Sinnett A.P. - A Great Step in Advance

The address delivered to the Physical Section of the British Association by Professor Oliver Lodge at Cardiff, constitutes one of the most important utterances of recent years connected with the preparation of the public mind for theosophic thinking. There are more avenues of approach than one to theosophic conclusions. A pure ardour for spiritual conditions of consciousness will in some cases suffice to illuminate the path of esoteric study; in others the broad logical coherence of esoteric ideas concerning human evolution will afford the only solace possible to quivering sympathies in torment at the sight of human suffering all around us, unexplained, unintelligible, and, without esoteric interpretation, purposeless and futile. But it would be a great mistake for any persons concerned with the enlightenment of this generation, to overlook the fact that the biggest obstacle in the way of the great majority of people in our time with regard to the appreciation of esoteric teaching, is that profound incredulity in regard to all alleged events or possibilities lying outside the domain of mere physical causation, which has rooted itself in the minds of the most cultured classes during the nineteenth century. Whether the magnificent achievements of physical research during that period, in themselves very often sufficient to satisfy the thirst for knowledge, or the unsatisfactory conceptions of conventional religion are most to blame for the result, the state of things we have actually to face is that for the most part the most highly cultivated minds of our time are all but incapable of assimilating a belief having reference to natural occurrences which bring forces of the psychic or physical planes into operation. We all know that this incredulity provokes something like angry resentment on the part of most persons concerned with physical science, when evidence, no matter how satisfactory in itself, is offered to them with a view of establishing any law of super-physical nature. The spiritualists have suffered most from this attitude of mind on the part of the scientific world generally, and the torrent of scornful abuse directed against them by some representatives of that world, and re-echoed with ribald delight by their foolish jackals in the newspapers, has overwhelmed not only the charlatan and impostor, who of course have played a large part in the literature of spiritualism, but also hundreds and thousands of good and earnest people, terribly misled, perhaps, by the experiences they have encountered, but none the less eager in the pursuit of knowledge through new openings and experiments, whom the scientific world ought long ago to have taken under their protection and guidance, instead of hounding on the ignorant herd at large to stone them 44 with obloquy and the missiles of ridicule and contempt which have taken the place of the harder stones in use at early periods of the world’s history.

It has often been our province in these pages to combat erroneous conclusions which the spiritualists have reached concerning the phenomena on which they have endeavoured to build a philosophical system, but the errors into which they have fallen afford no excuse whatever for the scientific world (which ought to be pursuing the truth, wherever that can be found) for holding obstinately aloof from the deeply interesting experiments with which the spiritualists have been concerned. One or two great scientific men, as we all know, have handled this terrible subject, have found that in real truth the familiar laws of physical causation are amongst those which are only impinging on this plane of matter. They have realized that there is, close in our neighbourhood, a realm of invisible intelligence, and that this realm is in some capricious way armed with powers by means of which it can translate its thought into manifestations within our cognizance. But whenever isolated men of science have come to such conclusions they have always been either repudiated by their colleagues at large, or, if they were too great and important in other lines of research to render this possible, their greatest work has been treated as an aberration of genius, a mono-maniacal weakness to be ignored by their friends and apologized for as far as possible.

Now at last Professor Lodge has spoken out in a tone that ought to have been employed long ago by the leaders of science, and he has boldly taken the opportunity of doing this when surrounded by the greatest scientific assemblage of the year in England, and when his utterances, occupying the important position that he does, are bound to be noticed far and wide within, as well as without, the limits of the scientific world. He has declared that it is but a platitude to say that our conscious aim should always be truth, and that it would be a great pity if the too complete absorption of our attention in the knowledge that has already been acquired, and in the fringe of territory lying immediately adjacent to it, were to end in our losing the power of raising our eyes and receiving evidence of a totally fresh kind; of perceiving the existence of regions in which the same processes of enquiry as had proved so fruitful might be extended with results at present incalculable, and perhaps wholly unexpected. Of course he handles actual examples in psychic enquiry with great reserve, and he speaks of thought-transference as a subject which must be enquired into; while the truth of course is that enquirers in this department, working in strict accordance with the methods of modern science, have established the fact of thought-transference as a principle in nature far more conclusively than Mr. Stanley has established the fact of the existence of the Congo Forest. However, the important task which Professor Lodge had to perform, and has performed so magnificently, was not that of rehearsing specific evidence, but of rebuking the narrow-minded bigotry to which 45 orthodox science has been in these latter times so terribly a prey, and of stating the case into which it has been their bounden duty to enquire in succession to those who have accomplished such enquiries already, but whose authority so far has not been sufficient to render the multitude willing to accept the great gifts they have been bringing to the common store of knowledge. The relation of life to energy is a topic in reference to which Professor Lodge throws out some important ideas, warning his brethren not to be too much content with their present range of experience:

“By what means is force exerted, and what, definitely, is force? I can hardly put the question here and now so as to be intelligible, except to those who have approached and thought over the same difficulties; but I venture to say that there is here something not provided for in the orthodox scheme of physics; that modern physics is not complete, and that a line of possible advance lies in this direction.”

