CHAPTER III.

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REINCARNATION

A STUDY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

AND

THE REINCARNATION OF THE SOUL

BY

DR. TH. PASCAL

TRANSLATED BY FRED ROTHWELL

"Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I

should be forced to answer him:--It is that part of the world

which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was

created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his

first entrance into life."--SCHOPENHAUER.

(_Parerga and Paralipomena_, Vol. 2, Chap. 15)

LONDON

The Theosophical Publishing Society

161 NEW BOND STREET, W.

1910

* * * * *

CONTENTS

CHAP.

SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

I. THE SOUL AND THE BODIES

II. REINCARNATION AND THE MORAL LAW

III. REINCARNATION AND SCIENCE

IV. REINCARNATION AND THE RELIGIOUS AND

PHILOSOPHICAL CONSENSUS OF THE

AGES

CONCLUSION

* * * * *

SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE.

Théophile Pascal was born on the 11th of May, 1860, at Villecroze, a

village in the South of France. His childhood was spent amid the

pleasant surroundings of a country life. Shortly after his sixteenth

birthday, a relative of his, a Catholic priest ministering in Toulon,

seeing that the youth showed considerable ability, sent for him and

presided over his studies in this large maritime centre. Before many

years elapsed, he entered the Naval Medical School of the town, which

he left at the age of twenty-two, with first-class honours. In his

professional capacity, he took several trips on vessels belonging to

the Mediterranean squadron. Four years afterwards he married, resigned

active naval service, and devoted himself to building up a practice on

land, becoming a homoeopathic physician in the great seaport itself.

It was about this time that the young doctor became interested in

Theosophy, owing to the kindly services of a former patient,

Commander Courmes. The closest friendship and sympathetic interest in

theosophic thought thus began, and continued during their common

labours subsequently in Paris, Dr. Pascal entered the Theosophical

Society in 1891, and during the course of the following year wrote a

series of articles for the _Revue Théosophique Française_. These were

continued year after year, and dealt with the most varied subjects:

Psychic Powers; The Fall of the Angels; Kâma-Manasic Elementals;

Thought Forms; Christianity, Prehistoric Races, and many others.

The young doctor had previously made a deep study of human magnetism,

which proved a most fertile ground for the sowing of the seed of the

Ancient Wisdom.

In 1898 attacks of serious nervous depression became frequent, forcing

him to cease work of every kind. Mrs. Besant persuaded him to

accompany her to India, where his general health was gradually

restored, and he was enabled to return to France in the following

year.

He decided to leave Toulon, where he had built up a considerable

practice, and to settle in Paris, hoping to provide for the needs of

himself and his family--his wife and only daughter--by the exercise of

his profession, and at the same time to fight the good fight for

Theosophy in the capital itself.

The French Section of the Theosophical Society was founded in 1900,

and Dr. Pascal was elected General Secretary. Throughout the next two

years a number of thoughtful articles and publications appeared from

his pen. The incessant labour and attention, however, which he

bestowed on the spreading of theosophic instruction began to have its

effect on a naturally delicate constitution, and in July, 1902, when

attending the meetings of the British Convention in London, he was

prostrated by an attack of congestion of the brain. The most devoted

care was lavished on him, both in London and in Paris, the result

being that a rapid, though only temporary, recovery took place. Had he

relaxed his efforts somewhat, the cure might have been a permanent

one, but Dr. Pascal, with the penetrating vision of the mystic, saw

how pressing were the needs of the age, and how few the pioneers of

this new presentation of the Truth, so that, at whatever cost of

personal sacrifice, he plunged once more into the midst of his arduous

toil.

In 1903 a series of very fine articles on the Laws of Destiny appeared

in the _Revue Théosophique_, to be followed immediately by publication

in volume form. Two years afterwards appeared the present

volume--REINCARNATION: A STUDY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION; a work considered

the most complete of any that have so far appeared in France on this

subject, and the most popular of Dr. Pascal's publications.

In 1906 some of the nerve centres controlling the organs of speech

became affected, but not sufficiently to compel him to remain absent

from the International Theosophical Congress held that year in Paris

under the presidency of Colonel Olcott. It was on this occasion that

Dr. Pascal received from the hands of the President-Founder the Subba

Rao medal, awarded to members of the society whose literary labours in

the promulgation of the truths of Theosophy have proved eminently

useful.

Twelve months afterwards he attended the Congress at Munich, under the

presidency of Mrs. Besant, but was obliged to leave before the

termination of the meetings. This may be regarded as Dr. Pascal's last

public appearance as an active theosophist, for his subsequent

prolonged stay in the South of France effected no radical improvement

in the state of his health.

Returning to Paris in March, 1908, and realising how impossible it was

for him to fulfil the duties incumbent on a General Secretary, he

decided to resign his post. His colleagues, however, insisted on his

continuing as Honorary General Secretary. From this time onward his

health became gradually worse, and his physical life terminated on the

18th of April, 1909, his body being cremated three days afterwards at

the Cemetery of Père Lachaise.

What was most striking about Dr. Pascal, in both public and private

life, was his intense earnestness--the index of a well-grounded habit

of concentration--and the calm strength of his convictions. It was

impossible to be in his presence for any length of time without

feeling the power that emanated from him, and recognising that here

was a mighty soul struggling for expression.

Other characteristics were his extreme modesty, and his continual

endeavour to accord praise and merit to those working for the cause so

dear to his own heart. When questioned on many of the intricate points

raised in a lecture or in conversation on some abstruse theosophical

subject, he made no pretence at knowledge he did not possess; on such

occasions his confession of ignorance would be charming, even touching

in its _naïveté_.

But the qualities he seemed to feel it his special object to awaken in

the minds of others--as will be acknowledged, I think, by those who

knew him best--may be inferred from his continual insistence on the

double duty, incumbent on students of Theosophy, of practising on all

occasions the utmost tolerance, refusing not only to condemn but even

to judge harshly the opinions or actions of others, and of seizing

every opportunity to help another because of the recognition of the

One Life throughout the world, May we who read the following pages

catch somewhat of the deep earnestness and enthusiastic spirit

breathing through them, and may the joy of service dissipate all

meaner, motives, taking as our watchword also the only key to true

growth, the very heart of altruism, that exhortation he never wearied

of repeating: _Aidez! Aidez toujours!_

F. R.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

It will soon be: 1500 years since the decision of the Council of 543

A.D.[1] condemned to oblivion sublime teachings which ought to have

been carefully preserved and handed down to future generations as a

beacon amid social reefs; teachings that would have uprooted that

frightful egoism which threatens to annihilate the world, and

instilled patience into the hearts of such as were being crushed

beneath the wheel of the cosmic law, by showing them the scales of

Justice inclining to the side filled with their iniquities of bygone

times; teachings which would have been welcomed by the masses, and the

understanding of which would not have called for any lofty

intellectual culture.

It was one of the greatest misfortunes that could have befallen the

races of the West, more especially the European, that they were thus

deprived for centuries of this indispensable knowledge. We look upon

it as a duty, following on so many others, to offer it anew, this time

in the clear, logical, illuminating form presented in theosophic

teachings. The necessity thereof is all the more imperative when we

consider the growth of scepticism and materialism amongst the more

intellectual classes, whilst the mass of the people have forsaken

their blind faith only to succumb to religious indifference.

To every awakened soul the question comes:

Why does evil exist?

So long as the enigma remains unsolved, Suffering remains a

threatening sphinx, opposing God and ready to devour mankind.

The key to the secret lies in Evolution, which can be accomplished

only by means of the continual return of souls to earth.

When once man learns that suffering is the necessary result of divine

manifestation; that inequalities of conditions are due to the

different stages which beings have reached and the changeable action

of their will; that the painful phase lasts only a moment in Eternity,

and that we have it in our power to hasten its disappearance; that

though slaves of the past, we are masters of the future; that,

finally, the same glorious goal awaits all beings--then, despair will

be at an end; hatred, envy, and rebellion will have fled away, and

peace will reign over a humanity made wise by knowledge.

Were this modest work to hasten forward this time by a few years, we

should feel sufficiently rewarded.

The subject will be divided into four chapters:

(1) The Soul and the bodies.

(2) Reincarnation and the moral law.

(3) Reincarnation and science.

(4) Reincarnation and the religious and philosophical

concensus of the ages.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This Council came to the following decision:--_Whosoever

shall teach the pre-existence of the soul and the strange opinion of

its returns to earth, let him be anathema!_]

REINCARNATION

A STUDY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION

CHAPTER I.

THE SOUL AND THE BODIES.

In a book dealing with the resurrection of bodies and the

reincarnations of the Soul, a chapter must be devoted to the

fundamental elements of the question.

We will give the name of _Soul_ to abstract Being, to the Unknown,

that unmanifested Principle which cannot be defined, for it is above

all definition.

It is the Absolute of Western philosophers, the _Parabrahm_ of the

Hindus, the _Tao_ of the ancient sages of China, the causeless Cause

of all that has been or ever will be manifested in concrete time and

space.

Some feeble idea of it may perhaps be obtained by comparing it with

electricity, which, though the cause of various phenomena: heat,

movement, chemical action, light, is not, _per se_, any one of these

phenomena, undergoes no modification from their existence, and

survives them when the apparatus through which they manifest

disappears.

We shall set up no distinction between this Soul, which may be called

the universal Soul, and the individual soul, which has often been

defined as a ray, a particle of the total Soul, for logically one

cannot imply parts to the Absolute; it is illusion, limitation on our

part, which shows us souls in the Soul.

_Bodies_ are "aspects" of the Soul, results of its activity--if,

indeed, the Infinite can be said to be either active or passive; words

fail when we attempt to express the Inexpressible. These bodies, or,

more precisely, the varied forms assumed by force-matter[2] are

aspects of the Soul, just as light or chemical action are aspects of

electricity, for one cannot suppose anything outside of infinite

Being, nor can anything be imagined which is not a manifestation of

the abstract Whole.

Let us also define _Consciousness_.

Taken absolutely, it is Being, the Soul, God; the uncaused Cause of

all the states which, in beings, we call states of consciousness.

