The corpuscular theory has been unceremoniously put aside; but
gravitation—the principle that all bodies attract each other with a force
proportional directly to their masses, and inversely to the squares of the
distances between them—survives to this day and reigns, supreme as ever,
in the alleged ethereal waves of Space. As a hypothesis, it had been
threatened with death for its inadequacy to embrace all the facts
presented to it; as a physical law, it is the King of the late and once
all‐potent “Imponderables.” “It is little short of blasphemy ... an insult
to Newton’s grand memory to doubt it!”—is the exclamation of an American
reviewer of _Isis Unveiled_. Well; what is finally that invisible and
intangible God in whom we should believe on blind faith? Astronomers who
see in gravitation an easy‐going solution for many things, and a universal
force which allows them to calculate planetary motions, care little about
the Cause of Attraction. They call Gravity a law, a cause in itself. We
call the forces acting under that name effects, and very secondary
effects, too. One day it will be found that the scientific hypothesis does
not answer after all; and then it will follow the corpuscular theory of
light, and be consigned to rest for many scientific æons in the archives
of all exploded speculations. Has not Newton himself expressed grave
doubts about the nature of Force and the corporeality of the “Agents,” as
they were then called? So has Cuvier, another scientific light shining in
the night of research. He warns his readers, in the _Révolution du Globe_,
about the doubtful nature of the so‐called Forces, saying that “it is not
so sure whether those agents were not after all Spiritual Powers [_des
agents spirituels_].” At the outset of his _Principia_, Sir Isaac Newton
took the greatest care to impress upon his school that he did not use the
word “attraction,” with regard to the mutual action of bodies in a
physical sense. To him it was, he said, a purely mathematical conception,
involving no consideration of real and primary physical causes. In a
passage of his _Principia_,(810) he tells us plainly that, physically
considered, attractions are rather impulses. In Section xi (Introduction),
he expresses the opinion that “there is some subtle spirit by the force
and action of which all movements of matter are determined”;(811) and in
his _Third Letter_ to Bentley he says:
It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without
the mediation of something else _which is not material_, operate
upon and affect other matter, without mutual contact, as it must
do if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and
inherent in it.... That gravity should be innate, inherent and
essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a
distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else
by and through which their action may be conveyed from one to
another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who
has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can
ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting
constantly according to certain laws; but _whether this agent be
material or immaterial_ I have left to the consideration of my
readers.
At this, even Newton’s contemporaries got frightened—at the apparent
return of Occult Causes into the domain of Physics. Leibnitz called his
principle of attraction “an incorporeal and inexplicable power.” The
supposition of an attractive faculty and a perfect void was characterized
by Bernoulli as “revolting,” the principle of _actio in distans_ finding
then no more favour than it does now. Euler, on the other hand, thought
the action of gravity was due to either a _Spirit_ or some subtle medium.
And yet Newton knew of, if he did not accept, the Ether of the Ancients.
He regarded the intermediate space between the sidereal bodies as vacuum.
Therefore he believed in “subtle Spirit” and Spirits as we do, guiding the
so‐called attraction. The above‐quoted words of the great man have
produced poor results. The “absurdity” has now become a dogma in the case
of pure Materialism, which repeats: “No Matter without Force, no Force
without Matter; Matter and Force are inseparable, eternal and
indestructible [_true_]; there can be no independent Force, since all
Force is an inherent and necessary property of Matter [_false_];
consequently, there is no immaterial Creative Power.” Oh, poor Sir Isaac!
If, leaving aside all the other eminent men of Science who agreed in
opinion with Euler and Leibnitz, the Occultists claim as their authorities
and supporters Sir Isaac Newton and Cuvier only, as above cited, they need
fear little from Modern Science, and may loudly and proudly proclaim their
beliefs. But the hesitation and doubts of the above cited authorities, and
of many others, too, whom we could name, did not in the least prevent
scientific speculation from wool‐gathering in the fields of brute matter
just as before. First it was matter and an imponderable fluid distinct
from it; then came the imponderable fluid so much criticized by Grove;
then Ether, which was at first discontinuous and then became continuous;
after which came the “mechanical” Forces. These have now settled in life
as “modes of motion,” and the Ether has become more mysterious and
problematical than ever. More than one man of Science objects to such
crude materialistic views. But then, from the days of Plato, who
repeatedly asks his readers not to confuse _incorporeal_ Elements with
their Principles—the transcendental or spiritual Elements; from those of
the great Alchemists, who, like Paracelsus, made a great difference
between a phenomenon and its cause, or the Noumenon; to Grove, who, though
he sees “no reason to divest universally diffused matter of the functions
common to all matter,” yet uses the term Forces where his critics, “who do
not attach to the word any idea of a specific action,” say Force; from
those days to this, nothing has proved competent to stem the tide of
brutal Materialism. Gravitation is the sole cause, the acting God, and
Matter is its prophet, said the men of Science only a few years ago.
