Five Years of Theosophy Part 28

The striking periodicity of the wars in Europe is also noticed by Dr. E.

Za.s.se. Beginning with 1700 A.D., every ten years have been signalized by either a war or a revolution. The periods of the strengthening and weakening of the warlike excitement of the European nations represent a wave strikingly regular in its periodicity, flowing incessantly, as if propelled onward by some fixed inscrutable law. This same mysterious law seems also to connect these events with the astronomical wave or cycle, which governs the periodicity of solar spots. The periods when the European powers have shown the most destructive energy are marked by a cycle of fifty years' duration. It would be too long and tedious to enumerate them from the beginning of history. We may, therefore, limit our study to the cycle beginning with the year 1712, when all the European nations were fighting each other in the Northern, and the Turkish wars, and the war for the throne of Spain. About 1761, the "Seven Years' War"; in 1810, the wars of Napoleon I. Towards 1861, the wave has been a little deflected from its regular course; but, as if to compensate for it, or propelled, perhaps, with unusual force, the years directly preceding, as well as those which followed it, left in history the records of the most fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y wars--the Crimean War in the former, and the American Civil War in the latter period. The periodicity in the wars between Russia and Turkey appears peculiarly striking, and represents a very characteristic wave. At first the intervals between the cycles of thirty years' duration--1710, 1740, 1770 then these intervals diminish, and we have a cycle of twenty years--1790, 1810, 1829-30; then the intervals widen again--1853 and 1878. But if we take note of the whole duration of the in-flowing tide of the war-like cycle, then we shall have at the centre of it--from 1768 to 1812--three wars of seven years' duration each, and at both ends, wars of two years.

Finally, the author comes to the conclusion that, in view of facts, it becomes thoroughly impossible to deny the presence of a regular periodicity in the excitement of both mental and physical forces in the nations of the world. He proves that in the history of all the peoples and empires of the Old World, the cycles marking the millenniums, the centennials as well as the minor ones of fifty and ten years' duration, are the most important, inasmuch as neither of them has ever yet failed to bring in its train some more or less marked event in the history of the nation swept over by these historical waves.

The history of India is one which, of all histories, is the most vague and least satisfactory. Yet were its consecutive great events noted down, and its annals well searched, the law of cycles would be found to have a.s.serted itself here as plainly as in every other country in respect of its wars, famines, political exigencies, and other matters.

In France, a meteorologist of Paris went to the trouble of compiling the statistics of the coldest seasons, and discovered that those years which had the figure 9 in them had been marked by the severest winters. His figures run thus:--in 859 A.D., the northern part of the Adriatic Sea was frozen, and was covered for three months with ice. In 1179, In the most moderate zones, the earth was covered with several feet of snow.

In 1209, in France the depth of snow and the bitter cold caused such a scarcity of fodder that most of the cattle perished in that country. In 1249, the Baltic Sea between Russia, Norway and Sweden remained frozen for many months, and communication was kept up by sleighs. In 1339, there was such a terrific winter in England, that vast numbers of people died of starvation and exposure. In 1409, the river Danube was frozen from its sources to its mouth in the Black Sea.

In 1469, all the vineyards and orchards perished in consequence of the frost. In 1609, in France, Switzerland and Upper Italy, people had to thaw their bread and provisions before they could use them. In 1639, the Harbour of Ma.r.s.eilles was covered with ice to a great distance. In 1659, all the rivers in Italy were frozen. In 1699, the winter in France and Italy proved the severest and longest of all. The prices for articles of food were so much raised that half of the population died of starvation. In 1709, the winter was no less terrible. The ground was frozen in France, Italy and Switzerland to the depth of several feet; and the sea, south as well as north, was covered with one compact and thick crust of ice, many feet deep, and for a considerable distance in the usually open sea. Numbers of wild beasts, driven out by the cold from their dens in the forests, sought refuge in villages and even cities; and the birds fell dead to the ground by hundreds. In 1729, 1749 and 1769 (cycles of twenty years' duration), all the rivers and streams were ice-bound all over France for many weeks, and all the fruit trees perished. In 1789, France was again visited by a very severe winter. In Paris, the thermometer stood at nineteen degrees of frost.

