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528 the; secret doctrine.
who proclaim them "materially fallacious," while others—the "atomomechanicalists"—cling
to them with desperate tenacity. The supposition
of an atomic or molecular constitution of Ether is upset, moreover, by
thermo-dynamics, for Clerk Maxwell showed that such a medium
would be simply gas.* The hypothesis of "finite intervals" is thus
proven of no avail as a supplement to the undulatory theory. Besides,
eclipses fail to reveal any such variation of colour as is supposed by
Cauchy, on the assumption that the chromatic rays are propagated
with different velocities. Astronomy has pointed out more than one
phenomenon absolutely at variance with this doctrine.
Thus, while in one department of Physics the atomo-molecular constitution
of the Ether is accepted in order to account for one special set
of phenomena, in another department such a constitution is
be quite subversive of a number of well-ascertained facts;
charges are thus justified.
Chemistry deemed it
found to
and Hirn's
Impossible to concede the enormous elasticity of the sether without' depriving it
of those properties, upon which its serviceableness in the construction of chemical
theories mainly depended.
This ended in a final transformation of Ether.
The exigencies of the atomo-mechanical theory have led distinguished mathematicians
and physicists to attempt a substitution for the traditional atoms of
matter, of peculiar forms of vortical motion in a universal, homogeneous, incompressible,
and coniinuoiis material medium [Ether], t
The present writer—claiming no great scientific education, but only
a tolerable
acquaintance with modern theories, and a better one with
Occult Sciences — picks up weapons against the detractors of the
Esoteric Teaching in the very arsenal of Modern Science. The glaring
contradictions, the mutually-destructive hypotheses of world-renowned
Scientists,
their disputes, their accusations and denunciations of each
other, show plainly that, whether accepted or not, the Occult Theories
have as much right to
a hearing as any of the so-called learned and
academical hypotheses. Thus, whether the followers of the Royal
Society choose to accept Ether as a continuous or as a discontinuous fluid
matters little, and is indifferent for the present purpose. It simply
points to one certainty: Official Science knows 7iothing to this day of the
constitution of Ether. I^et Science call it Matter, if it likes; only
• See Clerk Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity, and compare with Cauchy's Memoive sur la Dispersion
de la Lumiere.
+ Stallo, loc. cii., p. X.