Section III. Is Gravitation a Law?
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 [pg 533] 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 [pg 534] 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 [pg 535] 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. [pg 536] 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 [pg 537] 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 [pg 538] 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.” [pg 539] 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 [pg 541] 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.
[pg 542](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: [pg 543] “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.
Section IV. The Theories of Rotation in Science.
Considering that “final cause is pronounced a chimera, and the First Great Cause is remanded to the sphere of the Unknown,” as a reverend gentleman justly complains, the number of hypotheses put forward, a nebula of them, is most remarkable. The profane student is perplexed, and does not know in which of the theories of exact Science he has to believe. We give below hypotheses enough for every taste and power of brain. They are all extracted from a number of scientific volumes.
Current Hypotheses explaining the Origin of Rotation.
Rotation has originated:
(a) By the collision of nebular masses wandering aimlessly in Space; or by attraction, “in cases where no actual impact takes place.”
(b) By the tangential action of currents of nebulous matter (in the case of an amorphous nebula) descending from higher to lower levels,833 or simply by the action of the central gravity of the mass.834
“It is a fundamental principle in physics that no rotation could be generated in such a mass by the action of its own parts. As well attempt to change the course of a steamer by pulling at the deck railing,” remarks on this Prof. Winchell in World-Life.835
Hypotheses of the Origin of Planets and Comets.
(a) We owe the birth of the planets (1) to an explosion of the Sun—a parturition of its central mass;836 or (2) to some kind of disruption of the nebular rings.
[pg 545](b) “The comets are strangers to the planetary system.”837 “The comets are undeniably generated in our solar system.”838
(c) The “fixed stars are motionless,” says one authority. “All the stars are actually in motion,” answers another authority. “Undoubtedly every star is in motion.”839
(d) “For over 350,000,000 years, the slow and majestic movement of the sun around its axis has never for a moment ceased.”840
(e) “Maedler believes that ... our sun has Alcyone in the Pleiades for the centre of its orbit, and consumes 180,000,000 of years in completing a single revolution.”841
(f) “The sun has existed no more than 15,000,000 of years, and will emit heat for no longer than 10,000,000 years more.”842
A few years ago this eminent Scientist was telling the world that the time required for the Earth to cool from incipient incrustation to its present state, could not exceed 80,000,000 years.843 the encrusted age of the world is only 40,000,000, or half the duration once allowed, and the Sun's age is only 15,000,000, have we to understand that the Earth was at one time independent of the Sun?
Since the ages of the Sun, of the planets, and of the Earth, as they are stated in the various scientific hypotheses of the Astronomers and Physicists, are given elsewhere below, we have said enough to show the disagreement between the ministers of Modern Science. Whether we accept the fifteen million years of Sir William Thomson or the thousand millions of Mr. Huxley, for the rotational evolution of our Solar System, it will always come to this; that by accepting self-generated rotation for the heavenly bodies composed of inert Matter and yet moved by their own internal motion, for millions of years, this teaching of Science amounts to:
(a) An evident denial of that fundamental physical law, which states that “a body in motion tends constantly to inertia, i.e., to continue in the same state of motion or rest, unless it is stimulated into further action by a superior active force.”
[pg 546](b) An original impulse, which culminates in an unalterable motion, within a resisting Ether that Newton had declared incompatible with that motion.
(c) Universal gravity, which, we are taught, always tends to a centre in rectilinear descent—alone the cause of the revolution of the whole Solar System, which is performing an eternal double gyration, each body around its axis and orbit. Another occasional version is:
(d) A magnet in the Sun; or, that the said revolution is due to a magnetic force, which acts, just as gravitation does, in a straight line, and varies inversely as the square of the distance.844
(e) The whole acting under invariable and changeless laws, which are, nevertheless, often shown variable, as during some well-known freaks of planets and other bodies, as also when the comets approach or recede from the Sun.
(f) A Motor Force always proportionate to the mass it is acting upon; but independent of the specific nature of that mass, to which it is proportionate; which amounts to saying, as Le Couturier does, that:
Without that force independent from, and of quite another nature than, the said mass, the latter, were it as huge as Saturn, or as tiny as Ceres, would always fall with the same rapidity.845
A mass, furthermore, which derives its weight from the body on which it weighs.
