Part I
A little thought will soon make it apparent to any investigator that we live in a world of EFFECT which is the result of INVISIBLE CAUSES. MATTER and FORM we see, but the FORCE which molds the matter into form and quickens it is invisible to us. Life can not be cognized directly by the senses; it is invisible and self-existent, independent of the varied forms we see as its manifestations.
Electricity, magnetism, and steam are names given to forces never seen with physical eyes, though, by conforming to certain laws discovered by experiment, we have made them our most valuable servants. We see their manifestations in moving streetcars, in railways and steamships; they light our path at night and carry our message around he globe with a speed that annihilate space, bringing the antipodes to our very doors in seconds of time. They are at our beck and call at any and all hours, tireless and faithful in the performance of innumerable tasks, yet, as said, we have never seen these, our most faithful and valuable servants.
These Nature Forces are neither blind nor unintelligent s we mistakenly think; there are many classes of them and they work along different avenues of life. Perhaps an illustration will make clear their status in relation to us. Let us suppose a carpenter is making a fence and a dog is standing by watching him. The dog sees both the carpenter and his work, though it does not fully comprehend what he is doing. If the carpenter were invisible to the dog it would see the fence being slowly built, it would see every nail driven, it would perceive the manifestation but not the cause, and it would then be in the some relation to the carpenter as we are to the Nature Forces which manifest about us as gravity, electricity, and magnetism.
During the past few centuries, but particularly in the last sixty years, science has made giant strides in the investigation of the world in which we live, and the result has been to reveal in all directions a hitherto invisible world. With telescopes of increasing power the astronomers have been reaching out into space, discovering more and more worlds; with admirable ingenuity they have attached the camera to the telescope, and have thus been able to photograph suns at such enormous distances from us that their rays make no impression on our eyes, and can only be caught by hours of exposure of a sensitize photographic plate.
In the direction of the minutely small, the increasing perfection of the microscope has achieved similar results; a world that was hitherto invisible to us has been discovered, containing an exceeding activity of LIFE and marked by a diversity of form scarcely less complex than the world we behold through our unaided senses.
The effort of making such investigations through the eyepiece of a microscope is a severe one, causing intense strain on the eyes; but here also the camera lends its aid to man. With proper mechanical attachments and lightning speed it can make permanent records of microscopic phenomena at the rate of perhaps seventy negatives per second. These may then be magnified and projected upon a screen as moving pictures; they may be seen by hundreds of people at the same time in comfort and ease.
We may see how the sap slowly circulates through the veins of a leaf, or watch the way the blood races like a millstream through the semitransparent veins of a frog’s leg. Maggots in cheese appear as large as gray crabs meandering hither and thither in search of prey. A drop of water contains many dark colored balls which grow and burst, throwing out numerous tiny globes which in their turn expand and fling out offspring. Dr. Bastian of London has even seen how a little black spot on the spine of a cyclop (of which there are many in a drop of water) developed into a parasite which fed on the cyclop.
By means of the X-ray science has been able to invade the innermost recesses of the dense body of the living human, photographing the skeleton and any foreign substance which may have become located there by accident.
Thus in many directions a hitherto invisible world has presented itself to the gaze of the persistent investigators. Who shall say the end has been reached; that there are no other worlds in space beyond those now photographed by astronomers; no life dwelling in forms more minute than those discovered by the best microscopes of today? Tomorrow an instrument may be designed that will reach beyond all previous devices and show much of what is hidden today. The infinitude of space, of the great and of the small seems to be beyond question and independent of our cognition.
In looking over the marvelous achievements of physical science, there is one characteristic particularly worth while to note; namely, that each new discovery has been made through the invention of new or the improvement of previously existing devices to aid the senses; and for that reason the investigations of science have been limited to the world of sense the dense Physical World. Scientists have dealt with the chemical elements: solids, liquids, and gases; but beyond that they have no instruments capable of reaching, although forced to postulate a still finer matter they call “ether,” because without this finer medium they find it impossible to account for light, electricity, etc. Thus we see that physical science inductively recognizes the existence of an invisible world as a necessity in the economy of Nature.
Both physical and occult science are therefore agreed on that point and both reach into the invisible world for solutions to problems. They differ as to the method of investigation and the credence to be given evidence thus obtained. Material science seeks only for explanation to problems insoluble on a purely physical basis, such as the passage of light waves through a vacuum or the resemblance of the flowers of the present season to those of past summers. In such cases science readily postulates an invisible, intangible something like ether or heredity and prides itself on its acumen and the ingenuity of its explanations.
Occult science asserts that THERE IS AN INVISIBLE CAUSE AT THE ROOT OF ALL VISIBLE PHENOMENA, which when known will afford a more thorough knowledge of the facts of life than a mechanical concept, and that the most comprehensive idea of life is obtained by the study of BOTH phenomena of the visible and the noumena or underlying causes of the invisible world. It therefore investigates the invisible worlds and offers a more thorough and reasonable solution to the problems of life than mere facts of science derived only through observation of the physical phenomena.
Material science postulates ether and heredity as solutions to the above problems, though unable to offer actual proof of the truth of its hypotheses except their seeming reasonableness. Yet when occult science employs similar methods and declares the existence of thetc., physical science sneers and inconsistently speaks of superstition and ignorance. It demands proof, though the evidence offered is at least as good as the scientific evidence of the existence of ether, heredity, and numerous other ideas advanced by science, implicitly believed in by the multitude that admiringly bows its head in the dust before any dictum supported by the magic word Science. 
No one can demonstrate the truth of a proposition in geometry to a person unacquainted with the principles of mathematics. For similar reasons the facts of the inner worlds cannot be proved to the material scientist. If the person devoid of mathematical knowledge studies that science he will be easily satisfied as to the solution of the problem. When the physical scientist has fitted himself for the apprehension of superphysical facts he will have the proof and be compelled to uphold the very theories he now combats as superstition.
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