It was a time of extensive theory construction based on laboratory experiments and mathematical formulae and equations. Something was needed to guide men's thinking toward a more balanced vision of themselves and the universe, to prevent their spiritual impulses from falling back into flagrant superstition and sacerdotalism. Not surprisingly, then, the Adepts devoted considerable attention to the findings and practitioners of science, whose ranks included intuitive as well as materialistic thinkers, some of the former joining the nascent theosophical movement. Additional material was later included in The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, published in 1888 with their consent. Perhaps the best way to show their wider knowledge is to compare some of their statements with later scientific discoveries.
All manifestation is bipolar and is evolving.
It opens limitless horizons to substance informed by the divine breath of its soul in every possible state of tenuity. This divisible atom upset all former theories of matter derived from classical Newtonian physics, and ushered in modern or New Physics. It is no longer legitimate to ascribe to elementary particles the substantiality of pellets of matter. This recalls another statement Blavatsky made in 1888 that the physicist . . . must first know what an atom is, in reality, and that he cannot know. The atom belongs wholly to the domain of metaphysics.