the
achievements in which the men of science feel the most justly proud! It
is true that on the whole astronomy has achieved triumphs more brilliant
than those of most other sciences. But if it has done much in the
direction of satisfying man's straining and thirsting mind and his
noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important
particulars, it has ever laughed at man's puny efforts to wrest the
great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus.
While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial
and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously
progressed orbs of space have not been detected, nor proven to be
identical with those observed on our own planet. In this particular,
Esoteric Psychology may be useful. But who of the men of science would
consent to confront it with their own handiwork? Who of them would
recognise the superiority and greater trustworthiness of the Adept's
knowledge over their own hypotheses, since in their case they can claim
the mathematical correctness of their deductive reasonings based on the
alleged unerring precision of the modern instruments; while the Adepts
can claim but their knowledge of the ultimate nature of the materials
they have worked with for ages, resulting in the phenomena produced.
However much it may he urged that a deductive argument, besides being an
incomplete syllogistic form, may often be in conflict with fact; that
their major propositions may not always be correct, although the
predicates of their conclusions seem correctly drawn--spectrum analysis
will not be acknowledged as inferior to purely spiritual research. Nor,
before developing his sixth sense, will the man of science concede the
error of his theories as to the solar spectrum, unless he abjure, to
some degree at least, his marked weakness for conditional and
disjunctive syllogisms ending in eternal dilemmas. At present the
"Adepts" do not see any help for it. Were these invisible and unknown
profanes to interfere with--not to say openly contradict--the dicta of
the Royal Society, contempt and ridicule, followed by charges of crass
ignorance of the first elementary principles of modern science would be
their only reward; while those who would lend an ear to their
"vagaries," would be characterized immediately as types of the "mild
lunatics" of the age. Unless, indeed, the whole of that August body
should be initiated int