The Blessings of Publicity

A well-known public lecturer, a distinguished Egyptologist, said, in one of his lectures against the teachings of Theosophy, a few suggestive words, which are now quoted and must be answered:—

“It is a delusion to suppose there is anything in the experience or wisdom of the past, the ascertained results of which can only be communicated from beneath the cloak and mask of mystery. . . . Explanation is the Soul of Science. They will tell you we cannot have their knowledge without living their life. . . . Public experimental research, the printing press, and a free-thought platform, have abolished the need of mystery. It is no longer necessary for science to take the veil, as she was forced to do for security in times past,” etc.

This is a very mistaken view in one aspect. “Secrets of the purer and profounder life” not only may but must be made universally known. But there are secrets that kill in the arcana of Occultism, and unless a man lives the life he cannot be entrusted with them.

The late Professor Faraday had very serious doubts whether it was quite wise and reasonable to give out to the public at large certain discoveries of modern science. Chemistry had led to the invention of too terrible means of destruction in our century to allow it to fall into the hands of the profane. What man of sense—in the face of such fiendish applications of dynamite and other explosive substances as are made by those incarnations of the Destroying Power, who glory in calling themselves Anarchists and Socialists—would not agree with us in saying:—Far better for mankind that it should never have blasted a rock by modern perfected means, than that it should have shattered the limbs of one per cent even of those who have been thus destroyed by the pitiless hand of Russian Nihilists, Irish Fenians and Anarchists. That such discoveries, and chiefly their murderous application, ought to have been withheld from public knowledge may be shown on the authority of statistics and commissions appointed to investigate and record the result of the evil done. The following information gathered from public papers will give an insight into what may be in store for wretched mankind.

England alone—the centre of civilization—has 21,268 firms fabricating and selling explosive substances.¹ But the centres of the dynamite trade, of infernal machines, and other such results of modern civilization, are chiefly at Philadelphia and New York. It is in the former city of “Brotherly Love” that the now most famous manufacturer of explosives flourishes. It is one of the well-known respectable citizens—the inventor and manufacturer of the most murderous “dynamite toys”—who, called before the Senate of the United States anxious to adopt means for the repression of a too free trade in such implements, found an argument that ought to become immortalised for its cynical sophistry: “My machines,” that expert is reported to have said—“are quite harmless to look at; as they may be manufactured in the shape of oranges, hats, boats, and anything one likes. . . . Criminal is he who murders people by means of such machines, not he who manufactures them. The firm refuses to admit that were there no supply there would be no incentive for demand on the market; but insists that every demand should be satisfied by a supply ready at hand.”

That “supply” is the fruit of civilization and of the publicity given to the discovery of every murderous property in matter. What is it? As found in the Report of the Commission appointed to investigate the variety and character of the so-called “infernal machines,” so far the following implements of instantaneous human destruction are already on hand. The most fashionable of all among the many varieties fabricated by Mr. Holgate, are the “Ticker,” the “Eight Day Machine,” the “Little Exterminator,” and the “Bottle Machine.” The “Ticker” is in appearance like a piece of lead, a foot long and four inches thick. It contains an iron or steel tube, full of a kind of gunpowder invented by Holgate himself. That gunpowder, in appearance like any other common stuff of that name, has, however, an explosive power two hundred times stronger than common gunpowder; the “Ticker” containing thus a powder which equals in force two hundred pounds of the common gunpowder. At one end of the machine is fastened an invisible clock-work meant to regulate the time of the explosion, which time may be fixed from one minute to thirty-six hours. The spark is produced by means of a steel needle which gives a spark at the touch-hole, and communicates thereby the fire to the whole machine.

The “Eight Day Machine” is considered the most powerful, but at the same time the most complicated, of all those invented. One must be familiar with handling it before a full success can be secured. It is owing to this difficulty that the terrible fate intended for London Bridge and its neighbourhood was turned aside by the instantaneous killing instead of the two Fenian criminals. The size and appearance of that machine changes, Proteus-like, according to the necessity of smuggling it in, in one or another way, unperceived by the victims. It may be concealed in bread, in a basket of oranges, in a liquid, and so on. The Commission of Experts is said to have declared that its explosive power is such as to reduce to atoms instantly the largest edifice in the world.

The “Little Exterminator” is an innocent-looking plain utensil having the shape of a modest jug. It contains neither dynamite nor powder, but secretes, nevertheless, a deadly gas, and has a hardly perceptible clock-work attached to its edge, the needle of which points to the time when that gas will effect its escape. In a shut-up room this new “vril” of lethal kind, will smother to death, nearly instantaneously, every living being within a distance of a hundred feet, the radius of the murderous jug. With these three “latest novelties” in the high season of Christian civilization, the catalogue of the dynamiters is closed; all the rest belongs to the old “fashion” of the past years. It consists of hats, porte cigars, bottles of ordinary kind, and even ladies’ smelling bottles, filled with dynamite, nitro-glycerine, etc., etc.—weapons, some of which, following unconsciously Karmic law, killed many of the dynamiters in the last Chicago revolution. Add to this the forthcoming long-promised Keely’s vibratory force, capable of reducing in a few seconds a dead bullock to a heap of ashes, and then ask yourself if the Inferno of Dante as a locality can ever rival earth in the production of more hellish engines of destruction!

Thus, if purely material implements are capable of blowing up, from a few corners, the greatest cities of the globe, provided the murderous weapons are guided by expert hands—what terrible dangers might not arise from magical occult secrets being revealed, and allowed to fall into the possession of ill-meaning persons! A thousand times more dangerous and lethal are these, because neither the criminal hand, nor the immaterial, invisible weapon used, can ever be detected.

The congenital black magicians—those who, to an innate propensity towards evil, unite highly-developed mediumistic natures—are but too numerous in our age. It is nigh time then that psychologists and believers, at least, should cease advocating the beauties of publicity and claiming knowledge of the secrets of nature for all. It is not in our age of “suggestion” and “explosives” that Occultism can open wide the doors of its laboratories except to those who do live the life.