interpretation of the Zodiac, even though the whole Pleiades of Royal Astronomical Societies rise in arms against their mathematical rendering of it. The descent and re-ascent of the Monad or Soul cannot be disconnected from the Zodiacal signs, and it looks more natural, in the sense of the fitness of things, to believe in a mysterious. sympathy between the metaphysical soul and the bright constellations, and in the influence of the latter on the former, than in the absurd notion that the creators of Heaven and Earth have placed in heaven the types of twelve vicious Jews. And if, as the author of The Gnostics asserts, the aim of all the Gnostic schools and the later Platonists "was to accommodate the old faith to the influence of Buddhistic theosophy, the very essence of which was that the innumerable gods of the Hindu mythology were but names for the ENERGIES of the First Triad in its successive AVATARS or manifestations unto man," whither can we turn to trace these theosophic ideas to their very root-better than to old Indian wisdom? We say it again: archaic Occultism would remain incomprehensible to all, if it were rendered otherwise than through the more familiar channels of Buddhism and Hinduism. For the former is the emanation of the latter; and both are children of one mother— ancient Lemuro-Atlantean Wisdom.

XVIII.

SUMMARY OF THE MUTUAL POSITION.

The reader has had the whole case presented to him from both sides, and it remains with him to decide whether its summary stands in our favour or not. If there were such a thing as void, a vacuum in Nature, one would find it produced, according to a physical law, in the minds of helpless admirers of the "Jights" of science, who pass their time in mutually destroying their teachings. If ever the theory that "two lights make darkness" found its application it is in this case, when one half of the "lights" imposes its Forces and "modes of motion" on the belief of the faithful, and the other half opposes the very existence of the same. "Ether, Matter, Energy "-the sacred hypostatical trinity, the three principles of the truly unknown God of Science, called by them Physical Nature!

Theology is taken to task and ridiculed for believing in the union of three persons in one Godhead—one God as to substance, three persons as to individuality; and we are laughed at for our belief in unproved and improvable doctrines, in Angels and Devils, Gods and Spirits. And,

THE EXACT SCIENCES OF-NEGATION.

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indeed, that which made the Scientists win the day over Theology in the Great "Conflict between Religion and Science," was precisely the argument that neither the identity of that substance, nor the triple individuality claimed, after having been conceived, invented, and worked out in the depths of Theological Consciousness, could be proved by any Scientific inductive process of reasoning, least of all on the evidence of our senses. Religion must perish, it is said, because it teaches mysteries. Mystery is the negation of Common Sense, and Science repels it. According to Mr. Tyndall, metaphysics \s fiction, like poetry. The man of Science takes nothing on trust; rejects everything that is not proven to him, while the Theologian accepts everything on blind faith. The Theosophist and the Occultist, who take nothing on trust, not even exact Science, the Spiritualist who denies dogma but believes in Spirits and in invisible but potential influences, all share in the same contempt. Very well, then; what we have to do now, is to examine for the last time whether exact Science does not act precisely in the same way as Theosophy, Spiritualism, and Theology do.

In a work by Mr. S. Laing, considered a standard book on Science, "Modern Science and Modern Thought," the author of which, according to the laudatory review of the Times, "exhibits with much power and effect the immense discoveries of Science, and its numerous victories over old opinions, whenever THEY HAVE THE RASHNESS TO CHALLENGE CONCLUSIONS WITH IT," one reads in chapter III., "On Matter," as follows: "WHAT IS THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE COMPOSED OF? ETHER MATTER, ENERGY" . . . is the answer.

We stop to ask, "What is Ether?" And Mr. Laing answers in the name of Science :—

"Ether is not actually known to us BY ANY TEST OF WHICH THE SENSES CAN TAKE COGNIZANCE, but is a sort of mathematical substance which We ARE COMPELLED To Assume in order to account for the phenomena of light and heat." Aud what is matter? Do you know more about it than you do about the "hypothetical" agent, Ether?

