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662 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
advocating its mechanical Forces.
For these act very often with more
than human intelligence and pertinency. Nevertheless, that intelligence
is denied and attributed to blind chance. But, as De Maistre
was right in calling the law of gravitation merely a word which replaced
"the thing unknown," so are we right in applying the same remark to
all the other Forces of Science. And if it is objected that the Count
was an ardent Roman Catholic, then we ma}^ cite I,e Couturier, as
ardent a Materialist, who said the same thing, as did also Herschell
and many others.*
From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a Star to a rush-light,
from the Sun to the vital heat of the meanest organic being—the world
of Form and Existence is an immense chain, the links of which are all
connected. The Law of Analogy is the first key to the world-problem,
and these links have to be studied coordinately in their Occult relations
to each other.
When, therefore, the Secret Doctrine—postulating that
conditioned
or limited space (location) has no real being except in this world of
illusion, or, in other words, in our perceptive faculties—teaches that
every one of the higher, as of the lower worlds, is
interblended with
our own objective world; that millions of things and beings are, in
point of localization, around and iji us, as we are around, with, and in
them ; this is no mere metaphysical figure of speech, but a sober fact in
Nature, however incomprehensible to our senses.
But one has to understand the phraseology of Occultism before
criticizing what it asserts. For example, the Doctrine refuses—as
Science does, in one sense—to use the words "above" and "below,"
"higher" and "lower," in reference to invisible spheres, since here
they are without meaning. Even the terms "East" and "West" are
merely conventional, necessary only to aid our human perceptions.
For though the Earth has its two fixed points in the poles. North
and South, yet both East and West are variable relatively to our
own position on the Earth's surface, and in consequence of its rotation
from West to East. Hence, when "other worlds" are mentioned—
whether better or worse, more spiritual or still more material, though
both invisible—the Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside
or inside our Earth, as the theologians and the poets do ;
for their
location is nowhere in the space known to, or conceived by, the
profane. They are, as it were, blended with our world—interpene-
* See Mtisie des Sciences, August, 1856.