Thus neither Laplace's perceptions of a solar atmospheric fluid, which would extend beyond the orbits of the planets, nor Le Couturier's electricity, nor Foucault's heat,846 nor this, nor the other, can ever help any of the numerous hypotheses about the origin and permanency of rotation to escape from this squirrel's wheel, any more than can the theory of gravity itself. This mystery is the Procrustean bed of Physical Science. If Matter is passive, as we are now taught, the simplest movement cannot be said to be an essential property of Matter—the latter being considered simply as an inert mass. How, then, can such a complicated movement, compound and multiple, harmonious and equilibrated, lasting in the eternities for millions and millions of years, be attributed simply to its own inherent force, unless the latter is an Intelligence? A physical will is something new—a conception that the Ancients would never have entertained, indeed! For over a century all distinction between body and force has been made away with. “Force is but the property of a body in motion,” say the [pg 547] Physicists; “life—the property of our animal organs—is but the result of their molecular arrangement,” answer the Physiologists. As Littré teaches:
In the bosom of that aggregate which is named planet, are developed all the forces immanent in matter ... i.e., that matter possesses in itself and through itself the forces that are proper to it ... and which are primary, not secondary. Such forces are the property of weight, the property of electricity, of terrestrial magnetism, the property of life.... Every planet can develop life ... as earth, for instance, which had not always mankind on it, and now bears (produit) men.847
An Astronomer says:
We talk of the weight of the heavenly bodies, but since it is recognized that weight decreases in proportion to the distance from the centre, it becomes evident that, at a certain distance, that weight must be forcibly reduced to zero. Were there any attraction there would be equilibrium.... And since the modern school recognizes neither a beneath nor an above in universal space, it is not clear what should cause the earth to fall, were there even no gravitation, nor attraction.848
Methinks the Count de Maistre was right in solving the question in his own theological way. He cuts the Gordian knot by saying:—“The planets rotate because they are made to rotate ... and the modern physical system of the universe is a physical impossibility.”849 For did not Herschell say the same thing when he remarked that there is a Will needed to impart a circular motion, and another Will to restrain it?850 This shows and explains how a retarded planet is cunning enough to calculate its time so well as to hit off its arrival at the fixed minute. For, if Science sometimes succeeds, with great ingenuity, in explaining some of such stoppages, retrograde motions, angles outside the orbits, etc., by appearances resulting from the inequality of their progress and ours in the course of our mutual and respective orbits, we still know that there are others, and “very real and considerable deviations,” according to Herschell, “which cannot be explained except by the mutual and irregular action of those planets and by the perturbing influence of the sun.”
We understand, however, that there are, besides those little and accidental perturbations, continuous perturbations called “secular”—because of the extreme slowness with which the irregularity increases and affects the relations of the elliptic movement—and that these perturbations can be corrected. From Newton, who found that this world needed repairing very often, down to Reynaud, all say the same. In his Ciel et Terre, the latter says:
[pg 548]The orbits described by the planets are far from immutable, and are, on the contrary, subject to a perpetual mutation in their position and form.851
Proving gravitation and the peripatetic laws to be as negligent as they are quick to repair their mistakes. The charge as it stands seems to be that:
These orbits are alternately widening and narrowing, their great axis lengthens and diminishes, or oscillates at the same time from right to left around the sun, the plane itself, in which they are situated, raising and lowering itself periodically while pivoting around itself with a kind of tremor.
To this, De Mirville, who believes in intelligent “workmen” invisibly ruling the Solar System—as we do—observes very wittily:
Voilà, certes, a voyage which has little in it of mechanical precision; at the utmost, one could compare it to a steamer, pulled to and fro and tossed on the waves, retarded or accelerated, all and each of which impediments might put off its arrival indefinitely, were there not the intelligence of a pilot and engineers to catch up the time lost, and to repair the damages.852
The law of gravity, however, seems to be becoming an obsolete law in starry heaven. At any rate those long-haired sidereal Radicals, called comets, appear to be very poor respecters of the majesty of that law, and to beard it quite impudently. Nevertheless, and though presenting in nearly every respect “phenomena not yet fully understood,” comets and meteors are credited by the believers in Modern Science with obeying the same laws and consisting of the same Matter, “as the suns, stars and nebulæ,” and even “the earth and its inhabitants.”853
This is what one might call taking things on trust, aye, even to blind faith. But exact Science is not to be questioned, and he who rejects the hypotheses imagined by her students—gravitation, for instance—would be regarded as an ignorant fool for his pains; yet we are told by the just cited author a queer legend from the scientific annals.
The comet of 1811 had a tail 120 millions of miles in length and 25 millions of miles in diameter at the widest part, while the diameter of the nucleus was about 127,000 miles, more than ten times that of the earth.
He tells us that:
In order that bodies of this magnitude, passing near the earth, should not affect its motion or change the length of the year by even a single second, their actual substance must be inconceivably rare.