This limited consciousness may be defined as the faculty a "centre of

life" possesses of receiving vibrations from its surroundings. When,

in the course of evolution, a being is sufficiently developed to

become conscious of a separation between its "I" and the object which

sends it vibrations, consciousness becomes self-consciousness. This

_self_-consciousness constitutes the _human_ stage; it appears in the

higher animals, but as it descends the scale of being, gradually

disappears in non-individualised consciousness.

In a word, absolute Consciousness is one, though, as in the above

example, it is manifested differently, according to the differences in

the vehicles which express it in the concrete world in which we live.

The Soul, _per se_, is beyond the reach of beings who have not

finished the pilgrimage of evolution. To know it, one must have

attained to the eternal Centre, the unmanifested Logos. Up to that

point, one can only, in proportion as one ascends, feel it in oneself,

or acknowledge it by means of the logic which perceives it through all

its manifestations as the universal Mover of forms, the Cause of all

things, the Unity that produces diversity by means of the various

vehicles which serve it as methods of expression.

Science says that intelligence, or, to be more generic, consciousness,

results from the action of matter. This is a mistake.

Consciousness does not change in proportion as the cells of the body

are renewed; rather it increases with physical unconsciousness, as in

somnambulism.

Thought is not the fruit of the brain; it offers itself to the latter,

ready made, so to speak; the loftiest intellectual or artistic

inspirations are flashes which strike down into the awaiting brain,

when maintaining that passive expectant attitude which is the

condition in which a higher message may be received.

The senses are not the thinking-principle. They need to be controlled

by consciousness; thus, people blind from birth, when suddenly made to

see, cannot judge either distance or perspective; like animals and

primitive men, they see nothing but colours on a surface.

Science says also: the organ is created for the function it has to

perform; again a mistake. The eyes of the foetus are constructed in

the darkness of the womb. The human germ, notwithstanding its

unconsciousness and its simplicity of structure, develops a body that

is complex and capable of a considerable degree of consciousness;

though itself unintelligent, it produces prodigies of intelligence in

this body; here, consequently, the effect would be greatly superior to

the cause, which is absurd. Outside of the body and the germ is a

supreme Intelligence which creates the models of forms and carries out

their construction. This Intelligence is the Soul of the world.

If Consciousness _per se_, or the Soul, is above all direct proof at

the present stage of human evolution, the vehicles through which it

functions are more or less apparent to us provided they are capable of

affecting the brain. At the present stage of human evolution, this is

the case only with the astral body; the other bodies are too fine to

manifest through the nervous system such characteristics as are

calculated to furnish scientists with a proof of their existence; they

can only be felt and proved in and by _Yoga_.[3]

It is not without importance, however, to set forth the proofs of the

existence of a vehicle of consciousness immediately above the

physical, for it affords us a wider horizon and throws far more light

on the rest of the subject.

PROOFS OF THE ASTRAL BODY.

Certain normal and abnormal or morbid phenomena in man have proved the

existence of this vehicle, which we will call the _higher_

consciousness, for it is far greater than normal, waking

consciousness, that of the brain. In the somewhat rare cases in which

this consciousness is expressed in the physical world, it is forced to

make use of the brain. Now, in the majority of men, the latter is

still incapable of vibrating harmoniously with the matter which forms

the astral vehicle; this is because the density of the atoms of the

brain cells which preside over thought is incapable of reproducing the

rapid vibrations of the finer matter belonging to the body immediately

above it. By special training (the _yoga_ of the Hindus), by a

particular constitution of body (_sensitiveness_), by certain special

methods (_hypnotism_), or in certain maladies (_somnambulism_), the

brain may become receptive to these vibrations, and receive from them

an impression, though always an imperfect one. The rarity of this

impression, its imperfection, and especially the necessity for the

vibration of the physical brain that it may be manifested in our

environment; all these have made it very difficult to prove the

existence of this higher vehicle; still, there are certain

considerations which show that it exists, and that it alone is capable

of explaining the most characteristic phenomena of the higher

consciousness.

Let us first define these two states of consciousness rather more

completely, and fix their limits.

Normal consciousness is that which functions during waking hours, when

the brain is in full physiological activity, freely and completely

related to the outer physical world. This consciousness is more or

less developed according to the individual, but its component

parts--sensation, emotion, sentiment, reason, intelligence, will,

intuition--do not exceed known limits; for instance, we do not find

clairvoyance, the prophetic faculty, and certain other abnormal

faculties, which we shall class under the higher consciousness.

The higher consciousness works in the astral body, whether

externalised or not; it seldom manifests itself, and then

incompletely; it is accompanied by the more or less complete

inhibition of the senses, and by a kind of sleep in which the

relations of the subject with the physical world are wholly or

partially suspended. The characteristics of this state are greater

keenness of the normal faculties, and the appearance of new ones,

which are often inexplicable and extraordinary and the more remarkable

in proportion as sleep is more profound, the brain calmer, or the

physiological state more abnormal.

How can we explain the paradox that faculties shown by a brain in a

state of inactivity cover an extent of ground which the brain in a

state of activity cannot approach? The reason is that the brain, in

this case, is not an instrument moved directly by the cause of

consciousness, _the soul_, but a simple recipient, which the soul,

then centred in the astral body, impresses _on returning to the

physical body_ (if it has been far away) or impresses directly when,

whilst acting in the finer vehicle, the latter has not left the

body.[4]

In other words, the brain, by reason of its functional inactivity,

vibrates little or not at all in its higher centres; it plays the part

of a sounding-board at rest, capable of vibrating sympathetically

under the influence of a similar board placed by its side.

The necessity of cerebral quiet, if the higher consciousness is to

make an impression, is now easy to understand; the finer vibration of

the astral body cannot be impressed upon the brain when the latter is

already strongly vibrating under the action of normal consciousness.

For this reason also, the deeper the sleep of the physical body the

better the higher consciousness manifests itself.

In ordinary man, organic quiet is scarcely ever complete during sleep;

the brain, as we shall see shortly, automatically repeats the

vibrations which normal consciousness has called forth during the

waking state; this, together with an habitual density of the nervous

elements, too great to respond to the higher vibration, explains the

rarity and the confused state of the impression of astral

consciousness on the brain.

The facts relating to the higher consciousness are as numerous as they

are varied. We shall not enter into full details, but choose only a

few phenomena quoted in well-known works.

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS DURING THE DIFFERENT KINDS

OF SLEEP.

_Normal dream._ During normal sleep there exists a special

consciousness which must not be confounded either with waking

consciousness or with that of the astral body. It is due to the

automatic, cerebral vibration which continues during sleep, and which

the soul examines on its return to the body--when awake. This dream is

generally an absurd one, and the reason the dreamer notices it only on

awaking is that he is absent from the visible body during sleep.

The proof of the departure of the astral body during sleep has been

ascertained by a certain number of seers, but the absurdity of the

commonplace dream is a rational proof thereof, one which must here be

mentioned. As another rational proof of the existence of a second

vehicle of consciousness, we must also notice the regular registering

of the commonplace dream, because it takes place in the brain, and the

habitual non-registering of the true dream experience, because this

latter takes place in the externalised astral body.

Why does the astral body leave the physical during sleep? This

question is beyond our power to answer, though a few considerations on

this point may be advanced.

Sleep is characterised by the transfer of consciousness from the

physical to the astral body; this transfer seems to take place

normally under the influence of bodily fatigue. After the day's

activity, the senses no longer afford keen sensations, and as it is

the energy of these sensations that keeps the consciousness "centred"

in the brain[5]; this consciousness, when the senses are lulled to

sleep, centres in the finer body, which then leaves the physical body

with a slight shock.

It is, however, of the real dream--which is at times so intelligent

that it has been called lucid, and at all events is reasonable,

logical, and co-ordinate--that we wish to speak. In most cases this

dream consists of a series of thoughts due to the soul in action in

the astral body; it is sometimes the result of seeing mental pictures

of the future[6] or else it represents quite another form of animistic

activity, as circumstances and the degree of the dreamer's development

permit.

It is in the lucid dream--whether belonging to normal or to abnormal

sleep--that occur those numerous and well-known cases of visions past

or future to be found in so many of the books dealing with this

special subject.

To these same states of higher consciousness are due such productions

as Walter Scott's _Ivanhoe_. The author, suffering from fever, wrote

this work whilst in a kind of delirious condition; _Ivanhoe_ was

printed before the recovery of the author, who, on reading it at a

later date, had not the slightest recollection that it was his own

production. (Ribot's _Maladies de la Mémoire_, p. 41.)

Walter Scott remembered nothing, because _Ivanhoe_ was the fruit of

the astral consciousness impressed upon a brain which fever had

rendered temporarily receptive to the higher vibrations.

There are certain peculiarities of the real dream which prove almost

mathematically the superior nature of the vehicle which gives

expression to it. This dream, for instance, is never of a fatiguing

nature, however long it may appear to last, because it is only an

instantaneous impression made upon the brain by the astral body, when

the latter returns to the physical body, on awaking. On the other

hand, the cerebral ideation of the waking state is fatiguing if

intense or prolonged, or if the nervous system of the thinker is

deprived of its normal power of resistance (_in neurasthenia_); the

commonplace (_brain_) dream is also fatiguing if prolonged or at all

vivid.

Another peculiarity is that a dream--the real dream--which would

require several years of life on earth for its realisation, can take

place in a second. The dream of Maury (_Le Sommeil et le Rève_, p.

161), who in half a second lived through three years of the French

Revolution, and many other dreams of the same nature, are instances of

this. Now, Fechner has proved, in his _Elemente der Psychophysik_,

first, that a fraction of a second is needed for the sensorial contact

to cause the brain to vibrate--this prevents our perceiving the growth

of a plant and enables us to see a circle of fire when a piece of

glowing coal is rapidly whirled round; secondly, that another fraction

of a second is needed for the cerebral vibration to be transformed

into sensation. We might add that a third fraction of a second is

needed for sensation to be transformed into ideation, proving that in

these special dreams there can have been no more than an

instantaneous, mass impression of all the elements of the dream upon

the brain,[7] and that the dream itself has been produced by the

imaginative action of the soul in the astral body, an extremely subtle

one, whose vibratory power is such as to transform altogether our

ordinary notions of time and space.

