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''^he; secret doctrine.
proclaim their beliefs.
authorities, and of many others,
But the hesitation and doubts of the above cited
too, whom we could name, did not in
the least prevent scientific speculation from wool-gathering in the fields
of brute matter just as before.
fluid distinct from it;
First it was matter and an imponderable
then came the imponderable fluid so much criticized
by Grove; then Ether, which was at first discontinuous and then
became continuous; after which came the "mechanical" Forces. These
have now settled in life as "modes of motion," and the Ether has become
more mysterious and problematical than ever. More than one
man of Science objects to such crude materialistic views. But then,
from the days of Plato, who repeatedly asks his readers not to confuse
incorporeal Elements with their Principles—the transcendental or spiritual
Elements; from those of the great Alchemists, who, like Paracelsus,
made a great difference between a phenomenon and its cause,
or the Noumenon; to Grove, who, though he sees "no reason to divest
universally diffused matter of the functions common to all matter," yet
uses the term Forces where his critics, "who do not attach to the word
any idea of a specific action," say Force; from those days to this, nothing
has proved competent to stem the tide of brutal Materialism.
Gravitation
is the sole cause, the acting God, and Matter is its prophet, said
the men of Science only a few years ago.
They have changed their views several times since then.
But do the
men of Science understand the innermost thought of Newton, one of
the most spiritual-minded and religious men of his day, any better now
than they did then It is certainly to be doubted. Newton is credited
with having given the death-blow to
the Elemental Vortices of Descartes—the
idea of Anaxagoras, resurrected, by the bye—though the
last modern "vortical atoms" of Sir William Thomson do not, in truth,
differ much from the former. Nevertheless, when his disciple Forbes
wrote in the Preface to the chief work of his master a sentence declaring
that "attraction was the cause of the system," Newton was the
first to solemnly protest. That which in the mind of the great mathematician
assumed the shadow>% but firmly rooted image of God, as the
Noumenon of all,* was called more philosophically by ancient and
* "Attraction," Le Couturier, a Materialist, writes, "has now become for the public that which it
was for Newton himself— a simple word, an Idea" (Panorama des Mondes), since its cause is unknown.
Herschell virtually says the same, when remarking, that whenever studying the motion of the
heavenly bodies, and the phenomena of attraction, he feels penetrated at every moment with the idea
of "the existence of causes that act for us under a veil, disguising their direct action."
Sciences, August, 1856.)
(Must'e des