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by The Spectator.
A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, Theology, and Art.
Volume the Forty-Fifth.
1872.
London: John Campbell, 1 Wellington Street, Strand.
A Modern French
Gnostic.
April 27, 1872
It is not easy to
conceive a more curious moral phenomenon than that of a Frenchman deeply
read in the popular aspects at least of modern science, and especially
of modern inductive science, but reproducing, nevertheless, out of the
very materials that he has thus collected, some of the most
characteristic features of the ancient Gnosis. M. Figuier has
distinguished himself by popularising the most interesting aspects of
the astronomy and natural history of our day, in books which have been
translated into English and have been found full of vivacity. But he has
now passed out of that domain into the region of what we may call a
bastard gnosis, that is, into transcendental dreams of things divine,
not evolved pure out of his personal consciousness of the Infinite, but
evolved out of a consciousness which gazes at the Infinite through the
coloured glass of an imagination imbued with the lessons of modern
physical science. The result is curiously grotesque. You have the
revelations of the telescope and the microscope predominating, in the
slides of the strangest of moral magic-lanthorns, over the mystic dreams
of a modernized Valentinus or Basilides. You have the doctrine of
metempsychosis and an antenatal existence in quaint alliance with the
doctrine of the correlation of forces and the indestructibility of
matter. You have the funniest possible cross between the Darwinian
theory of evolution and the Gnostic theory of successive emanations from
the divine fullness. You have the modernest possible discussions on 'the
plurality of worlds' mixed up with the ancientest possible discussions
on the metempsychosis of the souls of animals and human beings and their
repeated reincarnations. Finally, you have the physical theories of the
sun and the heat it engenders, arrayed for the purpose of explaining a
new doctrine of angelic ministration, and the astronomic theorem that
all the stellar worlds move round some central point in space, brought
up for the sake of illustrating what we may with reverence call a
physical theory of God. It is impossible to imagine a book fuller of
strange spiritual, moral and logical medleys than M. Figuier's, of which
Mr. Bentley [1] has given us what, if we may judge without examining the
French, is an exceedingly lively, pure, and classical translation; --
though not of course without a few of the inevitable typographical and a
few scientific blunders, the latter probably due to carelessness in the
original of which we give below a few specimens. [2]
The oddity of the
phenomenon consists in the curious influence which modern science has
exerted, and the still more curious influence which it has failed to
exert, over this modern Gnostic's mind. It has saturated his
imagination, and not affected his intellectual method of testing truth
at all. It has coloured all his visions and not made it a whit the less
easy to him to lend belief to the merest dreams. It has apparently
weaned him from all confidence in dogmatic authority, -- except his own,
but not rendered it even difficult to him to believe ardently on a mere
guess, or to exult in the grandeur of an elaborate system of which no
two links hold together against the feeblest of intellectual tests. If
we had not read M. Figuier's book, we should have deemed it simply
incredible that modern science could crowd any man's mind with pictures
without even visibly affecting its logic. Indeed, so frail and even
fanciful is the thread between M. Figuier's knowledge of the physical
world and his dreams of the super-sensual world, that, but for the
Introduction, which it is impossible to read without recognising that a
serious and satisfying belief fills the author's mind, of which he would
gladly share the comfort with others, we should have said that he had
been trying very hard to find a new and attractive mode of airing his
knowledge of physical sciences, and that he had made the religious
doubts and difficulties of the day, and the tendency that Doubt has to
trust in physical science as the only solid basis of truth, the excuse
for a new book of great pretence and no value. However, as we have said,
the seriousness of M. Figuier's purpose cannot be questioned, and
therefore there is a real interest in observing the strange mixture
which his mind presents of the wild guess-work which springs from
unsatisfied spiritual craving, and the pictorial scenery of modern
naturalism.