But the severest of all winters proved that of 1829. For fifty-four consecutive days all the roads in France were covered, with snow several feet deep, and all the rivers were frozen. Famine and misery reached their climax in the country in that year. In 1839, there was again in France a most terrific and trying cold season. And the winter of 1879 has a.s.serted its statistical rights, and proved true to the fatal influence of the figure 9. The meteorologists of other countries are invited to follow suit, and make their investigations likewise, for the subject is certainly most fascinating as well as most instructive.

Enough has been shown, however, to prove that neither the ideas of Pythagoras on the mysterious influence of numbers, nor the theories of the ancient world-religions and philosophies are as shallow and meaningless as some too forward thinkers would have had the world to believe.

--H.P.B.

SCIENTIFIC

Odorigen and Jiva

Professor Yaeger of Stuttgart has made a very interesting study of the sense of smell. He starts from the fact well known in medical jurisprudence, that the blood of an animal when treated by sulphuric, or indeed by any other decomposing acid, smells like the animal itself to which it belongs. This holds good even after the blood has been long dried.

Let us state before all what is to be understood by the smell of a certain animal. There is the pure, specific smell of the animal, inherent in its flesh, or, as we shall see hereafter, in certain portions of its flesh. This smell is best perceived when the flesh is gently boiling in water. The broth thereby obtained contains the specific taste and smell of the animal--I call it specific, because every species, nay every variety of species, has its own peculiar taste and smell. Think of mutton broth, chicken broth, fish broth, &c. &c. I shall call this smell, the specific scent of the animal. I need not say that the scent of an animal is quite different from all such odours as are generated within its organism, along with its various secretions and excretions: bile, gastric juice, sweat, &c. These odours are again different in the different species and varieties of animals. The cutaneous exhalation of the goat, the sheep, the donkey, widely differ from each other; and a similar difference prevails with regard to all the other effluvia of these animals. In fact, as far as olfactory experience goes, we may say that the odour of each secretion and excretion of a certain species of animals is peculiar to itself, and characteristically different in the similar products of another species.

By altering the food of an animal we may considerably alter all the above-mentioned odours, scents, as well as smells; yet essentially they will always retain their specific odoriferous type. All this is matter of strict experience.

Strongly diffusive as all these odorous substances are, they permeate the whole organism, and each of them contributes its share to what in the aggregate const.i.tutes the smell of the living animal. It is altogether an excrement.i.tious smell tempered by the scent of the animal.

That excrement.i.tious smell we shall henceforth simply call the smell, in contradistinction to the scent of the animal.

To return after this not very pleasant, but nevertheless necessary digression, to our subject. Professor Yaeger found that blood, treated by an acid, may emit the scent or the smell of the animal, according as the acid is weak or strong. A strong acid, rapidly disintegrating the blood, brings out the animal's smell; a weak acid, the animal's scent.

We see, then, that in every drop of blood of a certain species of animal, and we may as well say, in each of its blood corpuscles, and in the last instance, in each of its molecules, the respective animal species is fully represented, as to its odorant speciality, under both aspects of scent and smell.

We have, then, on the one side, the fact before us that wherever we meet in the animal kingdom with difference of shape, form, and construction, so different as to const.i.tute a cla.s.s, a genus, or a family of its own, there we meet at the same time with a distinct and specific scent and smell. On the other hand, we know that these specific odours are invariably interblended with the very life-blood of the animal. And lastly, we know that these specific odours cannot be accounted for by any agents taken up in the shape of food from the outer world. We are, then, driven to the conclusion that they are properties of the inner animal; that they, in other words, pertain to the specific protoplasm of the animal concerned.

And thus our conclusion attains almost certainty, when we remember that it stands the crucial test of experiment--that we need only decompose the blood in order to find there what we contend to be an essential ingredient of it.

I must now say a few words in explanation of the term protoplasm.

Protoplasm is a soft, gelatinous substance, transparent and h.o.m.ogeneous, easily seen in large plant-cells; it may be compared to the white of an egg. When at rest all sorts of vibratory, quivering and trembling movements can be observed within its ma.s.s. It forms the living material in all vegetable and animal cells; in fact, it is that component of the body which really does the vital work. It is the formative agent of all living tissues. Vital activity, in the broadest sense of the term, manifests itself in the development of the germ into the complete organism, repeating the type of its parents, and in the subsequent maintenance of that organism in its integrity and both these functions are exclusively carried on by the protoplasm. Of course, there is a good deal of chemical and mechanical work done in the organism, but protoplasm is the formative agent of all the tissues and structures.

