Abstract
THIS is one of the books that most people would be glad to lay aside, and, indeed, it is very difficult to say with what object it has been written. The cycles decribed have nothing to do with approximate commensurability of planetary motions, and certainly not with evolution as understood in the modern acceptation of the term. The author is a disciple of the school of Mdme. Blavatsky, and draws his inspiration from that source, tinged, it may be, with something of esoteric Buddhism, and a good deal “spider-wove from his own brain.” If anyone wants to know what absurdities modern theosophy is capable of, by all means let him read it, but most people will be satisfied to take the contents at second-hand. A very objectionable feature in the book is the occasional quotation at the heads of chapters of extracts from recognised writers of authority, conveying the impression that the contents of the chapters following are based upon modern science, and would meet the approval of the authors from whom the quotations are made. One illustration will be sufficient to show the style of the author's reasoning and the character of the information conveyed. The particular object is to demonstrate the birth of comets and worlds (p. 148). “But the least subtilised type of those disembodied groups does not take the same direction as the others. It keeps going in orbits round the sun, shooting beams at him, which, expelled (seemingly, at least), spread out behind as a lengthy tail. Then, when the sun takes a short rest, his brilliancy nearly spent, that entity moves off, its beams showing the way, but greatly reduced, and of which nought remains ere the comet disappears for parts unknown. It will be known to us as comet I.” We have, approximately, 200 pages of this sort of stuff, paragraph after paragraph, all of which are utterly incomprehensible, and to wind up the whole we have sheet after sheet of diagrams or illustrations which no man can understand, and on which we should imagine the author himself would pass a very doubtful examination.
Involution and Evolution according to the Philosophy of Cycles.
By Kalpa. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1894.)
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Involution and Evolution according to the Philosophy of Cycles. Nature 51, 125 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/051125a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/051125a0