THE ONE UNPARDONABLE SIN . . . . Now the central point of Darwins teaching, . . . goes on the creator of the mythical Sozura, lies in this, that it demonstrates the simplest mechanical causes, purely physico-chemical phenomena of nature, as wholly sufficient to explain the highest and most difficult problems. Darwin puts in the place of a conscious creative force, building and arranging the organic bodies of animals and plants on a designed plan, a series of natural forces working blindly (or we say) without aim, without design. In place of an arbitrary act of operation, we have a necessary law of Evolution . . . . (So had Manu and Kapila, and, at the same time, guiding, conscious and intelligent Powers) . . . Darwin had very wisely . . . put on one side the question as to the first appearance of life. But very soon that consequence, so full of meaning, so wide reaching, was openly discussed by able and brave scientific men, such as Huxley, Carl Vogt, Ludwig Buchner. A mechanical origin of the earliest living form, was held as the necessary sequence to Darwins teaching . . . and we are at present concerned with a single consequence of the theory, the natural origin of the human race through ALMIGHTY EVOLUTION (pp. 34, 37). To which, unabashed by this scientific farrago, Occultism replies: in the course of Evolution, when the physical triumphed over, and nearly crushed under its weight, spiritual and mental evolutions, the great gift of Kriyasakti 1 remained the heirloom of only a few elect men in every age . . . . Spirit strove vainly to manifest itself in its fulness in purely organic forms (as has been explained in Part I of this Volume), and the faculty, which had been a natural attribute in the early humanity of the Third Race, became one of the class regarded as simply phenomenal by the Spiritualists and Occultists, and as scientifically impossible by the materialists. In our modern day the mere assertion that there exists a power which can create human forms – ready-made sheaths for the conscious monads or Nirmanakayas of past Manvantaras to incarnate within – is, of course, absurd, ridiculous! That which is regarded as quite natural, on the other hand, is the production of a Frankensteins monster, plus moral consciousness, religious aspirations, genius, and a feeling of ones own immortal nature within ones self – by physico-chemical forces, guided by blind Almighty Evolution (Pedigree of Man). As to the origin of that man, not ex-nihilo, cemented by a little red clay, but from a living divine Entity consolidating the astral body with surrounding materials – this conception is too absurd even to be mentioned in the opinion of the materialists. Nevertheless, Occultists and Theosophists are ready to have their claims and theories – however unscientific and superstitious at first glance – compared as to their intrinsic value and probability, with those of the modern evolutionists. Hence the esoteric teaching is absolutely opposed to the Darwinian evolution, as applied to man, and partially so with regard to other species. It would be interesting to obtain a glimpse of the mental representation of Evolution in the Scientific brain of a materialist. What is EVOLUTION? If asked to define the full and complete meaning of the term, neither Huxley nor Hæckel will be able to do it any better than Webster does: the act of unfolding; the process of growth, development; as the evolution of a flower from a bud, or an animal from the egg. Yet the bud must be traced through its parent-plant to the seed, and the egg to the animal or bird that laid it; or at any rate to the speck of protoplasm from which it expanded and grew. And both the seed and the speck must have the latent potentialities in them for the reproduction and gradual development, the unfolding of the thousand and one forms or phases of evolution, through which they must pass before the flower or the animal are fully developed? Hence, the future plan, if not a DESIGN, must be there. Moreover, that seed has to be traced, and its nature ascertained. Have the Darwinists been successful in this? Or will the Moneron be cast in our teeth? But this atom of the Watery Abysses is not homogeneous matter; and there must be something or somebody that had moulded and cast it into being. Here Science is once more silent. But since there is no Self-consciousness as yet in either speck, seed, or germ, according to both Materialists and Psychologists of the modern school – Occultists agreeing in this for once with their natural enemies – what is it that guides the force or forces so unerringly in this process of evolution? Blind force? As well call blind the brain which evolved in Hæckel his Pedigree of Man and other lucubrations. We can easily conceive that the said brain lacks an important centre or two. For, whoever knows anything of the anatomy of the human, or even of any animal, body, and is still an atheist and a materialist, must be hopelessly insane, according to Lord Herbert, who rightly sees in the frame of mans body and the coherence of its parts, something so strange and paradoxical that he holds it to be the greatest miracle of nature. Blind forces, and no design in anything under the Sun; when no sane man of Science would hesitate to say that, even from the little he knows and has hitherto discovered of