Section 2

* Animal Mechanism , a treatise on terrestrial and aer¬ ial locomotion. By E. J. Marey, Prof, at the College of France, and Member of the Academy of Medicine.
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with free-will in man which belongs to quite a different plane. The author of “ Psycho- physiologie Generale ”, treating of his dis¬ covery that psychic action is but motion, and the result of a collectivity of causes — re¬ marks that as it is so, there cannot be any further discussion upon spontaneity — in the sense of any native internal proneness cre¬ ated by the human organism ; and adds that the above puts an end to all claim for free-will! The Occultist denies the conclu¬ sion. The actual fact of man’s psychic (we say manasic or noetic) individuality is a sufficient warrant against the assumption ; for in the case of this conclusion being cor¬ rect, or being indeed, as the author expresses it, the collective hallucination of the whole mankind throughout the ages , there would be an end also to psychic individuality.
Now by “ psychic” individuality we mean that self-determining power which enables man to override circumstances. Place half a dozen animals of the same species under the same circumstances, and their actions, while not identical, will be closely similar ; place half a dozen men under the same cir-
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION
135
cumstances, and their actions will be as different as their characters, i. e ., psychic individuality .
But if instead of “psychic” we call it the higher Self-conscious Will, then having been shown by the science of psycho-phy¬ siology itself that will has no special organ , how will the materialists connect it with “ molecular ” motion at all ? As Professor George T. Ladd says :
“ The phenomena of human consciousness must be regarded as activities of some other form of Beal Being , than the moving molecules of the brain . They require a subject or ground which is in its nature unlike the phosphorized fats of the cen¬ tral masses, the aggregated nerve-fibres of nerve- cells of the cerebral cortex. This Real Being thus manifested immediately to itself in the phenomena of consciousness, and indirectly to others through the bodily changes, is the Mind (Manas). To it the mental phenomena are to be attributed as showing what it is by what it does. The so-called mental ‘ faculties ’ are only the modes of the behavior in consciousness of this real being. We actually find, by the only meth¬ od available, that this real being called Mind believes in certain perpetually recurring modes ; therefore, we attribute to it certain faculties. . . Mental faculties are not entities that have an
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existence of themselves . They are the
modes of the behavior in consciousness of the Mind. And the very nature of the classifying acts which lead to their being distinguished, is explicable only upon the assumption that a Real Being called Mind exists , and is to be distinguished from the real beings known as the physical mole¬ cules of the brain’s nervous mass.” *
And having shown that we have to regard consciousness as a unit (another occult proposition) the author adds : —
“We conclude, then, from the previous con¬ siderations: the subject of all the states of con¬ sciousness is a real unit-being , called Mind; which is of non-material nature , and acts and develops according to laws of its own, but is specially corre¬ lated with certain material molecules and masses forming the substance of the Brain .” t
This “ Mind ” is Manas , or rather its lower reflection, which whenever it disconnects it¬ self, for the time being, from kama , becomes the guide of the highest mental faculties, and is the organ of the free-will in physical
* The higher manas or “ Ego ” ( Kshetrajna ) is the “ Silent Spectator”, and the voluntary “sacrificial victim”: the lower manas, its representative— a tyrannical despot, truly.
t Elements of Physiological Psychology. A treatise of the activities and nature of the Mind, from the Physical and Experimental Point of View, pp. 606 and 613.
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION 137
man. Therefore, this assumption of the newest psycho-physiology is uncalled for, and the apparent impossibility of reconcil¬ ing the existence of free-will with the law of the conservation of energy is — a pure fallacy. This was well shown in the “ Sci¬ entific Letters” of “Elpay” in a criticism of the work. But to prove it finally and set the whole question definitely at rest, does not even require so high an interfer¬ ence (high for us, at any rate) as the Occult laws, but simply a little common sense. Let us analyse the question dispassionately.
It is postulated by one man, presumably a scientist, that because “ psychic action is found subject to the general and immutable laws of motion, there is, therefore, no free¬ will in man ”. The “ analytical method of exact sciences” has demonstrated it, and materialistic scientists have decreed to “pass the resolution ” that the fact should be so accepted by their followers. But there are other and far greater scientists who thought differently. For instance, Sir William Law¬ rence, the eminent surgeon, declared in his
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lectures * that : —
“ The philosophical doctrine of the soul, and its separate existence, has nothing to do with this physiological question, but rests on a species of proof altogether different. These sublime dogmas could never have been brought to light by the labors of the anatomist and physiologist. An immaterial and spiritual being could not have been discovered amid the blood and filth of the dissecting room.”
