Thus, the obstacle is not that the “Adepts” would “forbid inquiry,” but rather the personal, present limitations of the senses of the average, and even of the scientific man.  To undertake the explanation of that which at the outset would be rejected as a physical impossibility, the outcome of hallucination, is unwise and even harmful, because premature.  It is in consequence of such difficulties that the psychic production of physical phenomena—­save in exceptional cases—­is strictly forbidden.

And now, “Adepts” are asked to meddle with astronomy—­a science which, of all the branches of human knowledge has yielded the most accurate information, afforded the most mathematically correct data, and of the achievements in which the men of science feel the most justly proud!  It is true that on the whole astronomy has achieved triumphs more brilliant than those of most other sciences.  But if it has done much in the direction of satisfying man’s straining and thirsting mind and his noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important particulars, it has ever laughed at man’s puny efforts to wrest the great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus.  While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space have not been detected, nor proven to be identical with those observed on our own planet.  In this particular, Esoteric Psychology may be useful.  But who of the men of science would consent to confront it with their own handiwork?  Who of them would recognise the superiority and greater trustworthiness of the Adept’s knowledge over their own hypotheses, since in their case they can claim the mathematical correctness of their deductive reasonings based on the alleged unerring precision of the modern instruments; while the Adepts can claim but their knowledge of the ultimate nature of the materials they have worked with for ages, resulting in the phenomena produced.  However much it may he urged that a deductive argument, besides being an incomplete syllogistic form, may often be in conflict with fact; that their major propositions may not always be correct, although the predicates of their conclusions seem correctly drawn—­spectrum analysis will not be acknowledged as inferior to purely spiritual research.  Nor, before developing his sixth sense, will the man of science concede the error of his theories as to the solar spectrum, unless he abjure, to some degree at least, his marked weakness for conditional and disjunctive syllogisms ending in eternal dilemmas.  At present the “Adepts” do not see any help for it.  Were these invisible and unknown profanes to interfere with—­not to say openly contradict—­the dicta of the Royal Society, contempt and ridicule, followed by charges of crass ignorance of the first elementary principles of modern science would be their only reward; while those who would lend an ear to their “vagaries,”