The orbits traversed by the planets are far from being immutable. They are, on the contrary, subject to perpetual mutation in position, as in form. Elongations, contractions, and orbital widenings, oscillations from right to left, slackening and quickening of speed ... and all this on a plane which seems to vacillate.(412) As is very pertinently observed by des Mousseux: Here is a path having little of the mathematical and mechanical precision claimed for it; for we know of no clock which, having gone slow for several minutes should catch up the right time _of itself_ and _without a turn of the key_. So much for blind law and force. As for the physical impossibility—a miracle indeed in the sight of Science—of a stone raised in the air against the law of gravitation, this is what Babinet—the deadliest enemy and opponent of the phenomena of levitation—(cited by Arago) says: Everyone knows the theory of _bolides_ [meteors] and aerolithes.... In Connecticut an immense aerolith was seen [a mass of eighteen hundred feet in diameter], bombarding a whole American zone and returning to the spot [in mid‐air] from which it had started.(413) Thus we find in both of the cases above cited—that of self‐correcting planets and of meteors of gigantic size flying back into the air—a “blind force” regulating and resisting the natural tendencies of “blind matter,” and even occasionally repairing its mistakes and correcting its failures. This is far more miraculous and even “extravagant,” one would say, than any “Angel‐guided” Element. Bold is he who laughs at the idea of Von Haller, who declares that: The stars are perhaps an abode of glorious Spirits; as here Vice reigns, there is Virtue master.(414) SECTION XXV. EASTERN AND WESTERN OCCULTISM. In _The Theosophist_ for March, 1886,(415) in an answer to the “Solar Sphinx,” a member of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society wrote as follows: We hold and believe that the revival of Occult Knowledge now in progress will some day demonstrate that the Western system represents ranges of perceptions which the Eastern—at least as expounded in the pages of _The Theosophist_—has yet to attain.(416) The writer is not the only person labouring under this erroneous impression. Greater Kabalists than he had said the same in the United States. This only proves that the knowledge possessed by Western Occultists of the true Philosophy, and the “ranges of perceptions” and thought of the Eastern doctrines, is very superficial. This assertion will be easily demonstrated by giving a few instances, instituting comparisons between the two interpretations of one and the same doctrine—the Hermetic Universal Doctrine. It is the more needed since, were we to neglect bringing forward such comparisons, our work would be left incomplete.