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296.) This he develops in his mirific lecture on the " Perigenesis of the Plastidule, or the wave-motions of living particles." It is an improvement on Darwin's theory of "Pangenesis," and a further approach, a cautious move towards "magic." The former is a conjecture that certain of the actual and identical atoms which had belonged to ancestral bodies "are thus transmitted through their descendants for generation after generation, so that we are literally 'flesh of the flesh' of the primeval creature who has developed into man in the later . . . period" -- explains the author of "The Modern Zoroastrian" ( in " Primitive Polarities, " etc.). The latter (Occultism) teaches that -- ( a ) the life-atoms of our ( Prana ) life-principle are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the atoms best impregnated with the life-principle (an independent, eternal, conscious factor) are partially transmitted from father to son by heredity, and partially are drawn once more together and become the animating principle of the new body in every new incarnation of [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Those who take the opposite view and look upon the existence of the human soul, -- "as a supernatural, a spiritual phenomenon, conditioned by forces altogether different from ordinary physical forces," . . . "mock," he thinks, "in consequence, all explanation that is simply scientific." They have no right it seems, to assert that "psychology is, in part, or in whole, a spiritual science, not a physical one." . . . The new discovery by Haeckel (one taught for thousands of years in all the Eastern religions, however), that the animals have souls, will, and sensation, hence soul-functions, leads him to make of psychology the science of the zoologists. The archaic teaching that the "Soul" (the animal and human souls, or Kama and Manas ) "has its developmental history" -- is claimed by Haekel as his own discovery and innovation on an "untrodden (?) path"! He (Haeckel) will work out the comparative evolution of the soul in man and in other animals. . . . "The comparative morphology of the soul-organs, and the comparative physiology of the soul-functions, both founded on Evolution, thus become the psychological (really materialistic) problem of the scientific man." ( Cell-souls and Soul-cells, p. 137, " Pedigree of Man. ") [[Vol. 2, Page]] 672 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. the Monads. Because ( b ), as the individual Soul is ever the same, so are the atoms of the lower principles (body, its astral, or life double, etc . ) , drawn as they are by affinity and Karmic law always to the same individuality in a series of various bodies, etc., etc.* To be just, and, to say the least, logical, our modern Haeckelians ought to pass a resolution that henceforth the "Perigenesis of the Plastidule," and like lectures, should be bound up with those on "Esoteric Buddhism," and "The Seven Principles in Man." Thus the public will have a chance, at any rate, of judging after comparison which of the two teachings is the most or the least ABSURD, even from the standpoint of materialistic and exact Science! Now the Occultists, who trace every atom in the universe, whether an aggregate or single, to One Unity, or Universal Life ; who do not recognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic ; who know of no such thing as dead matter -- the Occultists are consistent with their doctrine of Spirit and Soul when speaking of memory in every atom, of will and sensation. But what can a materialist mean by the qualification? The law of biogenesis, in the sense applied to it by the Haeckelians -- "is the result of the ignorance on the part of the man of science of occult physics." We know and speak of "life-atoms" -- and of "sleeping-atoms" -- because we regard these two forms of energy -- the kinetic and the potential -- as produced by one and the same force or the ONE LIFE, and regard the latter as the source and mover of all. But what is it that furnished with energy, and especially with memory, the "plastidular souls" of Haeckel? The "wave motion of living particles" becomes comprehensible on the theory of a Spiritual ONE LIFE, of a universal Vital principle independent of our matter, and manifesting as atomic energy only on our plane of consciousness. It is that which, individualized in the human cycle, is transmitted from father to son. Now Haeckel, modifying Darwin's theory, suggests "most plausibly," as the author of the " Modern Zoroastrian " thinks, "that not the identical atoms, but their peculiar motions and mode of aggregation have been thus transmitted" (by heredity). If Haeckel, or any other Scientist, knew more than any of them does of the nature of the atom, he would not have improved the occasion in this way. For he only states, in a more metaphysical language than Darwin, one and the same thing. The life-principle, or life energy, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * ( See " Transmigration of the Life Atoms, " " Five years of Theosophy, " p. 533-539). The collective aggregation of these atoms forms thus the Anima Mundi of our Solar system, the soul of our little universe, each atom of which is of course a soul, a monad, a little universe endowed with consciousness, hence with memory ( Vol. I., Part III., " Gods, Monads and Atoms. ") [[Vol. 2, Page 673]] THE MEANING OF SOUL WITH HAECKEL. which is omnipresent, eternal, indestructible, is a force and a PRINCIPLE as noumenon, atoms , as phenomenon. It is one and the same thing, and cannot be considered as separate except in materialism.* Further, Haeckel enunciates concerning the Atom Souls that which, at first sight, appears as occult as a Monad of Leibnitz. "The recent contest as to the nature of atoms, which we must regard as in some form or other the ultimate factors in all physical and chemical processes," he tells us -- "seems to be capable of the easiest settlement, by the conception that these very minute masses possess, as centres of force, a persistent soul, that every atom has sensation and the power of movement." He does not say a word concerning the fact that this is Leibnitz's theory, and one pre-eminently occult. Nor does he understand the term "Soul" as we do; for, with Haeckel it is simply, along with consciousness, the production of the grey matter of the brain, a thing which, as the "cell-soul, is as indissolubly bound up with the protoplasmic body as is the human soul with the brain and spinal cord. " ( Ibid.