_The death-bed dream._ In dying people, the bodily senses gradually

lose their vitality, and by degrees the soul concentrates itself

within the finer vehicle. From that time signs of the higher

consciousness appear, time is inordinately prolonged, visions present

themselves, the prophetic faculty is sometimes manifested, and

verified cases are related of removal to a distance, like that of the

Alsatian woman dying on board ship. During the final coma she went to

Rio de Janeiro and commended her child to the keeping of a

fellow-countryman. (D'Assier's _L'humanité posthume_, p. 47) Similar

instances are found in _The Night Side of Nature_, by C. Crowe, as

well as in other works of the same kind.

_The dream of intoxication._ Under the influence of soporifics the

same transfer of consciousness is produced, and we meet with more or

less remarkable phenomena due to the higher consciousness. Opium

smokers and eaters of hashish are able to form ideas with such

rapidity that minutes seem to them to be years, and a few moments in

dreamland delude them into the idea that they have lived through a

whole life. (Hervey's _Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger_.)

_The dream of asphyxia._ During asphyxia by submersion the higher

consciousness enters into a minute study of the life now running to

its close. In a few moments it sees the whole of it again in its

smallest details. Carl du Prel (_Philos. der Mystik_) gives several

instances of this; Haddock (_Somnolism and Psychism_, p. 213) quotes,

among other cases, that of Admiral Beaufort. During two minutes' loss

of consciousness in a drowning condition, he saw again every detail of

his life, all his actions, including their causes, collateral

circumstances, their effects, and the reflections of the victim on the

good and evil that had resulted therefrom.

Perty's account (_Die Mystischen Erscheinungen der Menschlichen

Natur_) of Catherine Emmerich, the somnambulist nun, who, when dying,

saw again the whole of her past life, would incline one to think that

this strange phenomenon, which traditional Catholicism appears to have

called the "Private Judgment," and which theosophy defines with

greater preciseness, is not limited to asphyxia by submersion, but is

the regular accompaniment of life's ending.

MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN VARIOUS CASES OF MENTAL

FACULTIES LOST TO NORMAL CONSCIOUSNESS.

A rather large number of people born blind have images in dreams, and

can see with the higher consciousness, when placed in a state of

somnambulism. This proves that the higher consciousness possesses the

power of vision on its own plane, and can impress images thereof on

the brain.

That this impression may be translated into the language of the

physical plane,[8] it must evidently take place in one of the physical

centres of vision which make possible three-dimensional sight; these

centres may be intact even when the external visual apparatus does not

exist or is incapable of functioning.

A deaf and dumb idiot became intelligent and spoke during spontaneous

somnambulism (Steinbach's _Der Dichter ein Seher_). This is a case

which appears to us difficult to explain fully; indeed, if the

impression of the higher vibration on that portion of the brain which

presides over intelligence and thought can be understood, it is not

easy to see how tongue and lips could suddenly utter precise sounds

which they had never produced before. Another factor must have

intervened here, as was the case with the child prophets of the

Camisards. (V. Figuier's _Hist. du merveilleux_, _etc._)

Young Hébert, who had gone mad as the result of a wound, regained full

consciousness, the higher consciousness, during somnambulism.

(Puysegur's _Journal du traitement du jeune Hébert_.)

Dr. Teste (_Manuel pratiq. du magnét. anim._) came across madmen who

became sane just before death, _i.e._, when consciousness was passing

into the astral body. He also mentions a servant girl, quite

uneducated and of ordinary intelligence, who nevertheless became a

veritable philosopher during mesmeric somnambulism and delivered

learned discourses on lofty problems dealing with cosmogony.

This proves that the vibratory scale of the finer vehicle extends far

beyond that of the physical, and that the soul cannot impress on this

latter vehicle all that it knows when functioning in the former. By

this we do not mean that it is omniscient as soon as it has left the

visible body; this opinion, a current one, is contrary to the law of

evolution, and will not bear examination.

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS UNDER THE FORM OF MEMORY.

The memory that is lost by the brain is preserved in its entirety by

the finer vehicle.

A musician, a friend of Hervey's, once heard a remarkable piece of

music; he remembered it on awaking, and wrote it down, regarding it as

his own inspiration. Many years afterwards, he found it in an old

parcel of music where he knew it had been long before; he had totally

forgotten it in his normal consciousness. (Hervey's _Dreams_.)

Coleridge tells of a servant girl who, when in a state of delirium,

would recite long passages of Hebrew which she had formerly heard from

the lips of a priest in whose service she had been. In the same way,

she would repeat passages from Latin and Greek theological books,

which she had heard under the same circumstances; in her normal state,

she had no recollection whatever of all this. (Dr. Carpenter's _Mental

Physiology_, p. 437, 1881 edition.)

Ricard (_Physiol. et Hygiène du Magnét._, p. 183) relates the case of

a young man, possessed of an ordinary memory, but who, in

somnambulism, could repeat almost word for word a sermon he had heard

or a book he had read.

Mayo, the physiologist, states that an ignorant young girl, in a state

of somnambulism, wrote whole pages of a treatise on astronomy,

including figures and calculations, which she had probably read in the

_Encyclopædia Britannica_, for the treatise was afterwards found in

that work. (_Truths in Popular Superstitions._)

Ladame (_La Névrose hypnotique_, p. 105) mentions a woman who, having

only on one occasion been to the theatre, was able, during

somnambulism, to sing the whole of the second act of Meyerbeer's

_L'Africaine_, an opera of which she knew nothing whatever in her

waking state.

During experiments with the inhaling of protoxyde of azote, H. Davy

said that normal consciousness disappeared, and was followed by a

wonderful power of recalling past events. (Hibbert's _Philosophy of

Apparitions_, p. 162.)

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN PHENOMENA OF DOUBLE

CONSCIOUSNESS.

The "strata of memory" met with in many cases also prove the existence

of the second vehicle of consciousness which we are trying to

demonstrate.

Certain dreams continue night after night, beginning again just where

they stopped the previous night; this is noticed in the case of those

who talk in their sleep and in spontaneous or forced somnambulism.

The memory of one intoxicated, or in a state of fever delirium is lost

when consciousness returns from the astral to the physical body; it

comes back on the return of the delirium or the intoxication.

The same thing takes place in madness; at the termination of a crisis,

the patients take up the past just where they left it. (Wienholt's

_Heilkraft_.) Kerner relates that one of these unfortunate persons,

after an illness lasting several years, remembered the last thing he

did before the crisis happened, his first question being whether the

tools with which he had been cutting up wood had been put away. During

the whole of the interval he had been living in his higher

consciousness.

Ribot (_Maladies de la Mémoire_ p. 63) has noted the fact that the

same thing happens with those who fall into a state of coma after

having received a hurt or wound.

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS, INDICATING NOT ONLY THAT

IT EXTENDS FARTHER THAN NORMAL CONSCIOUSNESS, BUT DOMINATES, AND IS

SEPARATED FROM IT, RECOGNISING THAT ITS VEHICLE--THE BODY--IS NOTHING

MORE THAN AN INSTRUMENT.

The Soul functioning in the finer body sees the physical body in a

state of coma. Dr. Abercrombie relates the case of a child aged four,

who was trepanned as the result of fracture of the skull, and whilst

in a stale of coma. He never knew what happened. At the age of

fifteen, during an attack of fever, the higher consciousness impressed

itself upon the brain, and he remembered every detail of the accident;

he described to his mother where he had felt the pain, the operation,

the people present, their number, functions, the clothes they wore,

the instruments used, etc. (Kerner, _Magikon_, vol. 3, p. 364.)

The Soul, in the finer body, during somnambulism, is separated both

from the physical body and from normal consciousness, it calmly

foresees the illness or the death of the denser body on which it

sometimes imposes serious operations. Such facts were numerous in the

case of magnetisers in olden days.

Deleuze (_Hist. crit. du magn. animal_, vol. 2, p. 173) had a patient

who, in a state of somnambulism, held moral, philosophical, and

religious opinions quite contrary to those of his waking state.

Charpignon (_Physiol., médecine et métaphys. du magnétisme_, p. 341)

tells of a patient who, when awake, wished to go to the theatre, but

during somnambulism refused to do so, saying: "_She_ wants to go, but

_I_ don't want." On Charpignon recommending that she should try to

turn _her_ aside from her purpose, she replied: "What can I do? _She_

is mad!"

Deleuze (_Inst. pratiq. s. le magét. anim._, p. 121) says that many

somnambulists look into their body when the latter is ill; that they

are often indifferent to its sufferings, and sometimes are not even

willing to prescribe remedies to cure it.

Chardel (_Esquisse de la nat. humaine expliq. p. le magn. anim._, p.

282) relates that many somnambulists are unwilling to be awakened so

as not to return to a body which is a hindrance to them.

There are many madmen who speak of their body in the third person.

(Ladame, _La Névrose_, p. 43). They function in the non-externalised

finer vehicle. Some explain their use of the third person as

follows:--"_It_ is the body; it is _I_ who am the spirit."

MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE PHENOMENA OF

POSSESSION AND MATERIALISATION.

In these strange phenomena, not only manifestations of the higher

consciousness, analogous with or similar to those just cited, have

been noted, but also a number of facts which prove, to some extent,

the casual presence in a normal human body or in materialised abnormal

forms, of beings other than that which constitutes the personality of

the one possessed, or of the medium who conditions these

materialisations. On this point, we would mention the well-known

investigations of Sir W. Crookes (_Katie King_), those of Colonel de

Rochas (Vincent, _Un cas de changement de personnalité, Lotus Bleu_

1896), and similar experiments of other savants.

"Incarnation mediums" have often lent their physical bodies to

disincarnated human entities, whose account of what happened or whose

identity it has been possible to verify. Here I will mention only one

case amongst several others, I heard it from my friend, D. A. Courmes,

a retired naval captain, a man who is well-informed in these matters,

thoroughly sincere, and of unquestioned veracity.

In 1895, he happened to be off Algiers, on a training vessel. A boat

had sunk in the harbour, and a man was drowned. His body had not been

recovered. On the evening of the accident, my friend, accompanied by a

doctor, a professor, and the vice-president of the Court of Algiers,

attended a spiritualistic meeting in the town. One of these

"incarnation mediums" happened to be present. M. Courmes suggested

that the drowned man should be called up. The latter answered to the

call, entered the medium, whose voice and attitude immediately

changed. He gave the following account of what had taken place: "When

the boat sank, I was on the ladder. I was hurled down, my right leg

passed between two bars, occasioning fracture of the leg, and

preventing me from releasing myself. My body will be found caught in

the ladder when the boat is brought to the surface. It is useless to

seek elsewhere."

