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524 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
chemist, and rigid-elastic to satisfy the physicist; it cannot be continuous at the
command of Sir William Thomson and discontinuous on the suggestion of Cauchy
or Fresnel.*
The eminent Physicist, G. A. Hirn, may likewise be quoted as saying
the same thing in the 43rd Volume of the Memoires de VAcademie Royale
de Belgique, which we translate from the French, as cited:
When one sees the assurance with which to-day are affirmed doctrines which
attribute the collectivity, the universality of the phenomena to the motions alone
of the atom, one has a
right to expect to find likewise unanimity in the qualities
assigned to this unique being, the foundation of all that exists. Now, from the
first examination of the particular systems proposed, one finds the strangest deception;
one perceives that the atom of the chemist, the atom of the physicist, that of
the metaphysician, and that of the mathematician .... have absolutely
nothing in common but the name! The inevitable result is the existing subdivision
of our sciences, each of which, in its own little pigeon-hole, constructs an atom
which satisfies the requirements of the phenomena it studies, without troubling
itself in the least about the requirements proper to the phenomena of the neighbouring
pigeon-hole. The metaphysician banishes the principles of attraction and
repulsion as dreams; the mathematician, who analyses the laws of elasticity and
those of the propagation of light, admits them implicitly, without even naming
them. . . . The chemist cannot explain the grouping of the atoms, in his often
complicated molecules, without attributing to his atoms specific distinguishing
qualities; for the physicist and the metaphysician, partisans of the modem doctrines,
the atom is, 07t the contrary, always and everywhere the same. What am I saying.
There is no agreement even in one and the same science as to the properties of the
atom. Each constructs an atom to suit his own fancy, in order to explain some
special phenomenon with which he is particularly concemed.t
The above is the photographically correct image of Modern Science
and Physics. The "pre-requisite of that incessant play of the 'scientific
imagination'," which is so often found in Professor Tyndall's eloquent
discourses, is vivid indeed, as is shown by Stallo, and for contradictory
variety it leaves far behind it any "phantasies" of Occultism. However
that may be, if physical theories are confessedly "mere formal,
explanatory, didactic devices," and if, to use the words of a critic of
Stallo, "atomism is only a symbolical graphic system," J then the
Occultist can hardly be regarded as assuming too much, when he
places alongside of these "devices" and "symbolical systems" of
Modern Science, the symbols and devices of Archaic Teachings.
• Concepts of Modern Physics, pp. xi, xii, Introd. to 2nd Ed.
t " Recherches experimentales sur la relation qui existe entre la resistance de I'air et sa temperature,"
p. 68, translated from Stallo's quotation.
t From the criticism of Concepts of Modern Physics, in Nature. See Stallo's work, p. xvi of
Introduction.