We should have gone very
far in what at present we call the unknown or the occult; but we
should have known hardly anything of physics, chemistry or
mechanics, unless, which is very probable, we had come upon them
by another road as we travelled round the occult. It is true that
certain nations, the Hindus particularly, the Egyptians and
perhaps the Incas, as well as others, in all probability, who
have not left sufficient traces, thus went to work the other way
and obtained nothing decisive. Is this again a consequence of the
hopeless incompatibility between the faculties of the brain and
those of the subconsciousness? Possibly; but we must not forget
that we are speaking of nations which never possessed our
intellectual habits, our passion for precision, for verification,
for experimental certainty; indeed, this passion has only been
fully developed in ourselves within the last two or three
centuries. It is to be presumed therefore that the European would
have gone much farther in the other direction than the Oriental.
Where would he have arrived? Endowed with a different brain,
naturally clearer, more exacting, more logical, less credulous,
more practical, closer to realities, more attentive to details,
but with the scientific side of his intelligence uncultivated,
would he have gone astray or would he have met the truths which
we are still seeking and which may well be more important than
all our material conquests.
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