This account was shortly afterwards confirmed.

These phenomena are more frequent than one would imagine; a sufficient

number might be given to show that, judging from the theory of

probabilities, serious consideration should be given to them.

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN APPARITIONS.

A final group of phenomena to which I wish to call attention is the

one which goes under the name of apparitions. A considerable number of

these are to be found; we will confine ourselves, however, to

referring the reader to a volume entitled _Phantasms of the Living_,

due to the patient investigations of a distinguished body of foreign

savants. Here we find, first of all, proof of the transmission of

thought to a distance. An examination into the conditions under which

most of these cases took place has convinced several students of the

existence of the finer body which we are here endeavouring to

demonstrate, as well as of the possibility of its instantaneous

transference to a great distance. As the proofs afforded by

apparitions are not mathematical, _i.e._, indisputable, and as they

give room for a variety of opinions, we will make no attempt to detail

them, preferring to pass on to a final proof--the least important,

perhaps, from a general point of view, since it is limited to the

individual possessing it; the only absolute and mathematical one,

however, to the man who has obtained it:--the personal proof.

There are persons--few in number, true--who, under divers influences,

have been able to leave the physical body and see it sleeping on a

couch. They have freely moved in an environment--the astral

world--similar to our physical one in some respects, though different

in many others, and have returned again to the body, bringing back the

memory of their wanderings. These accounts have been given by persons

deserving of credence and not subject to hallucinations.

There are other individuals, though not so numerous--of whom we have

the pleasure of knowing some personally--who are able to leave their

physical bodies and return at will. They travel to great distances

with the utmost rapidity and bring back a complete memory of their

journeyings. D'Assier gives a typical case in his work. (_L'Humanité

posthume_, p. 59.)

Such is the proof we look upon as irrefutable, as complete and

perfect. The man who can thus travel freely in his finer body knows

that the physical body is only a vehicle adapted to the physical world

and necessary for life in this world; he knows that consciousness does

not cease to function, and that the universe by no means provides the

conditions for a state of nothingness, once this body of flesh is laid

aside.

At this stage of his evolution man can, in addition, make use of his

astral body at will, and obtain on the astral plane, first by reason

and intuition, afterwards by personal experience, proof of another

vehicle of consciousness--the mental body. At a further stage he

obtains the certainty of possession of the causal body, then of higher

bodies, and from that time he can no longer doubt the teachings of the

Elder Brothers, those who have entered the higher evolution, the

worlds that are divine. He knows, beyond all possibility of doubt,

that what the ordinary man expresses in such childish language

regarding these lofty problems, what he calls the Absolute and the

Manifested, God and the Universe, the soul and the body, are more

vitally true than he imagined; he sees that these words are dense

veils that conceal the supreme, ineffable, infinite Being, of whom

manifested beings are illusory "aspects," facets of the divine

Jewel.[9]

With this introduction, we will plunge at once into the heart of the

subject.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Which is nothing but an unknown "aspect" of abstract

Divinity.]

[Footnote 3: Present-day man possesses four bodies of increasing

fineness, the elements of which interpenetrate. Proceeding from the

most dense, these are: The physical, the astral, the mental, and the

causal body. In certain conditions they are capable of dissociation,

and they last for a longer or a shorter time. The astral body, also

called the body of desire, animal soul (Kâmarûpa, in Sanskrit) is the

seat of sensation. Evolution has in store for us higher bodies

stilt--the buddhic body, the atmic body, &c.... but these need only be

mentioned at this point.

_Yoga_--Sanskrit, _union_--is a training of the different bodies of

man by the will; its object is to make of those bodies complete and

perfect instruments, capable of responding to the vibrations of the

outer universe as well as to those of the individual soul. When this

process is accomplished, man can receive, consciously and at will, in

any one of his bodies, vibrations received by the soul primarily in

one of the others; for instance, he may feel in the physical brain the

direct action of his astral or higher bodies; he may also leave the

physical, and feel directly in his astral body the action of the

mental body, and so on.

_Yoga_ can be practised only under the guidance of a Master, _i.e._, a

highly developed being, capable of guiding the student safely through

the dangers incidental to this training.]

[Footnote 4: When the astral body is externalised, the subject cannot

speak; he must await its return; when only partially externalised or

not at all, and consciousness is centred in it, the subject can speak

and relate what he sees afar off, for astral vision is possible at

enormous distances. Such cases as these are frequently met with.]

[Footnote 5: In 1876, in a Leipzic hospital, there was a patient

possessed of neither sensibility nor muscular sense. He had only sight

in the right eye and hearing in the left ear. If this eye and ear were

closed, the patient immediately fell asleep. Neither by being touched

nor shaken could he be awakened; to effect this, it was necessary to

open his eye and unstop his ear. (_Archiv. für die ges. Physiologie_,

vol. 15, p. 573).]

[Footnote 6: These pictures are often visible in the astral world;

they explain the prophetic faculty of ordinary seers.]

[Footnote 7: In such cases, by association of ideas or any other

influence, the soul dramatises the physical impression which calls

forth the dream, and creates the long phantasmagoria of this dream in

so short a time as to be scarcely appreciable. Between the sleeping

physical body and the externalised astral body there is so close a

degree of sympathy that the latter is conscious of everything that

takes place in the former. This explains why the astral body returns

so rapidly to the physical when a noise, light, or any other sensation

impresses this latter.]

[Footnote 8: We say "language of the physical plane" because the soul,

in the astral body, sees in four dimensions, _i.e._, all the parts of

an object at once, as though these parts were spread out on a

two-dimensional plane. Consequently, the higher vision needs

interpretation in order to be expressed on the physical plane.]

[Footnote 9: There are other proofs of the existence of the causal

body, the reincarnating vehicle; the principal one is given in the

middle of Chapter 3. It is there shown that the physical germs explain

only a very small portion of heredity, and that logic imperiously

demands the existence of an invisible, durable body, capable of

gathering up the germs which preserve the moral and intellectual

qualities of man.]

CHAPTER II.

REINCARNATION AND THE MORAL LAW.

The Goodness, justice, and Omnipotence of God are the guarantees of

Providence.

It is absolutely impossible that the faintest breath of injustice

should ever disturb the Universe. Every time the Law appears to be

violated, every time Justice seems outraged, we may be certain that it

is our ignorance alone that is at work, and that a deeper knowledge of

the net-work of evolution and of the lines of action created by human

free will, sooner or later, will dissipate our error.

For all that, the whole universe appears to be the very incarnation of

injustice. The constellations as they come into manifestation shatter

the heavens with their titanic combats; it is the vampirism of the

greatest among them that creates the suns, thus inaugurating egoism

from the very beginning. Everywhere on earth is heard the cry of pain,

a never-ending struggle; sacrifice is everywhere, whether voluntary or

forced, offered freely or taken unwillingly. The law of the strongest

is the universal tyranny. The vegetable kingdom feeds upon the

mineral, and in its turn forms nourishment for the animal; the giants

of the forests spread ruin in every direction, beneath their

destructive influence the spent, exhausted soil can nourish nothing

but weeds and shrubs of no importance. In the animal kingdom a war to

the death is ever being waged, a terrible destruction in which those

best armed for the fray pitilessly devour the weak and defenceless.

Man piles up every kind and method of destruction, cruelty and

barbarity of every sort; he tears away gold from the bowels of the

earth, mutilates the mighty forests, exhausts the soil by intensive

culture, harasses and tortures animals when unable to utilise their

muscular strength, and, in addition, kills them when their flesh is

eatable; his most careful calculations are the auxiliaries of his

insatiable egoism, and, by might or cunning, he crushes everything

that hinders or inconveniences him. Finally, from time to time, the

Elements mingle their awful voice in this concert of pain and despair,

and we find hurricanes and floods, fires and earthquakes pile up

colossal wreck and ruin in a few hours, on which scenes of destruction

the morrow's calm and glorious sun sheds his impassive beams.

And so, before reaching individual evil and apparent injustice, there

rises up before us at the very outset the threatening spectre of

universal evil and injustice. This problem is so closely bound up with

our subject that we are compelled to spend a short time in considering

it.

WHY DOES PAIN EXIST?

To admit, as do certain ignorant fatalists, that the Universe was

created by the stroke of some magic wand, and that each planet,

kingdom, and being is condemned, so to speak, to a definite

crystallisation in the state in which it has pleased God to fix it; to

admit that the mineral will remain a mineral throughout eternity, that

the vegetable will ever reproduce the same types, that the animal will

definitely be confined to his instincts and impulses, without the

hope, some day, of developing the superior mentality of his torturers

in human form; to admit that man will never be anything but man,

_i.e._, a being in whom the passions have full play whereas the

virtues are scarcely born; to admit that there is no final

goal--perfection, the divine state--to crown man's labour; all this is

to refuse to recognise evolution, to deny the progress everywhere

apparent, to set divine below human justice; blasphemy, in a word.

It has been said by unthinking Christians that evidently God created

human suffering, so that those might gain Heaven who, but for this

suffering, would have no right to it. To speak thus is to represent

the Supreme Goodness in a very unworthy aspect and to attribute the

most gratuitous cruelty to Divine Justice. When, too, we see that this

absurd reasoning explains neither the sufferings of animals, which

have no right to enjoy the felicity of heaven, they say, nor the

fact[10] that "there are many called but few chosen," nor the saying

that "outside the Church there is no salvation," although for ages

past God has caused millions of men to be born in countries where the

Gospel has not been preached, we shall not be astonished to find that

those who arrogate to themselves a monopoly of Truth bring forward

none but arguments of childish folly in support of their claims.

Generally, however, it is original sin that is advanced as the cause

of suffering.

