Inertia, the Great Occult Force in Our Kosmos

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Secret Doctrine's First Proposition Series · 38 pages

Thirty-eight pages with a full abstract and train of thoughts at the front, one of the more substantial studies in the section.

The opening proposition is that the concepts of the West are the allegories of the East and the truths of the Elect, and the study begins by finding allies rather than opponents among the scientists. Faraday is described as an Aristotelean and an agnostic rather than a materialist, and he and Boscovitch are credited with seeing in atoms and molecules centres of force, and in the corresponding elemental force an entity in itself. Behind the veil of terrestrial phenomena the occultist is said to see in the elemental forces secondary causes which are themselves the effects of primary causes guided by divine intelligences — from which follows the flat rejection of the idea that anything in nature is inorganic or dead. The paradox in the title is then worked out: when matter appears inert it is at its most active. A stone block is motionless and impenetrable to all intents and purposes, and yet its particles are in ceaseless vibration so rapid that the eye sees no motion at all. Much of the rest turns on a distinction of vocabulary the study insists on. Substance in metaphysics does not mean matter: it is the pre-cosmic substratum, undifferentiated yet interrelated with ideation, supersensuous but atomic — boundless Æther, formless and supernal, the ultimate essence of matter in space, as against ether, which is called physical and infernal. Eastern occultism is said to have a special name for each variety of substance on each plane, while science, in the file's own joke, is like England, blessed with thirty-six religions and only one fish-sauce, and has but one word for all of them.

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