They have changed their views several times since then. But do the men of
Science understand the innermost thought of Newton, one of the most
spiritual‐minded and religious men of his day, any better now than they
did then? It is certainly to be doubted. Newton is credited with having
given the death‐blow to the Elemental Vortices of Descartes—the idea of
Anaxagoras, resurrected, by the bye—though the last modern “vortical
atoms” of Sir William Thomson do not, in truth, differ much from the
former. Nevertheless, when his disciple Forbes wrote in the Preface to the
chief work of his master a sentence declaring that “attraction was the
cause of the system,” Newton was the first to solemnly protest. That which
in the mind of the great mathematician assumed the shadowy, but firmly
rooted image of God, as the Noumenon of all,(812) was called more
philosophically by ancient and modern Philosophers and Occultists—“Gods,”
or the creative fashioning Powers. The modes of expression may have been
different, and the ideas more or less philosophically enunciated by all
sacred and profane Antiquity; but the fundamental thought was the
same.(813) For Pythagoras the Forces were Spiritual Entities, Gods,
independent of planets and Matter as we see and know them on Earth, who
are the rulers of the Sidereal Heaven. Plato represented the planets as
moved by an intrinsic Rector, one with his dwelling, like “a boatman in
his boat.” As for Aristotle, he called those rulers “_immaterial_
substances”;(814) though as one who had never been initiated, he rejected
the Gods as Entities.(815) But this did not prevent him from recognizing
the fact that the stars and planets “were not inanimate masses but acting
and living bodies indeed.” As if sidereal spirits were the “diviner
portions of their phenomena (τὰ θειότερα τῶν φανερῶν).”(816)
If we look for corroboration in more modern and scientific times, we find
Tycho Brahe recognizing in the stars a triple force, divine, spiritual and
vital. Kepler, putting together the Pythagorean sentence, “the Sun,
guardian of Jupiter,” and the verses of David, “He placed his throne in
the Sun,” and “the Lord is the Sun,” etc., said that he understood
perfectly how the Pythagoreans could believe that all the Globes
disseminated through Space were rational Intelligences (_facultates
ratiocinativæ_), circulating round the Sun, “in which resides a pure
spirit of fire; the source of the general harmony.”(817)
When an Occultist speaks of Fohat, the energizing and guiding Intelligence
in the Universal Electric or Vital Fluid, he is laughed at. Withal, as now
shown, the nature neither of electricity, nor of life, nor even of light,
is to this day understood. The Occultist sees in the manifestation of
every force in Nature, the action of the quality, or the special
characteristic of its Noumenon; which Noumenon is a distinct and
intelligent Individuality _on the other side of the manifested mechanical
Universe_. Now the Occultist does not deny—on the contrary he will support
the view—that light, heat, electricity and so on are affections, not
properties or qualities, of Matter. To put it more clearly: Matter is the
condition, the necessary basis or vehicle, a _sine quâ non_, for the
manifestation of these Forces, or Agents, on this plane.
But in order to gain the point, the Occultists have to examine the
credentials of the law of gravity, first of all, of “Gravitation, the King
and Ruler of Matter,” under every form. To do so effectually, the
hypothesis, in its earliest appearance, has to be recalled to mind. To
begin with, is it Newton who was the first to discover it? The _Athenæum_
of Jan. 26, 1867, has some curious information upon this subject. It says:
Positive evidence can be adduced that Newton derived all his
knowledge of Gravitation and its laws from Bœhme, with whom
Gravitation or Attraction is the first property of Nature.... For
with him, his [Bœhme’s] system shows us the inside of things,
while modern physical science is content with looking at the
outside.
Then again:
The science of electricity, which was not yet in existence when he
[Bœhme] wrote, is there anticipated [in his writings]; and not
only does Bœhme describe all the now known phenomena of that
force, but he even gives us the origin, generation, and birth of
electricity, itself.
Thus Newton, whose profound mind easily read between the lines, and
fathomed the spiritual thought of the great Seer, in its mystic rendering,
owes his great discovery to Jacob Bœhme, the nursling of the Genii,
Nirmânakâyas who watched over and guided him, of whom the author of the
article in question so truly remarks:
Every new scientific discovery goes to prove his profound and
intuitive insight into the most secret workings of Nature.
