The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

to the Synedrion: "If this doctrine is false it will perish, and fall of itself; but if true, then
- it cannot be destroyed.
SECTION II
Modern Criticism and the Ancients
(Page 30) THE Secret Doctrine of the Aryan East is found repeated under Egyptian
symbolism and phraseology in the Book of Hermes. At, or near, the beginning of the
present century, all the books called Hermetic were, in the opinion of the average
man of Science unworthy of serious attention. They were set down and loudly
proclaimed as simply a collection of tales, of fraudulent pretences and most absurd
claims. They "never existed before the Christian era," it was said: "they were all
written with the triple object of speculation, deceiving and pious fraud;" they were all,
even the best of them, silly apocrypha. [ See in this connection, Pneumatologie des
Esprits, by the Marquis de Mirville, who devotes six enormous volumes to show the
absurdity of those who deny the reality of Satan and Magic, or the Occult Sciences -
the two being with him synonymous.] In this respect the nineteenth century proved a
most worthy scion of the eighteenth, for, in the age of Voltaire as well as in this
century, everything, save what emanated direct from the Royal Academy, was false,
superstitious, foolish. Belief in the wisdom of the Ancients was laughed to scorn,
perhaps more so even than it is now. The very thought of accepting as authentic the
works and vagaries of "a false Hermes, a false Orpheus, a false Zoroaster," of false
Oracles, false Sibyls, and a thrice false Mesmer and his absurd fluid, was tabooed all
along the line. Thus all that had its genesis outside the learned and dogmatic
precincts of Oxford and Cambridge, [ We think we see the sidereal phantom of the
old Philosopher and Mystic - once of Cambridge University - Henry More, moving
about in the astral mist over the old moss-covered roofs of the ancient town in which
he wrote his famous letter to Glanvil about "witches." The "soul" seems restless and
indignant, as on that day of May, 1678, when the doctor complained so bitterly to the
author of Sadducismus Triumphatus of Scot, Adie and Webster. "Our new inspired
saints," the soul is heard to mutter, "sworn advocates of the witches. . . . who against
all sense and reason . . . Will have no Samuel but a confederate knave . . . these inblown
buffoons, puffed up with . . . ignorance, vanity and stupid infidelity!" (See
"Letter to Glanvil," and Isis Unveiled, i, 205, 206) ] or the Academy of France, was
denounced in those days as ‘unscientific," and "ridiculously absurd." This tendency
has survived to the present day.
All Honour to Genuine Scientists - (Page 31) Nothing can be further from the
intention of any true Occultist - who stands possessed, by virtue of his higher psychic
development, of instruments of research far more penetrating in their power than any
as yet in the hands of physical experimentalists - than to look unsympathetically on
the efforts that are being made in the area of physical enquiry. The exertions and
labours undertaken to solve as many as possible of the problems of Nature have
always been holy in his sight. The spirit in which Sir Isaac Newton remarked that at
the end of all his astronomical work he felt a mere child picking up shells beside the
Ocean of Knowledge, is one of reverence for the boundlessness of Nature which
Occult Philosophy itself cannot eclipse. And it may freely be recognised that the
attitude of mind which this famous simile describes is one which fairly represents that
of the great majority of genuine Scientists in regard to all the phenomena of the
physical plane of Nature. In dealing with this they are often caution and moderation
itself. They observe facts with a patience that cannot be surpassed. They are slow to
cast these into theories, with a prudence that cannot be too highly commended. And,
subject to the limitations under which they serve Nature, they are beautifully accurate
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