Page 91 (part 7)

But, as the French naturalist observes -- "their (Darwin's and Haeckel's) process is always the same, considering the unknown as a proof in favour of their theory." ( Ibid. ) It comes to this. Grant to man an immortal Spirit and Soul; endow the whole animate and inanimate creation with the monadic principle gradually evolving from the latent and passive into active and positive polarity -- and Haeckel will not have a leg to stand upon, whatever his admirers may say. But there are important divergences even between Darwin and Haeckel. While the former makes us proceed from the tailed catarrhine, Haeckel traces our hypothetical ancestor to the tailless ape, though, at the same time, he places him in a hypothetical "stage" immediately preceding this: " Menocerca with tails " (19th stage). Nevertheless, we have one thing in common with the Darwinian school: it is the law of gradual and extremely slow evolution, embracing many million years. The chief quarrel, it appears, is with regard to the nature of the primitive "Ancestor." We shall be told that the Dhyan Chohan, or the "progenitor" of Manu, is a hypothetical being unknown on the physical plane. We reply that it was believed in by the whole of antiquity, and by nine-tenths of the present humanity; whereas not only is the pithecoid man, or "ape-man," a purely hypothetical creature of Haeckel's creation, unknown and untraceable on this earth, but further its genealogy -- as invented by him -- clashes with scientific facts and all the known data of modern discovery in Zoology. It is simply absurd, even as a fiction. As de Quatrefages demonstrates in a few words, Haeckel "admits the existence of an absolutely theoretical pithecoid man " -- a hundred times more difficult to accept than any Deva ancestor. And it is not the only instance in which he proceeds in a similar manner in order to complete his genealogical table; and he admits very naively his inventions himself. Does he not confess the non-existence of his sozura (14th stage) -- a creature entirely unknown to science -- by confessing over his own signature, that -- "The proof of its existence arises from the necessity of an intermediate type between the 13th and the 14th stages"! If so, we might maintain with as much scientific right, that the proof of the existence of our three ethereal races, and the three-eyed men of the Third and Fourth Root-Races "arises also from the necessity of an intermediate type" between the animal and the gods. What reason would the Haeckelians have to protest in this special case? Of course there is a ready answer: "Because we do not grant the presence of the monadic essence." The manifestation of the Logos as individual consciousness in the animal and human creation is not accepted [[Vol. 2, Page]] 670 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. by exact science, nor does it cover the whole ground, of course. But the failures of science and its arbitrary assumptions are far greater on the whole than* any "extravagant" esoteric doctrine can ever furnish. Even thinkers of the school of Von Hartmann have become tainted with the general epidemic. They accept the Darwinian Anthropology (more or less), though they also postulate the individual Ego as a manifestation of the Unconscious (the Western presentation of the Logos or Primeval Divine Thought). They say the evolution of the physical man is from the animal, but that mind in its various phases is altogether a thing apart from material facts, though organism (as an upadhi ) is necessary for ITS manifestation. ------- P LASTIDULAR S OULS, AND C ONSCIOUS N ERVE-CELLS. But one can never see the end of such wonders with Haeckel and his school, whom the Occultists and Theosophists have every right to consider as materialistic tramps trespassing on private metaphysical grounds. Not satisfied with the paternity of Bathybius (Haeckelii), "plastidule souls,"** and "atom-souls" are now invented by them, on the basis of purely blind mechanical forces of matter. We are informed that "the study of the evolution of soul-life shows that this has worked its way up from the lower stages of the simple cell-soul, through an astonishing series of gradual stages in evolution, up to the soul of man. " (" Present Position of Evolution, " p. 266.) "Astonishing" -- truly, based as this wild speculation is on the Consciousness of the "nerve cells." For as he tells us, "Little as we are in a position, at the present time, to explain fully the nature of consciousness,*** yet the comparative and genetic observation of it clearly shows that it is only a higher and more complex function of the nerve cells. " (Ibid, note 22.) [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Of course the Esoteric system of Fourth Round Evolution is much more complex than the paragraph and quotations referred to categorically assert. It is practically a reversal -- both in embryological inference and succession in time of species -- of the current Western conception. ** According to Haeckel, there are also cell-souls ; "an inorganic molecular soul " without, and a "plastidular soul with (or possessing) memory". What are our esoteric teachings to this? The divine and human soul of the seven principles in man must, of course, pale and give away before such a stupendous revelation! *** A valuable confession, this. Only it makes the attempt to trace the descent of Consciousness in man as well as of his physical body from Bathybius Haeckelii still more humorous and empirical, in the sense of Webster's second definition. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 671 HAECKEL CREATES SOULS. Mr. Herbert Spencer's song on Consciousness -- is sung, it seems, and may henceforth be safely stored up in the lumber room of obsolete speculations. Where, however, do Haeckel's "complex functions" of his scientific "nerve-cells" land him? Once more right into the Occult and mystic teachings of the Kabala about the descent of souls as conscious and unconscious atoms; among the Pythagorean MONAD and the monads of Leibnitz -- and the "gods, monads, and atoms" of our esoteric teaching;* into the dead letter of Occult teachings, left to the amateur Kabalists and professors of ceremonial magic. For this is what he says, while explaining his newly-coined terminology: -- "Plastidule-Souls; the plastidules or protoplasmic molecules, the smallest, homogeneous parts of the protoplasm are, on our plastic theory, to be regarded as the active factors of all life-functions. The plastidular soul differs from the inorganic molecular soul in that it possesses memory. " (" Pedigree of Man, " Note, p.