And having _discovered_ gravity, Newton, in order to render possible the
action of attraction in space, had, so to speak, to annihilate every
physical obstacle capable of impeding its free action; Ether among others,
though he had more than a presentiment of its existence. Advocating the
corpuscular theory, he made an _absolute vacuum_ between the heavenly
bodies. Whatever may have been his suspicions and inner convictions about
Ether; however many friends he may have unbosomed himself to—as in the
case of his correspondence with Bentley—his teachings never showed that he
had any such belief. If he was “persuaded that the power of attraction
could not be exerted by matter across a vacuum,”(818) how is it that so
late as 1860, French astronomers, Le Couturier, for instance, combated
“the _disastrous_ results of the theory of vacuum established by the great
man”? Le Couturier says:
Il n’est plus possible aujourd’hui, de soutenir comme Newton, que
les corps célestes se mouvent au milieu du vide immense des
espaces.... Parmi les conséquences de la théorie du vide établie
par Newton, il ne reste plus debout que le mot “attraction.”...
Nous voyous venir le jour ou le mot attraction disparaîtra du
vocabulaire scientifique.(819)
Professor Winchell writes:
These passages [Letter to Bentley] show what were his views
respecting the nature of the interplanetary medium of
communication. Though declaring that the heavens “are void of
sensible matter,” he elsewhere excepted “perhaps some very thin
vapours, steams, and effluvia, arising from the atmospheres of the
earth, planets, and comets, and from such an exceedingly rare
ethereal medium as we have elsewhere described.”(820)
This only shows that even such great men as Newton have not always the
courage of their opinions. Dr. T. S. Hunt
Called attention to some long‐neglected passages in Newton’s
works, from which it appears that a belief in such universal,
intercosmical medium gradually took root in his mind.(821)
But such attention was never called to the said passages before Nov. 28,
1881, when Dr. Hunt read his “Celestial Chemistry, from the time of
Newton.” As Le Couturier says:
Till then the idea was universal, even among the men of Science,
that Newton had, while advocating the corpuscular theory, preached
a _void_.
The passages had been “long neglected,” no doubt because they contradicted
and clashed with the preconceived pet theories of the day, till finally
the undulatory theory imperiously required the presence of an “ethereal
medium” to explain it. This is the whole secret.
Anyhow, it is from this theory of Newton of a universal void, taught, if
not believed in by himself, that dates the immense scorn now shown by
modern Physics for ancient. The old sages had maintained that “Nature
abhorred a vacuum,” and the greatest mathematicians of the world—read of
the Western races—had discovered the antiquated “fallacy” and exposed it.
And now Modern Science, however ungracefully, vindicates Archaic
Knowledge, and has, moreover, to vindicate Newton’s character and powers
of observation at this late hour, after having neglected, for one century
and a half, to pay any attention to such very important
passages—perchance, because it was wiser not to attract any notice to
them. Better late than never!
And now Father Æther is _re‐welcomed_ with open arms and wedded to
gravitation, linked to it for weal or woe, until the day when it, or both,
shall be replaced by something else. Three hundred years ago it was
_plenum_ everywhere, then it became one dismal _vacuity_; later still the
sidereal ocean‐beds, dried up by Science, rolled onward once more their
ethereal waves. _Recede ut procedas_ must become the motto of exact
Science—“exact,” chiefly, in finding itself inexact every leap‐year.
But we will not quarrel with the great men. They had to go back to the
earliest “Gods of Pythagoras and old Kanâda” for the very backbone and
marrow of their correlations and “newest” discoveries, and this may well
afford good hope to the Occultists for their minor Gods. For we believe in
Le Couturier’s prophecy about gravitation. We know the day is approaching
when an absolute reform will be demanded in the present modes of Science
by the Scientists themselves, as was done by Sir William Grove, F.R.S.
