Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

else eternal absolutely. That is the first state of matter, itself perfectly uncognizable by physical senses, which deal with manifested matter, another state altogether. But though thus in one sense of the word materialistic, the esoteric doctrine, as any reader of the foregoing explanations will have seen, is as far from resembling the gross narrow-minded conception of Nature, which ordinarily goes by the name of Materialism, as the North Pole looks away from the South. It stoops to Materialism, as it were, to link its methods with the logic of that system, and ascends to the highest realms of idealism to embrace and expound the most exalted aspirations of Spirit. As it cannot be too frequently or earnestly repeated -it is the union of Science with Religion-the bridge by which the most acute and cautious pursuers of experimental knowledge may cross over to the most enthusiastic devotee, by means of which the most enthusiastic devotee may return to Earth and yet keep Heaven still around him.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DOCTRINE REVIEWED.

LONG familiarity with the esoteric doctrine will alone give rise to a full perception of the manner in which it harmonizes with facts of Nature such as we are all in a position to observe. But something may be done to indicate the correspondences that may be traced between the whole body of teaching now set forth, and the phenomena of the world around us.

Beginning with the two great perplexities of ordinary philosophy-the conflict between free-will and predestination, and the origin of evil, it will surely be recognized that the system of Nature now explained, enables us to deal with those problems more boldly than they have ever yet been handled. Till now the most prudent thinkers have been least disposed to profess that either by the aid of metaphysics or religion could the mystery of free-will and predestination be unravelled. The tendency of thought has been to relegate the whole enigma to the region of the unknowable. And strange to say this has been done contentedly by people who have been none the less contented to accept as more than a provisional hypothesis the religious doctrines which

thus remained incapable of reconciliation with some of their own most obvious consequences. The omniscience of a personal Creator ranging over the future as well as the past, left man no room to exercise the independent authority over his own destinies, which nevertheless it was absolutely necessary to allow him to exercise in order that the policy of punishing or rewarding him for his acts in life could be recognized as anything but the most grotesque injustice. One great English philosopher, frankly facing the embarrassment, declared in a famous posthumous essay, that by reason of these considerations, it was impossible that God could be all-good and all-potent. People were free to invest him logically with one or other of these attributes, but not with both. The argument was treated with the respect due to the great reputation of its author, and put aside with the discretion due to respect for orthodox tenets.

But the esoteric doctrine comes to our rescue in this emergency. First of all it honestly takes into account the insignificant size of this world compared to the universe. This is a fact of Nature, which the early Christian church feared with a true instinct, and treated with the cruelty of terror. The truth was denied, and its authors were tortured for many centuries. Established at last beyond even the authority of papal negations, the Church resorted to the "desperate expedient," to quote Mr. Rhys David's phrase, of pretending that it did not matter.

The pretence till now has been more successful than its authors could have hoped. When they

dreaded astronomical discovery, they were crediting the world at large with more remorseless logic than it ultimately showed any inclination to employ. People have been found willing as a rule to do that which I have described Esoteric Buddhism as not requiring us to do, to keep their science and their religion in separate watertight compartments. So long and so thoroughly has this principle been worked upon, that it has finally ceased to be an argument against the credibility of a religious dogma to point out that it is impossible. But when we establish a connection between our hitherto divided reservoirs and require them to stand at the same level, we cannot fail to see how the insignificance of the earth's magnitude diminishes in a corresponding proportion the plausibility of theories that require us to regard the details of our own lives as part of the general stock of a universal Creator's omniscience. On the contrary, it is unreasonable to suppose that the creatures inhabiting one of the smaller planets of one of the smaller suns in the ocean of the universe, where suns are but water-drops in the sea, are exempt in any way from the general principle of government by law. But that principle cannot co-exist with government by caprice, which is an essential condition of such predestination as conventional discussions of the problems before us associate with the use of the word. For, be it observed that the predestination which conflicts with free-will, is not the predestination of races, but individual predestination, associated with the ideas of divine grace or wrath. The predestination of races, under laws analogous to those which control the

general tendency of any multitude of independent chances, is perfectly compatible with individual free will, and thus it is that the esoteric doctrine reconciles the long-standing contradiction of Nature. Man has control over his own destiny within constitutional limits, so to speak; he is perfectly free to make use of his natural rights as far as they go, and they go practically to infinity as far as he, the individual unit, is concerned. But the average human action, under given conditions, taking a vast multiplicity of units into account, provides for the unfailing evolution of the cycles which constitute their collective destiny.

Individual predestination, it is true, may be asserted, not as a religious dogma having to do with divine grace or wrath, but on purely metaphysical grounds-that is to say, it may be argued that each human creature is fundamentally, in infancy, subject to the same influence by similar circumstances, and that an adult life is thus merely the product or impression of all the circumstances which have influenced such a life from the beginning, so that if those circumstances were known, the moral and intellectual result would be known. By this train of reasoning it can be made to appear that the circumstances of each man's life may be theoretically knowable by a sufficiently searching intelligence; that hereditary tendencies, for example, are but products of antecedent circumstances entering into any given calculation as a perturbation, but not the less calculable on that account. This contention, however, is no less in direct conflict with the consciousness of humanity, than the religious dogma of individual

« ПредишнаНапред »