All that which _is_, emanates from the ABSOLUTE, which, by reason of this qualification alone, stands as the One and Only Reality—hence, everything extraneous to this Absolute, the generative and causative Element, _must_ be an Illusion, most undeniably. But this is only so from the purely metaphysical view. A man who regards himself as mentally sane, and is so regarded by his neighbours, calls the visions of an _insane_ brother—hallucinations which make the victim either _happy or supremely wretched_, as the case may be—likewise illusions and fancies. But, where is that madman for whom the hideous shadows in his deranged mind, his _illusions_, are not, for the time being, as actual and as real as the things which his physician or keeper may see? Everything is relative in this Universe, everything is an Illusion. But the experience of any plane is an actuality for the percipient being, whose consciousness is on that plane, though the said experience, regarded from the purely metaphysical standpoint, may be conceived to have no objective reality. But it is not against Metaphysicians, but against Physicists and Materialists that Esoteric teaching has to fight; and for these latter Vital Force, Light, Sound, Electricity, even to the objectively drawing force of Magnetism, have no objective being, and are said to exist merely as “modes of motion,” “sensations and _affections_ of matter.” Neither the Occultists generally, nor the Theosophists, reject, as erroneously believed by some, the views and theories of the Modern Scientists only because these views are opposed to Theosophy. The first rule of our Society is to render unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s. Theosophists, therefore, are the first to recognize the intrinsic value of Science. But when its high priests resolve consciousness into a secretion from the grey matter of the brain, and everything else in Nature into a mode of motion, we protest against the doctrine as being unphilosophical, self‐ contradictory, and simply absurd, from a _scientific_ point of view, as much and even more than from the Occult aspect of the Esoteric Knowledge. For truly the Astral Light of the derided Kabalists has strange and weird secrets for him who can see in it; and the mysteries concealed within its incessantly disturbed waves _are there_, the whole body of Materialists and scoffers notwithstanding. The Astral Light of the Kabalists is by some very incorrectly translated “Ether,” the latter is confused with the hypothetical Ether of Science, and both are referred to by some Theosophists as synonymous with Âkâsha. This is a great mistake. The author of _A Rational Refutation_ writes, thus unconsciously helping Occultism: