The Secret Doctrine, page 68
No material constituent of a body, no atom, is in itself originally endowed with force, but that every such atom is absolutely dead, and without any inherent power to act at a distance.861
This statement, however, does not prevent Spiller from enunciating an Occult doctrine and principle. He asserts the independent substantiality of Force, and shows it as an “incorporeal stuff” (unkörperlicher Stoff) or Substance. Now Substance is not Matter in Metaphysics, and for argument's sake it may be granted that it is a wrong expression to use. But this is due to the poverty of European languages, and especially to the paucity of scientific terms. Then this “stuff” is identified and connected by Spiller with the Æther. Expressed in Occult language it might be said with more correctness that this “Force-Substance” is the ever-active phenomenal positive Ether—Prakriti; while the omnipresent all-pervading Æther is the Noumenon of the former, the substratum of all, or kâsha. Nevertheless, Stallo falls foul of Spiller, as he does of the Materialists. He is accused of “utter disregard of the fundamental correlation of Force and Matter,” of neither of which Science knows anything certain. For this “hypostasized half-concept” is, in the view of all other Physicists, not only imponderable, but destitute of cohesive, chemical, thermal, electric, and magnetic forces, of all of which forces—according to Occultism—Æther is the Source and Cause.
Therefore Spiller, with all his mistakes, exhibits more intuition than does any other modern Scientist, with the exception, perhaps, of Dr. Richardson, the theorist on “Nerve-Force,” or Nervous Ether, also on “Sun-Force and Earth-Force.”862 For Æther, in Esotericism, is the very quintessence of all possible energy, and it is certainly to this Universal Agent (composed of many agents) that are due all the manifestations of energy in the material, psychic and spiritual worlds.
What, in fact, are electricity and light? How can Science know that one is a fluid and the other a “mode of motion”? Why is no reason given why a difference should be made between them, since both are considered as force-correlations? Electricity is a fluid, we are told, immaterial and lion-molecular—though Helmholtz thinks otherwise—and the proof of it is that we can bottle it up, accumulate it and store it away. Then, it must be simply Matter, and no peculiar “fluid.” Nor is it only “a mode of motion,” for motion could hardly be stored in a Leyden jar. As for light, it is a still more extraordinary “mode of motion”; since, “marvellous as it may appear, light (also) can actually be stored up for use,” as was demonstrated by Grove nearly half a century ago.
Take an engraving which has been kept for some days in the dark, expose it to full sunshine—that is, insulate it for 15 minutes; lay it on sensitive paper in a dark place, and at the end of 24 hours it will have left an impression of itself on the sensitive paper, the whites coming out as blacks.... There seems to be no limit for the reproduction of engravings.863
What is it that remains fixed, nailed, so to say, on the paper? It is a Force certainly that fixed the thing, but what is that thing, the residue of which remains on the paper?
Our learned men will get out of this by some scientific technicality; but what is it that is intercepted, so as to imprison a certain quantity of it on glass, paper, or wood? Is it “Motion” or is it “Force”? Or shall we be told that what remains behind is only the effect of the Force or Motion? Then what is this Force? Force or Energy is a quality; but every quality must belong to a something, or a somebody. In Physics, Force is defined as “that which changes or tends to change any physical relation between bodies, whether mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic, etc.” But it is not that Force or that Motion which remains behind on the paper, when the Force or Motion has ceased to act; and yet something, which our physical senses cannot perceive, has been left there, to become a cause in its turn and to produce effects. What is it? It is not Matter, as defined by Science—i.e., Matter in any of its known states. An Alchemist would say it was a spiritual secretion—and he would be laughed at. But yet, when the Physicist said that electricity, stored up, is a fluid, or that light fixed on paper is still sunlight—that was Science. The newest authorities have, indeed, rejected these explanations as “exploded theories,” and have now deified “Motion” as their sole idol. But, surely, they and their idol will one day share the fate of their predecessors! An experienced Occultist, one who has verified the whole series of Nidânas, of causes and effects, that finally project their last effect on to this our plane of manifestations, one who has traced Matter back to its Noumenon, holds the opinion that the explanation of the Physicist is like calling anger, or its effects—the exclamation provoked by it—a secretion or a fluid, and man, the cause of it, its material conductor. But, as Grove prophetically remarked, the day is fast approaching when it will be confessed that the Forces we know are but the phenomenal manifestations of Realities we know nothing about—but which were known to the Ancients, and by them worshipped.