Following up this Professor Lodge shows within the next two sentences that he has the courage of his new convictions:

“And if there is a gap in our knowledge between the conscious idea of a motion and the liberation of muscular energy needed to accomplish it, how do we know that a body may not be moved without ordinary material contact by an act of will?”

As he justly says, if the conservation of energy were upset by the theories concerning psychic action on matter, which the spiritualists have been chiefly concerned with bringing into Western notice, that indeed would be a formidable obstacle in the way of taking them for what they seem, but, says Professor Lodge, nothing that we know is upset by the discovery of a novel means of communication, perhaps some more immediate action through the ether. And then in half a dozen words he gives utterance to the sublimely reasonable truth which of course has been asserted, and re-asserted, and emphasized a hundred times in theosophic literature: –

“It is no use theorising; it is unwise to decline to examine phenomena because we feel sure of their impossibility. We ought to know the universe very thoroughly and completely before we take up that attitude.”

As regards the conservation of energy, if only the self-styled philosophers of our physical age had not obstinately shut their eyes to the facts of nature conflicting with their pre-conceived ideas, they would have seen in truth that on their own hypothesis the conservation of energy, as they have understood it, was not the invariable law they imagined. With the infinite varieties of experiment open to them they discerned the conservation of energy operating through the domains of mechanical, electrical, chemical and other forces, and on evidence which is really insufficient to establish that idea which they rightly attain by an illogical leap, they realized the conservation of energy as a universal law of nature. If nature was really limited by the barriers they set up, and he only forces with which she had to deal, those perceptible to the five senses, the conservation of energy would not be one of her principles. For it would then be violated 46 whenever will power provokes a mechanical result, as we, who have studied these things, have long since known that it can, though the idea is revealed for the first time to assembled science at Cardiff, and the listeners gasp with surprise, and hardly know how to deal with the innovating thought. The real law is that the conservation of energy embraces other planes of nature besides those on which the physical senses perceive it in operation; but with the mysteries of energy in its relations to the spiritual plane we have very little as yet but a dim and imperfect consciousness.

The whole region, Professor Lodge thinks, in which mind acts directly on mind, and possibly mind even on matter, is “unexplored territory”, and in view of the magnificent service his present address is calculated to do to the great cause of truth’s advance we may forgive him the expression, absurd as it will seem to those who know something of the explorations to which that territory has been subjected. But in the noblest spirit of anxiety to push forward, he calls on his brethren of science that they shall free themselves from “the disgrace of jogging along accustomed roads, leaving to outsiders the work, the ridicule, and the gratification of unfolding a new region to unwilling eyes”.

If the attitude of mind which Professor Lodge has reached could become that of the European world of science in general, the change would be immeasurably important in the direction of favouring the general acceptance of theosophic teaching. However reasonable and coherent that teaching may be, however sublime its ethical code, everyone who knows anything about it at all knows that it must involve the recognition, as facts in nature, of principles against which the hard incredulity of the physical intellect, trained in conventional methods of research alone, is always fiercely at war. And as regards the great bulk of moderately educated humanity in Europe, if it may not be quite true to say that they leave the scientific world to do all their thinking for them, it is certainly true that as a body they will never venture to think in opposition to the dictates which the scientific world may issue. They will venture, it is true, to go to church and to make professions of belief although the scientific world may withhold its countenance from these proceedings, but the scientific world has its own attachment to decorum, even when its principles may be a little strained in maintaining the worship of that idea, and the world at large knows that its professed thinkers will, for the most part, be very tolerant of its mere lip-service to the great rival orthodoxy with which science is in the same relations as those maintained by Voltaire when he lifted his hat to the procession of the Host, “Nous nous saluons, mais nous ne parlons pas”. Once let the word go forth that even in the atmosphere of the highest science, revelations of new truth concerning humanity need not any more be scouted out of notice because they involve new revelations concerning natural forces as well, and the largest possible results may be expected 47 from the attention which will then, so to speak, be payable by the world at large to modern observers of ancient esoteric wisdom. We are very far from suggesting that a true theosophist is made as soon as a new enquirer into the wonders with which the first inauguration of theosophy was associated, has possessed himself with the belief that the records of these represent real events, and indicate new lines of enquiry along which truth may be pursued. But in so far as it is one, at all events, of the great principles of theosophic teaching that human consciousness trained in the right way, may, without waiting for whatever illumination lies beyond the grave, acquire direct cognizance of nature’s more exalted regions, and of the wisdom, not to speak of the beatitude, which has to do with the spiritual plane, it is of primary importance to break down the miserable and forlorn materialism which hugs the grovelling superstition – more ignoble, almost, than the wildest vagaries of mediæval fancy – that its own senses can reach out and embrace the totality of things, and that when the organism which controls them is dust, the thoughts to which they give rise will vanish like yesterday’s shadow from the wall. The blindness, the superstition of science, in spite of its glories and its achievements, constitute the heaviest burdens which this generation has to carry. They are so nearly entitled, these ardent devotees of nature whom we call the great scientists of the age, to be regarded as the worthiest of her worshippers. The patience, the precision, the industry, the beautiful imaginative intellect to which modern science in its highest manifestations gives rise, cannot be admired, as one of the human faculties, too ardently or too cordially. But, as we say, the bigotry with which these qualities have hitherto been found compatible, has been a terrible obstacle in the path of what may be called scientific happiness, for there is something quite pathetic in the gloominess of the nihilism which the modern scientific view of things engenders. This came out very strongly in a touching phrase at the end of Dr. Huggins’ address as General President of the British Association. After describing the achievements of modern astronomy in connection with new instruments of research now brought to bear on that department of science, “Happy are those”, he says, “who are yet on the Eastern side of life’s meridian”. For them there were possibilities of increasing knowledge in the future which for such magnates of science as himself, close to the Western horizon, there seemed no longer any hope. This miserable belief, that the intellectual treasures of a learned life-time vanish at the end of all as the brain that stored them dissolves in the earth, is undoubtedly held by scientific men at large, and is a bitter sarcasm on the theology in the midst of which their real inner convictions have been formed. Certainly, it is first of all in the interests of our generation at large that we welcome Professor Lodge’s demonstration with enthusiastic pleasure, but if only its spirit will enter into the hearts and minds of his illustrious brethren generally, it should be they themselves who would foremost in the race appreciate the magnificent 48 possibilities held out by theosophic teaching to the mind which is already in tune with, at all events, one great department of nature, and in the training of this school has acquired the faculties which, when once directed to others, may lead with a rapidity their possessors little foresee to other than intellectual results of a sublimity beyond their present imaginings.

