The immense "Salt Valley" of Dasht-Beyad by

Khorasson covers the most ancient civilizations of the world; while the

Shamo desert has had time to change from sea to land, and from fertile

land to a dead desert, since the day when the first civilization of the

Fifth Race left its now invisible, and perhaps for ever hidden, "traces"

under its beds of sand.

Times have changed, are changing. Proofs of the old civilizations and

the archaic wisdom are accumulating. Though soldier-bigots and priestly

schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses;

though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious

records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made

bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if

spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; though Omar lit the

fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of

the Serapeum; though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and

Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian invaders of Ceylon

"heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees" the ollas

of the Buddhists, and set them ablaze to light their victory--thus

obliterating from the world's knowledge early Buddhist annals and

treatises of great importance: though this hateful and senseless

Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations--still,

despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of

mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what

science has often called "most curious coincidences." Europe has no

very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her

successive races and their doings. What with their savage wars, the

barbaric habits of the historic Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior

nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests

who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an

antiquity could not exist for Europe. And, having no Past to record

themselves, the European critics, historians and archeologists have not

scrupled to deny one to others--whenever the concession excited a

sacrifice of biblical prestige.

No "traces of old civilizations" we are told! And what about the

Pelasgi--the direct forefathers of the Hellenes, according to Herodotus?

What about the Etruscans--the race mysterious and wonderful, if any, for

the historian, and whose origin is the most insoluble of problems? That

which is known of them only shows that could something more be known, a

whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered. A people

described as are the Pelasgi--a highly intellectual, receptive, active

people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary,

though preferring peace; a people who built canals as no one else,

subterranean water-works, dams, walls, and Cyclopean buildings of the

most astounding strength; who are even suspected of having been the

inventors of the so-called Cadmean or Phoenician writing characters from

which all European alphabets are derived--who were they? Could they be

shown by any possible means as the descendants of the biblical Peleg

(Gen. x. 25) their high civilization would have been thereby

demonstrated, though their antiquity would still have to be dwarfed to

2247 "B.C.." And who were the Etruscans?

Shall the Easterns like the Westerns be made to believe that between the

high civilizations of the pre-Roman (and we say--prehistoric) Tursenoi

of the Greeks, with their twelve great cities known to history; their

Cyclopean buildings, their plastic and pictorial arts, and the time when

they were a nomadic tribe "first descended into Italy from their

northern latitudes"--only a few centuries elapsed? Shall it be still

urged that the Phoenicians with their Tyre 2750 "B.C." (a chronology,

accepted by Western history), their commerce, fleet, learning, arts, and

civilization, were only a few centuries before the building of Tyre but

"a small tribe of Semitic fishermen"? Or, that the Trojan war could not

have been earlier than 1184 B.C., and thus Magna Graecia must be fixed

somewhere between the eighth and the ninth Century "B.C.," and by no

means thousands of years before, as was claimed by Plato and Aristotle,

Homer and the Cyclic Poems, derived from, and based upon, other records

millenniums older? If the Christian historian, hampered by his

chronology, and the freethinker by lack of necessary data, feel bound to

stigmatize every non-Christian or non-Western chronology as "obviously

fanciful," "purely mythical," and "not worthy of a moment's

consideration," how shall one, wholly dependent upon Western guides get

at the truth? And if these incompetent builders of Universal History

can persuade their public to accept as authoritative their chronological

and ethnological reveries, why should the Eastern student, who has

access to quite different--and we make bold to say, more trustworthy--

materials, be expected to join in the blind belief of those who defend

Western historical infallibility? He believes--on the strength of the

documentary evidence, left by Yavanacharya (Pythagoras) 607 "B.C." in

India, and that of his own national "temple records," that instead of

giving hundreds we may safely give thousands of years to the foundation

of Cumaea and Magna Graecia, of which it was the pioneer settlement.