He made one still more suggestive remark which ought to have become the motto of Science, but has not. Sir William Grove said that: “Science should have neither desires nor prejudices. Truth should be her sole aim.”
Meanwhile, in our days, Scientists are more self-opinionated and bigoted than even the Clergy. For they minister to, if they do not actually worship, “Force-Matter,” which is their Unknown God. And how unknown it is, may be inferred from the many confessions of the most eminent Physicists and Biologists, with Faraday at their head. Not only, he said, could he never presume to pronounce whether Force was a property or function of Matter, but he actually did not know what was meant by the word Matter.
There was a time, he added, when he believed he knew something of Matter. But the more he lived, and the more carefully he studied it, the more he became convinced of his utter ignorance of the nature of Matter.864
This ominous confession was made, we believe, at a Scientific Congress at Swansea. Faraday held a similar opinion, however, as stated by Tyndall:
What do we know of the atom apart from its force? You imagine a nucleus which maybe called a and surround it by forces which may be called m; to my mind the a or nucleus vanishes and the substance consists of the powers m. And, indeed, what notion can we form of the nucleus independent of its powers? What thought remains on which to hang the imagination of an a independent of the acknowledged forces?
The Occultists are often misunderstood because, for lack of better terms, they apply to the Essence of Force, under certain aspects, the descriptive epithet of Substance. Now the names for the varieties of Substance on different planes of perception and being are legion. Eastern Occultism has a special appellation for each kind; but Science—like England, in the recollection of a witty Frenchman, blessed with thirty-six religions and only one fish-sauce—has but one name for all, namely “Substance.” Moreover, neither the orthodox Physicists nor their critics seem to be very certain of their premisses, and are as apt to confuse the effects as they are the causes. It is incorrect, for instance, to say, as Stallo does, that “Matter can no more be realized or conceived as mere positive spatial presence than as a concretion of forces,” or that “Force is nothing without mass, and mass is nothing without force”—for one is the Noumenon and the other the phenomenon. Again; Schelling, when saying that
It is a mere delusion of the phantasy that something, we know not what, remains after we have denuded an object of all the predicates belonging to it,865
could never have applied the remark to the realm of transcendental Metaphysics. It is true that pure Force is nothing in the world of Physics; it is All in the domain of Spirit. Says Stallo:
If we reduce the mass upon which a given force, however small, acts to its limit zero—or, mathematically expressed, until it becomes infinitely small—the consequence is that the velocity of the resulting motion is infinitely great, and that the “thing” ... is at any given moment neither here nor there, but everywhere—that there is no real presence; it is impossible, therefore, to construct matter by a synthesis of forces.866
This may be true in the phenomenal world, inasmuch as the illusive reflection of the One Reality of the supersensual world may appear true to the dwarfed conceptions of a Materialist. It is absolutely incorrect when the argument is applied to things in what the Kabalists call the supermundane spheres. Inertia, so-called, is Force, according to Newton,867 and for the student of Esoteric Sciences the greatest of the Occult Forces. A body can only conceptually, only on this plane of illusion, be considered divorced from its relations with other bodies—which, according to the physical and mechanical sciences, give rise to its attributes. In fact, it can never be so detached; death itself being unable to detach it from its relation with the Universal Forces, of which the One Force, or Life, is the synthesis: the inter-relation simply continues on another plane. But what, if Stallo is right, can Dr. James Croll mean when, in speaking “On the Transformation of Gravity,” he brings forward the views advocated by Faraday, Waterston, and others? For he says very plainly that gravity
Is a force pervading Space external to bodies, and that, on the mutual approach of the bodies, the force is not increased, as is generally supposed, but the bodies merely pass into a place where the force exists with greater intensity.868
No one will deny that a Force, whether gravity, electricity, or any other Force, which exists outside bodies and in open Space—be it Ether or a vacuum—must be something, and not a pure nothing, when conceived apart from a mass. Otherwise it could hardly exist in one place with a greater and in another with reduced “intensity.” G. A. Hirn declares the same in his Théorie Mécanique de l'Univers. He tries to demonstrate:
That the atom of the chemists is not an entity of pure convention, or simply an explicative device, but that it exists really, that its volume is unalterable, and that consequently it is not elastic (!!). Force, therefore, is not in the atom; it is in the space which separates the atoms from each other.
