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574 'J'HE SECRET DOCTRINE.
but depend on the relative proportions of ethereal and ponderable matter of which
they are composed. The most elastic gas may be reduced to the liquid form by the
abstraction of caloric, and again converted into a firm solid, the particles of which
would cling together with a force proportional to their augmented affinity for caloric.
On the sOther hand, by adding a sufficient quantity of the same principle to the
densest metals, their attraction for it is diminished when they are expanded into
the gaseous state, and their cohesion is destroyed."
Having thus quoted at length the heterodox views of the great
"heretic"—views that to be correct, need only a little alteration of
terms here and there—Dr. Richardson, undeniably an original and
liberal thinker, proceeds to sum up these views, and continues
I shall not dwell at great length on this unity of sun-force and earth-force, which
this theory implies. But I may add that out of it, or out of the hypothesis of mere
motion as force, and of virtue without substance, we may gather, as the nearest
possible approach to the truth on this, the most complex and profound of all subjects,
the following inferences:
(a) Space, inter-stellary, inter-planetary, inter-material, inter-organic, is not a
vacuum, but is filled with a subtle fluid or gas, which for want of a better term* we
may still call, as the ancients did, Aiih-ur—Solar Fire—^ther. This fluid, unchangeable
in composition, indestructible, invisible.t pervades everj^thing and all
[ponderable'] matter, t the pebble in the nmning brook, the tree overhanging, the
man looking on, is charged with the ether in various degrees; the pebble less than
the tree, the tree less than man. All in the planet is in like manner so charged! A
world is built up in ethereal fluid, and moving through a sea of it.
(b) The ether, whatever its nature is, is from the sun and from the suns:§ the
suns are the generators of it, the store-houses of it, the diffusers of it.||
(c) Without the ether there could be no motion; without it particles of ponderable
matter could not glide over each other; without it there could be no impulse
to excite those particles into action.
,
(d) Ether determines the constitution of bodies. Were there no ether there
could be no change of constitution in substance; water, for instance, could only
* Verily, unless the Occult terms of the Kabalists are adopted!
+ " Unchangeable" only during manvantaric periods, after which it merges once more into Mulaprakriti;
"invisible" for ever, in its own essence, but seen in its reflected coruscations, called the
Astral Light by the modem Kabalists. Yet, conscious and grand Beings, clothed in that same
Essence, move in it.
i One has to add ponderable, to distinguish it from that Ether which is Matter still, though a
substratum.
The Occult Sciences reverse the statement, and say that it is the Sun, and all the Suns that are
from it, which emanate at the manvantaric dawn from the Central Sun.
Here, we decidedly beg to differ from the learned gentleman. I,et us remember that this Ether—
II
whether Akasha, or its lower principle, Ether, is meant by the term—is septenary. Akasha is Aditi
in the allegory, and the mother of Marttanda, the Sun, the Devamatri, Mother of the Gods. In the
Solar System, the Sun is her Buddhi and Vahana, the Vehicle, hence the sixth principle; in Kosmos
all the Suns are the Kama Rupa of Akasha and so is ours. It is only when regarded as an indi\'idual
Entity in his own Kingdom, that Surya, the Sun, is the seventh principle of the great body of
Matter.