Of tissues and structures already formed, we may fairly say that they have pa.s.sed out of the realms of vitality, as they are destined to gradual disintegration and decay in the course of life; it is they that are on the way of being cast out of the organism, when they have once run through the scale of retrograde metamorphosis; and it is they that give rise to what we have called the smell of the animal. What lives in them is the protoplasm.

In the shape of food the outer world supplies the organism with all the materials necessary for the building up of the constantly wasting organic structures; and, in the shape of heat, there comes from the outer world that other element necessary for structural changes, development and growth--the element of force. But the task of directing all the outward materials to the development and maintenance of the organism--in other words, the task of the director-general of the organic economy falls to the protoplasm.

Now this wonderful substance, chemically and physically the same in the highest animal and in the lowest plant, has been all along the puzzle of the biologist. How is it that in man protoplasm works out human structure; in fowl, fowl structure, &c. &c., while the protoplasm itself appears to be everywhere the same? To Professor Yaeger belongs the great merit of having shown us that the protoplasms of the various species of plants and animals are not the same; that each of them contains, moreover, imbedded in its molecules, odorant substances peculiar to the one species and not to the other.

That, on the other hand, those odorous substances are by no means inactive bodies, may be inferred from their great volatility, known as it is in physical science that volatility is owing to a state of atomic activity. Prevost has described two phenomena that are presented by odorous substances. One is that, when placed on water, they begin to move; and the other is, that a thin layer of water, extended on a perfectly clean gla.s.s plate, retracts when such an odorous substance as camphor is placed upon it. Monsieur Ligeois has further shown that the particles of an odorous body, placed on water, undergo a rapid division, and that the movements of camphor, or of benzoic acid, are inhibited, or altogether arrested, if an odorous substance be brought into contact with the water in which they are moving.

Seeing, then, that odorous substances, when coming in contact with liquid bodies, a.s.sume a peculiar motion, and impart at the same time motion to the liquid body, we may fairly conclude that the specific formative capacity of the protoplasm is owing, not to the protoplasm itself, since it is everywhere alike, but to the inherent, specific, odoriferous substances.

I shall only add that Professor Yaeger's theory may be carried farther yet. Each metal has also a certain taste and odour peculiar to itself; in other words, they are also endowed with odoriferous substances. And this may help us to explain the fact that each metal, when crystallizing out of a liquid solution, invariably a.s.sumes a distinct geometrical form, by which it may be distinguished from any other. Common salt, for instance, invariably crystallizes in cubes, alum in octohedra, and so on.

Professor Yaeger's theory explains further to us that other great mystery of Nature--the transmission from parent to offspring of the morphological speciality. This is another puzzle of the biologist.

What is there in the embryonal germ that evolves out of the materials stored up therein a frame similar to the parents? In other words, what is there that presides over the preservation of the species, working out the miniature duplicate of the parents' configuration and character? It is the protoplasm, no doubt; and the female ovum contains protoplasm in abundance. But neither the physicist nor the chemist can detect any difference between the primordial germ, say of the fowl, and that of a female of the human race.

In answer to this question--a question before which science stands perplexed--we need only remember what has been said before about the protoplasmic scent. We have spoken before of the specific scent of the animal as a whole. We know, however, that every organ and tissue in a given animal has again its peculiar scent and taste. The scent and taste of the liver, spleen, brain, &c., are quite different in the same animal.

And if our theory is correct, then it could not be otherwise. Each of these organs is differently constructed, and as variety of organic structure is supposed to be dependent upon variety of scent, there must necessarily be a specific cerebral scent, a specific splenetic scent, a specific hepatic scent, &c. &c. What we call, then, the specific scent of the living animal must, therefore, be considered as the aggregate of all the different scents of its organs.

When we see that a weak solution of sulphuric acid is capable of disengaging from the blood the scent of the animal, we shall then bear in mind that this odorous emanation contains particles of all the scents peculiar to each tissue and organ of the animal. When we further say that each organ in a living animal draws by selective affinity from the blood those materials which are necessary for its sustenance, we must not forget that each organ draws at the same time by a similar selective affinity the specific odorous substances requisite for its constructive requirements.