We are far as yet, of course, from the date at which the bigotry of science will be altogether broken down. The great majority of Professor Lodge’s brethren will feel their amour propre offended by the prospect of having to follow in the footsteps of untrained explorers in the domain of psychic phenomena. They will hang back from all enquiry themselves, and take refuge in the departmentalism of science, declaring this new research to be out of their own province, whatever that may specially be. And to a certain extent they will be justified in taking that line. Science is altogether too enormous an undertaking for any one man to work himself at more than one branch; but the electrician hears what has been done by the metallurgist for example, and takes mental note of the results: the astronomer is not indifferent to the researches of the chemist, though he may not endeavour to advance these himself: and if it becomes possible now for men of scientific eminence, without forfeiting general esteem, to work at psychic enquiry and get their results recognised in the general parliament of knowledge, that is all we need desire. By degrees the dignity and supreme importance of that branch of science which has to do with the forces and phenomena of the higher planes of Nature will be felt by the intellectual world generally, when that perception is no longer impeded by the scornful denial on the part of scientific men at large, that any knowledge is obtainable along that road.

And then science may enter on a new phase of its career, with very little suspicion of the momentous issues for the world that turn on the spirit in which it will carry out its all-important research. The theosophist who has profited by the message that has come to us during the last ten years will know that the investigation of Nature with adequate courage and ability, but without any higher motive than the worldly advantage and power which the control of astral forces may put within our grasp, led, during the life of the last great race, to spiritual degradation and suffering, rather than to true cosmic progress. It is possible that again some consequences of the same sort may be repeated. It is not possible that the Atlantean catastrophe will be exactly repeated, and the race as a whole be crushed, so to speak, under the weight of its own achievements, by getting itself absolutely opposed to the principles of infinite perfection. The fifth race will assuredly come to a better end, because it is necessary to the fulfilment of the general design of human evolution that it should. On human instrumentality it is true, Nature will rely in working out the design, but if A or B does not do the necessary work, C or D will. None the less, at any given moment, it rests with the leaders of thought and the 49 teachers whom the world respects, to give the necessary impulse, or, by leaving this ungiven, to retard progress, and for a time to entangle its general design.

Now if the Scientists of a near future, when the astral plane is recognized as one of the legitimate departments of research, fail to leaven their undertaking with the spirituality of aspiration which Theosophy teaches, they will be dragging the higher knowledge – to that extent – down to lower uses, instead of elevating the desires of humanity to the level of the higher knowledge. We touch on this possibility, however, rather because it will no doubt present itself to the minds of a good many anxious thinkers already engaged on psychic enquiry by the light of Theosophic teaching, than because it is a danger which need seriously impair the satisfaction we ought to feel at the great step in advance which Prof. Lodge has accomplished. No activities in life are free from risks, but those of us are not the least likely to meet with accidents, who are the most timid in reflecting on the perils they may perhaps encounter. So with the elevation of human knowledge and requirements to the level of those realms of Nature of which physicists have hitherto known nothing, but into which one of them at all events is pursuing his way and encouraging others to follow. Of course there are risks to be encountered there, but it is merely in reference to the precise nature of these that the modern scientific world is ignorant. Without knowing the way in which they are to be circumvented, the aptitudes of the highly educated classes in the present day for assimilating lofty motives, is shown by the wonderful altruism which so often colours the most depressing and gloomy philosophies of materialistic thinking. Assuredly this ready inclination of current aspiration towards high ethical standards will operate with psychic explorers of the coming epoch, as a rule, if not in every case. We are not in the least afraid of, or for, our fellow students of Nature in this respect, though as yet they have not linked their ethics with their science, as they will be able to do when they get on a little further.

A. P. Sinnett.

Footnotes