The absurdity of this doctrine is so apparent that it has lost all

credence by enlightened members of the Christian faith. First of all,

it does not explain the sufferings of animals, which have had no

participation in this sin, nor does it account for the unequal

distribution of pain amongst men themselves. This sin being the same

for all at birth,[11] punishment ought to have been equally severe for

all, and we ought not to see such frightful disproportions as are to

be found in the condition of children who have not attained to the age

of reason, _i.e._, of responsibility. Saint Augustine felt the weight

of this consideration; he reflected long on this torturing problem:

"When I come to consider the sufferings of children," he says,

"believe me, I am in a state of terrible perplexity. I have no wish

whatever to speak only of the punishment inflicted on them after this

life by eternal damnation to which they are of necessity condemned if

they have left their bodies without receiving the sacrament of Christ,

but of the pains they endure in this present life, under our very

eyes. Did I wish to examine these sufferings, time would fail me

rather than instances thereof; they languish in sickness, are torn by

pain, tortured by hunger and thirst, weakened in their organs,

deprived of their senses, and sometimes tormented by unclean beings. I

should have to show how they can with justice be subjected to such

things, at a time when they are yet without sin. It cannot be said

that they suffer unknown to God or that God can do nothing against

their tormentors, nor that He can create or allow unjust punishment.

When men suffer, we say they are being punished for their crimes, but

this can be applied only to adults. As children have in them no sin

capable of meriting so terrible a punishment, tell me what answer can

be given?"

The answer, indeed, cannot be made that original sin is capable of

explaining this unequal retribution; but then, ought not the very

absurdity of the consequences due to such sin to justify one in

refusing to examine this argument? What soul could admit that the

innocent should be punished for the guilty? Does human justice, in

spite of its imperfection, punish the offspring of criminals? Can the

millions of descendants of the mythical Adam have been chastised for a

crime in which they have had no share? And would this chastisement,

multiplied millions of times without the faintest reason, never have

stirred the conscience of the Church? Saint Augustine could not make

up his mind to accuse God of injustice; so, to avoid disputing the

truth of the Christian teaching in which he wholly believed, he

invented his famous theory of "generation," often called

"translation."

Men suffer because of original sin, he says, but it would not be just

of God to punish them for this, had they not shared therein[12];

this, indeed, they have done, for the soul of a man was not created

directly, by God, at the moment of the birth of the body; it is a

branch taken from the soul of his father, as the latter's comes from

that of his parents; thus, ascending the genealogical chain, we see

that all souls issue from that of the common father of mankind:

Adam.[13]

So that Saint Augustine preferred to deny the creation of souls and to

derive them from the soul of Adam, through a successive progeny of

human vehicles, rather than to allow God to be charged with injustice.

We are not called upon to demonstrate the falsity of his hypothesis,

which the Church has been forced to condemn, though without replacing

it with a better theory; all the same, if human souls suffer from a

sin in which they have not individually and consciously

participated--and such is the case, for even granting that translation

be a fact, these souls existed in Adam only potentially, as

unconscious, undeveloped germs, when the sin took place--their

punishment is none the less arbitrary and revolting. Saint Augustine

believed he was justifying Providence; he succeeded only in deceiving

his own reason and revolted sense of justice, but he preferred by

suggestion to deceive himself to such an extent as to believe in the

reality of his desire rather than enrol himself against the Church.

In order to reconcile divine Justice with the injustice of punishing

all for the fault of one alone, the theologians also said: "Adam

sinned, his sin has been distributed over the whole of his race, but

God, by sending down his son, instituted baptism; and the waters of

the sacrament wash the stains of original sin from the souls of men."

This reply is as childish as the former. As a matter of fact,

according to the Church, about four thousand years intervened between

the sin of Adam and the coming of the Redeemer, and so only after that

interval did the souls of the just, who were waiting in the Life

Beyond for the coming of the Messiah, enter Paradise!

Would not this delay in itself be an injustice? Ought not baptism to

have been instituted immediately after the sin, and should it not have

been placed within the reach of all? Besides, do we not see that even

in our days, two thousand years after the coming of the Christ,

millions of human beings are born and die without ever having heard of

the existence of this sacrament. This part of the argument is too

puerile to dwell upon at length, but we will spend a few moments on it

to show definitely how powerless this theory is to explain evil.

Before teaching the doctrine of "Limbo," the Church accepted the idea

of the damnation of children who died without being baptised, as we

have just seen in the case of Saint Augustine.[14] Bossuet, with

incredible blindness, also accepted it; and, sad to relate, his reason

did not feel called upon to furnish an explanation which would justify

Providence, as was the case with Saint Augustine. He rejected

"translation," and discovered nothing with which to veil the

blasphemy.

On this point the following is a faithful _résumé_ of his letter to

Pope Innocent XII.:

The damnation of children who have died without being

baptised must be firmly believed by the Church. They are

guilty because they are born under the wrath of God and in

the power of Darkness. Children of wrath by nature, objects

of hatred and aversion, hurled into Hell with the rest of

the damned, they will remain there for all eternity punished

by the horrible vengeance of the Demon.

Such also are the decisions of the learned Denis Pétau, the

most eminent Bellarmin, the Councils of Lyons, of Florence,

and of Trent; for these things are not decided by human

considerations, but by the authority of tradition and of the

Scriptures.

Such logic makes one really doubt human reason, and reminds one of the

spirit with which the courts of the Holy Inquisition were inspired.

Where in Nature can there be found such lack of proportion between

cause and effect, crime and punishment? Have such arguments ever been

justified by the voice of conscience?

Official Christianity remains powerless to explain suffering. Let us

see what we can learn from the philosophies and religions of the past

and the greatest of modern philosophers, as well as from the admirable

_résumés_ of Teachers of theosophy.

The problem of suffering is one with that of life, _i.e._, with that

of evolution in general. The object of the successive worlds is the

creation of millions of centres of consciousness in the germinal state

(_souls_) and the transformation of these germs into divinities

similar to their father, God. This is the divine multiplication,

creating innumerable "gods," in God.

To produce divine germs, homogeneous Unity must limit its immensity

and create within itself the diversity of matter, of form. This can

be obtained by the creation of "multiplicity" and by the "limitation"

of what might be called a portion of Divinity. Now, limitation implies

imperfection, both general and individual, _i.e._, suffering; and

multiplicity implies diversity of needs and interests, forced

submission to the general law _i.e._, suffering again. That the divine

germs may evolve, their potentialities must be awakened by their

surroundings; in other words, by the action of the "opposites," and

sensation must come into being; the action of the opposites on

sensation is also a cause of pain.

Outside of the unknown Being--which will be known at the end of

evolution--nothing can _be_. Everything is in Him. He is all; the

worlds, time and space are "aspects" which He assumes from time to

time[15]; for this reason it has been said that the Universe is an

illusion, which may be expressed more clearly by saying that it is an

illusion to believe that what exists is not one form of divine

activity, an "aspect" of God.

That anything may exist, or rather that aspects of God may appear,

there must be manifested in Him a special mode of being, to call

forth what we designate as multiplicity.

That multiplicity[16] may be manifest, differences must be produced in

Unity; these differences in the world are the "pairs of

opposites"--the contraries. These contraries are everywhere.

Matter is the fulcrum of force--both of these terms being "aspects" of

God--and without a fulcrum no force can manifest itself; there is no

heat without cold, and when it is summer in the northern hemisphere it

is winter in the southern. There is no movement that does not depend

upon a state of rest, no light without shadow, no pleasure without the

faculty of pain, no freedom that is not founded upon necessity, no

good that does not betoken an evil.

The following are a few examples of duality taken from nature. The

current of electricity is polarised into a positive and a negative

current. It is the same with the magnet; though you break a bar into a

hundred pieces, you bring into being a hundred small magnets, each

possessing its positive and negative side; you will not have destroyed

the "duality," the opposites.

Like the magnet, the solar spectrum forms two series, separated by a

neutral point, the blue series and the red one, united by the

violet.[17]

Violet.

Indigo. Yellow.

Blue. Orange.

Green. Red.

The terms of the two series are respectively complimentary to each

other; the violet dominates the two groups of opposites and is a

visible member of the axis formed by the colours that might be called

neutral.

Duality appears in every shape and form.

Symbolically, we may say with the Hindus that the Universe begins and

ends with two opposite movements: an emanation from Brahmâ, it is born

when the breast of God sends forth the heavenly outbreathing, it dies,

reabsorbed, when the universal inbreathing takes place. These

movements produce attraction and repulsion, the aggregation and

dissolution to be found everywhere. It is the attraction of a

force-centre, the "laya centre" of Theosophy, which permits of the

atomic condensation that gives it the envelope whose soul it is; when

its cycle of activity ends, attraction gives place to repulsion, the

envelope is destroyed by the return of its constituent elements to the

source from which they were drawn, and the soul is liberated until a

future cycle of activity begins.

Even the rhythm of pulmonary respiration, the contraction and dilation

(systole and diastole) of the heart, the ebb and flow of the tides, as

also day and night, sleeping and waking, summer and winter, life and

death, are all products of that law of contraries which rules

creation.

These "opposites" are the very essence of cosmic life, the twin

pillars of universal equilibrium; they have been represented in

Solomon's symbolical temple--here, the Universe--by Jakin and Boaz,

the white and the black columns; they are also the interlaced

triangles of "Solomon's Seal," the six-pointed star, the two Old Men

of the Kabbalah, the white Jehovah and the black Jehovah; Eros and

Anteros, the serpents of Mercury's caduceus, the two Sphinxes of the

car of Osiris, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, the

Chinese "Yang" and "Yin," the goblet and staff of Tarot, man and

woman. All these images represent the same law.

Multiplicity, the fruit of the contraries, makes its appearance in the

forms born in infinite, homogeneous Being; its goal is the goal of

creation; the production, in infinite Being, of centres which are

developed by evolution and finally become gods in God. These centres,

or "souls," these points in the supreme Point, are divine in essence,

though, so far, they have no share at all in the perfection

"manifested" by God; they are all "centres," for God is a sphere,

whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, but they have

not developed consciousness which is as yet only potential in them.

Like cuttings of willow which reproduce the mother-tree, these points,

veritable portions of God, are capable of germinating, growing up, and

becoming "I's," self-conscious beings, intelligent and endowed with

will-power, and finally gods, having developed the entire

potentialities of the All by their repeated imprisonment in the series

of forms that make up the visible and invisible kingdoms of nature.