"In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigations can tell us

NOTHING DIRECTLY of the composition of living matter, and . . . it is also in strictness true, That We Know Nothing about the compositions of ANY (material) Body Whatever As It is." (Lecture on Plotoplasm by Mr. Huxley.)

And Energy? Surely you can define the third person of the Trinity of your Material universe?

"The Energy is That Which is Only Known To us By Its Effects." {Books on Physics.)

Pray explain, for this is rather hazy.

"IN MECHANICS THERE IS ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL ENERGY: WORK

ACTUALLY PERFORMED, AND THE CAPACITY FOR PERFORMING IT. As TO THE NATURE OF MOLECULAR ENERGY OR FORCES, THE VARIOUS PHENOMENA

WHICH BODIES PRESENT SHOW THAT THEIR MOLECULES ARE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF TWO CONTRARY FORCES ONE WHICH TENDS TO BRING THEM

TOGETHER, THE OTHER TO SEPARATE THEM. . . . . THE FIRST IS MOLECULAR ATTRACTION, THE SECOND FORCE IS DUE TO vis viva, OR MOVING Force." . . . . (Ganot's Physics.)

Just so it is the nature of this moving force, the vis viva that we want to know. What is it? . . . .

"WE DO NOT KNOW!' is The Invariable Answer.

"It Is An Empty Shadow Of My Imagination," explains Mr. Huxley in his Physical Basis of Life.

Thus the whole structure of Modern Science is built on a kind of "mathematical abstraction," on a Protean "Substance which eludes the senses," (Dubois Reymond,) and on effects, the shadowy and illusive will-o'-the-wisps of a something entirely unknown to and beyond the reach of Science, "Self-moving" atoms! Self-moving Suns, planets, and stars! But who, then, or what are they all, if they are self-endowed with motion? Why then should you, physicists, laugh and deride our "Selfmoving ARCH/EUS"? Mystery is rejected and scorned by Science, and "MYSTERY is the fatality of Science," as Father Felix has truly said. . . . . Science cannot escape it!" The language of the French preacher is ours, and we quote it in "Isis Unveiled" (Vide Vol. I. 338-9). Who—he asks—who of you, men of Science :

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". . . . has been able to penetrate the secret of the formation of a body, the generation of a single atom? What is there, I will not say at the centre of a sun, but at the centre of an atom? Who has sounded to the bottom the abyss in a grain of sand? The grain of sand, gentlemen, has been studied four thousand years by science, she has turned and returned it; she divides it and subdivides it; she torments it with her experiments; she vexes it with her questions to snatch from it the final word as to its secret constitution; she asks it, with an insatiable curiosity: Shall I divide thee infinitesimally?' Then suspended over this abyss, science hesitates, she stumbles, she feels dazzled, she becomes dizzy, and in despair says: / DO NOT KNOW."

"But it you are so fatally ignorant of the genesis and hidden nature of a grain of sand, how should you have an intuition as to the generation of a single living being? Whence in the living being does life come? Where does it commence? What is the life principle

Do the men of science deny all these charges? Not at all, for here is a confession of Tyndall, which shows how powerless is science, even over the world of matter.

"The first marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action depends,

Le Mystère et la Science," Conférences, Père Félix de Nôtre Dame; des Mousseaux : "Hauts Phen. Magiques."

baffles a keener power than that of the microscope." "Through pure excess of complexity, and long before observation can have any voice in the matter, the most highly trained intellect, the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our instrument, but even whether we ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature."