Now, let us examine on the testimony of the materialist how this universal solvent called the “ analytical method ” is applied in this special case. The author of uPsy- chophysiologie ” decomposes psychic activ¬ ity into its compound elements, traces them back to motion, and, failing to find in them the slightest trace of free-will or spon¬ taneity, jumps at the conclusion that the latter have no existence in general ; nor are they to be found in that psychic activity which he has just decomposed. “Are not the fallacy and error of such an unscientific proceeding self-evident?” asks his critic;
*W. Lawrence. Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man . 8 vo. London, 1848, p. 6.
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION 139
and then argues very correctly that : —
“At this rate, and starting from the stand¬ point of this analytical method, one would have an equal right to deny every phenomenon in nature from first to last. For, do not sound and light, heat and electricity, like all other chemical processes, once decomposed into their respective elements, lead the experimenter back to the same motion, wherein all the peculiarities of the given elements disappear, leaving behind them only ‘ the vibrations of molecules ’ ? But does it necessarily follow that for all that, heat, light, electricity — are but illusions instead of the actual manifestations of the peculiarities of our real world? Such peculiarities are not, of course, to be found in compound elements, simply because we cannot expect that a part should contain, from first to last, the properties of the whole. What should we say of a chemist, who, having decomposed water into its compounds, hydrogen and oxygen, without finding in them the special characteristics of water, would maintain that such did not exist at all nor could they be found in water? What of an antiquary, who upon examining distributed type and finding no sense in every separate letter, should assert that there was no such thing as sense to be found in any printed document? And does not the author of Psychophysiologie act just in this way when he denies the existence of free-will or self-spon-
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taneity in man, on the grounds that this dis¬ tinctive faculty of the highest psychic activity is absent from those compound elements which he has analysed? ”
Most undeniably no separate piece of brick, of wood, or iron, each of which has once been a part of a building now in ruins, can be expected to preserve the smallest trace of the architecture of that building — in the hands of the chemist, at any rate; though it would in those of a psychometer , a faculty, by the bye, which demonstrates far more powerfully the law of the conserva¬ tion of energy than any physical science does, and shows it acting as much in the subjective or psychic worlds as on the ob¬ jective and material planes. The genesis of sound, on this plane, has to be traced back to the same motion, and the same correlation of forces is at play during the phenomenon as in the case of every other manifestation. Shall the physicist, then, who decomposes sound into its compound element of vibra¬ tions and fails to find in them any harmony or special melody, deny the existence of the latter? And does not this prove that the
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION
141
analytical method having to deal exclusively with the elements, and nothing to do with their combinations , leads the physicist to talk very glibly about motion, vibration, and what not, and to make him entirely lose sight of the harmony produced by certain com¬ binations of that motion or the “ harmony of vibrations”? Criticism, then, is right in accusing Materialistic psycho-physiology of neglecting these all-important distinctions; in maintaining that if a careful observation of facts is a duty in the simplest physical phenomena, how much more should it be so when applied to such complex and import¬ ant questions as psychic force and faculties? And yet in most cases all such essential dif¬ ferences are overlooked, and the analytical method is applied in a most arbitrary and prejudiced way. What wonder, then, if, in carrying back psychic action to its basic elements of motion, the psycho-physiologist depriving it during the process of all its essential characteristics, should destroy it; and having destroyed it, it only stands to reason that he is unable to find that which exists in it no longer. He forgets, in short,
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or rather purposely ignores the fact, that though, like all other phenomena on the material plane, psychic manifestations must he related in their final analysis to the world of vibration (“ sound ” being the substratum of universal Akasa ), yet, in their origin, they belong to a different and a higher World of Harmony. Elpay has a few se¬ vere sentences against the assumptions of those he calls “ physico-biologists ” which are worthy of note.
“Unconscious of their error, the psycho-physi¬ ologists identify the compound elements of psychic activity with that activity itself: hence the conclusion from the standpoint of the ana¬ lytical method, that the highest, distinctive spe¬ ciality of the human soul — free-will, spontaneity — is an illusion, and no psychic reality. But as we have just shown, such identification not only has nothing in common with exact science, but is simply impermissible, as it clashes with all the fundamental laws of logic, in consequence of which all these so-called physico-biological de¬ ductions emanating from the said identification vanish into thin air. Thus to trace psychic action primarily to motion, means in no way to prove the “illusion of free-will”. And, as in the case of water, whose specific qualities cannot
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION 143
be deprived of their reality although they are not to be found in its compound gases, so with regard to the specific property of psychic action : its spontaneity cannot be refused to psychic real¬ ity, though this property is not contained in those finite elements into which the psycho-physiolo¬ gist dismembers the activity in question under his mental scalpel.”
