Theosophy - What is Matter and What is Force? - by K.H. - as published in "The Theosophist" September 1882
What
is Matter and What is Force?
by K.H.
[The Theosophist, September 1882]
reprinted
from “Theosophical Siftings” Volume
1 -
[The
continual discoveries with which modern science astonishes
and bewilders the world create a presumption in many minds
that an article dealing with scientific subjects becomes
unreliable when it is a few years old, because most
probably superseded by new facts or theories, discovered
or formulated in the meantime by the hierophants of
the laboratory or the lecture hall, but not yet generally
known. Some of these discoveries would in legal phraseology
be termed retro-active — they upset
theories hitherto upheld as axioms of science or “laws
of nature”; and
science that has become out of date is quite as much to
be avoided as “last year's fashions”. This,
of course, is a danger which necessarily threatens anyone
who, not being in the inner circle of scientists, quotes
from even the “latest editions” of
scientific works, and the uncertainty thereby created does
much to keep up the unquestioning faith which so many persons
feel in the dicta of modern science, paradoxical as that
may sound. The reason is plain enough. Men of science stand
to the vulgar in the position of revelators. It does not
so much matter if they are mistaken today, since they will
most likely correct their mistakes tomorrow; and this uncertainty
does for the men of science what the constant promise of
a new revelation did for Joe Smith and Brigham Young — it
creates expectant attention and happy anticipation.
This uncertainty of science tends also to discourage undue
curiosity and criticism on the part of the public, and to
favour the autocratic assumptions of scientific “authorities”;
for naturally there does not seem to be much use for outsiders
to spend their time in learning abstruse things that may
be discovered, in a few months or years, to have after all
been altogether falsely conceived and wrongly explained.
In the case of the following article, however, most of the
scientific theories and data quoted are still standing, although
the article is over five years old; and the occult views
of nature it puts forth are true for all time. For this reason
it has been thought well to republish it without delay, before
the scientific views it deals with have any more time to
turn sour or “explode” The article,
it should be mentioned, was written in answer to some objections
raised by a correspondent in a previous number of THE THEOSOPHIST,
as to the designation of electricity as a “form of
matter”;
and the writer does not imagine that the question which forms
its title is fully answered in the text. There remain several
aspects of force almost wholly unnoticed, and it would, of
course, be ridiculous to suppose that the subject of Force
has been exhausted by dealing with some of its manifestations.
Had it been the intention of the article to settle the questions
at issue, the writer would not have taken for a title the
query, “What is Matter and
What is Force?” but would probably
have adopted the usual style of teachers of science, and
headed the article, “What Matter and Force are”.
Enough is said in the article, however, to answer its original
purpose, namely, of showing that the all-important questions,
What is matter? and What is Force? have received no satisfactory
answer from modern science, and of proving that no one
has any right, in the present state of scientific knowledge,
to assert, in the face of the occultists, that electricity
is not a form of matter, more especially so since Helmholtz
has declared it to be as atomic as ponderable matter itself.]
"It
is a question of science", which, as such, has to be strictly
kept within the boundaries of modern materialistic science.
All “discussion on the
subject”, however “desirable”, would prove,
on the whole, unprofitable. Firstly, because science confines
herself only to the physical aspect of the conservation of
energy or correlation of forces; and, secondly, because,
notwithstanding her own frank admission of helpless ignorance
as to the ultimate causes of things, judging by the tone
of our critic’s
article, I doubt whether he would be willing to admit the
utter inaptness [Page
2] of
some of the scientific terms as approved by the Dwija,
the “twice-born” of the
Royal Society, and obediently accepted by their admirers.
The fact that modern science has been pleased to divide and
subdivide the atmosphere into a whole host of elements, and
to call them so for her own convenience, is no authoritative
reason why the Occultists should accept that terminology.
Science has never yet succeeded in decomposing a single one
of the many simple bodies miscalled “elementary substances”,
for which failure, probably, the latter have been named by
her elementary. And whether she may yet, or never may, succeed
in that direction in time, and thus recognise her error,
in the meanwhile, we Occultists permit ourselves to maintain
that the alleged “primordial” atoms would be
better specified under any other name but that one. With
all respect due to the men of science, the terms “element” and “elementary” applied
to the ultimate atoms and molecules of matter of which they
know nothing do not seem in the least justifiable. It is
as though the Royal Society agreed to call every star a “Kosmos”,
because each star was supposed to be a world like our own
planet; and then would begin taunting the ancients with ignorance,
since they knew but of one Kosmos, the boundless, infinite
universe. So far, however, science admits herself that the
words “element” and “elementary”,
unless applied to primordial principles or self-existing
essences, out of which the universe was evoluted, are unfortunate
terms, and remarks thereupon that “experimental science
deals only with legitimate deductions from the facts of observation,
and has nothing to do with any kind of essences except those
which it can see, smell, or taste”. Professor J. P.