How little is known of the material universe, indeed, has now been suspected for years, on the very admissions of these men of science themselves. And now there are some materialists who would even make away with Ether—or whatever Science calls the infinite Substance, the noumenon of which the Buddhists call Swabhavat—as well as with atoms, too dangerous both on account of their ancient philosophical and their present Christian and theological associations. From the earliest philosophers whose records passed to posterity, down to our present age, which, if it denies "invisible Beings" in Space, can never be so insane as to deny a plenum of some sort the fulness of the universe was an accepted belief. And what it was said to contain, one learns from Hermes Trismegistus (in Mrs. Kingsford's able rendering)—who is made to say:—

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:

Concerning the void . . . my judgment is that it does not exist, 'that it never existed, and that it never will exist, for all the various parts of the universe are filled, as the earth also is complete. and full of bodies, differing in quality and in form, having their species and their magnitude, one larger, one smaller, one solid, one tenuous. The larger . . . are easily perceived; the smaller ... are difficult to apprehend, or altogether invisible. We know only of their existence by the sensation of feeling, wherefore many persons deny such entities to be bodies, and regard them as simply spaces, but it is impossible there should be such spaces. For if indeed there should be anything outside the universe . . . then it would be a space occupied by intelligent beings analogous to its (the universe's) divinity . . . I speak of the genii, for I hold they dwell with us, and of the heroes who dwell above us, between the earth and the highest airs; wherein are neither clouds nor any tempest" (p. 84).

...

And we "hold" it too. Only, as already remarked, no Eastern Initiate would speak of spheres "above us, between the earth and the

* Behold the work of Cycles and their periodical return! Those who denied such "Entities" (Forces) to be bodies, and called them "Spaces," were the prototypes of our modern" Science-struck" public, and their official teachers, who speak of the Forces of nature as the imponderable energy of matter and modes of motion, and yet hold electricity (for one) as being as atomic as matter itself-- (Helmholtz). Inconsistency and contradiction reign as much in official as in heterodox Science.

airs," even the highest, as there is no such division or measurement in occult speech, no "above" as no "below," but an eternal "within," within two other withins, or the planes of subjectivity merging gradually into that of terrestrial objectivity-this being for man the last one, his own plane. This necessary explanation may be closed here by giving, in the words of Hermes, the belief on this particular point of the whole world of mystics:

"There are many orders of the gods; and in all there is an intelligent part. It is not to be supposed they do not come within the range of our senses; on the contrary, we perceive them, better even than those which are called visible. . . There are then gods, superior to all appearances; after them come the gods whose principle is spiritual; these gods being sensible, in conformity with their double origin, manifest all things by a sensible nature, each of them illuminating his works one by another. The Supreme Being of Heaven, or of all that is comprehended under this name, is Zeus, for it is by Heaven that Zeus gives life to all things. The Supreme Being of the Sun is Light, for it is by the disk of the Sun that we receive the benefit of the light. The thirty-six horoscopes of the fixed stars have for supreme Being or Prince, him whose name is Pantomorphos, or having all forms, because he gives divine forms to divers types. The seven planets, or wandering spheres, have for Supreme Spirits Fortune and Destiny, who uphold the eternal stability of the laws of nature throughout incessant transformation and perpetual agitation. The ether is the instrument or medium by which all is produced."

This is quite philosophical and in accordance with the spirit of Eastern esotericism: for all the Forces, such as Light, Heat, Electricity, etc., etc., are called the "Gods "--esoterically.

It must be so, since the esoteric teachings in Egypt and India were identical. And, therefore, the personification of Fohat synthesizing all the manifesting forces in nature is a legitimate result. Moreover, as will be shown in the division that follows this one, the real and Occult forces in nature only now begin to be known—and even in this case, by heterodox, not orthodox, Science (See also § X., The Coming Force), though their existence, in one instance at any rate, is corroborated, and certified to by an immense number of educated people and even by some official men of science.

This sentence, moreover, in Stanza VI., "Fohat sets in motion the primordial World-germs, or the aggregation of Cosmic atoms and matter, some one way, some another, in the opposite direction "—looks orthodox and Scientific enough. For there is, at all events, one fact in support of this position fully recognized by Science, and it is this. The meteoric showers (periodical in November and August) belong to

Hermes here includes as gods the sensible Forces of nature, the elements and the phenomena of the Universe," remarks Mrs. A. Kingsford in a foot-note explaining it very correctly. So does Eastern philosophy.