M. Figuier is very
severe on the modern spiritualists -- believers in "mediums," and so
forth, -- but they at least rest their belief on what they assert to be
facts within their own experience, and allow their illusions to spring,
if they be all illusions, only from the defects of their senses and the
haste and credulousness of their inductions. But M. Figuier himself
resembles the old Gnostics in nothing so much as this, that he not only
asks for no fact at all on which to build belief except its
agreeableness to his own inner sense of what is divine, but even if he
finds a lot of strongly asserted but questionable facts which would just
fit his view, he rejects them with as much scorn as if the truth of his
speculations were rather undermined than established by any show of
facts to support it, especially if they be of a kind that makes no
pretence to dignity or impressiveness. For instance, one of his beliefs
is that tolerably good men when they die rise into the ether of the
inter-stellar spaces above our atmosphere, putting on a more refined
body better adapted to a superhuman nature, and getting nearer and
nearer to the sun as they get purer and purer, -- while bad men, or
children who die too young for the purifying results of human trial and
suffering, are re-incarnated in other human bodies, and have another try
at human probation. Now we should certainly have expected any man who
calmly stated his complete belief in this assertion, to found himself on
the ghost-stories of old days and the spiritualist assertions of modern
times. But no; he cannot adequately express his contempt for such
stories. He rejects the ghosts peremptorily. He declares that the medium
is an ignorant person who mistakes his own thoughts for revelations from
beyond the tomb. Spiritualism, he says, "is a vulgar and foolish phase
of the popular belief in ghosts. It has higher pretensions, but science
and sense alike forbid us to admit them." (p. 124.) But not the less
"the fact of communication between superhuman beings and the dwellers
upon earth" is, as it seems to him, "proved."
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The world is always ungrateful to its great men. Florence
has built a statue to Galileo, but hardly even mentions
Pythagoras. The former had a ready guide in the treatises of
Copernicus, who had been obliged to contend against the
universally established Ptolemaic system. But neither
Galileo nor modern astronomy discovered the emplacement of
the planetary bodies. Thousands of ages before, it was
taught by the sages of Middle Asia, and brought thence by
Pythagoras, not as a speculation, but as a demonstrated
science. "The numerals of
Pythagoras," says
Porphyry, "were hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained all
ideas concerning the nature of all things."
Verily, then, to antiquity alone have we to look for
the origin of all things. How well
Hargrave Jennings
expresses himself when speaking of Pyramids, and how true
are his words when he asks: "Is it at all reasonable to
conclude, at a period when knowledge was at the highest, and
when the human powers were, in comparison with ours at the
present time, prodigious, that all these indomitable,
scarcely believable physical effects — that such
achievements as those of the Egyptians — were devoted to a
mistake? that the myriads of the Nile were fools laboring in
the dark, and that all the magic of their great men was
forgery, and that we, in despising that which we call their
superstition and wasted power, are alone the wise? No! there
is much more in these old religions than probably — in the
audacity of modern denial, in the confidence of these
superficial-science times, and in the derision of these days
without faith — is in the least degree supposed. We do not
understand the old time. . . . Thus we see how classic
practice and heathen teaching may be made to reconcile — how
even the Gentile and the Hebrew, the mythological and the
Christian doctrine harmonize in the general faith founded on
Magic. That Magic is indeed possible is the moral of this
book."
It is possible. Thirty years ago, when the first
rappings of Rochester awakened slumbering attention to the
reality of an invisible world; when the gentle shower of
raps gradually became a torrent which overflowed the whole
globe, spiritualists had to contend but against two
potencies — theology and science. But the theosophists have,
in addition to these, to meet the world at large and the
spiritualists first of all....
For many years we have watched the development and growth of
that apple of discord — MODERN SPIRITUALISM. Familiar with
its literature both in Europe and America, we have closely
and eagerly witnessed its interminable controversies and
compared its contradictory hypotheses. Many educated men and
women — heterodox spiritualists, of course — have tried to
fathom the Protean phenomena. The only result was that they
came to the following conclusion: whatever may be the reason
of these constant failures — whether such are to be laid at
the door of the investigators themselves, or of the secret
Force at work — it is at least proved that, in proportion as
the psychological manifestations increase in frequency and
variety, the darkness surrounding their origin becomes more
impenetrable.