The above-cited views, expressed by two men of Science of great eminence in their respective countries, show that it is not in the least unscientific to speak of the substantiality of the so-called Forces. Subject to some future specific name, this Force is Substance of some kind, and can be nothing else; and perhaps one day Science will be the first to reädopt the derided name of phlogiston. Whatever may be the future name given to it, to maintain that Force does not reside in the Atoms, but only in the “space between them,” may be scientific enough; nevertheless it is not true. To the mind of an Occultist it is like saying that water does not reside in the drops of which the ocean is composed, but only in the space between those drops!
The objection that there are two distinct schools of Physicists, by one of which
This force is assumed to be an independent substantial entity, which is not a property of matter nor essentially related to matter,869
is hardly likely to help the profane to any clearer understanding. It is, on the contrary, more calculated to throw the question into still greater confusion than ever. For Force is, then, neither this nor the other. By viewing it as “an independent substantial entity,” the theory extends the right hand of fellowship to Occultism, while the strange contradictory idea that it is not “related to Matter otherwise than by its power to act upon it,”870 leads Physical Science to the most absurd contradictory hypotheses. Whether “Force” or “Motion” (Occultism, seeing no difference between the two, never attempts to separate them), it cannot act for the adherents of the atomo-mechanical theory in one way, and for those of the rival school in another. Nor can the Atoms be, in one case, absolutely uniform in size and weight, and in another, vary in their weight (Avogadro's law). For, in the words of the same able critic:
While the absolute equality of the primordial units of mass is thus an essential part of the very foundations of the mechanical theory, the whole modern science of chemistry is based upon a principle directly subversive of it—a principle of which it has recently been said that “it holds the same place in chemistry that the law of gravitation does in astronomy.”871 This principle is known as the law of Avogadro or Ampère.872
This shows that either modern Chemistry, or modern Physics, is entirely wrong in the respective fundamental principles. For if the assumption of Atoms of different specific gravities is deemed absurd, on the basis of the atomic theory in Physics; and if Chemistry, nevertheless, on this very assumption, meets with “unfailing experimental verification,” in the formation and transformation of chemical compounds; then it becomes apparent that it is the atomo-mechanical theory which is untenable. The explanation of the latter, that “the differences of weight are only differences of density, and differences of density are differences of distance between the particles contained in a given space,” is not really valid, because, before a Physicist can argue in his defence that “as in the atom there is no multiplicity of particles and no void space, hence differences of density or weight are impossible in the case of atoms,” he must first know what an Atom is, in reality, and that is just what he cannot know. He must bring it under the observation of at least one of his physical senses—and that he cannot do: for the simple reason that no one has ever seen, smelt, heard, touched or tasted an Atom. The Atom belongs wholly to the domain of Metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction—at any rate for Physical Science—and has nought to do with Physics, strictly speaking, as it can never be brought to the test of retort or balance. The mechanical conception, therefore, becomes a jumble of the most conflicting theories and dilemmas, in the minds of the many Scientists who disagree on this, as on other subjects; and its evolution is beheld with the greatest bewilderment by the Eastern Occultist, who follows this scientific strife.