Till that day there is nothing to be done. For if gravitation were
dethroned to‐morrow, the Scientists would discover some other new mode of
mechanical motion the day after.(822) Rough and up‐hill is the path of
true Science, and its days are full of vexation of spirit. But in the face
of its “thousand” contradictory hypotheses offered as explanations of
physical phenomena, there has been no better hypothesis than
“motion”—however paradoxically interpreted by Materialism. As may be found
in the first pages of this Volume, Occultists have nothing to say against
Motion,(823) the Great Breath of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s “Unknowable.” But,
believing that everything on Earth is the shadow of something in Space,
they believe in smaller “Breaths,” which, living, intelligent and
independent of all but Law, blow in every direction during manvantaric
periods. These Science will reject. But whatever may be made to replace
attraction, _alias_ gravitation, the result will be the same. Science will
be as far then from the solution of its difficulties as it is now, unless
it comes to some compromise with Occultism, and even with Alchemy—a
supposition which will be regarded as an impertinence, but remains,
nevertheless, a fact. As Faye says:
Il manque quelque chose aux géologues pour faire la géologie de la
Lune; c’est d’être astronomes. À la vérité, il manque aussi
quelque chose aux astronomes pour aborder avec fruit cette étude,
c’est d’être géologues.(824)
But he might have added, with still more pointedness:
Ce qui manque à tous les deux, c’est l’intuition du mystique.
Let us remember Sir William Grove’s wise “concluding remarks,” on the
ultimate structure of Matter, or the minutiæ of molecular actions, which,
he thought, man will never know.
Much harm has already been done by attempting hypothetically to
dissect matter and to discuss the shapes, sizes, and numbers of
atoms, and their atmospheres of heat, ether, or electricity.
Whether the regarding electricity, light, magnetism, etc., as
simply motions of ordinary matter, be or be not admissible,
certain it is that all past theories have resolved, and all
existing theories do resolve, the action of these forces into
motion. Whether it be that, on account of our familiarity with
motion, we refer other affections to it, as to a language which is
most easily construed, and most capable of explaining them, or
whether it be that it is in reality the only mode in which our
minds, as contra‐distinguished from our senses, are able to
conceive material agencies, certain it is that since the period at
which the mystic notions of spiritual or preternatural powers were
applied to account for physical phenomena, all hypotheses framed
to explain them have resolved them into motion.
And then the learned gentleman states a purely Occult tenet:
The term perpetual motion, which I have not infrequently used in
these pages, is itself equivocal. If the doctrines here advanced
be well founded, all motion is, in one sense, perpetual. In
masses, whose motion is stopped by mutual concussion, heat or
motion of the particles is generated; and thus the motion
continues, so that if we could venture to extend such thoughts to
the universe, we should assume the same amount of motion affecting
the same amount of matter for ever.(825)
This is precisely what Occultism maintains, and on the same principle,
that:
Where force is made to oppose force, and produce static
equilibrium, the balance of preëxisting equilibrium is affected,
and fresh motion is started equivalent to that which is withdrawn
into a state of abeyance.
This process finds intervals in the Pralaya, but is eternal and ceaseless
as the “Breath,” even when the manifested Kosmos rests.
Thus, supposing attraction or gravitation should be given up in favour of
the Sun being a huge magnet—a theory already accepted by some Physicists—a
magnet that acts on the planets as attraction is now supposed to do,
whereto, or how much farther, would it lead the Astronomers from where
they are now? Not an inch farther. Kepler came to this “curious
hypothesis” nearly 300 years ago. He had not discovered the theory of
attraction and repulsion in Kosmos, for it was known from the days of
Empedocles, by whom the two opposite forces were called “love” and
“hate”—words implying the same idea. But Kepler gave a pretty fair
description of cosmic magnetism. That such magnetism exists in Nature, is
as certain as that gravitation does not; not at any rate, in the way in
which it is taught by Science, which has never taken into consideration
the different modes in which the dual Force, that Occultism calls
attraction and repulsion, may act within our Solar System, the Earth’s
atmosphere and beyond in the Kosmos.
As the great Humboldt writes:
Trans‐solar space has not hitherto shown any phenomenon analogous
to our solar system. It is a peculiarity of _our_ system, that
matter should have condensed within it in nebulous rings, the
nuclei of which condense into earths and moons. I say again,
heretofore, _nothing of the kind has ever been observed beyond our
planetary system_.(826)
True, that since 1860 the Nebular Theory has sprung up, and being better
known, a few identical phenomena were supposed to be observed beyond the
Solar System. Yet the great man is quite right; and no _earths_ or _moons_
can be found, _except in appearance_, beyond, or of the same order of
Matter as found in, our System. Such is the Occult Teaching.
This was proven by Newton himself; for there are many phenomena in our
Solar System, which he confessed his inability to explain by the law of
gravitation; “such were the uniformity in the directions of planetary
movements, the nearly circular forms of the orbits, and their remarkable
conformity to one plane.”(827) And if there is one single exception, then
the law of gravitation has no right to be referred to as a universal law.
“These adjustments,” we are told, “Newton, in his general Scholium,
pronounces to be ‘the work of an intelligent and all‐powerful Being’.”