the forces at work in Kosmos, he sees very plainly that every part, every speck and atom are in harmony with their fellow atoms, and these with the whole, each having its distinct mission throughout the life-cycle. But, fortunately, the greatest, the most eminent thinkers and Scientists of the day are now beginning to rise against this Pedigree, and even Darwins natural selection theory, though its author had never, probably, contemplated such widely stretched conclusions. The remarkable work of the Russian Scientist N. T. Danilevsky – Darwinism, a Critical Investigation of the Theory – upsets it completely and without appeal, and so does de Quatrefages in his last work. Our readers are recommended to examine the learned paper by Dr. Bourges – read by its author, a member of the Paris Anthropological Society at a recent official meeting of the latter – called Evolutionary Psychology; the Evolution of Spirit, etc. in which he reconciles entirely the two teachings – namely, those of the physical and spiritual evolutions. He explains the origin of the variety of organic forms, made to fit their environments with such evident intelligent design, by the existence and the mutual help and interaction of two principles in (manifest) nature, the inner Conscious Principle adapting itself to physical nature and the innate potentialities in the latter. Thus the French Scientist has to return to our old friend – Archæus, or the life-Principle – without naming it, as Dr. Richardson has done in England in his Nerve-Force, etc. The same idea was recently developed in Germany by Baron Hellenbach, in his remarkable work, Individuality in the Light of Biology and Modern Philosophy. We find the same conclusions arrived at in still another excellent volume of another Russian deep thinker, N. N. Strachof – who says in his Fundamental Conceptions of Psychology and Physiology: The most clear, as the most familiar, type of development may be found in our own mental or physical evolution, which has served others as a model to follow . . . . If organisms are entities . . . then it is only just to conclude and assert that the organic life strives to beget psychic life; but it would be still more correct and in accordance with the spirit of these two categories of evolution to say, that the true cause of organic life is the tendency of spirit to manifest in substantial forms, to clothe itself in substantial reality. It is the highest form which contains the complete explanation of the lowest, never the reverse. This is admitting, as Bourges does in the Memoire above quoted, the identity of this mysterious, integrally acting and organizing Principle with the Self-Conscious and Inner Subject, which we call the EGO and the world at large – the Soul. Thus, gradually, all the best Scientists and Thinkers are approaching the Occultists in their general conclusions. But such metaphysically inclined men of Science are out of court and will hardly be listened to. Schiller, in his magnificent poem on the Veil of Isis, makes the mortal youth who dared to lift the impenetrable covering fall down dead after beholding naked Truth in the face of the stern goddess. Have some of our Darwinians, so tenderly united in natural selection and affinity, also gazed at the Saitic Mother bereft of her veils? One might almost suspect it after reading their theories. Their great intellects must have collapsed while gauging too closely the uncovered face of Nature, leaving only the grey matter and ganglia in their brain to respond to blind physico-chemical forces. At any rate Shakespeares lines apply admirably to our modem Evolutionist who symbolizes that proud man, who – Dressd in a little brief authority; Most ignorant of what hes most assured, His glassy essence – like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the Angels weep! . . . . These have nought to do with the angels. Their only concern is the human ancestor, the pithecoid Noah who gave birth to three sons – the tailed Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape, and the arboreal Palæolithic man. On this point, they will not be contradicted. Every doubt expressed is immediately set down as an attempt to cripple scientific inquiry. The insuperable difficulty at the very foundation of the evolution theory, namely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an approximate definition of the period at which, and the form in which, the first man appeared, is smoothed down to a trifling impediment, which is really of no account. Every branch of knowledge is in the same predicament, we are informed. The chemist bases his most abstruse calculations simply upon a hypothesis of atoms and molecules, of which not one has ever been seen isolated, weighed, or defined. The electrician speaks of magnetic fluids which have never tangibly revealed themselves. No definite origin can be assigned either to molecules or magnetism. Science cannot and does not pretend to any knowledge of the beginnings of law, matter or life, . . . etc., etc. (Knowledge, January, 1882.) And, withal, to reject a scientific hypothesis, however absurd, is to commit the one unpardonable sin! We risk it. 1 For an explanation of the term Kriyasakti, see Com. 2 in Stanza 26. The Secret Doctrine, ii 652–655 H. P. Blavatsky
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