That phenomena are actually witnessed, mysterious in their
nature
— generally and perhaps wrongly termed spiritual — it is
now idle to deny. Allowing a large discount for clever
fraud, what remains is quite serious enough to demand the
careful scrutiny of science. "E pur se muove," the
sentence spoken ages since, has passed into the category of
household words. The courage of Galileo is not now required
to fling it into the face of the Academy. Psychological
phenomena are already on the offensive.
The position assumed by modern scientists is that even
though the occurrence of certain mysterious phenomena in the
presence of the mediums be a fact, there is no proof that
they are not due to some abnormal nervous condition of those
individuals. The possibility that they may be produced by
returning human spirits need not be considered until the
other question is decided. Little exception can be taken to
this position. Unquestionably, the burden of proof rests
upon those who assert the agency of spirits. If the
scientists would grapple with the subject in good faith,
showing an earnest desire to solve the perplexing mystery,
instead of treating it with undignified and unprofessional
contempt, they would be open to no censure. True, the great
majority of "spiritual" communications are calculated to
disgust investigators of even moderate intelligence. Even
when genuine they are trivial, commonplace, and often
vulgar. During the past twenty years we have received
through various mediums messages purporting to be from
Shakespere, Byron, Franklin, Peter the Great,
Napoleon and
Josephine, and even from Voltaire. The general impression
made upon us was that the French conqueror and his consort
seemed to have forgotten how to spell words correctly;
Shakespere
and Byron had become chronic inebriates; and
Voltaire had turned an imbecile. Who can blame men trained
to habits of exactitude, or even simply well-educated
persons, for hastily concluding that when so much palpable
fraud lies upon the surface, there could hardly be truth if
they should go to the bottom? The huckstering about of
pompous names attached to idiotic communications has given
the scientific stomach such an indigestion that it cannot
assimilate even the great truth which lies on the
telegraphic plateaux of this ocean of psychological
phenomena. They judge by its surface, covered with froth and
scum. But they might with equal propriety deny that there is
any clear water in the depths of the sea when an oily scum
was floating upon the surface. Therefore, if on one hand we
cannot very well blame them for stepping back at the first
sight of what seems really repulsive, we do, and have a
right to censure them for their unwillingness to explore
deeper. Neither pearls nor cut diamonds are to be found
lying loose on the ground; and these persons act as unwisely
as would a professional diver, who should reject an oyster
on account of its filthy and slimy appearance, when by
opening it he might find a precious pearl inside the
shell....
Self-complacency is the most serious obstacle to the
enlightenment of the modern spiritualist. His thirty years'
experience with the phenomena seem to him sufficient to have
established intermundane intercourse upon an unassailable
basis. His thirty years have not only brought to him the
conviction that the dead communicate and thus prove the
spirit's immortality, but also settled in his mind an idea
that little or nothing can be learned of the other world,
except through mediums.
For the spiritualists, the records of the past either
do not exist, or if they are familiar with its gathered
treasures, they regard them as having no bearing upon their
own experiences. And yet, the problems which so vex them,
were solved thousands of years ago by the theurgists, who
have left the keys to those who will search for them in the
proper spirit and with knowledge. Is it possible that nature
has changed her work, and that we are encountering different
spirits and different laws from those of old? Or can any
spiritualist imagine that he knows more, or even as much
about mediumistic phenomena or the nature of various
spirits, as a priest-caste who spent their lives in
theurgical practice, which had been known and studied for
countless centuries? If the narratives of Owen and Hare, of
Edmonds, and Crookes, and Wallace are credible, why not
those of Herodotus, the "Father of History," of Iamblichus,
and Porphyry, and hundreds of other ancient authors? If the
spiritualists have their phenomena under test-conditions, so
had the old theurgists, whose records, moreover, show that
they could produce and vary them at will. The day when this
fact shall be recognized, and profitless speculations of
modern investigators shall give place to patient study of
the works of the theurgists, will mark the dawn of new and
important discoveries in the field of psychology.