Cooke tells us that “science leaves all others
to the metaphysicians” (New Chemistry, 1887). This
stern pronunciamento, which shows the men of science refusing
to take anything on faith, is immediately followed by a very
curious admission made by the same author. “Our
theory, I grant, may be all wrong”, he adds, “and
there may be no such things as molecules.....The new chemistry
assumes as its fundamental postulate that the magnitudes
we call molecules are realities, but this is only a postulate”.
We
are thus made to suspect that the exact science of chemistry
needs to take as well as transcendental metaphysics something
on blind faith. Grant her the postulate — and her deductions
make of her an exact science; deny it — and “exact
science” falls to pieces! Thus, in this respect, physical
science does not stand higher than psychological science,
and the Occultists need fear but very little of the thunderbolts
of their “exact” rivals. Both are, to say the
least, on a par. The chemist, though carrying his subdivision
of molecules further than the physicist, can no more than
he experiment on individual molecules. One may even remind
both that neither of them has ever seen an individual molecule.
Nevertheless, and while priding themselves upon taking nothing
on faith, they admit that they cannot often follow the sub-division
of molecules with the eye, but “can
discern it with the intellect”. What more, then, do
they do than the [Page
3]
Occultists,
the alchemists, the adepts ? While they discern with the “intellect”,
the adept, as he maintains, can as easily discern the subdivision adinfinitum of
that which his rival of the exact methods pleases to
call an “elementary body”, and he follows
it — with
the spiritual in addition to his physical intellect.....We
must pass to the more important question now, and see
how far science is justified in regarding electricity
as a force and .... Eastern Occultists in maintaining
that it is “still matter”. Before
we open the discussion I must be allowed to remark that,
since a “Theosophist” wants to be scientifically
accurate, he ought to remember that science does not call
electricity a force, but only one of the manifestations
of the same; a mode of action or motion. Her list of the
various kinds of energy which occur in nature is long,
and many are the names which she uses to distinguish them.
With all that, one of her most eminent adepts, Professor
Balfour Stewart — one of
the authorities he quotes against our President — warns
his readers (see “The Forces and Energies of Nature”)
that their enumeration has nothing absolute or complete
about it, representing, as it does, not so much the
present state of our knowledge as of our want of knowledge,
or rather profound ignorance, of the ultimate constitution
of matter”. So
great is that ignorance, indeed, that, treating upon heat,
a “mode of motion” which is supposed to be
better understood than electricity, that scientist confesses
that “if
heat be not a species of motion, it must necessarily
be a species of matter”, and adds that the men
of science “have preferred to consider heat as
a species of motion to the alternative of supposing the
creation of a peculiar kind of matter”.
[See also, to cite an impartial authority,
H.T. Buckle’s “History of Civilization”]
And,
if so, what is there to warrant us that science will
not yet find out her mistake some day, and recognise
and call electricity, in agreement with the Occultists, “a
species of a peculiar kind of matter”.
Thus,
before the too dogmatic admirers of modern science take
the occultists to task for viewing electricity under one
of its aspects — and for
maintaining that its basic principle is — matter, they
ought first to demonstrate that science errs when she herself,
through the mouthpiece of her recognised high priests, confesses
her ignorance as to what is properly force and what is matter.
For instance, the same Professor of Natural Philosophy, Mr.
Balfour Stewart, LL.D., F.R.S., in his lectures on the “Conservation
of Energy” tells us as follows: — “We
know nothing or next to nothing of the ultimate structure
or properties of matter, whether organic or inorganic”,
and . . . “ it is in truth only a convenient
classification and nothing more”.