To conclude, on the question of gravity. How can Science presume to know anything certain of it? How can it maintain its position and its hypotheses against those of the Occultists, who see in gravity only sympathy and antipathy, or attraction and repulsion, caused by physical polarity on our terrestrial plane, and by spiritual causes outside its influence? How can they disagree with the Occultists before they agree among themselves? Indeed one hears of the Conservation of Energy, and in the same breath of the perfect hardness and inelasticity of the Atoms; of the kinetic theory of gases being identical with “potential energy,” so called, and, at the same time, of the elementary units of mass being absolutely hard and inelastic! An Occultist opens a scientific work and reads as follows:
Physical atomism derives all the qualitative properties of matter from the forms of atomic motion. The atoms themselves remain as elements utterly devoid of quality.873
And further:
Chemistry in its ultimate form must be atomic mechanics.874
And a moment after he is told that:
Gases consist of atoms which behave like solid, perfectly elastic spheres.875
Finally, to crown all, Sir W. Thomson is found declaring that:
We are forbidden by the modern theory of the conservation of energy to assume inelasticity, or anything short of perfect elasticity of the ultimate molecules whether of ultra-mundane or mundane matter.876
But what do the men of true Science say to all this? By the “men of true Science” we mean those who care too much for truth and too little for personal vanity to dogmatize on anything, as do the majority. There are several among them—perhaps more than dare openly publish their secret conclusions, for fear of the cry “Stone him to death!”—men, whose intuitions have made them span the abyss that lies between the terrestrial aspect of Matter, and the, to us, on our plane of illusion, subjective, i.e., transcendentally objective Substance, and have led them to proclaim the existence of the latter. Matter, to the Occultist, it must be remembered, is that totality of existences in the Kosmos, which falls within any of the planes of possible perception. We are but too well aware that the orthodox theories of sound, heat and light, are against the Occult Doctrines. But, it is not enough for the men of Science, or their defenders, to say that they do not deny dynamic power to light and heat, and to urge, as a proof, the fact that Mr. Crookes' radiometer has unsettled no views. If they would fathom the ultimate nature of these Forces, they have first to admit their substantial nature, however supersensuous that nature may be. Neither do the Occultists deny the correctness of the vibratory theory.877 Only they limit its functions to our Earth—declaring its inadequacy on other planes than ours, since Masters in the Occult Sciences perceive the Causes that produce ethereal vibrations. Were all these only the fictions of the Alchemists, or dreams of the Mystics, such men as Paracelsus, Philalethes, Van Helmont, and so many others, would have to be regarded as worse than visionaries; they would become impostors and deliberate mystificators.
The Occultists are taken to task for calling the Cause of light, heat, sound, cohesion, magnetism, etc., etc., a Substance.878 Mr. Clerk Maxwell has stated that the pressure of strong sunlight on a square mile is about 3-¼ lbs. It is, they are told, “the energy of the myriad ether waves”; and when they call it a Substance impinging on that area, their explanation is proclaimed unscientific.
There is no justification for such an accusation. In no way—as already more than once stated—do the Occultists dispute the explanations of Science, as affording a solution of the immediate objective agencies at work. Science only errs in believing that, because it has detected in vibratory waves the proximate cause of these phenomena, it has, therefore, revealed all that lies beyond the threshold of Sense. It merely traces the sequence of phenomena on a plane of effects, illusory projections from the region that Occultism has long since penetrated. And the latter maintains that those etheric tremors are not set up, as asserted by Science, by the vibrations of the molecules of known bodies, the Matter of our terrestrial objective consciousness, but that we must seek for the ultimate Causes of light, heat, etc., in Matter existing in supersensuous states—states, however, as fully objective to the spiritual eye of man, as a horse or a tree is to the ordinary mortal. Light and heat are the ghost or shadow of Matter in motion. Such states can be perceived by the Seer or the Adept during the hours of trance, under the Sushumnâ Ray—the first of the Seven Mystic Rays of the Sun.879
