Superfluity

“ Having shewn that impulsion depends on attraction; that the expansive force, like the attractive, becomes negative; that light, heat, and fire, are only modes of the common existing matter; in one word, that there exists but one sole force, and one sole matter, ever ready to attract or repel, according to circumstances; let us see how, with this single spring, and this single subject, Nature can vary her works, ad infinitum. ”

“ Büchner. We have no notion of supersensible forces.
Reader. You talk without reflection, doctor. If you have no such a notion, what is it, then, that compels you to admit any demonstrated [pg 641] truth? Is it attraction, heat, electricity, or any of your physical or chemical forces? No; it is the force of demonstration, it is the force of truth. This is no vain theory; I appeal to your own experience. Your intellect is obliged to yield to the force of evidence and demonstration just as inevitably as the pendulum is obliged to yield to the force of gravitation. ”

“ The lowest plane, being fixed, can not pass the influx on, but its office is reactive, whereby inflowing powers are conserved, and caused to yield their powers in ultimates, and thereby in higher planes. Influx having descended to the ultimate, it can not ascend as influx, but must ascend as reacting effects. This is illustrated by the sun's influx into nature. Nature has no influx into the sun, but the sun's influx ascends as the reactive effects of heat, light, electric action, and gravity. A still better illustration is the reactive effect of affection and thought in acts. ”

“ The vertical influx is from heaven, which maintains all order and keeps all things alive. The lateral influx is from the world of spirits; and from the good and evil populations on the earth in connection with them. The abyssal influences are from the hells, from which disease and death perpetually assault us. All these are of human conditions, and are virtually 'in us, from us, and of us.' They are firmaments of influx above and below, and operate by induction; they are forces of influx at the sides, and act by spiritual pressure. ”

“ We shall assume a medium existing before the need of the transmission (for reasons to be seen later.) Our Theory of Dynamic Thought, and Thought- [Pg 174] Transference between bodies of Substance, compels us to suppose that this medium is a Mental Connection, or Mental Relation, existing between the two bodies of Substance. So, we must consider the question of this medium of Mind transmitting the vibrations of Radiant Energy from the Sun to the Earth. How can Mind conduct Radiant Energy? ”

“ What reason have you for accepting that, to other forms unknown and yet transparent to this energy, your sunshine may not be as intangible as the ether of space is to man? What reason have you to believe that a force torrent is not circulating to and from the sun and earth, inappreciable to man, excepting the mere trace of this force which, modified by contact action with matter appears as heat, light, and other force expressions? ”

“ The analogies of gross matter are accordingly excluded from our thoughts, and we suppose the impulse to proceed from some very subtle fluid, to which we give the name of ether, or any other name, which we may choose to invent for it. The hypothesis is founded, you will observe, on the mere analogy of another species of motion, and which would account for gravitation by the impulse of some fine fluid. It is evident, that there may be, in this way, as many hypotheses to explain a single fact, as there have been circumstances analogous observed in all the various phenomena of nature. ”

“ Thus I admit, with the pure dynamist, that the material universe, or successive material universes (if such a solecism is pardonable) , as manifestations of matter and motion, are concatenated with time, are born, run their course, and fade away, as do the clouds of air. But the infinite reservoir of power wherein they occur as disturbances remains. ”

“ He wished to be shown that changes in form caused evolution in force; that chemical or mechanical energy had by natural selection and minute changes, under uniform conditions, converted itself into thought. The ganoid fish seemed to prove,—to him,—that it had selected neither new form nor new force, but that the curates were right in thinking that force could be increased in volume or raised in intensity only by help of outside force. ”

“ As a consequence of this division into mass and ether there ensues a ceaseless struggle between the two antagonistic elements, and this struggle is the source of all physical processes. The positive ponderable matter, the element with the feeling of like or desire, is continually striving to complete the process of condensation, and thus collecting an enormous amount of potential energy ”

“ Apparently, the universally-co-existent forces of attraction and repulsion, which, as we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes—produce now an immeasurable period during which the attractive forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period during which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal diffusion—alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution. ”

“ And as we are now convinced by facts, and the multitude of constant and uniform observations, that there exists in nature powers which do not act by the mode of impulsion, why should we not make use of those powers as mechanical principles? Why should we exclude them from the explanations of effects, which we are convinced they produce? Why should we be confined to employ only the power of impulsion? Is not this like judging of a picture by the touch, and explaining the phenomena of the mass by those of the surface, and the penetrating power by superficial action? ”

“ The line of force directly acting, is the dynamic [214] energy of matter. It passes into the world of life in an ascending spiral, that at each ascension, instead of completing itself, rises to a higher degree. The spirals at b represent the life of plants; and those at i animal life, now termed vital energy or vital force. There is incompleteness, and the force ever ascends to a higher form. At d the spiral becomes a circle. The evoluting or individualizing energy returns within its orbit, and instead of extending to higher forms, seeks the perfection of the human being. ”

“ In the preceding chapters we have found certain definite facts,—that all known matter is formed out of one primordial Universal Substance,—that the ether spreading throughout limitless space is a Universal Medium, through which it is possible to convey force by means of vibrations,—and that vibrations can be started by the power of Sound. These we have found to be well established facts of ordinary science, and taking them as our starting-point, we may now begin to speculate as to the possible workings of the known laws under unknown conditions. ”