Intelligent that “Being” may be; as to “all‐powerful,” there would be
every reason to doubt the claim. A poor “God” he, who would work upon
minor details and leave the most important to secondary forces! The
poverty of this argument and logic is surpassed only by that of Laplace,
who, seeking very correctly to substitute Motion for Newton’s “all‐
powerful Being,” and ignorant of the true nature of that Eternal Motion,
saw in it a blind physical law. “Might not those arrangements be an effect
of the laws of motion?” he asks, forgetting, as do all our modern
Scientists, that this law and this motion are a vicious circle, so long as
the _nature of both_ remains unexplained. His famous answer to Napoleon:
“_Dieu est devenu une hypothèse inutile_,” could be correctly made only by
one who adhered to the philosophy of the Vedântins. It becomes a pure
fallacy, if we exclude the interference of operating, intelligent,
powerful (never “all‐powerful”) Beings, who are called “Gods.”
But we would ask the critics of the mediæval Astronomers, why should
Kepler be denounced as most unscientific, for offering just the same
solution as did Newton, only showing himself more sincere, more consistent
and even more logical? Where may be the difference between Newton’s “all‐
powerful Being” and Kepler’s Rectores, his Sidereal and Cosmic Forces, or
Angels? Kepler again is criticized for his “curious hypothesis which made
use of a vortical movement within the solar system,” for his theories in
general, and for favouring Empedocles’ idea of attraction and repulsion,
and “solar magnetism” in particular. Yet several modern men of Science, as
will be shown—Hunt, if Metcalfe is to be excluded, Dr. Richardson,
etc.—very strongly favour the same idea. He is half excused, however, on
the plea that:
To the time of Kepler no interaction between masses of matter had
been distinctly recognized which was generically different from
magnetism.(828)
Is it _distinctly_ recognized now? Does Professor Winchell claim for
Science any serious knowledge whatever of the nature of either electricity
or magnetism—except that both seem to be the effects of some result
arising from an undetermined cause.
The ideas of Kepler, when their theological tendencies are weeded out, are
purely Occult. He saw that:
(I) The Sun is a great Magnet.(829) This is what some eminent modern
Scientists and also the Occultists believe in.
(II) The Solar substance is immaterial.(830) In the sense, of course, of
Matter existing in states unknown to Science.
(III) For the constant motion and restoration of the Sun’s energy and
planetary motion, he provided the perpetual care of a Spirit, or Spirits.
The whole of Antiquity believed in this idea. The Occultists do not use
the word Spirit, but say Creative Forces, which they endow with
intelligence. But we may call them Spirits also. We shall be taken to task
for contradiction. It will be said that while we deny God, we admit Souls
and operative Spirits, and quote from bigoted Roman Catholic writers in
support of our argument. To this we reply: We deny the anthropomorphic God
of the Monotheists, but never the Divine Principle in Nature. We combat
Protestants and Roman Catholics on a number of dogmatic theological
beliefs of human and sectarian origin. We agree with them in their belief
in Spirits and intelligent operative Powers, though we do not worship
“Angels” as the Roman Latinists do.
This theory is tabooed a great deal more on account of the “Spirit” that
is given room in it, than of anything else. Herschell, the elder, believed
in it likewise, and so do several modern Scientists. Nevertheless
Professor Winchell declares that “a hypothesis more fanciful, and less in
accord with the requirements of physical principles, has not been offered
in ancient or modern times.”(831)
The same was said, once upon a time, of the universal Ether, and now it is
not only accepted perforce, but is advocated as the only possible theory
to explain certain mysteries.
Grove’s ideas, when he first enunciated them in London about 1840, were
denounced as unscientific; nevertheless, his views on the Correlation of
Forces are now universally accepted. It would, very likely, require one
more conversant with Science than is the writer, to combat with any
success some of the now prevailing ideas about gravitation and other
similar “solutions” of cosmic mysteries. But, let us recall a few
objections that came from recognized men of Science; from Astronomers and
Physicists of eminence, who rejected the theory of rotation, as well as
that of gravitation. Thus one reads in the _French Encyclopædia_ that
“Science agrees, in the face of all its representatives, that it is
_impossible_ to explain the _physical_ origin of the rotatory motion of
the solar system.”
If the question is asked: “What causes rotation?” We are answered: “It is
the centrifugal force.” “And this force, what is it that produces it?”
“The force of rotation,” is the grave answer.(832) It will be well,
perhaps, to examine both these theories as being directly or indirectly
connected.