In contradistinction to the ill-will engendered when visas are refused, there is a positive asset of good-will and better understanding which is created when Europeans are allowed to visit our shores and see our civilization at first hand. I have talked with numerous visitors, and in most every case their false impressions are corrected in our favor we are not the money-hungry imperialistic nation represented by the leftist European press or the collection of pompous, predatory, sometimes uncouth individuals so often depicted in the movies, but rather human individuals who wish to live and let live, and who are basically friendly. As one French visitor put it, he was surprised at what he called the "bon enfant" character of Americans. We Americans need not suffer from an inferiority complex. We are not ashamed of our civilization—it is our trump card, our strongest element of propaganda, to let others see what it is like. I believe we should play our cards in the American, not the Russian way. SOME DIFFICULT THINGS TO DO To admit guilt. To break a habit. To love an enemy. To think logically. To hate the sin, yet love the sinner. To concentrate in the midst of strife. To endure hatred without resentment. To fraternize without losing individuality. To serve, without compensation, commendation— -Arthur Foster FORUM SCIENCE • RELIGION • PHILOSOPHY Scientific Solutions Ancient, Modern, Future? The tendency of modern thought is to recur to the archaic idea of a homogeneous basis for apparently widely different things-heterogeneity developed from homogeneity. Biologists are now searching for their homogeneous protoplasm and chemists for their protyle, while science is looking for the force of which electricity, magnetism, heat, and so forth, are the differentiations. "The Secret Doctrine" carries this idea into the region of metaphysics and postulates a “One Form of Existence" as the basis and source of all things.-H. P. Blavatsky, 1888. IN THESE DAYS, when Science has become almost synonymous with hydrogen and atom bombs, and each new discovery makes us wonder uneasily what new destructive power will be added to our arsenal of troubles, we forget that despite ourselves, we, because of nuclear physics, are approaching a time when we must deal with the universe on different terms. This was made especially evident recently when Prof. Vaclov Hlavaty of the Department of Mathematics at Indiana University announced that he had achieved solutions to the equations of Einstein's latest Unified Field Theory, Kay Arnoll that lend themselves to physical interpretation. Dr. Hlavaty says that the solutions reveal that electromagnetism is the basis of all cosmic forces and that energy, matter and gravitation are built out of this all pervading ocean of electromagnetism. Instead of gravity being dependent on matter, and instead of gravitation and electromagnetism being parallel forces from one source, there is now only one great field of electromagnetism out of which all else comes. The theory further shows, as reported in the New York Times, that "The Hlavaty solutions show that it is possible to have gravitation without matter, a concept not permitted under the relative theory. They also reveal that it is possible for space to exist without gravity and without matter, yet it would still be governed by the electromagnetic field." Prof. Hlavaty hopes that his method may at last build a bridge linking the two major theories of the universe the relativity theory and the quantum theory. The former deals with the enormous scale of forces interacting in the universe at large, while the latter deals with the minute scale of forces interacting within the nuclei of atoms. At present there is no link between the theory relating to the universe of the galaxies in the four dimensional space-time manifold and the universe of the nuclei of atoms of which the galaxies are constituted. The universe, according to relativity, is governed by cause and effect, whereas, according to the quantum theory, chance or at least motion which is as yet without designable cause- governs all, a concept that led Prof. Einstein to remark that he "could not believe that God played dice with the cosmos." These may be new theories to the scientists, but the universe reveals itself through more than one means of perception, and those who are versed in what may be called the ancient wisdom handed down to us through history's greatest philosophers, will not find themselves surprised that science is proving what highly developed spiritual intuition has long known. The possibilities of this new frontier for science brings many speculations to mind and suggests a review of the ideas of certain scientists who were philosophers, and certain philosophers who were scientists. One is reminded of the intuition of Emerson when he said: "Everything in nature contains all the powers of nature. Everything is made of one hidden. stuff." By this "hidden stuff" he must have meant that the basis of the universe is in essence spiritual, and in this, is its true reality. Sir James Jeans also concluded that the universe is a thought in the mind of A Supreme Mathematical Thinker, echoing ancient Pythagoras who said "God geometrizes." J. W. N. Sullivan in his fine book The Limitations of Science, says