Every form, _i.e._ aggregate of substance-force, reflects within

itself one of these points of Divinity. This point is its Monad, its

centre of consciousness, or soul; it is the cause which is manifested

as qualities in the envelopes, and these give it the illusion of

separateness for a certain period,[18] just as a soap-bubble

momentarily acquires a fictitious individuality and appears separate

from the atmosphere--of which it forms part--so long as its illusory

envelope endures.

Thus do men imagine themselves separate from one another, when all the

time their soul is nothing more than a drop of the divine Ocean,

hidden momentarily in a perishable body.

The "contraries" are the anvil and the hammer which slowly forge souls

by producing what might be called sensation in general, and sensation

is a fertile cause of suffering each time the vehicles of

consciousness receive vibrations that greatly exceed their fundamental

capacity of sensation. Without sensation however--consequently without

suffering--the body could neither walk,[19] nor see, nor hear, nor

show any disturbance brought to bear upon it; there would exist no

possible relation between the Universe and the "I," between the All

and the parts, between bodies and souls; there would be no

consciousness, or sensation of being, since no vibration from without

would find an echo in the incarnated "centres" of life; no knowledge

would be possible; man would be, as it were, in a state of

nothingness; and, without suspecting it, his body might at any moment

be crushed to the ground by the forces of Nature.

But these material necessities are not by any means the only ones that

demand sensation; without it, one of the principal objects of

evolution--the development of "Egos"--would be impossible. As an

example borrowed from the domain of physical sensation, we need only

call to memory a well-known experience in childhood.

All who have been at a boarding school know how heavy and fetid is the

atmosphere of a dormitory in the early winter morning, when fifty boys

have been breathing the same air again and again during the whole of

the night. And yet, who suspected this until he had gone out for a few

minutes and then returned to the bed-room? It needed the "contrary,"

the pure outside air, to make known the state of the atmosphere

inside. The contrast produced sensation--that nauseous, suffocating

impression of foul, mephitic air; suffering[20] generated knowledge of

the vitiated air; as the result of this influence, the "centre of

consciousness" felt itself an "I" distinct from its surroundings, and

its "self-consciousness" received a slight increase.

What might be called passional sensibility--desire, emotion,

impulse--is, like physical sensation, another indispensable factor in

evolution; it is the special element in the development of the animal

kingdom as well as of the less evolved portion of the human kingdom.

The young souls of mankind must receive the comparatively simple lessons

of sensation, desire, and passion, before beginning the far more

complicated study of mentality. But for desire, a host of needs could

not be manifested, numberless functions would remain inactive; the body

would not feed itself, and would die, were it not for hunger; danger

would not be fled from, but for the instinct of self-preservation; nor

without this would there be any propagation of the species. None the

less is this life of sensation the source of many evils; desire and

passion amongst human beings create terrible misery, fill prisons and

hospitals, and are at the root of all kinds of moral suffering. In its

turn, intelligence--that sensation so characteristic of the human

state--is both an indispensable necessity and the most fertile source of

evil, so long as it has not experienced a yearning for that inner

"divinity," deep in the heart of man, which calls to it. A powerful

lever of progress, it might convert this earth into a paradise, whereas

it is the weapon which the strong, in their egoism, use to crush the

feeble, a terrible weapon which either creates or intensifies all the

evils under which the people writhe in despair. Once it becomes the

instrument of a regenerate humanity, that is to say, when men have

become compassionate, loving, and devoted, then the social question will

cease to exist, and the old instrument of torture will become a pledge

of general happiness.

Even spiritual sensibility is a cause of suffering to some noble souls

who have developed it, for however deep the joy of loving and giving

oneself, intense too is the pain of witnessing the cruel drama of

life, that fratricidal struggle in which passion strikes without

mercy, whilst illusion and ignorance deal blows even more terrible,

for into the wounds they make they instil the poison of revolt and

despair.

The action of multiplicity, and of its creators, the "contraries,"

engenders still other causes of suffering. Every being lives both for

others and at their expense. For instance, physical bodies are obliged

to replace with food and nourishment those particles which the various

functions of life cause them to lose. The vegetable kingdom takes its

constituent elements from the mineral kingdom, and itself serves as

food for large portions of the animal kingdom; up to this point

physical pain has not manifested itself, though there is a momentary

arrest of evolution for the animistic essence which represents the

individual in the destroyed vegetable. A portion of the animal kingdom

feeds on its own members; man, too, extorts from this same kingdom a

very heavy tribute; here, the arrested evolution of the victims is all

the more important, inasmuch as their stage of evolution is higher,

and the existence of a nervous system brings the possibility of

suffering, suffering which certain influences[21] either diminish or

suppress altogether, when caused by animal destructiveness, but which

may become intense when it is man who is the sacrificer.

Among the causes of pain, arising from multiplicity there is also the

physical, mental, and moral action exercised by the solidarity of all

beings. By exchanging, with those that come into contact with us, the

products thrown off by our visible and invisible bodies, we are the

dispensers of good or ill-health. Everyone, for instance, is aware of

the far-reaching effects of an evil intellectual and moral example;

physical contagion, in spite of the torture it inflicts, is far less

to be dreaded than moral contagion. The spiritual qualities alone do

not form a leaven of evil; they are not the double-edged instruments

we meet with elsewhere. The reason of this is that they belong to the

plane of Unity. But it is none the less true that, though the

presence of a highly developed soul is a help to younger souls within

its reach and influence, its powerful vibrations may, from certain

points of view, prove fatiguing to those still at the foot of the

ladder of evolution. This is one of the many reasons that have given

rise to the saying that it is dangerous prematurely to enter the

"circle of the ascetics."

But the most powerful causes of pain, due to multiplicity, are the

ignorance and the will of beings who have reached the human stage. Man

can employ his mental faculties for good or evil, and so long as he

does not know definitely that he is the brother of all beings, _i.e._,

until his divine faculties have been developed, and love and the

spirit of sacrifice have taken possession of his heart, he remains a

terrible egoist, more to be dreaded than the criminal dominated by a

momentary burst of passion, for he acts in cold blood, he evades or

refuses to recognise the law of humanity, he dominates and destroys.

This man is at the stage of ingratitude; he no longer possesses the

harmlessness of childhood, nor has he yet acquired the wisdom of

advanced age. Our Western race has reached this critical stage,

whereof the menacing demands of the suffering masses are a striking

testimony. Here, too, God could not do otherwise; He might create

bodies blindly obedient to his law, mere automata, but it would be

impossible for Him to cause divine germs to evolve into "gods" without

pulling them through the school of evolution which teaches them,

first, of the "ego," the root of all egoism, then knowledge by

ignorance, liberty by necessity, good by evil, and the perfect by the

imperfect.

It may at this point just be mentioned that though human egoism

appears to have free play and to be unrestrained in its cruelty,

divine Law never allows innocence to suffer for the errors of evolving

souls, it punishes only the guilty, whether their faults or misdeeds

be known or unknown, belonging to the present life or to past ones.

Such, briefly, is the cause of pain and suffering in evolution; in the

following pages we will set forth the causes of the unequal

distribution of this suffering.

THE PROBLEM OF THE INEQUALITY OF CONDITIONS.

If suffering in general is the child of Necessity--since it is born of

multiplicity and the limitation of the Infinite, without which the

Universe could not exist--it would seem that we ought to find it

falling upon all beings without distinction, in uniform, regular, and

impartial fashion. Instead of this, it is every moment losing its

character of impersonality; it respects those who are guilty on a

large scale; and, without any visible cause, strikes fiercely the most

innocent of persons; noble souls are born in the families of

criminals, whilst criminals have fathers of the utmost respectability;

we find parricides, and brothers hostile to each other; millionaires

die of surfeiting alongside of paupers dying of hunger; we find giants

by the side of dwarfs; the healthy and well-formed near the crippled

or those wasted away by terrible diseases; Apollos contrast with

Quasimodos; men of genius are met with, cheek by jowl with idiots;

some children are stillborn, others blind or deaf and dumb from birth.

Extremely different races people the earth--on the one hand,

unintelligent and cannibal negroes; on the other, the proud, handsome,

and intelligent, though selfish and cruel white race. Again, from a

moral standpoint, who can explain congenital tendencies to crime, the

vicious by birth, the wicked by nature, the persons with

uncontrollable passions? Wherefore are thrift and foresight lacking in

so many men, who are consequently condemned to lifelong poverty and

wretchedness? Why this excess of intelligence, used mainly for the

exploiting of folly? It is useless to multiply examples, one has only

to look around at hospitals and prisons, night-shelters, palaces and

garrets; everywhere suffering has taken up its abode. Can no reply be

given to this terrible charge brought against Divinity? Is man to

remain in a state of dejection and discouragement, as though some

irreparable catastrophe had befallen him?

According to the Church, all this is the work of the soul which God

gives at the birth of a man--a soul that is good or bad, prudent or

foolish, one which damns or saves itself according as its will can, or

cannot, dominate its passions, its intelligence discover the way to

heaven or not; according as grace or rejection predestine it to heaven

or to hell.

Is it not the depth of profanity to represent God as watching over

conceptions in order to create souls so unfairly endowed, most of whom

will never hear the Gospel message, and consequently cannot be saved,

whilst the rest are destined to animate the bodies of savages and

cannibals, devoid of moral consciousness? Is it not an act of

sacrilege thus to convert God, Who is all Wisdom and Love, into a kind

of accomplice of adulterers and lewd persons or the sport of

Malthusian insults. Unconscious blasphemers are they who would offer

this Dead Sea fruit as the true manna of Life!

There is also another theory, often advanced in certain quarters, on

which we must say a few words, for though it contains only a minimum

of truth, and consequently cannot withstand serious examination, it

has led astray more than one earnest thinker. Inequalities of

suffering, it has been said, arise from inequalities of social

conditions. Intelligence, morality, will, in fact all human faculties,

develop more or less according to their environment; men are born

equal; they become unequal as the result of different environment; pay

the same care and attention to all and they will remain equal, and if

they are equal, the theory seems to imply, evil will disappear from

the face of the earth.

This is not so.

Inequality of suffering does not result from inequality of condition.