Furthermore,
one and all, the men of science admit that though they
possess a definite knowledge of the general laws, yet they “have
no knowledge of the individuals in the domains of physical
science”. For
example, they suspect “a large number of our diseases
to be caused by [Page
4] organic
germs”; but they have to avow that their “ignorance
about these germs is most complete”. And in the chapter “What
is energy ?” the
same great naturalist staggers the too-confiding profane
by the following admission: — “If our knowledge
of the nature and habits of organised molecules be so small,
our knowledge of the ultimate molecules of inorganic matter
is, if possible, still smaller. It thus appears that we
know little or nothing about the shape or size of molecules,
or about the forces which actuate them. The very largest
masses of the universe sharing with the very smallest this
property of being beyond the scrutiny of the human senses”. Of
physical “human senses” he must mean, since he knows
little, if anything, of any other senses. But let us take
note of some further admissions, this time by Professor
Le Conte, in his lecture on the correlation of vital with
chemical and physical forces.....“The
distinction between force and energy is very imperfectly,
or not at all, defined in the higher forms of force, and
especially in the domain of life. . . . . Our language
cannot be more precise until our ideas in this department
are far clearer than now”.
Even
as regards the familiar liquid — water — science
is at a loss to decide whether the oxygen or hydrogen exist
as such in water or whether they are produced by some unknown
and unconceived transformation of its substance. “It
is a question”. says Mr. J. P. Cooke, Professor of
Chemistry,
“about which we may speculate, but in regard to which
we have no knowledge. Between the qualities of water and
the quality of these gases there is not the most distant
resemblance”.
All they know is that water can be decomposed by an electrical
current; but why it is so decomposed and then again recombined,
or what is the nature of that they call electricity,
etc., they do not know. Hydrogen, moreover, was till
very lately one of the very few substances which was known
only in its aeriform condition. It is the lightest form of
matter known.
There
is not an atom in nature but contains latent or potential
electricity which manifests under known conditions. Science
knows that matter generates. [Using the term “generated” in
the lesser sense of calling forth into manifestation.
Force or energy is known to be eternal, and cannot of
course be generated in the sense of being created] what
it calls force, the latter manifesting itself under various
forms of energy — such as heat, light,
electricity, magnetism, gravitation, etc., — yet
that same science has hitherto been unable as we find from
her own admissions, as given above, to determine where it
is that matter ends and force (or spirit, as some erroneously
call it) begins. Science, while rejecting metaphysics and
relegating it through her mouthpiece — Professor Tyndall — to
the domain of poetry and fiction, unbridles as often as many
metaphysicians her wild fancy, and allows mere hypotheses
to run riot on the field of unproved speculation. All this
she [Page
5] does,
as in the case of the molecular theory, with no better
authority for it than the paradoxical necessity for the philosophy
of every science to arbitrarily select and assume imaginary
fundamental principles; the only proof offered in the
way of demonstrating the actual existence of the latter
being a certain harmony of these principles with observed
facts. Thus, when men of science imagine themselves subdividing
a grain of sand to the ultimate molecule they call oxide
of silicon, they have no real but only an imaginary and
purely hypothetical right to suppose that, if they went on
dividing it further (which, of course, they cannot), the
molecule, separating itself into its chemical constituents
of silicon and oxygen, would finally yield that which has
to be regarded as two elementary bodies — since the
authorities so regard them. Neither an atom of silicon nor
an atom of oxygen is capable of any further subdivision into
something else, they say. But the only good reason we can
find for such a strange belief is because they have tried
the experiment and — failed. But how can they tell
that a new discovery, some new invention of still finer and
more perfect apparatuses and instruments, may not show their
error some day ? How do they know that those very bodies
now called “elementary atoms” are not in their
turn compound bodies or molecules, which, when analysed with
still greater minuteness, may show containing in themselves
the real primordial elementary globules, the gross encasement
of the still finer atom-spark, the spark of life, the source
of electricity — matter still! Truly has Henry
Kunrath, the greatest of the alchemists and Rosicrucians
of the middle ages, shown spirit in man, as in every atom — as
a bright flame enclosed within a more or less transparent
globule — which he calls soul. And since
the men of science confessedly know nothing of (a) the
origin of either matter or force; (b) nor of electricity
or life; and (c) that their knowledge of the ultimate molecules
of inorganic matter amounts to a cipher. Why, I ask, should
any student of Occultism, whose great masters may know, perchance,
of essences which the professors of the modern materialistic
school can neither “see, smell, or taste” — why
should he be expected to take their definitions as to what
is Matter and what is Force as the last word of unerring,
infallible science ? . . . . The term imponderable agents
is now regarded as a scientific absurdity. The latest conclusions
at which modern chemistry has arrived, it seems, have brought
it to reject the word imponderable, and to make away with