We have now only to suppose that the embryonal germ contains, like the blood itself, all the odorous substances pertaining to the various tissues and organs of the parent, and we shall understand which is the moving principle in the germ that evolves an offspring, shaped in the image and after the likeness of the parents.

In plants it is the blossom which is entrusted with the function of reproduction, and the odorous emanations accompanying that process are well known. There is strong reason to believe that something similar prevails in the case of animals, as may be seen from an examination of what embryologists call the aura seminalis.

Let us now inquire what the effects are of odours generated in the outer world on animals. The odorous impressions produced may be pleasant or unpleasant, pleasant to one and unpleasant to another animal. What is it that const.i.tutes this sensation of pleasure or displeasure?

Professor Yaeger answers, It is harmony or disharmony which makes all the difference. The olfactory organs of each animal are impregnated by its own specific scent. Whenever the odorous waves of a substance harmonize in their vibration with the odorous waves emanating from the animal; in other words, whenever they fall in and agree with each other, an agreeable sensation is produced; whenever the reverse takes places, the sensation is disagreeable. In this way it is that the odour regulates the choice of the food on the part of the animal. In a similar way the sympathies and antipathies between the various animals are regulated. For every individual has not only its specific but also its individual scent. The selection between the s.e.xes, or what, in the case of the human race, is called love, has its mainspring in the odorous harmony subsisting in the two individuals concerned.

This individual scent--a variation of the specific odorous type--alters (within the limits of its speciality) with age, with the particular mode of occupation, with the s.e.x, with certain physiological conditions and functions during life, with the state of health, and last, but not least, with the state of our mind.

It is to be remembered that every time protoplasm undergoes disintegration, specific odours are set free. We have seen how sulphuric acid, or heat, when boiling or roasting meat, brings out the specific animal odour. But it is an established fact in science, that every physical or mental operation is accompanied by disintegration of tissue; consequently we are ent.i.tled to say that with every emotion odours are being disengaged. It can be shown that the quality of those odours differ with the nature of the emotion. The prescribed limits prevent further pursuit of the subject; I shall, therefore, content myself by drawing some conclusions from Professor Yaeger's theory in the light of the Esoteric Doctrine.

The phenomena of mesmeric cures find their full explanation in the theory just enunciated. For since the construction and preservation of the organism, and of every organ in particular, is owing to specific scents, we may fairly look upon disease in general as a disturbance of the specific scent of the organism, and upon disease of a particular organ of the body, as a disturbance of the specific scent pertaining to that particular organ. We have been hitherto in the habit of holding the protoplasm responsible for all phenomena of disease. We have now come to learn that what acts in the protoplasm are the scents; we shall, therefore, have to look to them as the ultimate cause of morbid phenomena. I have mentioned before the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, showing that odoriferous substances, when brought in contact with water, move; and that the motion of one odoriferous substance may be inhibited, or arrested altogether, by the presence of another odoriferous substance. Epidemic diseases, and the zymotic diseases in particular, have, then, most likely their origin in some local odours which inhibit the action of our specific organic odours. In the case of hereditary diseases, it is most likely the transmission of morbid specific odours from parent to offspring that is the cause of the evil, knowing, as we do, that in disease the natural specific odour is altered, and must, therefore, have been altered in the diseased parent.

Now comes the mesmeriser. He approaches the sick with the strong determination to cure him. This determination, or effort of the will, is absolutely necessary, according to the agreement of all mesmerisers, for his curative success. Now an effort of the will is a mental operation, and is, therefore, accompanied by tissue disintegration. The effort being purely mental, we may say it is accompanied by disintegration of cerebral and nervous tissue. But disintegration of organic tissue means, as we have seen before, disengagement of specific scents; the mesmeriser emits, then, during his operation, scents from his own body. And as the patient's sufferings are supposed to originate from a deficiency or alteration of his own specific scent, we can well see how the mesmeriser, by his mesmeric or odoriferous emanations, may effect a cure. He may supply the want of certain odoriferous substances in the patient, or he may correct others by his own emanations, knowing, as we do, from the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, that odorant matter does act on odorant matter.

One remark more and I have done. By the Esoteric Doctrine we are told that the living body is divided into two parts:

1. The physical body, composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most tangible form.

2. The vital principle (or Jiva), a form of force indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately by others.

