SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE

[Lucifer, Vol. VI, No. 35, July, 1890, p. 440]

One of the occult doctrines which has been most often laughed at by the incredulous scientasters of the Press and popular platforms, is the assertion that electricity is an entity, having a substantial existence. How often have the wise critics poured scorn on the heads of Theosophists for believing such wild nonsense, in the face of infallible modern science, which had long ago proved (save the mark!) that electricity, and light and heat, was a form of energy!
But in this respect, as in so many others, the Nemesis of Truth has overtaken our slanderers. In the latest, most thoroughly orthodox textbook on Electricity, by Professor Oliver Lodge, in the Nature Series, that “scientific authority” declares in the name of the most advanced science that electricity is not energy—whatever it may be—and upholds the doctrine that electricity is ETHER, or if not ether itself then certainly a “form of its manifestation.” The whirligig of time brings strange revenges, and the one now cited is but the forerunner of many another case in which “orthodox” and “infallible” science will quietly appropriate occult teachings without one word of acknowledgment, teaching as facts the very doctrines which for years it has scorned as “unscientific charlatanry.” Ex uno disce omnes.