Many a poor tiller of the fields enjoys a degree of peace and

happiness that those favoured by birth or fortune would envy. Disease

visits poor and rich alike; moral suffering is more especially the

appanage of the so-called higher classes, and if obscurity and poverty

render certain troubles specially severe, wealth and rank play the

same _rôle_ in afflictions of another kind; there is a dark side to

every picture. More than this, inequality of condition is one of the

fundamental factors of social equilibrium; without it, many urgent and

even indispensable functions would be neglected, numerous general

needs would remain unsatisfied; so-called menial work, which, in a

state of society that is still imperfect and consequently selfish, is

performed only in the hope of remuneration, would never be done at

all; every man would have to provide for the whole of his necessities;

no one could find time for self-improvement or for flinging himself

entirely into those divers branches of activity which, if personal

interest were absent, would make life infinitely better and progress

extremely rapid. The partisans of this theory rely on diversity of

tastes to fill the diversity of functions that are necessary in social

life: another illusion. The inferior, painful, or difficult tasks will

never find sufficient workers, whilst easy or honourable posts will

always be overcrowded. To believe the contrary would be to shut one's

eyes to the present imperfection of men; it would mean the belief that

they were noble and lofty beings, eager for self-sacrifice, demanding

only to work for the happiness of all, without a single thought of

their personal preferences; it would mean seeing, in present-day

humanity, that of the future in which each individual has attained to

such a degree of perfection that not a single idle, ill-disposed, or

stupid person is to be found amongst them, for each one would regard

himself as the brother and helper of all, and the universal standard

of life would be: Each for all and all for each! How ardently we

desire that this were so; how eagerly we pray for that future, so far

away, when we shall have grown to this nobler stature, and the

present fratricidal struggle shall have given place to a lasting

peace, the offspring of a higher, spiritual, universal love. Anxiously

do we await it; like lost travellers, we fix our eyes on the dark

horizon to catch the first faint streaks of light, harbingers of the

dawn. We greet with joy and gratitude all such as believe in that

blessed future and endeavour to hasten its coming, all who

impersonally and in sincerity aim at the social Unity towards which

the heart aspires, and especially those whose aim it is to advance in

accordance with that continuous, progressive evolution based on the

physical, moral, mental, and spiritual amelioration of men, for it is

they who have learned the secret of Nature. Indeed, evolution shows us

that, the more souls grow, the nearer they approach that perfection to

which progress destines them, and happiness exists only in perfection.

To return to other aspects of the subject.

Men are born equal, we are told.

A single glance at the differences in the moral and intellectual

qualities of races and individuals, at the differences between young

children, even at the differences in the instincts of infants at the

breast, is sufficient to prove the contrary.

There are savages in whom no trace whatever of the moral sense can be

discovered. Charles Darwin in one of his works relates a fact, which

Mrs. Besant has quoted, in illustration of this. An English missionary

reproached a Tasmanian with having killed his wife in order to eat

her. In that rudimentary intellect, the reproach aroused an idea quite

different from that of a crime; the cannibal thought the missionary

imagined that human flesh was of an unpleasant flavour, and so he

replied: "But she was very good!"

Is it possible to attribute to the influence of surroundings alone a

degree of moral poverty so profound as this?

Many a mother has been able to find out that souls are not equal, in

other words, that they are of different ages, by the discovery of

diametrically opposite qualities and tendencies in two children born

under the same conditions; in twins, for instance.

Every schoolmaster has noticed the same fact in the pupils under his

charge. Mrs. Besant says that amongst the 80,000 children who came

under her inspection in the London schools she would often find side

by side with gentle, affectionate little beings others who showed

criminal tendencies from birth.

Looking at the question from another point of view, are we not

continually finding in schools and educational establishments pupils

who, for no explicable reason, show a disposition for one branch of

instruction only? They shine in this, but are dunces in every other

subject.

As a final example, do not infant prodigies prove that men are not

born equal? Young, who discovered the undulatory theory of light,

could read with wonderful rapidity at the age of two, whilst at eight

he had a thorough knowledge of six languages.

Sir W. R. Hamilton began to learn Hebrew when he was three, and knew

it perfectly four years later. At the age of thirteen he knew thirteen

languages.

Gauss, of Brunswick--the greatest mathematician in Europe, according

to Laplace--solved problems in arithmetic when only three.

No, men are not born equal. Nor does environment cause the

inequalities we find; it favours or checks the development of

qualities, but has no part in their creation. Still, its influence is

sufficiently important for us to give it due consideration.

We are linked to one another by the closest bonds of solidarity,

whether we wish it and are conscious thereof or not. Everything

absorbs and throws off, breathes in and breathes out, and this

universal exchange, if at times bad, is none the less a powerful

factor in evolution. The atom of carbon, on entering into the

combinations of the human body, is endowed with a far higher power of

combining than the one which has just left the lump of ore; to obtain

its new properties, this atom has had to pass through millions of

vegetable, animal, and human molecules. Animals brought into close

contact with man develop mentally to a degree that is sometimes

incredible, by reason of the intellectual food with which our thoughts

supply them. The man who lives alone is, other things being equal,

weaker physically, morally, and mentally than he who lives in a large

social environment; it is for this reason that the mind develops far

more rapidly in large centres of life than in the country. And what is

true of good is, unfortunately, true also of evil qualities.

Consequently, environment has an undeniable influence, and it is

perfectly true to say that the social conditions under which

individuals are born favour or impede the development of their

faculties. There its influence stops; it can intensify inequality, but

does not create it.

Inequality of condition arises, above all else, from the continuity of

what might be called creation. Atoms are incessantly being formed in

the womb of the Virgin Mother,[22] by the might of the divine vortex

perceived by seers in ecstatic vision, and which theosophy has named

the Great Breath; ceaselessly are these atoms entering into multitudes

of organisms, ceaselessly is the plan of evolution being worked--some

ending, others beginning the great Pilgrimage. It is the existence of

this circuit which creates and keeps complete the hierarchy of beings,

brings into existence and perpetuates the known and the unknown

kingdoms of Nature; souls ascend slowly from one kingdom to another,

whilst the places they leave are filled by new-comers, by younger

souls.

A second cause of human inequality is the difference in effort and

deed accomplished by the will of human beings who have reached a

certain point in evolution. As soon as this will is guided by

intelligence and the moral sense, it hastens or delays individual

evolution, makes it easy when it acts in harmony with divine Law--by

doing what is called "good"--or disturbs evolution by pain, when it

opposes this Law, by doing "evil." By modifying the direction of the

Law, the Soul engenders beneficent or maleficent forces, which, after

having played in the universe within the limit the law has imposed on

them, return to their starting point--man. From that time, one

understands that the balance of the scales in different individuals

becomes unequal. These effects of the will influence to a noticeable

degree the life during which they have originated; they are preserved

in a latent condition after death, and appear again in future returns

to earth.

Thus are men born laden with the results of their past and in

possession of the capacities they have developed in the course of

their evolution. Those whom the difficulties of life have filled with

energy in the past return to existence on earth possessed of that

might which the world admires; now it is perseverance or courage; now

patient calm or violence, which is the stronger, according to the

aspect of the energy developed. Others, again, are born feeble and

devoid of energy; their former lives have been too easy. Men are

philosophers or mathematicians, artists or _savants_, from the very

cradle.

Objections have been brought against the doctrine of Rebirth by

opponents who have looked only on one side of the individual life, and

so have been unable to explain apparent anomalies, especially in those

cases where it is seen that the effect does not immediately follow the

cause. In reality, every force that emerges from a centre of will[23]

describes an ellipse, so to speak, which travels through a net-work of

other ellipses generated by thousands of other centres of energy, and

is accelerated or retarded in its course, according to the direction

and nature of the forces with which it is connected. It is for this

reason that certain actions meet with their reward or their punishment

almost immediately. Then the people say: "It is the finger of God!" In

other cases, again, and these are the most numerous, the reaction is

postponed; the noble-hearted man, who has made sacrifices the whole of

his life, seems to receive in exchange nothing but misfortune and

pain, whilst close by the wicked, selfish man prospers and thrives

exceedingly. Thereupon the ignorant say: "There is no God, for there

is no justice."

Not so! It is impossible to defeat Justice; though, in the interests

of evolving beings, it may allow the forces around to accelerate or

retard its progress. Nothing is ever lost; causes that have not

fructified remain potential; and, like the grain of corn gathered

thousands of years ago, grow and develop as soon as favourable soil

and environment are offered them. Debts are still recorded, when the

perishable sheaths of our physical bodies have been cast off; they

come up for future payment, often in the next life. But this next life

may not wipe off the whole of the liabilities, so the process is

continued for several successive existences, and this has given rise

to the saying that the sins of the parents[24] are visited upon the

children[25] unto the seventh generation.[26]

Such is the truth.

Souls, equal in potentialities whilst dormant as germs in the womb of

Being, become unequal, as soon as they are born into existence in the

manifested Universe, for they find predecessors, elder souls in front

of them; inequality is intensified when they have reached the human

stage, where intelligence and will come into play, for henceforth,

inequality in the actions of individuals, variations of what might be

called merit and demerit, set up a second factor in the inequality of

conditions. Evolution treasures up the causes that have not been able

to germinate in one existence, and, by successive returns to earth,

realises the aims and ends of that Justice which governs the Universe,

the designs of that Love which makes for progress and leads to

perfection.

OBJECTION.

An apparently serious objection to the doctrine of Rebirth is

constantly being made. It is unjust and useless, people say, to be

punished for misdeeds that are forgotten. As this objection has

reference to moral proofs, we must deal with it here.

Does forgetfulness efface faults or destroy their consequences? Could

the assassin, who has lost all memory of the crime committed the

previous evening, change his deed or its results in the slightest

degree? Rebirths are nothing more than the morrows of former lives,

and though the merciful waters of Lethe have effaced their memory, the

forces stored up in the soul, during the ages, perform their work all

the same in the future.

On the other hand, injustice would exist, and that under a very cruel

aspect, were memory to continue; for the painful vision of a past

always full of weaknesses, even when free from the stain of crime,

would be a continual one. And if, too--as our opponents would

prefer--man knew why he was punished, _i.e._, if he knew that each of

these past errors and faults, ever present before his eyes, would

carry with it a particular fruit, and that strict payment would be

exacted at every step in his new life, would not the punishment be far

greater than the sin? Would there not rise from every human heart an

outcry of blasphemy against a God who, by means of memory, transformed

life into an endless torment, destroying all activity or initiative

in the anxiety of expectancy, in a word, stifling the present beneath

the heavy nightmare of the past?