those text books of pre-modern science which refer the
phenomena of heat and electricity to attenuated forms of
matter. Nothing, they hold, can be added to or subtracted
from bodies without altering their weight. This was said
and written in 1876, by one of the greatest chemists in
America. With all that, have they become any the wiser
for it ? Have they been able to replace by a more scientific
theory the old and tabooed “phlogiston theory” of
the science of Stahl, Priestley, Scheele, and others? Or,
because they have proved, to their own satisfaction, that
it is highly unscientific to refer the phenomena of heat
and electricity to attenuated forms of matter, have they[Page
6] succeeded
at the same time in proving what are really Force, Matter,
Energy, Fire, Electricity, Life ? The phlogiston of Stahl — a
theory of combustion taught by Aristotle and the Greek philosophers — as
elaborated by Scheele, the poor Swedish apothecary, a secret
student of Occultism, who, as Professor Cooke says of him, “added
more knowledge to the stock of chemical science in a single
year than did Lavoisier in his lifetime”,
was not a mere fanciful speculation, though Lavoisier was
permitted to taboo and upset it. But, indeed, were the high
priests of modern science to attach more weight to the essence
of things than to mere generalisations, then, perhaps, they
would be in a better position to tell the world more of the “ultimate
structure of matter” than they now are. Lavoisier,
it is well known, did not add any new fact of prime importance
by upsetting the phlogiston theory, but only added “a
grand generalisation”. The Occultists
are perfectly aware, it need hardly be said, of modern theories
of combustion, and fully recognize the part which oxygen
plays therein. They prefer, however, to hold to the fundamental
theories of ancient sciences, knowing well that a very large
balance of real knowledge lies on that side, when the ancient
and the modern are compared. No more than the authors of
the old theory do they attach to phlogiston — which
has its specific name as one of the attributes of Akasa — the
idea of weight which the unitiated generally associate with
all matter. And though to us it is a principle, a well-defined
essence, yet no more than we did they view it as matter in
the sense it has for the present men of science. As one of
their modern professors put it — “translate the
phlogiston by energy, and in Stahl's work on Chemistry and
Physics, of 1731, put energy where he wrote phlogiston, and
you have . . . our great modern doctrine of conservation
of energy”.
Verily so it is the “great modern doctrine”,
only plus something else, let me add. Hardly a year after
these words had been pronounced, the discovery by Professor
Crookes of radiant matter — of which farther on — has
nigh upset again all their previous theories.
“Force,
energy, physical agent, are simply different words to express
the same idea”, observes our critic. I believe he
errs. To this day the men of science are unable to agree
in giving to electricity a name which would convey a clear
and comprehensive definition of this “very mysterious
agent”, as Professor Balfour Stewart calls it. While
the latter states that electricity or “electrical attraction
may probably be regarded as peculiarly allied to that force
which we call chemical affinity”; and Professor Tyndall
calls it only “a mode of motion”; Professor A.
Bain regards electricity as one of the five chief powers
or forces in nature: — “One mechanical or molar,
the momentum of moving matter”, the others “molecular,
or embodied in the molecules, also supposed (?) in motion — these
are heat, light, chemical force, electricity”. (The
Correlations of Nervous and Mental Forces) Now, these three
definitions would not gain, I am afraid, by being strictly
analysed . . . Light was never regarded [Page
7] as “a
force”. It
is, says science, a “manifestation of energy”,
a “mode
of motion” produced
by a rapid vibration of the molecules of any light-giving
body, and transmitted by the undulations of ether. The same
for heat and sound, the transmission of the latter depending,
in addition to the vibrations of ether, on the undulations
of an intervening atmosphere. Professor Crookes thought at
one time that he had discovered light to be a force, but
found out his mistake very soon. The explanation of Thomas
Young of the undulatory theory of light, holds now as good
as ever in the theories of modern science at least, and according
to this explanation that which we call light is simply an
impression produced on the retina of the eye by the wave-like
motion of the particles of matter. Light, then, like heat —0
f which it is the crown — is simply the ghost, the
shadow of matter in motion ! . . . . The men of science
have just found out “a fourth state of matter”.
whereas the Occultists have penetrated years ago beyond
the sixth, and, therefore, do not infer, but know of the
existence of the seventh, the last. Professor Balfour Stewart,
in seeking to show light to be an energy or force, quotes
Artistotle, and remarks that the Greek philosopher seems
to have entertained the idea that “light is not a
body, or the emanation of any body (for that, Aristotle
says, would be a kind of body), and, that, therefore, light
is an energy or act”. To this I respectfully demur,
and answer that if we cannot conceive of motion without
force, we can conceive still less of an “energy or
act” existing
in boundless space from the eternity, or even manifesting
without some kind of body. Moreover, the conceptions about “body” and “matter” of
Aristotle and Plato, the founders of the two great rival
schools of antiquity, opposed as they were in many things
to each other, are nevertheless still more at variance
with the conceptions about “body” and “matter” of
our modern men of science.
