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538 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
world—read of the Western races—had discovered the antiquated
"fallacy" and exposed it. And now Modern Science, however ungracefully,
vindicates Archaic Knowledge, and has, moreover, to vindicate
Newton's character and powers of observation at this late hour, after
having neglected, for one century and a half, to pay any attention to
such very important passages — perchance, because it was wiser not to
attract any notice to them. Better late than never!
And now Father ^ther is re-welcomed with open arms and wedded
to gravitation, linked to it for weal or woe, until the day when it, or
both, shall be replaced by something else. Three hundred years ago
it was plenum everywhere, then it became one dismal vacuity; later
still the sidereal ocean-beds, dried up by Science, rolled onward once
more their ethereal waves. Recede ut procedas must become the motto of
exact Science—"exact," chiefly, in finding itself inexact every leap-year.
But we will not quarrel with the great men. They had to go back to
the earliest "Gods of Pythagoras and old Kanada" for the very backbone
and marrow of their correlations and "newest" discoveries, and
this may well afford good hope to the Occultists for their minor Gods.
For we believe in Le Couturier's prophecy about gravitation. We
know the day is approaching when an absolute reform will be demanded
in the present modes of Science by the Scientists themselves,
as was done by Sir William Grove, F.R.S. Till that day there is
nothing to be done. For if gravitation were dethroned to-morrow,
the Scientists would discover some other new mode of mechanical
motion the day after.*' Rough and up-hill is the path of true Science,
and its days are full of vexation of spirit. But in the face of its
"thousand" contradictory hypotheses offered as explanations of physical
phenomena, there has been no better hypothesis than "motion"
—however paradoxically interpreted by Materialism. As may be found
in the first pages of this Volume, Occultists have nothing to say against
Motion,! the Great Breath of Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Unknowable."
*
When read in a fair and unprejudiced spirit, Sir Isaac Newton's works are an ever ready witness
to show how he must have hesitated between gravitation and attraction, impulse, and some other
unknown cause, to explain the regular course of the planetary motion. But see his Treatise on Colour
(Vol. III. Question 31). We are told by Herschell that Newton left vvdth his successors the duty of
drawing all the scientific conclusions from his discovery. How Modem Science has abused the privilege
of building its newest theories upon the law of gravitation, may be reahzed when one remembers
how profoundly religious was that great man.
t The materialistic notion that because, in Physics, real or sen.sible motion is impossible in pure
space or vacuum, therefore, the eternal Motion of and in Cosmos—regarded as infinite Space—is a
fiction, only shows once more that such expressions of E;astern metaphysics as "pure Space," "pure
Being," the "Absolute," etc., have never been understood in the West.