of Jeans, "His reason for thinking this seems to be that all the pictures which science draws of nature, and which alone seem capable of according with observational fact, are mathematical pictures." Moreover these mathematical pictures are not pictures of anything that we can im agine. On the wave theory of matter, for example, an electron is a system of waves in a three-dimensional space. This sounds unintelligible. We can identify this with the physical space of our perceptions, and imagine the waves as being waves in some kind of ether. But we find that two electrons require six-dimensions; three electrons, nine-dimensions and so on. It is evident that the space being talked of, can have nothing to do with the space of perception. Also, we find that the waves being talked of are extremely elusive. It is suggested that they may be waves of probability, with no material existence whatever. Newton also supposed space to be "God's Sensorium" and Eddington concluded that "the stuff of the universe is mind stuff." Mr. Sullivan rightly says "The humanistic importance of this outlook, in the minds of its authors, seems to be that it leaves us more free to attach the traditional significance to our aesthetic, religious, or, compendiously mystic experiences. It does not actively reinforce any particular religious interpretation of the universe, but it cuts the ground from under those arguments which were held to prove that any such interpretation is necessarily illusory. This it does by showing that science deals with but a partial aspect of reality, and that there is no faintest reason for supposing that everything science ignores is less real than what it accepts. Why is it that science forms a closed system? Why is it that the elements of reality it ignores never come to disturb it? The reason is that all the terms of physics are defined in terms of one another. The abstractions with which physics begins are all it ever has to do with. By starting with 'point events,' for instance, we can, mathematically, grind out one expression after another until we come to the mathematical specification of 'matter.' From this specification we can continue until we arrive back at our starting point." It would seem, then, that even the most exact of the sciences, mathematics, is dependent upon the interpretative qualities of the human mind using it, and is given value by the spiritual perceptions of the individual mathematician. If this is true, then there must, of necessity, be a synthesis between science and philosophy in order to find a true picture of reality in either the material or spiritual world. One such synthesis can be found in the works of H. P. Blavatsky whose discussions on ancient philosophy are classic, and whose scientific theories and predic tions predicated on philosophic premises, written in the 1880's, antici pated modern scientific develop ments. There is much illuminating discussion on the nature of Electricity, Space, Time, and other areas of present day physics, in her famous work The Secret Doctrine. In her comments upon an ancient religioscientific book she uses the old Sanscrit word "Fohat" which is in some respects synonymous with electromagnetism, but carrying an added idea of divine or spiritual, intelligent energy. "Primordial matter," she wrote, "before it emerges from the plane of the never-manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of Fohat, is but 'a cool Radiance, colorless, formless, tasteless, and devoid of every quality and aspect'." Electricity, she defined as "the One Life at the upper rung of Being." She also said, "it is * through Fohat that the ideas of the universal mind are impressed upon matter. Some faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from the appellation "Cosmic Electricity, . . . including intelligence." Or again, "He (Fohat) is on the Cosmic plane, and is behind all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc. and is the 'spirit' of Electricity, which is the Life of the Universe. As an abstraction, we call it the One Life; as an objective and evident Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the Unknowable Causality, and ends as Omnipresent Mind. and Life immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus while science speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless motion, the Occultists* point to intelligent Law and Sensient Life, and add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this." The whole basis of occultism lies in this, that there is latent within every man a power which can give him true knowledge, a power of perception of truth, which enables him to deal first hand with universals if he will be strictly logical and face the facts. Thus we can proceed from universals to particulars by this innate spiritual force which is in every man. . . . It is curious to read Schopenhauer and Hartmann and mark how, step by step, by strict logic and pure reason, they have arrived at the same bases of thought that had been centuries ago adopted in India, especially by the Vedantin system. It may, however, be objected that they have arrived at this by the inductive method. But in Schopenhauer's case at any rate it was not so. He acknowledges himself that the idea came to him like a flash; having thus |