as published in "Theosophical Siftings" Volume -5- [1892-1893]
[The advance of
science which for a time overshadowed philosophy, has brought
men face to face once more with ultimate questions, and
has revealed the impotence of science to deal with its
own conditions and pre-suppositions. The needs of science
itself call for a critical doctrine of knowledge as the basis
of an ultimate theory of things. Philosophy must criticise
not only the categories of science but also the metaphysical
systems of the past.
— Prof. Seth]
Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals and forts.
As long as men
remain "demons of selfishness and ignorance", so
long will they fight for their turn to tyrannise over their
brother men. Instruction and education can alone prepare
the way for a peaceful solution of the greatest problem that
mankind has ever had to deal with; for, before we can hope
to enter into a "brotherhood of humanity", the
earth must be "filled with the knowledge of the Lord".
— H.
O. WARD, in The Nationalization News.
As for myself
I hold the firm conviction that unflagging research will
be rewarded by an insight into natural mysteries such as
now can rarely be conceived.
— PROF. WM. CROOKES.
Though "it
is the spirit that quickeneth, and the flesh profiteth
nothing", the grand reign of the Spirit will
not commence until the material world shall be completely
under man's control.
— ERNEST RENAN, Future of Science. [Page 3]
THEOSOPHY
interprets the often-quoted Scripture passage of "the
seven Spirits which are before His throne", as
the cosmical, creative, sustaining, and world-governing
potencies, the principles of which God avails himself as
his instruments, organs and media. This is what the Kabbala
implies with its seven "Sephiroth", what Schelling
means by the "potencies", or principles in the
inner life of God; and it is by their emergence, separation
and tension that they become cosmical potencies. If we stop
short at these general considerations, this is precisely
the idea of Theosophy. When it is asked what special activities
are to be ascribed to each of the seven Spirits, striving
to apprehend more closely the uncreated potencies through
which the Deity works in its manifestation, and to which
Scripture itself makes unmistakable allusion, revelation
is silent, intimating only by veiled suggestions. It is here
that Theosophy leads the way to the open Book of Nature:
the title-page of which we have only begun to turn.
Theosophy, says
Bishop Martensen, signifies wisdom in God: Church Theology
is not wise in assuming a hostile attitude towards Theosophy
because it hereby deprives itself of a most valuable leavening
influence, a source of renewal and rejuvenescence, which
Theology so greatly needs, exposed as it is to the danger
of stagnating in barren and dreary scholasticism and cold
and trivial criticism. In such a [Page
4] course no real
progress can be made in the Christian apprehension, of
truth. Jacob Boëhme, who was the greatest and most
famous of all Theosophists in the world, [See Jacob Boëhme,
His Life and Teaching, or Studies in Theosophy, by Dr. Hans
Lassen Martenson.] said of philosophers and other disputants
who attack not only Theosophy, but also theology, and even
Christianity itself, in the name of modern science; — "Every
spirit sees no further than its mother, out of which it has
its original, and wherein it stands; for it is impossible
for any spirit, in its own natural power to look into another
Principle, and behold it, except it be regenerated therein". This
is what Christ taught: "Ye must be born again". Only
those who are regenerated by the principle of which Christ
spoke to Nicodemus, can understand the quickening of the
Spirit which comes only from Him who gives this new birth
to all who seek it, and in whom all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge are hidden: — "hidden, not in order
that they may remain secret, but in order that they may ever
increasingly be made manifest and appropriated by us".
Jacob Boëhme,
who was born in 1575, "brought to
the birth", an idea, which three centuries later is
developing into a system of pure philosophy which promises
to "cover the earth with wisdom and understanding
in the deep mysteries of God."
Boëhme gave
birth to an idea. Keely is giving birth to a system. Both
are exceedingly imperfect in the expression of their views;
yet, in points of detail each possesses a firm dialectical
grip. In their writings, both seem overwhelmed by the vast
extent of the realm they are exploring. Both find in harmony
the object and the ending of the world's development. Conflicting
with modern science at very many points, visionary as both
appear to be, powerful expression is given to an idea of
life both in the macrocosm and the microcosm, the validity
of which can be questioned only by materialism. The idea
of the one and the system of the other teach that when
Nature is affirmed in God it is in a figurative and symbolical
sense; — that it is, in comparison with
what we call nature, something infinitely more subtle and
super-material than matter; that it is the source of matter;
a plenitude of living forces and energies. This system teaches,
as "Waterdale" has expressed it, "the existence
of a Great Almighty, as being in virtue of the perfect organization
of the Universe, even as the existence of man is incidental
to the organic structure of his body"; and that the
attribute of Omniscience is represented by "the perfect
conveyance of signs of atomic movement in vibratory action
through the length and breadth of our universe". We
are led by it to look from nature up to nature's God and
to comprehend the [Page 5] attributes of Deity as never
before, in any other system. It lays hold, with a giant's
grasp of the heart of the problems which science is wrestling,with.
It answers the question asked by Prof. Oliver Lodge in his
paper, read at Cardiff, last August, — "By what
means is force exerted, and what definitely is force?" It
was a bold speculation of Prof. Lodge, who is known as "a
very careful and sober physicist", when after admitting
that there is, herein, something not provided for in the
orthodox scheme of physics, he suggested that good physicists
should carry their appropriate methods of investigation into
the field of psychology, admitting that a line of possible
advance lies in this direction. Without speculation, science
could never advance in any direction; discussion precedes
reform; there can be no progress without it. It required
rare courage for a physicist to step from the serried ranks,
that have always been ready to point their javelins at psychologists,
and to show, with the torch of science, the hand on the sign-post
at the cross-roads pointing in the right direction. It is
the great high road of knowledge; but those who would explore
it must do so with cautious tread until the system of sympathetic
association is completed which Keely is bringing to birth,
for the road is bordered with pitfalls and quicksands and
the mists of ignorance envelope it.
Ernest Renan,
in "The Future of Science", illustrates
the thesis that, henceforth, the advancement of civilization
is to be the work of science; the word science being used
in its largest signification as covering intellectual achievement
in every direction open to the mind, and the coordination
of the results in a progressive philosophy of life. The fundamental
distinction which is expressed or implied, on every page,
is that the earlier processes of civilization belong to an
age of spontaneity, of unreflective productivity; an age
that expressed itself in myths, created religions, organized
social forms and habits in harmony with the spontaneous creations;
and that we have now entered upon the critical, defining,
intellectual age; in short, as Nisbet has said, that "the
evolution of the human race has passed from the physiological
into the psychical field; and that it is in the latter alone,
henceforward, that progress may be looked for toward a higher
civilization". Philosophy, that is to say rational research,
is alone capable of solving the question of the future of
humanity, says Renan. "The really efficacious revolution,
that which will give its shape to the future, will not be
a political, it will be a religious and moral revolution.
Politics has exhausted its resources for solving this problem.
The politician is the offscouring of humanity, not its inspired
teacher. The great revolution can only come from men of thought
and sentiment. [Page
6]
It does
not do to expect too much from governments. It is not for
them to reveal to humanity the law for which it is in search.
What humanity needs is a moral law and creed; and it is
from the depths of human nature that they will emerge,
and not from the well-trodden and sterile pathways of the
official world." In order to know whence will
come a better understanding of the religion which Christ
taught, "the religion of the future, we must always
look in the direction of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity". Not
the French: Commune liberty to cut one another's throats
(an equality of misery and a fraternity of crime) but that
liberty to know and to love the truth of things which constitutes
true religion, and which when it is bestowed, without money
and without price, as it will be, "humanity will accomplish
the remainder, without asking anyone for permission. No one
can say from what part of the sky will appear the star of
this new redemption. The one thing certain is that the shepherds
and the Magi will be once more the first to perceive it,
that the germ of it is already formed, and that if we were
able to see the present with the eyes of the future, we should
be able to distinguish, in the complication of the hour,
the imperceptible fibre which will bear life for the future.
It is amid putrefaction that the germ of future life is developed,
and no one has the right to say: "This is a rejected
stone": for that stone may be "the corner-stone
of the future edifice. Human nature is without reproach", continues
Renan (in The Future of Science), "and proceeds toward
the perfect by means of forms successively and diversely
imperfect. All the ideas which primitive science had formed
on the world appear narrow, trivial and ridiculous to us
after that which progressive research has proved to be true.
The fact is that science has only destroyed her dreams of
the past, to put in their stead a reality a thousand times
superior; but were science to remain what it is we should
have to submit to it while cursing it, for it has destroyed
and not built up again; it has awakened man from a sweet
sleep, without smoothing the reality to him. What science
gives us is not enough, we are still hungry. True science
is that which belongs neither to the school nor the drawing-room,
but which corresponds exactly to the want of man. Hence true
science is a religion which will solve for men the eternal
problems, the solution of which his nature imperatively demands.
Herein lies the hope of humanity; for like a wild beast,
the uneducated masses stand at bay; ready to turn and rend
those who are willing to keep them in their present condition,
in order to be able to make them answer their own purposes." .
. . "I am firmly convinced", says Renan "for
my own part, that [Page 7] unless
we make haste and elevate the people, we are upon the eve
of a terrible outbreak of barbarism. For if the people triumph
in their present state, it will be worse than it was with
the Franks and Vandals. They will destroy of their own accord
the instrument which might have served to elevate them; we
shall then have to wait until civilization once more emerges
spontaneously from the profound depths of nature. Morality
like politics is summed up, then, in this grand saying: To
elevate the people. If I were to see humanity collapse on
its own foundations, mankind again slaughter one another
in some fateful hour, I should still go on proclaiming that
perfection is human nature's final aim, and that the day
must come when reason and perfection shall reign supreme".
Sailing, sailing
in the same staunch ship —
We are sailing on together;
We see the rocks and we mark the shoals,
And we watch for cyclone weather.
The perils we run for one alone
Are perils for all together, —
The harbour we make for one alone,
Makes haven for all, through the weather.
Stand by your ship: be brave, brothers mine!
Be brave, for we'll stand together!
We'll yet reach the port for which we sail
In this black and stormy weather.
Sailing, sailing the same stormy sea,
We are sailing all together;
There are rocks ahead and shoals beneath,
And 'round us hurricane weather.
I see in the West a star arise,
That will guide us all together —
Stand firm by our helm and trust in God
Who pilots us through this weather.
"The dawn" of
morning breaks in the skies
Which will bring mankind together; —
To havens of peace, to havens of bliss,
We'll ride through this cyclone weather.