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SECTION XII.
Scientific and Esoteric Evidence for, and
Objections to,
the Modern
Nebular Theory.
Of late, Esoteric Cosmogony has been frequently opposed by the
phantom of this theory and its ensuing hypotheses. ''Can this most
scientific teaching be denied by your Adepts" it is asked. "Not
entirely," is the reply, "but the admissions of the men of Science
themselves kill it: and there remains nothing for the Adepts to
deny."
To make of Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed, the study
of spiritual and psychic, as well as of physical, Nature.
Otherwise it
will ever be like the anatomy of man, discussed of old by the profane
from the point of view of his shell-side, and in ignorance of the interior
work.
Even Plato, the greatest Philosopher of his country, was guilty,
before his Initiation, of such statements as that liquids pass into the
stomach through the lungs. Without metaphysics, as Mr. H. J. Slack
says, real Science is inadmissible.
The nebulse exist; yet the Nebular Theory is wrong. A nci;ula
exists in a state of entire elemental dissociation. It is gaseous and
something else besides, which can hardly be connected with gases
as these are known to Physical Science; and it is self-luminous. But
that is all. The sixty-two "coincidences" enumerated by Professor
Stephen Alexander,* confirming the Nebular Theory, may all
be explained
by Esoteric Science; though, as this is not an astronomical
work, the refutations are not attempted at present. Laplace and Faye
come nearer to the correct theory than any; but of the speculations of
• Smithsonian Contributions, xxi., Art. i. pp. 79-97.