It must be so indeed, yet:
[pg 549]The extreme tenuity of a comet's mass is also proved by the phenomenon of the tail, which, as the comet approaches the sun, is thrown out sometimes to a length of 90 millions of miles in a few hours. And what is remarkable, this tail is thrown out against the force of gravity by some repulsive force, probably electrical, so that it always points away from the sun [!!!].... And yet, thin as the matter of comets must be, it obeys the common Law of Gravity [!?], and whether the comet revolves in an orbit within that of the outer planets, or shoots off into the abysses of space, and returns only after hundreds of years, its path is, at each instant, regulated by the same force as that which causes an apple to fall to the ground.854
Science is like Cæsar's wife, and must not be suspected—this is evident. But it can be respectfully criticized, nevertheless, and at all events, it may be reminded that the “apple” is a dangerous fruit. For the second time in the history of mankind, it may become the cause of the Fall—this time, of “exact” Science. A comet whose tail defies the law of gravity right in the Sun's face can hardly be credited with obeying that law.
In a series of scientific works on Astronomy and the Nebular Theory, written between 1865 and 1866, the present writer, a poor tyro in Science, has counted in a few hours, no less than thirty-nine contradictory hypotheses offered as explanations for the self-generated, primitive rotatory motion of the heavenly bodies. The writer is no Astronomer, no Mathematician, no Scientist; but she was obliged to examine these errors in defence of Occultism, in general, and what is still more important, in order to support the Occult Teachings concerning Astronomy and Cosmology. Occultists were threatened with terrible penalties for questioning scientific truths. But now they feel braver; Science is less secure in its “impregnable” position than they were led to expect, and many of its strongholds are built on very shifting sands.
Thus, even this poor and unscientific examination of it has been useful, and it has certainly been very instructive. We have learned a good many things, in fact, having especially studied with particular care those astronomical data, that would be the most likely to clash with our heterodox and “superstitious” beliefs.
Thus, for instance, we have found there, concerning gravitation, the axial and orbital motions, that synchronous movement having been once overcome, in the early stage, this was enough to originate a rotatory motion till the end of Manvantara. We have also come to know, in all the aforesaid combinations of possibilities with regard to [pg 550] incipient rotation, most complicated in every case, some of the causes to which it may have been due, as well as some others to which it ought and should have been due, but, in some way or other, was not. Among other things, we are informed that incipient rotation may be provoked with equal ease in a mass in igneous fusion, and in one that is characterized by glacial opacity.855 That gravitation is a law which nothing can overcome, but which is, nevertheless, overcome, in and out of season, by the most ordinary celestial or terrestrial bodies—the tails of impudent comets, for instance. That we owe the universe to the holy Creative Trinity, called Inert Matter, Senseless Force and Blind Chance. Of the real essence and nature of any of these three, Science knows nothing, but this is a trifling detail. Ergo, we are told that, when a mass of cosmic or nebular Matter—whose nature is entirely unknown, and which may be in a state of fusion (Laplace), or dark and cold (Thomson), for “this intervention of heat is itself a pure hypothesis” (Faye)—decides to exhibit its mechanical energy under the form of rotation, it acts in this wise. It (the mass) either bursts into spontaneous conflagration, or it remains inert, tenebrous, and frigid, both states being equally capable of sending it, without any adequate cause, spinning through Space for millions of years. Its movements may be retrograde, or they may be direct, about a hundred various reasons being offered for both motions, in about as many hypotheses; anyhow, it joins the maze of stars, whose origin belongs to the same miraculous and spontaneous order—for:
The nebular theory does not profess to discover the origin of things, but only a stadium in material history.856
Those millions of suns, planets, and satellites, composed of inert matter, will whirl on in most impressive and majestic symmetry round the firmament, moved and guided only, notwithstanding their inertia, “by their own internal motion.”
Shall we wonder, after this, if learned Mystics, pious Roman Catholics, and even such learned Astronomers as were Chaubard and Godefroy,857 have preferred the Kabalah and the ancient systems to the modern dreary and contradictory exposition of the Universe? The Zohar makes a distinction, at any rate, between “the Hajaschar [the [pg 551] ‘Light Forces’], the Hachoser [‘Reflected Lights’], and the simple phenomenal exteriority of their spiritual types.”858
The question of “gravity” may now be dismissed, and other hypotheses examined. That Physical Science knows nothing of “Forces” is clear. We may close the argument, however, by calling to our help one more man of Science—Professor Jaumes, Member of the Academy of Medicine at Montpellier. Says this learned man, speaking of Forces:
A cause is that which is essentially acting in the genealogy of phenomena, in every production as in every modification. I said that activity (or force) was invisible.... To suppose it corporeal and residing in the properties of matterwould be a gratuitous hypothesis.... To reduce all the causes to God, ... would amount to embarrassing oneself with a hypothesis hostile to many verities. But to speak of a plurality of forces proceeding from the Deity and possessing inherent powers of their own, is not unreasonable, ... and I am disposed to admit phenomena produced by intermediate agents called Forces or Secondary Agents. The distinction of Forces is the principle of the division of Sciences; so many real and separate Forces, so many mother-Sciences.... No; Forces are not suppositions and abstractions, but realities, and the only acting realities whose attributes can be determined with the help of direct observation and induction.859