That the civilization of the latter had already become effete when

Pythagoras, the great pupil of Aryan Masters went to Crotone. And,

having no biblical bias to overcome, he feels persuaded that, if it took

the Celtic and Gaelic tribes Britannicae Insulae, with the ready-made

civilizations of Rome before their eyes, and acquaintance with that of

the Phoenicians whose trade with them began a thousand years before the

Christian era; and to crown all with the definite help later of the

Normans and Saxons--two thousand years before they could build their

medieval cities, not even remotely comparable with those of the Romans;

and it took them two thousand five hundred years to get half as

civilized; then, that instead of that hypothetical period, benevolently

styled the childhood of the race, being within easy reach of the

Apostles and the early Fathers, it must be relegated to an enormously

earlier time. Surely if it took the barbarians of Western Europe so

many centuries to develop a language and create empires, then the

nomadic tribes of the "mythical" periods ought in common fairness--since

they never came under the fructifying energy of that Christian influence

to which we are asked to ascribe all the scientific enlightenment of

this age--about ten thousand years to build their Tyres and their Veii,

their Sidons and Carthagenes. As other Troys lie under the surface of

the topmost one in the Troad; and other and higher civilizations were

exhumed by Mariette Bey under the stratum of sand from which the

archeological collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum

were taken; and six Hindu "Delhis," superposed and hidden away out of

sight, formed the pedestal upon which the Mogul conqueror built the

gorgeous capital whose ruins still attest the splendour of his Delhi;

so when the fury of critical bigotry has quite subsided, and Western men

are prepared to write history in the interest of truth alone, will the

proofs be found of the cyclic law of civilization. Modern Florence

lifts her beautiful form above the tomb of Etruscan Florentia, which in

her turn rose upon the hidden vestiges of anterior towns. And so also

Arezzo, Perugia, Lucca, and many other European sites now occupied by

modern towns and cities, are based upon the relics of archaic

civilizations whose period covers ages incomputable, and whose names

Echo has forgotten to even whisper through "the corridors of Time."

When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were

the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious

Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with

writing--as proved by their inscriptions--than the Phoenicians, then

only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data

and dogmas. Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no

appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in

the Past?"

"Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its

offshoots .... can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?"

More easily than was many another civilization. Europe has neither the

titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments,

to preserve the records of its "existing arts and languages." Its

civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively

indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences.

What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even

approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the

geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms? Is it its

ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile

furniture: or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and

micrographs? While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and

cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed

by a child breaking them to atoms. When we know of the destruction of

the "Seven World's Wonders," of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the

Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly

crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the

hand of Time--lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm--the

question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern

reasoning. Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few

days; your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand

civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are

made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable? And

why should European civilization escape the common lot? It is from the

lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in

nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know

nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those

very imperfectly. The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old:

they die but to revive. And when the question found on page 58 of

"Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress

within the last two thousand years," was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett's

correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying: "This

rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery

follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you

look upon in the light of 'discoveries' are merely rediscoveries, which,

following the law of gradual progress, you make more perfect, yet in

enunciating, you are not the first to explain them." We learn more

easily that which we have heard about, or learnt in childhood. If, as

averred, the Western nations have separated themselves from the great

Aryan stock, it becomes evident that the races that first peopled Europe

were inferior to the root-race which had the Vedas and the pre-historic

Rishis. That which your far-distant forefathers had heard in the

secrecy of the temples was not lost. It reached their posterity, which

is now simply improving upon details.

Question IV.--Is the Moon immersed in matter?

No "Adept," so far as the writers know, has ever given to "Lay Chela"

his "views of the moon," for publication. With Selenography, modern

science is far better acquainted than any humble Asiatic ascetic may

ever hope to become. It is to be feared the speculations on pp. 104 and

105 of "Esoteric Buddhism," besides being hazy, are somewhat premature.

Therefore, it may be as well to pass on to--

Question V.--About the mineral monad.

Any English expression that correctly translates the idea given is

"authorized by the Adepts." Why not? The term "monad" applies to the

latent life in the mineral as much as it does to the life in the

vegetable and the animal. The monogenist may take exception to the term

and especially to the idea while the polygenist, unless he be a

corporealist, may not. As to the other class of scientists, they would

take objection to the idea even of a human monad, and call it

"unscientific." What relation does the monad bear to the atom? None

whatever to the atom or molecule as in the scientific conception at

present. It can neither be compared with the microscopic organism

classed once among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable

and ranked among algae; nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics.

Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course,

from that of the human monad, which is neither physical, nor can its

constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements. In short,

the mineral monad is one--the higher animal and human monads are

countless. Otherwise, how could one account for and explain

mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four

kingdoms? The "monad" is the combination of the last two Principles in

man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad"

applies only to the Spiritual Soul, not to its highest spiritual

vivifying Principle. But since divorced from the latter the Spiritual

Soul could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called. The

composition (if such a word, which would shock an Asiatic, seems

necessary to help European conception) of Buddhi or the 6th principle is

made up of the essence of what you would call matter (or perchance a

centre of Spiritual Force) in its 6th and 7th condition or state; the

animating ATMAN being part of the ONE LIFE or Parabrahm. Now the

Monadic Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable

and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the

lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of

progression.

It would be very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity

trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and

after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human

being; in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad

of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the

correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every

atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that

form of Prakriti called the mineral kingdom. Each atom or molecule of

ordinary scientific hypotheses is not a particle of something, animated

by a psychic something, destined to blossom as a man after aeons. But

it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has

not yet become individualized: a sequential manifestation of the one

Universal Monas. The ocean does not divide into its potential and

constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the

evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into

individual monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to

the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Cosmos,

in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists while accepting this

thought for convenience' sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the

evolution of the Concrete from the Abstract by terms of which the

"Mineral Monad" is one. The term merely means that the tidal wave of

spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The

"Monadic Essence" begins to imperceptibly differentiate in the vegetable

kingdom. As the monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by

Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their

degrees of differentiation which constitutes properly the monad--not the

atomic aggregation which is only the vehicle and the substance through

which thrill the lower and higher degrees of intelligence.

And though, as shown by those plants that are known as sensitives, there

are a few among them that may be regarded as possessing that conscious

perception which is called by Leibnitz apperception, while the rest are

endowed but with that internal activity which may be called vegetable

nerve-sensation (to call it perception would be wrong), yet even the

vegetable monad is still the Monad in its second degree of awakening

sensation. Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined

the monadic evolution incorrectly and often greatly blundered. There

are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of

elementals, or nascent centres of forces--from the first stage of the

differentiation of Mulaprakriti to its third degree--i.e., from full

unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces

the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming

the central or turning-point in the degrees of the "Monadic Essence"--

considered as an Evoluting Energy. Three stages in the elemental side;

the mineral kingdom; three stages in the objective physical side--these

are the seven links of the evolutionary chain. A descent of spirit into

matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from

the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo

ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to

Nirvana--the vanishing point of differentiated matter. Perhaps a simple

diagram will aid us:--

[[Diagram here]]

The line A D represents the gradual obscuration of spirit as it passes

into concrete matter; the point D indicates the evolutionary position

of the mineral kingdom from its incipient (d) to its ultimate concretion

(a); c, b, a, on the left-hand side of the figure, are the three stages

of elemental evolution; i.e., the three successive stages passed by the

spiritual impulse (through the elementals--of which little is permitted

to be said) before they are imprisoned in the most concrete form of

matter; and a, b, c, on the right-hand side, are the three stages of

organic life, vegetable, animal, human. What is total obscuration of

spirit is complete perfection of its polar antithesis--matter; and this

idea is conveyed in the lines A D and D A. The arrows show the line of

travel of the evolutionary impulse in entering its vortex and expanding

again into the subjectivity of the ABSOLUTE. The central thickest line,

d d, is the Mineral Kingdom.

The monogenists have had their day. Even believers in a personal god,

like Professor Agassiz, teach now that, "There is a manifest progress in

the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. The progress

consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the

vertebrates especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is

the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first

appearance of the first Palaeozoic fishes" ("Principles of Zoology," pp.

205-6). The mineral "monad" is not an individuality latent, but an

all-pervading Force which has for its Present vehicle matter in its

lowest and most concrete terrestrial state; in man the monad is fully

developed, potential, and either passive or absolutely active, according

to its vehicle, the five lower and more physical human principles. In

the Deva kingdom it is fully liberated and in its highest state--but one

degree lower than the ONE Universal Life.*

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* The above diagram represents a logical section of the scheme of

evolution, and not the evolutionary history of a unit of consciousness.

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