“a speck in infinite extension—­a mere drop in the Universal sea;” and saying that, “to Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total.  The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation .... the flux of power is eternally the same.”  Mr. Tyndall speaks here as though he were an Occultist.  Yet, the memento mori—­“the sun is cooling .... it is dying!” of the Western Trappists of Science resounds as loud as it ever did.

No, we say; no, while there is one man left on the globe, the sun will not be extinguished.  Before the hour of the “Solar Pralaya” strikes on the watch-tower of Eternity, all the other worlds of our system will be gliding in their spectral shells along the silent paths of Infinite Space.  Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and the nursling of Aether, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden and—­died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them—­to die themselves for their father’s loss.  And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have to shift his place in heavens and erect his own funeral pile.  Then only, surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general conflagration, bring on likewise the death of our sun:  he will have unveiled by moving off the “Central sun”—­the mysterious, the ever-hidden centre of attraction of our sun and system.  Fables?  Mere poetical fiction?  Yet, when one knows that the most exact sciences, the greatest mathematical and astronomical truths went forth into the world among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths even under the patches of fiction’s harlequinade.  This fable about the Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu books, and has likewise the same occult meaning.  But then like the Ramayana “borrowed from the Greek Iliad” and the Bhagavat-Gita and Krishna plagiarized from the Gospel—­in the opinion of the great Sanskritist, Prof.  Weber, the Aryans may have also borrowed the Pleiades and their Hercules from the same source!  When the Brahmins can be shown by the Christian Orientalists to be the direct descendants of the Teutonic Crusaders, then only, perchance, will the cycle of proofs be completed, and the historical truths of the West vindicated!

Question iii.—­Are the great nations to be swept away in an hour?