This method is “a distinctive feature of modern science in its endeavor to satisfy inquiry into the nature of the objects of its investigation by a detailed description of their development ”, says G. T. Ladd. And the author of “ The Elements of Physiolog¬ ical Psychology ”, adds: —
“The universal process of ‘Becoming’ has been almost personified and deified so as to make it the true ground of all finite and concrete
existence . The attempt is made to refer
all the so-called development of the mind to the evolution of the substance of the brain, under purely physical and mechanical causes. This attempt, then, denies that any real unit-being called the Mind needs to be assumed as undergo¬ ing a process of development according to laws of its own . On the other hand, all at¬
tempts to account for the orderly increase in complexity and comprehensiveness of the men-
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tal phenomena by tracing the physical evolution of the brain are wholly unsatisfactory to many minds. We have no hesitation in classing our¬ selves among this number. Those facts of ex¬ perience which show a correspondence in the order of the development of the body and the mind, and even a certain necessary dependence of the latter upon the former, are, of course, to be admitted; but they are equally compatible with another view of the mind’s development. This other view has the additional advantages that it makes room for many other facts of ex¬ perience which are very difficult of reconcilia¬ tion with any materialistic theory. On the whole, the history of each individual's experiences is such as requires the assumption that a real unit¬ being (a Mind) is undergoing a process of devel¬ opment, in relation to the changing condition or evolution of the brain, and yet in accordance with a nature and laws of its own ” (p. 616).
How closely this last u assumption ” of science approaches the teachings of the Occult philosophy will be shown in Part II of this article. Meanwhile, we may close with an answer to the latest materialistic fallacy, which may be summarized in a few words. As every psychic action has for its substratum the nervous elements whose ex¬ istence it postulates, and outside which it
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION 145
cannot act; as the activity of the nervous elements are only molecular motion, there is therefore no need to invent a special and psychic Force for the explanation of our brain work. Free-will would force Science to postulate an invisible Free - Witter, a cre¬ ator of that special Force.
We agree: “not the slightest need” of a creator of “ that special ” or any other Force. Nor has any one ever claimed such an absurdity. But between creating and guiding there is a difference, and the latter implies in no way any creation of the ener¬ gy of motion, or, indeed, of any special energy. Psychic mind (in contradistinc¬ tion to manasic or noetic mind) only trans¬ forms this energy of the “ unit-being ” according to “ a nature and laws of its own ” — to use Ladd’s felicitous expression. The “ unit-being ” creates nothing, but only causes a natural correlation in accordance with both the physical laws and laws of its own ; having to use the Force, it guides its direction, choosing the paths along which it will proceed, and stimulating it to action. And, as its activity is sui generis, and inde-
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pendent, it carries this energy from this world of disharmony into its own sphere of harmony. Were it not independent it could not do so. As it is, the freedom of man’s will is boyond doubt or cavil. Therefore, as already observed, there is no question of creation, but simply of guidance . Because the sailor at the wheel does not create the steam in the engine, shall we say that he does not direct the vessel?
And, because we refuse to accept the fallacies of some psycho-physiologists as the last word of science, do we furnish thereby a new proof that free-will is an hallucination? We deride the animalistic idea. How far more scientific and logical, besides being as poetical as it is grand, is the teaching in the Kathopanishad, which, in a beautiful and descriptive metaphor, says that : “ The senses are the horses, body is the chariot, mind (Jcama-manas) is the reins, and intellect (or free-will ) the charioteer”. Yerily there is more exact science in the less important of the Upan - ishads , composed thousands of years ago, than in all the materialistic ravings of
PSYCHIC AND NOETIC ACTION 147
modern “ physico-biology ” and “ psycho¬ physiology ” put together !
“ . The knowledge of the past, present, and
future is embodied in Kshetrajna (the ‘Self ’) .’’—Occult Axioms.
TTAVING explained in what particulars, * 1 and why, as Occultists, we disagree with materialistic physiological psychology, we may now proceed to point out the dif¬ ference between pyschic and noetic mental functions, the noetic not being recognized by official science.
Moreover, we, Theosophists, understand the terms “ psychic” and “psychism” some¬ what differently from the average public, science, and even theology, the latter giving it a significance which both science and Theosophy reject, and the public in general remaining with a very hazy conception of what is really meant by the terms. For many, there is little, if any, difference be-
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tween “psychic” and “psychological”, both words relating in some way to the human soul. Some modern metaphysicians have wisely agreed to disconnect the word Mind ( pneuma ) from Soul {psyche) , the one being the rational, spiritual part, the other — psyche — the living principle in man, the breath that animates him (from anima , soul). Yet, if this is so, how in this case refuse a soul to animals f These are, no less than man, informed with the same principle of sentient life, the nephesh of the 2d chapter of Genesis . The Soul is by no means the Mind, nor can an idiot, bereft of the latter, be called a “ soul-less ” being. To describe, as the physiologists do, the human Soul in its relations to senses and appetites, desires and passions, common to man and the brute, and then endow it with God-like intellect with spiritual and rational faculties which can take their source but in a supersensible world — is to throw forever the veil of an impenetrable mystery over the subject. Yet in modern science, “psychology” and “ psychism ” relate only to conditions of the nervous system, mental phenomena being