the boy who never grew up--heaven defend me from ever feeling
quite grown up, for then I should come to a standstill; so the reader
must take what I have to say simply as the talk of one boy to another in
the Great School, and not expect too much.
The first question then is, where to begin. Descartes commenced his book
with the words "Cogito, ergo sum." "I think, therefore I am," and we
cannot do better than follow his example. There are two things about
which we cannot have any doubt--our own existence, and that of the world
around us. But what is it in us that is aware of these two things, that
hopes and fears and plans regarding them? Certainly not our flesh and
bones. A man whose leg has been amputated is able to think just the
same. Therefore it is obvious that there is something in us which
receives impressions and forms ideas, that reasons upon facts and
determines upon courses of action and carries them out, which is not the
physical body. This is the real "I Myself." This is the Person we are
really concerned with; and it is the betterment of this "I Myself" that
makes it worth while to enquire what our Thought has to do in the
matter.
Equally true it is on the other hand that the forces of Nature around us
do not think. Steam, electricity, gravitation, and chemical affinity do
not think. They follow certain fixed laws which we have no power to
alter. Therefore we are confronted at the outset by a broad distinction
between two modes of Motion--the Movement of Thought and the Movement of
Cosmic Energy--the one based upon the exercise of Consciousness and
Will, and the other based upon Mathematical Sequence. This is why that
system of instruction known as Free Masonry starts by erecting the two
symbolic pillars Jachin and Boaz--Jachin so called from the root "Yak"
meaning "One," indicating the Mathematical element of Law; and Boaz,
from the root "Awáz" meaning "Voice" indicating Personal element of Free
Will. These names are taken from the description in I Kings vii, 21 and
II Chron. iii, 17 of the building of Solomon's Temple, where these two
pillars stood before the entrance, the meaning being that the Temple of
Truth can only be entered by passing between them, that is, by giving
each of these factors their due relation to the other, and by realizing
that they are the two Pillars of the Universe, and that no real progress
can be made except by finding the true balance between them. Law and
Personality--these are the two great principles with which we have to
deal, and the problem is to square the one with the other.
Let me start, then, by considering some well established facts in the
physical world which show how the known Law acts under certain known
conditions, and this will lead us on in an intelligible manner to see
how the same Law is likely to work under as yet unknown conditions. If
we had to deal with unknown laws as well as unknown conditions we
should, indeed, be up a gum tree. Fancy a mathematician having to solve
an equation, both sides of which were entirely made up of unknown
quantities--where would he be? Happily this is not the case. The Law is
ONE throughout, and the apparent variety of its working results from the
infinite variety of the conditions under which it may work. Let us lay a
foundation, then, by seeing how it works in what we call the common
course of Nature. A few examples will suffice.
Hardly more than a generation ago it was supposed that the analysis of
matter could not be carried further than its reduction to some seventy
primary chemical elements, which in various combinations produced all
material substances; but there was no explanation how all these
different elements came into existence. Each appeared to be an original
creation, and there was no accounting for them. But now-a-days, as the
rustic physician says in Molière's play of the "Médecin Malgré Lui,"
"nous avons changé tout cela." Modern science has shown conclusively
that every kind of chemical atom is composed of particles of one
original substance which appears to pervade all space, and to which the
name of Ether has been given. Some of these particles carry a positive
charge of electricity and some a negative, and the chemical atom is
formed by the grouping of a certain number of negatively charged
particles round a centre composed of positive electricity around which
they revolve; and it is the number of these particles and the rate of
their motion that determines the nature of the atom, whether, for
instance, it will be an atom of iron or an atom of hydrogen, and thus we
are brought back to Plato's old aphorism that the Universe consists of
Number and Motion.
The size of these etheric particles is small beyond anything but
abstract mathematical conception. Sir Oliver Lodge is reported to have
made the following comparison in a lecture delivered at Birmingham. "The
chemical