Now this division, generally speaking, fully agrees with the teachings of science. I need only remind you of what I have said before with regard to the formed tissues and structures of the body and its formative agent the protoplasm. Formed structure is considered as material which has already pa.s.sed out of the realms of life; what lives in it is the protoplasm. So far the esoteric conception fully agrees with the result of the latest investigations of modern science.

But when we are told by the Esoteric Doctrine that the vital principle is indestructible, we feel we move on occult, incomprehensible ground, for we know that protoplasm is, after all, as destructible as the body itself. It lives as long as life lasts, and, it may be said, it is the only material in the body that does live as long as life lasts. But it dies with the cessation of life. It is true it is capable of a sort of resuscitation. For that very dead protoplasm, be it animal or vegetable, serves again as our food, and as the food of all the animal world, and thus helps to repair our constantly wasting economy. But for all that it could hardly be said to be indestructible; it is a.s.similable--that is to say, capable of re-entering the domain of life, through its being taken up by a living body. But such an eventual chance does by no means confer upon it the attribute of indestructibility; for we need only leave the dead animal or plant containing the protoplasm alone, and it will rot and decay--organs, tissues, and protoplasm altogether.

To our further perplexity the Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is not only indestructible, but it is a form of force, which, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted immediately by others. The vital principle to the Esoteric Doctrine would then appear to be a sort of abstract force, not a force inherent in the living protoplasm--this is the scientific conception--but a force per se, independent altogether of the material with which it is connected.

Now I must confess this is a doctrine which puzzles one greatly, although one may have no difficulty in accepting the spirit of man as an ent.i.ty, for the phenomena of ratiocination are altogether so widely different from all physical phenomena that they can hardly be explained by any of the physical forces known to us. The materialist, who tells us that consciousness, sensation, thought, and the spontaneous power of the will, so peculiar to man and to the higher animals, are altogether so many outcomes of certain conditions of matter and nothing else, makes at best merely a subjective statement. He cannot help acknowledging that spontaneity is not a quality of matter. He is then driven to the contention that what we believe to be spontaneous in us, is, after all, an unconscious result of external impulses only. His contention rests then on the basis of his own inner experience, or what he believes to be such. This contention of his is, however, disputed by many, who no less appeal to their own inner experience, or what they believe to be their experience. It is then a question of inner experience of the one party versus inner experience of the other. And such being the case, the scientific materialist is driven to admit that his theory, however correct it may be, rests, after all, on subjective experience, and can, as such, not claim the rank of positive knowledge. There is then no difficulty in accepting the ent.i.ty of the spirit in man, the materialistic a.s.sertion to the contrary notwithstanding. But the vital force is exclusively concerned with the construction of matter. Here we have a right to expect that physical and chemical forces should hold the whole ground of an explanation, if an explanation is possible at all.

Now, physical and chemical forces are no ent.i.ties; they are invariably connected with matter. In fact, they are so intimately connected with matter that they can never be dissevered from it altogether. The energy of matter may be latent or patent, and, when patent, it may manifest itself in one form or the other, according to the condition of its surroundings; it may manifest itself in the shape of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, or vitality; but in one form or the other energy constantly inheres in matter. The correlation of forces is now a well-established, scientific fact, and it is more than plausible that what is called the vital principle, or the vital force, forms a link in the chain of the other known physical forces, and is, therefore, trans.m.u.table into any of them; granted even that there is such a thing as a distinct vital force. The tendency of modern Biology is then to discard the notion of a vital ent.i.ty altogether. If vital force is to be indestructible, then so are also indestructible heat, light, electricity, &c.; they are indestructible in this sense, that whenever their respective manifestation is suspended or arrested, they make their appearance in some other form of force; and in this very same sense vital force may be looked upon as indestructible: whenever vital manifestation is arrested, what had been acting as vital force is transformed into chemical, electrical forces, &c., taking its place.

But the Esoteric Doctrine appears to teach something quite different from what I have just explained, and what is, as far as I understand, a fair representation of the scientific conception of the subject. The Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted by others. He then evidently holds that, what const.i.tutes the vital principle is a principle or form of force per se, a form of force which can leave one set of atoms and go over as such to another set, without leaving any subst.i.tute force behind. This, it must be said, is simply irreconcileable with the scientific view on the subject as. .h.i.therto understood.

By the and of Professor Yaeger's theory this difficulty can be explained, I am happy to say, in a most satisfactory way.