The
Theosophists, old and modern, the Alchemists, and Rosicrucians
have ever maintained that there were no such things per
se as “light”, “heat”,
“sound”, “electricity”, least of
all could there be a vacuum in nature. And now the results
of old and modern investigation fully corroborate what they
had always affirmed, namely, that in reality there is no
such thing as a “chemical
ray”, a “light
ray”, or a “heat ray”. As far as
can be ascertained by those whose observations and experiments
are confined to the material plan, there is nothing but radiant
energy; or, as a man of science expresses it in the ScientificAmerican, “radiant
energy, motion of some kind, causing vibrations across space
of something between us and the sun; something which, without
understanding fully (verily so!), we call 'ether', and which
exists everywhere, even in the vacuum of a radiometer”.
The sentence, for being confused, is, none the less for it,
the last word of science. Again: “We have always one
and the same cause, radiant energy, and we give this one
thing different names — 'actinism'.
' light', or 'heat'. And we are told also that the miscalled
chemical or actinic rays, as well as [Page
8] those
which the eye sees as blue, or green, or red, and those
which the thermometer feels, are all one thing, the effects
of motion in ether”. (“The
Sun's Radiant Energy” by Professor Langley.)
Now,
the sun and ether being beyond dispute material bodies,
necessarily every one of their effects — light, heat,
electricity, etc., — must be, agreeably
to the definition of Aristotle (as accepted, though slightly
misconceived, by Professor Balfour Stewart), also “a
kind of body”, ergo — matter.
Now
what is in reality matter ? We have seen that it is hardly
possible to call electricity a force, and yet we are
forbidden to call it matter under the penalty of being
called “unscientific”. Electricity has no weight — ergo,
it cannot be matter. Well, there is much to be said on both
sides. Mallet's experiment, which corroborated that of Pirani
(1878), showed that electricity is under the influence of
gravitation, and must have, therefore, some weight, A straight
copper wire, with its ends bent downwards, suspended at the
middle to one of the arms of a delicate balance, while the
bent ends dip in mercury. When the current of a strong battery
is passed through the wire by the intervention of the mercury,
the arm to which the wire is attached, although accurately
balanced by a counterpoise, sensibly tends downwards, notwithstanding
the resistance produced by the buoyancy of the mercury. Mallet's
opponents, who tried at the time to show that gravitation
had nothing to do with the fact of the arm of the balance
tending downward, but that it was due to the law of attraction
of electric currents, and who brought forward to that effect
Barlow's theory of electric currents, and Ampère's
discovery that electric currents, running in opposite directions,
repel one another, and are sometimes driven upwards, only
proved that men of science will rarely agree, and that the
question is so far an open one. This, however, raises a side
issue as to what is “the law of
gravitation”. The scientists of the present day assume that “gravitation” and “attraction” are quite distinct from one another.
But the day may not be far distant when the theory of the
Occultists that the “law of gravitation” is nothing more or less than “the law of attraction and
repulsion” will'
be proved scientifically correct.
Science
may, of course, if it so pleases her, call electricity
a force. Only by grouping it together with light and
heat, to which the name of force is decidedly refused,
she has either to plead guilty of inconsistency, or to
tacitly admit that it is a “species of matter”. But whether
electricity has weight or not, no true scientist is prepared
to show that there is no matter so light as to be beyond
weighing with our present instruments. And this brings us
directly to the latest discovery, one of the grandest in
science; I mean Mr. Crookes' “radiant matter”, or, as it
is now called, the fourth state of matter. That the three
states of matter, the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous,
are but so many stages in an unbroken chain of physical continuity,
and that the three correlate or are transformed one [Page
9] into
the other by insensible gradations needs no further demonstration,
we believe. But what is of far greater importance to us
Occultists is the admission made by several great men of
science in various articles upon the discovery of that fourth
state of matter. Says one of them in the “Scientific American'': —
“There
is nothing any more improbable in the supposition that
these three states of matter do not exhaust the possibilities
of material condition than in supposing the possibilities
of sound to extend to aerial undulations to which our organs
of hearing are insensible, or the possibilities of vision
to ethereal undulations too rapid or too slow to affect
our eyes as light.”?