--
Isis Unveiled, by
Helena P. Blavatsky
The pituitary body and the
pineal gland belong to still another class of organs, which
at the present time are neither evolving nor degenerating,
but are dormant. In the far past, when man was in touch with
the "inner" Worlds, these organs were his means of ingress
thereto, and they will again serve that purpose at a later
stage. They were connected with the involuntary or
sympathetic nervous system. Man then saw the inner Worlds,
as in the Moon Period and the latter part of the Lemurian
and early Atlantean Epochs. Pictures presented themselves
quite independent of his will. The sense centers of his
desire body were spinning around counter-clockwise
(following negatively the motion of the Earth, which
revolves on its axis in that direction) as the sense centers
of "mediums" do to this day. In most people these
sense-centers are inactive, but true development will set
them spinning clockwise, as explained elsewhere. That is the
difficult feature in the development of positive
clairvoyance.
The development of
mediumship is much easier, because it is merely a revival of
the mirror-like function possessed by man in the far past,
by which the outside world was involuntarily reflected in
him, and which function was afterward retained by
inbreeding. With present day mediums this power is
intermittent, which explains why they can sometimes "see"
and at other times, for no apparent reason, fail utterly.
Occasionally, the strong desire of the client enables them
to get into touch with the information he is seeking, on
which occasions they see correctly, but they are not always
honest. Office rent and other expenses must be paid, so when
the power (over which they have no conscious control) fails
them, some resort to fraud and utter any absurdity that
occurs to their minds, in order to satisfy their client and
get his money, thus casting discredit upon what they really
do see at other times. ...
When the candidate has
lived such a life for a time sufficient to establish the
current of spiritual force, and is found worthy and
qualified to receive esoteric instruction, he is taught
certain exercises, to set the pituitary body in vibration.
This vibration causes the pituitary body to impinge upon and
slightly deflect the nearest line of force (See diagram 17).
This, in turn, impinges upon the line next to it, and so the
process continues until the force of the vibration has been
spent. It is similar to the way in which the striking of one
note on a piano will produce a number of overtones, by
setting up a vibration in the other strings which are at
proper intervals of pitch.
When by the increased
vibration of the pituitary body, the lines of force have
been deflected sufficiently to reach the pineal gland, the
object has been accomplished, the gap between these two
organs has been bridged. This is the bridge between the
World of Sense and the World of Desire. From the time it is
built, man becomes clairvoyant and able to direct his gaze
where he will. Solid objects are seen both inside and out.
To him space and solidity, as hindrances to observation,
have ceased to exist.
He is not yet a trained
clairvoyant, but he is a clairvoyant at will,
a voluntary clairvoyant. His is a very different faculty
from that possessed by the medium, who is usually an
involuntary clairvoyant and can see only what comes; or who
has, at best, very little more than the purely negative
faculty. But the person in whom this bridge is once built is
always in sure touch with the inner Worlds, the connection
being made and broken at his will. By degrees, the observer
learns to control the vibration of the pituitary body in a
manner enabling him to get in touch with any of the regions
of the inner Worlds which he desires to visit. The faculty
is completely under the control of his will. It is not
necessary for him to go into a trance or do anything
abnormal, to raise his consciousness to the Desire World. He
simply wills to see, and sees.
