30H.P. Blavatsky & Annie Besant, editors - Lucifer Vol. V, No. 30 February, 1890

Western science failed to accomplish the latter object in some very essential particulars, and that principally because its investigations were conducted on inperfect lines, while Theosophy, working upon an entirely different line, not -only disagreed with the conclusions of the Western scientists, but could find a passage beyond the dead wall which blocked the path of all our scientists at a certain point, and beyond which wall no single Western investigator had yet been able to penetrate. What was the reason of this? Possibly because Western scientists started on too limited a basis. Personally he had long ago been led to the conclusion— from the study of H uxley’s lecture on protoplasm — that the vital forces o f nature were the unseen forces, and from Professor H uxley’s own showing the material physical senses of the body proved rather a barrier than an assistance to the study of the powers o f nature.

I f this were so, it naturally led up to the conclusion that if our senses were -only refined and acute enough it would be possible to perceive and understand the unseen forces o f nature. O n the other hand, the scientists of the West, •every one of them, however profound their investigations, were met at one point in their inquiries by a barrier which -they found it impossible to pass, in a very large class of phenomena which they found to be absolutely inexplainable by their modern science.

Mr. Burrows then showed how inexplicable were many natural effects from th e materialist standpoint.

For instance, by means o f a definite arrangement o f a violin, a tuning fork, a strong light, and a sort of disc suspended after the style o f a magic lantern sheet, it was found that a note o f music produces distinct and unmistakeable colours, which vary with different notes. Another instrument, the pendulagraph, demonstrates that a musical note possesses force.

T h e apparatus is constructed upon vibrating principles, and is fitted with a universal jointed pen. U pon a certain note being struck certain spiral curves are recorded by the pen. Strike another note, and a different class of spirals is produced ; strike the first note again, and spirals are produced similar to those registered on the first occasion. Now, why are these spiral ? T h at is what Theosophy alone can tell, and the man who has this knowledge can learn to control the forces o f n atu re! T h e materialist failed to surmount the wall that stopped him, and why ? Partly because he failed to recognise that there was n o rigid line o f demarcation between the spiritual and the material part o f man.

Judging by the state o f clairvoyance, when the physical material senses o f man were in a certain sense paralysed, the intelligent, spiritual, mental faculties of man were sharpened. Man dwelt in two worlds, the outward visible world, and the inward and invisible.

T h e latter could only come into play when the other was deadened, or, in other words, purified and refined o f a great deal of its material grossness. T aking another line, he showed that the Theosophist and the Western scientist, by widely differing methods, agreed, step by step, that under the whole o f nature lay some widely diffused basic force, but that while the Western could only tell the relation between things— as in the mole­ cular theory— the Theosophist could explain the essence of the things them ­ selves, or rather, could get behind the relation o f the things and explain why they were so related.

This method, followed to its natural conclusion, must lead up to the explanation of the spiritual nature o f man, and thus Theosophy was -seen to comprehend the great truths that underlie all the great religions o f the world