“ Our influence is like those strong currents which run beneath the surface of the ocean without disturbing it, and yet with irresistible force, and at a rate that may be calculated. It is to help in the direction of that force that I am going to devote my life. ”

“ They form an essentially discontinuous system, and translate the process of our perceptual experience, which is naturally a flux, into a set of stagnant and petrified terms. The very conception of flux itself is an absolutely changeless meaning in the mind: it signifies just that one thing, flux, immovably.—And, with this, the doctrine of the flux of the concept may be dismissed, and need not occupy our attention again. ”

“ If the minds of all the most learned sages, of all time, were concentrated, into one mind, that one would be too feeble, in its mental outreach, to comprehend the conditions associated with the fourth order of sympathetic condensation. The controversies of the past in regard to the condensation of invisible matter prove this. The chemistry of the infinite and the chemistry of the finite are as wide apart, in their sympathetic ranges, as is the velocity of light from the movement of the hour-hand of a clock. Even the analysis of the visible conditions taxes our highest powers of concentration. ”

“ Far back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that of things conjunct and separated. The great continua of time, space, and the self envelop everything, betwixt them, and flow together without interfering. The things that they envelop come as separate in some ways and as continuous in others. Some sensations coalesce with some ideas, and others are irreconcilable. Qualities compenetrate one space, or exclude each other from it. They cling together persistently in groups that move as units, or else they separate. ”

“ Those modes of the Unknowable which we call motion, heat, light, chemical affinity, &c., are alike transformable into each other, and into those modes of the Unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought: these, in their turns, being directly or indirectly re-transformable into the original shapes. That no idea or feeling arises, save as a result of some physical force expended in producing it, is fast becoming a common place of science ”

“ How this metamorphosis takes place—how a force existing as motion, heat, or light, can become a mode of consciousness—how it is possible for aerial vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound, or for the forces liberated by chemical changes in the brain to give rise to emotion—these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom. But they are not profounder mysteries than the transformations of the physical forces into each other. ”

“ I observe that a deep layer of thought sometimes makes itself felt through the superincumbent strata, thus:—The usual single or double currents shall flow on, but there shall be an influence blending with them, disturbing them in an obscure way, until all at once I say,—Oh, there! ”

“ The centres of disturbance, which positively exceed the mean consistency in virtue of the pyknosis or condensation, form the ponderable matter of bodies; the finer, intermediate substance, which occupies the space between them, and negatively falls below the mean consistency, forms the ether, or imponderable matter. ”

“ Thus the peculiar attractions and repulsions of the particles of bodies, and the general ones of the masses of matter, perpetually oppose and counteract each other; whence if the power of attraction should cease to act, all matter would be dissipated by the power of repulsion into boundless space; and if heat, or the power of repulsion, should cease to act, the whole world would become one solid mass, condensed into a point. ”

“ Hence the phenomenon becomes double, it splits into inside and outside, into force and its manifestation, into cause and effect. Once more we find the inside or the force identified with the universal and permanent: not this or that flash of lightning, this or that plant—but that which continues the same in them all. The sensible appearance is individual and evanescent: the permanent in it is discovered by. reflection. Nature shows us a countless number of individual forms and phenomena. ”

“ More and more science is coming to recognize, what theosophy affirms, that the spiral vortex, which so beautifully illustrates this law, both in its time and its space aspects is the universal archetype, the pattern of all that is, has been, or will be, since it is the form assumed by the ultimate physical atom, and the ultimate physical atom is the physical cosmos in miniature. ”

“ Material molecules are edgewise in it, and meet no retardation in the subtle flood. This force is a disturbance of space energy that is rushing into the earth in one form, and out of it in another. But your mind is not yet in a condition to grasp the subject, for at best there is no method of explaining to men that which their experimental education has failed to prepare them to receive, and for which first absolutely new ideas, and next words with new meaning, must be formed. ”

“ What! a perturbative force lurking, by the hypothesis, in the human organism sufficiently powerful to lift tables, and which yet had never produced the slightest derangement in the thousands of experiments that physicists are daily making in their laboratories! Their balances, responsive to the weight of a tenth of a milligram, their pendulums whose oscillations take place with mathematical regularity, had never felt the slightest disturbing effect of these forces, whose source is there present wherever there is a man and a volition! ”

“ And while you are looking, the opaque mass begins to stir, and by-and-by slowly to turn upon its axis like a forming planet,—life beginning in the microcosm, as in the great worlds of the firmament, with the revolution that turns the surface in ceaseless round to the source of life and light. ”

“ The effects of the force, called either affinity or attraction, which maintains these elements united, are not beyond the range of our observation; tables of affinity, and of atomic weights, have been constructed, which enable the chemist to dominate over matter, just as the astronomer embraces the stars, the atoms of the world, by the law of universal gravitation. ”

“ On the one side we have the facts of external sensible experience—the statical phenomena of nature as mass, extension, position, and distance—conditions essential to the action or manifestation of force; then the dynamical phenomena of nature as rotatory, vibratory, pulsatory, gyratory, and transitive motion, which to our reason, not to our senses, are manifestations of force. Science observes the uniformity of relations among these phenomena—uniformities of resemblance, co-existence, and succession, and calls these uniformities laws of nature. ”