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Amidst this antagonism, whose triumph are we to hope for? Is any
alliance between the two opposing forces for ever impossible so
long as we are in the flesh? What are we to do meanwhile? If a
choice be inevitable, which way will our choice incline; and
which victim shall we sacrifice? Shall we listen to those who
tell us that there is nothing more to be gained or learnt in
those inhospitable regions where all our bewildering phenomena
have been known since man first was man? Is it true that
occultism--as it is very improperly called, for the knowledge
which it seeks is no more occult than any other--is it true that
occultism is marking time, that it is becoming hopelessly
entangled in the same doubtful facts and that it has not taken a
single step forward since its renaissance more than fifty years
ago? One must be entirely ignorant of the wonderful efforts of
those fruitful years to venture upon such an assertion. This is
not the place to discuss the question, which would require full
and careful treatment; but we may safely say that until now there
is no science which in so short a time has brought order out of
such a chaos, ascertained, checked and classified such a quantity
of facts, or more rapidly awakened, cultivated and trained in man
certain faculties which he had never seriously been believed to
possess; and furthermore none which has caused to be recognized
as incontestable and thus introduced into the circle of the
realities whereon we base our lives a number of unlikely
phenomena which had hitherto been contemptuously passed over.
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