And
as Professor Crookes has now succeeded in refining gases
to a condition so ethereal as to reach a state of matter “fairly
describable as ultra-gaseous, and exhibiting an entirely
novel set of properties”, why
should the Occultists be taken to task for affirming that
there lie beyond that “ultra-gaseous” state
still other states of matter; states so ultra-refined, even
in their grosser manifestations — such as electricity
under all its known forms — as to have fairly deluded
the scientific senses, and let the happy possessors thereof
call electricity — a
force! They tell us that it is obvious that if the tenuity
of some gas is very greatly increased, as in the most perfect
vacua attainable, the number of molecules may be so diminished
that their collisions under favourable conditions may become
so few in comparison with the number of masses that they
will cease to have a determining effect upon the physical
character of the matter under observation. In other words,
they say: “The free-flying molecules, if left
to obey the laws of kinetic force without mutual interference,
will cease to exhibit the properties characteristic of the
gaseous state, and take on an entirely new set of properties".
This is radiant matter. And still beyond lies the source
of electricity — still matter......Speaking of his
discovery, Professor Crookes justly remarks that the phenomena
he has investigated in his exhausted tubes reveal to physical
science a new field for explanation, a new world, “a
world wherein matter exists in a fourth state, where the
corpuscular theory of light holds good, and where light does
not always move in a straight line, but where we can never
enter, and in which we must be content to observe and experiment
from without”. To
this the Occultist might answer: “If we can never enter
it with the help of our physical senses, we have long since
entered and even gone beyond it, carried thither by our spiritual
faculties and in our spirit bodies”.
And
now I will close this too lengthy article with the following
reflection. The ancients never invented their myths.
One acquainted with the science of occult symbology can
always detect a scientific fact under the mask of grotesque
fancy. Thus one who would go to the trouble of studying
the fable of Electra — one of the seven Atlantides — in
the light of occult science, would soon discover the
real nature of Electricity, and learn that it signifies
little whether we call it force or matter, since it is both. [Page
10] and
so far, in the sense given it by modern science, both terms
may be regarded as misnomers. Electra, we know, is the
wife and daughter of Atlas the Titan, and the son of Asia
and of Pleione, the daughter of the Ocean. . . . . As Professor
Leconte well remarks, there are many of the best scientists
who ridicule the use of the term “ vital force” or “vitality” as
a remnant of superstition, and yet the same men use the
words gravity, magnetic force, physical force, electrical
force, etc., and are
unable withal to explain what is life, or even
electricity; nor are they able to assign any good reason
for that well-known fact that when an animal body is killed
by lightning, after death the blood does not coagulate. Chemistry,
which shows to us every atom, whether organic or inorganic,
in nature susceptible to polarisation, whether in its atomic
mass or as a unit, and inert matter allied with gravity,
light with heat, etc., hence as containing latent electricity,
that chemistry still persists in making a difference between
organic and inorganic matter, though both are due to the
same mysterious energy, ever at work by her own occult processes
in Nature's laboratory, in the mineral no less than in the
vegetable kingdom. Therefore do the Occultists maintain
that the philosophical conception of spirit, like the conception
of matter, must rest on one and the same basis of phenomena,
adding that force and matter, spirit and matter, or deity
and nature, although they may be viewed as opposite poles
in their respective manifestations, yet they are in essence
and in truth but one, and that life is present as much
in a dead as in a “living” body, in inorganic
as in organic matter. This is why, while science is searching
still, and may go on searching for ever, to solve the problem “What
is life?” the Occultist can afford to refuse taking
the trouble, since he claims, with as much good reason as
any given to the contrary, that life, whether in its latent
or dynamical form, is everywhere, that it is as infinite
and indestructible as matter itself, since neither can exist
without the other, and that electricity is the very essence
and origin of life itself. “Purush” is
non-existent without “Prakriti”; nor can
Prakriti, or plastic matter, have being or
exist without Purush, or spirit, vital energy, life. Purush
and Prakriti are, in short, the two poles of the one eternal
element, and are synonymous and convertible terms. Our bodies
as organised tissues are indeed “an unstable
arrangement of chemical forces”, plus a molecular
force — as
Professor Bain calls electricity — raging in it
dynamically during life, tearing asunder its particles
at death, to transform itself into a chemical force after
the process, and thence again to resurrect as an electrical
force or life in every individual atom. Therefore, whether
it is called Force or Matter, it will ever remain the omnipresent'
Proteus of the universe, the one element, Life, Spirit
or Force at its negative, Matter at its positive pole;
the former the Materio-Spiritual, the latter the Materio-Physical
Universe, Nature, Swabhâvat or Indestructible Matter.