Quotes:Fechner, Gustav Theodor

Zirkoff, Boris

Fechner, Gustav Theodor. German experimental psychologist and philosopher, b. at Goss-Sarchen, Lower Lusatia, April 19, 1801; d. at Leipzig, Nov. 18, 1887. Educated at Dresden and Leipzig. Appointed, 1834, professor of physics, but, due to eye affection, turned to the study of the relations between body and mind. His epochmaking work, Elemente der Psychophysik (1860), is an attempt to discover an exact methematical relation between bodily and conscious facts as different facets of the one reality, as proposed by Spinoza. Fechner conceived the world as highly animistic, including the stars; to him God was the Soul of the Universe, and natural laws the unfoldment of God’s perfection. He was the founder of modem psychological research.

It is of very great interest to occult students to realize that Master K.H. apparently knew Fechner and had conversations with him, most likely during the period when this Adept-Brother attended one or more Universities in Germany, to familiarize himself with the Occidental viewpoint. In one of his letters to A. P. Sinnett (Letter IX in the Mahatma Letters)he tells Sinnett what he then said to Fechner: “You are right; .... ‘every diamond, every crystal, every plant and star has its own individual soul, besides man and animal . . . .’ and, ‘there is a hierarchy of souls from the lowest forms of matter up to the World Soul,’ but, you are mistaken when adding to the above the assurance that ‘the spirits of the departed hold direct psychic communication with Souls that are still connected with a human body’—for, they do not.”

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 3, p. 508