--
The Rosicrucian
Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel |
However, as it is
not proved by revelation, to which M. Figuier never appeals, except as
to a sublime rendering of some of the ideas of natural religion, we
naturally ask how it is "proved," and why, if it is proved, he rejects
so scornfully statements which seem in keeping with the "proof." The
answer is that it is proved solely by its seeming suitable to M. Figuier,
-- to which he subsequently adds some very faint and dim kind of
confirmation from the phenomena of dreams, dreams seeming to M. Figuier
phenomena more ideal and less repulsive than the other superstitions
which he rejects. In short, the existence of myriads of superhuman
beings in the interplanetary and interstellar spaces is proved by the
mere fact that M. Figuier has so represented it to his own imagination,
and found that representation to be good. A still more amazing gnosis of
the same kind is his theory of the solar essence. Having shown that
astronomy and physical science have as yet failed to account
satisfactorily for the enormous and, as far as we know, undiminishing
heat of the sun, he goes on: --
"There, where
science places nothing, we venture to place something. In our belief
solar radiation is maintained by the continuous, unbroken succession
of souls, in the sun. These pure and burning spirits are perpetually
replacing the emanations perpetually sent through space by the sun,
to the globes which surround him. Thus we complete that
uninterrupted circle of which we have previously spoken, which binds
together all the creatures of nature by the links of a common chain,
and attaches the visible to the invisible world. We may venture to
put forward this explanation of the maintenance of solar radiation
with some confidence, since science can give us no exact information
upon the point, and philosophy in this case only fills up the void
left by astronomy and physics. In short, the sun, the centre of the
planetary aggregation, the constant source of light and heat, which
sends forth motion, sensation and life upon the earth, is, in our
belief, the final sojourn of purified perfected souls, which have
attained their most exquisite subtlety. They are entirely devoid of
material alloy, they are pure spirits who dwell in the midst of the
blazing atmosphere and the burning masses which compose the sun.
That star, whose size far surpasses the bulk of all the others put
together, is sufficiently vast to contain them."
Is it possible to
conceive anything stranger than this bastard gnosis of modern days? The
sun is not yet accounted for by physical science, therefore,
"with some confidence," we may say it is due to "pure souls"! If M.
Figuier had said, that as the chemical law of combining proportions is
still unaccounted for, he might "with some confidence" ascribe it to the
sons of the angels, we should have bee neither more nor less surprised.
As we know very little of pure soul, we certainly can't say that it is
not a constant source of heat; but certainly we should expect, if it
were so, that we could detect the purity even of an embodied soul by the
thermometer, and trace its purgatorial progress by the ingenious little
self-registering contrivance which records a maximum. As M. Figuier
never even suggests this confirmation of his theory, we conclude that we
are right in saying that, like the Gnostics, he finds pure truth on
these subjects only through his own arbitrary intellectual degrees; --
but it does a little puzzle, instead of help us, to find these arbitrary
decrees so strongly coloured by the pictorial efforts of modern science.
The following passage really exhibits the genesis of speculative opinion
in M. Figuier's mind: --
"It seems to
us that the human soul, in order to rise to the ethereal spaces,
needs to have acquired that last degree of perfection which sets it
free from every besettling weight; that it must be subtle, light,
purified, beautiful, and that only under such conditions can it quit
the earth, and soar towards the heavens. To our fancy, the human
soul is like a celestial seroatat, who flies towards the sublimest
heights with swift strength, because it is free from all impurity.
But the soul of a perverse, wicked, vile, gross, bass, cowardly man
has not been purified, perfected, or lightened. It is weighed down
by evil passions and gross appetites, which he has not sought to
repress, but has, on the contrary, cultivated. It cannot rise to the
celestial heights, it is constrained to dwell upon our melancholy
and miserable earth. We believe that the wicked and impenitent man
is not called to the immediate enjoyment of the blessed life of the
ethereal regions. His soul remains here below, to recommence life a
second time."
That is, because
we name a wicked man's nature "gross," and a good man's fine and
spiritual, M. Figuier infers that the latter is a sort of inflated
balloon, and the former a mere clod of earth. But we also call
passionate men hot, and self-controlled men cool. Why does not M.
Figuier argue from that, that it is the passionate man's soul that is in
the sun, -- the source of heat, -- and that it is the spiritual man who
cools the atmosphere for us, and feeds the pure fountain of refreshment.
There is just as much and just as little to say for the one as the
other. Indeed, if he had said that the heat of the sun was caused by the
agony of extinguished hopes and smothered faculties, in the Hell of
condemned souls, he would have had a more plausible case in popular
opinion that he now has. M. Figuier dreams and believes on thing today;
there is no reason at all why he should not dream and believe another
thing to-morrow. With him the fundamental maxim of philosophy is, "I
dream, therefore, it is."
