Produced by Jake Jaqua
by Thomas E. Willson
Contents
Preface
I. Physical Basis of Metaphysics
II. The Two Kinds of Perception
III. Matter and Ether
IV. What a Teacher Should Teach
V. The Four Manifested Planes
VI. One Place on Earth
VII. The Four Globes
VIII. The Battle Ground
IX. The Dual Man
X. The Septenary World
XI. Stumbling blocks in Eastern Physics
The Editor of the Theosophical Forum in April, 1901, noted thedeath of Mr. Thomas E. Willson in the previous month in anarticle which we reproduce for the reason that we believe manyreaders who have been following the chapters of "Ancient andModern Physics" during the last year will like to know somethingof the author. In these paragraphs is said all that need be saidof one of our most devoted and understanding Theosophists.
In March, 1901, The Theosophical Forum lost one of its mostwilling and unfailing contributors. Mr. T.E. Willson diedsuddenly, and the news of his death reached me when I actuallywas in the act of preparing the concluding chapter of his"Ancient and Modern Physics" for the April number.
Like the swan, who sings his one song, when feeling that death isnear, Mr. Willson gave his brother co-workers in the Theosophicalfield all that was best, ripest and most suggestive in histhought in the series of articles the last of which is to comeout in the same number with this.
The last time I had a long talk with T.E. Willson, he said"
"For twenty years and more I was without a hearing, yet myinterest and my faith in what I had to say never flagged, theeagerness of my love for my subject never diminished."
This needs no comment. The quiet and sustained resistance toindifference and lack of appreciation, is truly the steadyballast which has prevented our Theosophical ship from aimlessand fatal wanderings, though of inclement weather and adversewinds we had plenty.
For many long years Mr. Willson was the librarian of the New York"World." In the afternoons he was too busy to see outsiders,but, beginning with five o'clock in the afternoon until he wenthome somewhere in the neighbourhood of midnight, he always wasglad to see his friends. He had a tiny little room of his own,very near the top of the tremendous building, his one windowlooking far above the roofs of the tallest houses in thedistrict. There he sat at his desk, generally in his shirtsleeves, if the weather was at all warm, always busy with somematter already printed, or going to be, a quiet, yet impressiveand dignified figure.
The elevated isolation, both figuratively and literally speaking,in which T.E. Willson lived and worked, in the midst of the mostcrowded thoroughfares of New York, always made me think ofProfessor Teufelsdrockh on the attic floor of "the highesthouse in the Wahngasse." The two had more than one point ofresemblance. They shared the loftiness of their point of view,their sympathetic understanding of other folks, their loneliness,and, above all, their patient, even humorous resignation to thefact of this loneliness.
Yet in his appearance Mr. Willson was not like the greatWeissnichtwo philosopher. In fact, in the cast of his featuresand in his ways, Mr. Willson never looked to me like a white man.In British India I have known Brahmans of the better type exactlywith the same sallow complexion, same quick and observant browne