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OCCULT CHEMISTRY. 281
Sthula Sharira, that is the grossest of all our "Principles," but verily
the middle Principle, the real Animal Centre, whereas our Body is
but its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the
beast in us acts all its life. Every intellectual Theosophist will understand
my real meaning. Thus the idea that the human tabernacle is
built by countless Lives, just in the same way as was the rocky crust of
our Earth, has nothing repulsive in it for the true Mystic. Nor can
Science oppose the Occult teaching, for it is not because the microscope
will ever fail to detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it can reject
the doctrine.
{c)
Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organisms of
both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various
kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of
microbes with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines,
cerobes, anaerobes, and what not. But Science has never yet gone so
far as to assert with the Occult doctrine, that our bodies, as well as
those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up
of such beings; which, with the exception of the larger species, no
microscope can detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material
portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will go
far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and Phj'siology^ are
the two great magicians of the future, which are destined to open the
eyes of mankind to great physical truths. With every day, the identity
between the animal and physical man, between the plant and man, and
even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man—is more and
more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all
being found to be identical. Chemical Science may well say that there
is
no difference between the matter which composes the ox, and that
which forms man. But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. It
says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal
invisible Lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain
and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the
tree which shelters it from the sun. Each particle—whether you call it
organic or inorganic—^ a Life. Every atom and molecule in the Universe
is both life-giving and death-giving to such forms, inasmuch as it
builds by aggregation universes, and the ephemeral vehicles ready to
receive the transmigrating soul, and as
eternally destroys and changes
the forms, and expels the souls from their temporary abodes. It
creates and kills; it is self-generating and self-destroying; it brings