The method or
unmethod of M. Figuier finds its apotheosis in the magnificent climax of
his gnosis as to, -- we hardly like to write it, -- the whereabouts
of God. How is it intelligible that a man who had conceived either God
or the subjects of physical science, should be able to localize the
Divine person, and identify it with the central focus of force in a
Newtonian universe? --
"The absolute
fixity of the sun and the stars was an astronomical principle,
which, in the time of Newton, appeared to be indubitable. But
science never stands still. Observations made in the present century
have proved that the fixity, the immobility of the sun is only
relative. The truth is that the sun, and with him the entire system
of planets, asteroids, satellites, and comets, which he carries in
his train, change their places, very slightly no doubt, but still
appreciably. Our sun appears to advance slowly, with all the
planetary family, towards that part of the sky in which the
constellation of Hercules is situated, at the rate of
62,000,000 of leagues each year, or two leagues each second,
describing an orbit which comprehends millions of centuries. That
which is the case with our sun is equally the case with the other
suns, that is to say, the stars. This general motion of translation
must be common to all the stellar systems, and it is indubitable
that the countless millions of solar systems suspended in infinite
space are moving more or less quickly towards an unknown point in
the sky. Now, there is nothing to forbid the supposition that all
these circles or ellipses traced by myriads of solar systems have a
common centre of attraction, towards which our system and all the
others gravitate. Thus, all these celestial bodies, without
exception, all this anti-hill of worlds which we have enumerated,
may be turning round one point, one centre of attraction. What
forbids us to believe that God dwells at this centre of attraction
for all the worlds which fill infinite spaces?"
What should
forbid us indeed, except that finding a plea for God is
destroying the very meaning of the word?
That M. Figuier's mind is not by any means a scientific one in any sense
whatever, -- though his mind is full of the pictures with which modern
science has familiarized us, -- there are abundant proofs in this
strange book. He argues, for instance, from the hydrogen cyclones
visible in the sun, that the "ether" of the interstellar spaces must be
hydrogen, -- a conclusion which a good chemist would make great fun of.
Indeed he does not even seem to see that where there is burning
hydrogen, there must be oxygen also, to support the combustion, and
therefore, if the hydrogen cyclones suggest hydrogen in the
inter-stellar spaces, they suggest it no more than they suggest oxygen
also. His psychology and theology are just as random and unscientific.
The interest of his book lies in the extraordinary exhibition it gives
us of a mind saturated with the details of science, and yet as
independent of its only trustworthy method as if its discoveries were
mere accidental visions, preternaturally presented on the field of some
really magic lanthorn. He speaks of God, and his mind is full of
mere notions of force and origin. He speaks of laws of nature, and his
mind is full of pretty pictures that have pleased his fancy, and by that
means alone given him the idea that they are true. He is like an
intelligent child putting a number of kaleidoscopic fragments together
in the forms that please him most, and fancying that because they please
him so, they must have pleased the Creator too. It is a strange lesson
on the capacity of man not only to learn, but to be deeply impressed by
facts without having the faintest suspicion of their drift, their true
meaning. M. Figuier is as much at home in recasting the laws of nature
at his pleasure, as he would be if modern science had never existed; and
yet, though it is not modern science, but some painful doubts about
immortality which have impelled him to his present task, it is
modern science which has furnished him with all his materials. Comte
gives us a Catholic Church minus God, and M. Figuier a scientific
picture of theology minus both the scientific and theologic spirit. We
suspect that Method will never take its true place in human study till
we have admitted frankly to ourselves that the method of the inductive
and the method of the psychological and theological, sciences is not and
cannot be the same; and that both alike require the most rigid and
earnest study.
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Notes:
1. The Day
after Death; or, Our Future Life, according to Science. Translated
from the French of Louis Figuier, and illustrated by Astronomical
Plates. London: Bentley.
2. As where plants
are talked of as "aspiring" liquids (p. 164, line 5), or where "birth"
is written probably for "bulk" (p. 118, line 2), or the planet Jupiter
is spoken of (p. 187, last line) as revolving on its axle in twelve
hours, and having "a day and night respectively only ten hours long" --
the fact being that it revolves in ten hours, and has a day and night
respectively five hours long.
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