Men, though so unjust and little disposed to pity, have always refused

to inflict on a man condemned to death the torture of anticipation;

only at the last moment is he informed of the rejection of his appeal

for mercy. Could divine Law be less compassionate than human law?

Is it not rash for us, in our profound ignorance, to criticise the

workings of a boundless Wisdom? He who takes only a few steps along

the pathway of Knowledge, or enters, however slightly, into the secret

of the works of God, obtains the proof that Providence leaves no part

of the Cosmos, no being anywhere, deprived of its fatherly care and

protection. When, in our blindness, we imagine injustice, a void or an

imperfection of any kind, a radiant beam of light shows us the

omnipresent Life, bestowing love on all its children without

distinction, from the slumbering atom to the glorious planetary

Spirit, whose consciousness is so vast as to enfold the Universe.

It is more especially after death that the soul, set free from its

illusory sheaths, makes an impartial review of its recent incarnation,

attentively following its actions and their consequences, noting its

errors and failures, along with their motives and causes. In this

school it grows in knowledge and power; and when, in a future

incarnation, the same difficulties present themselves anew, it is

better equipped for the struggle; what has been learned, is retained

within the soul; it knows, where formerly it was ignorant, and by the

"voice of conscience," tells the personality[27] what its duty is.

This wisdom, sifted from the panorama of a thousand past images, is

the best of all memories, for on those numerous occasions when a

decision must be arrived at on the spur of the moment it would not be

possible to summon forth from the depths of the past such groups of

memories as refer to the decision to be reached, to see the events

over again, and deduce therefrom a line of conduct. The lesson must

have been learnt and thoroughly assimilated during the enlightened

peace and calm of the Hereafter; then only is the soul ready to

respond without delay, and its command is distinct; its judgment,

sure; do this, avoid that.

When a soul, in the course of evolution, has succeeded in impressing

its vibration--its thought--on a brain which it has refined and made

responsive by a training which purifies the entire nature of the man,

it is able to transmit to the incarnated consciousness the memory of

its past lives; but this memory then ceases to be painful or

dangerous, for the soul has not only exhausted the greater part of its

karma of suffering, it also possesses the strength necessary to

sustain its personality, whenever a foreboding of what we call

misfortune comes upon it.

In the divine work everything comes in its own time, and we recognise

the perfection of the Creator by the perfect concatenation of all

creation.

Reincarnation is so intimately bound up with the Law of Causality, and

receives from it such powerful support, that this chapter would be

left in a very incomplete form were we not to say a few words on

Karma.

THE LAW OF CAUSALITY (Karma).[28]

Karma is the Law of the Universe, the expression of divine Will. Its

seemingly essential attributes are Justice and Love; it neither

punishes nor rewards, but adjusts things, restores disturbed balance

and harmony, brings back evolving souls to the right path and teaches

them Law.

When a man acts against the Law, he is like a swimmer, struggling

against the current of a rapid river; his strength fails, and he is

borne away.

So does God bear away, in spite of all their efforts, those who,

whether ignorantly or consciously, fight against the Law, for it is

His love that wills evolution, _i.e._, the making human beings divine;

so he brings them back to the path, in spite of themselves, every time

they wander astray.

"God is patient because He is eternal," it has been said. The sentence

is incomplete and must be changed, since it attributes to Divinity a

vindictive nature. The Law is patient because it is perfect in Wisdom,

Power, and Love.

This Law is the divine Will which moves all things and vibrates

everywhere; it is the music of the spheres, the song of glory and

harmony, which murmurs in the heart like the rippling of a waterfall,

the chant of life and joy that eternally triumphs in its never-ending

creation of beings, who, after revolving for a moment in the universe,

have become perfect.

Its glorious strains resound in the heart of man, when the soul has

found peace in the Law, and we are told that, when once heard, its

divine accents continue for ever, like an ineffable whisper which

brings us back to hope and faith, when we are sunk in the depths of

despair.

God limited himself in order to become incarnate in the Universe: He

is the Soul of the world. His will is exerted everywhere, it finds its

reflection in every creature; and man, a portion of divinity in

course of evolution, possesses a germ of will that is infinite in its

essence, and consequently capable of limitless development; God

respects this will in His creatures, and submits to violence, in order

to teach them His will, which is supreme Love. Like a stone that falls

into a tranquil lake, a human action creates, all round, concentric

ripples which continue to the very shores or limits of the Universe;

then the wave is thrown back upon itself, returns to its

starting-point, and the man who began the first movement receives a

recoil exactly equivalent to the original impetus. Reaction is equal

to action; obstacles on the way may delay its return or break up its

energy, but the time comes when the fractions return to the centre

that generates the disturbance, which thus receives from the Law a

perfectly just retribution.

The principal element in actions is thought. Every thought is a form

in a state of vibration--a ray of intelligence which unites itself

with subtle matter[29] and forms a being, of which this matter is the

body, and thought, the soul. This being, often called a

"thought-form," possesses form, duration, and strength that bear a

strict relation to the energy of the thought that created it; if it

embodies a soul of hatred, it will react on the man who harbours this

thought, and on all who come into contact with him, as a leaven of

destruction, but if it is guided by love it will be, as it were, the

incarnation of some beneficent power.

In certain cases its action is expressed visibly and rapidly; for

instance, a venomous thought may[30] cause the death of the person

against whom it is directed--this is one aspect of the "evil eye"--as

also it may[31] return to its starting-point and kill the one who

generated it, by the recoil. Every mental projection of a criminal

nature, however, by no means necessarily reaches the object aimed at;

a sorcerer, for instance, could no more injure one who was positive,

consciously and willingly good, than he could cause a grain of corn to

sprout on a block of granite; favourable soil is needed to enable the

seed of evil to take root in a man's heart; otherwise, the evil

recoils with its full force upon the one who sent it forth and who is

an irresistible magnet, for he is its very "life-centre."

Thoughts cling to their creator and attract towards this latter those

of a similar nature floating about in the invisible world, for they

instinctively come to vitalise and invigorate themselves by contact

with him; they radiate around him a contagious atmosphere of good or

evil, and when they have left him, hover about, at the caprice of the

various currents, impelling those they touch towards the goal to which

they are making. They even recoil on the visible form of their

generator; it is for this reason that physical is closely connected

with moral well-being, and most of our diseases are nothing else than

the outer expression of the hidden leaven of passion. When the action

of this latter is sudden and powerful, diseases may be the immediate

consequence thereof; blinded by materialism, certain doctors seldom

acknowledge their real cause; and yet instances of hair turning white

in a single night are too numerous to be refuted, congestion of the

brain brought on by a fit of anger, jaundice and other grave maladies

caused by grief and trouble, are to be met with continually.

When the mental forces which disturb the physical organs meet with

obstacles which prevent their immediate outlet, they accumulate, like

the electric fluid in a condenser, until an unexpected contact

produces a discharge; this condensation often persists for a whole

life in a latent condition, and is preserved intact for a future

incarnation; this is the cause of original vices, which, incorporated

in the etheric double, react upon the organic texture of the body.

This also explains why each individual possesses an _ensemble_ of

pathological predispositions often radically different from those

heredity should have bequeathed to him; it is also, to some extent,

the key to physiognomy, for every single feature bears either the

stamp of our passions or the halo of our virtues.

Thought creates lasting bonds between human beings; love and hatred

enchain certain individuals to one another for a whole series of

incarnations; many a victim of the past is to be found again in those

unnatural sons who send a thrill of horror through society when it

hears of some heinous crime--they have become the torturers of their

former oppressors. In other cases, it is love which attracts and

unites in renewed affection those who formerly loved one another--they

return to earth as brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, husbands or

wives.

But if we are the slaves of the past, if fate compels us to reap what

we have sown, we yet have the future in our hands, for we can tear up

the weeds, and in their place sow useful plants. Just as, by means of

physical hygiene, we can change within a few years the nature of the

constituents that make up our bodies, so also, by a process of moral

hygiene, we can purify our passions and then turn their strength in

the direction of good. According as we will, so do we actually become,

good or bad; every man who has taken his evolution in hand notices

this rapid transformation of his personality, and sees his successive

"egos" rise step by step, so to speak, throughout his whole life.

Speaking generally, the first part of life is the expression of the

distant past--of former lives--the second is a mixture of the past and

of the energies of the present incarnation; the end of life is nothing

but a sinking into an ever-deepening rut for those who crystallise in

only one direction; the force of habit sets up its reign, and man

finds himself bound by the chains he himself has forged. This is the

reason an old man does not like the present times; he has stopped

whilst time has advanced, and he is now being carried along like the

flotsam and jetsam of a wreck; the very tastes and habits of his

contemporaries violently clashing with his beloved past. Speak not to

him of progress or evolution, he has brought himself into a state of

complete immobility, and he will discover no favourable field of

action nor will he acquire real energy until he has drunk of the

waters of Lethe in a rest-giving Hereafter and a new body supplies his

will with an instrument having the obedient suppleness of youth.

H. P. Blavatsky, in the _Secret Doctrine_, has well described this

progressive enmeshing of man in the net he himself is weaving.

"Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from

birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around

himself, as a spider his web; and this destiny is guided either by the

heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our

more intimate _astral_ or inner man, who is but too often the evil

genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the

outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning

of the invisible affray the stern and implacable _Law of Compensation_

steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations

of the fight. When the last strand is woven, the man is seemingly

enwrapped in the net-work of his own doing, then he finds himself

completely under the empire of this _self-made_ destiny...."

She adds shortly afterwards:

"An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or

cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will

teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in

this as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer, aye, even

to his seventh rebirth, so long, in short, as the effect of his having

thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World

of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of

Karma--an eternal and immutable decree--is absolute Harmony in the

world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore,

Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish

ourselves, according to whether we work with, through, and along with

nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or--break

them.

"Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable, were men to work in union

and harmony instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those

ways--which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark

and intricate, while another sees in them the action of blind

Fatalism, and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to

guide them--would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all

these to their correct cause....

"We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the

riddle of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great

Sphinx of devouring us. But verily, there is not an accident in our

lives, not a mis-shapen day or a misfortune, that could not be traced

back to our own doings in this or in another life...."

On the same subject, Mrs. Sinnett says in _The Purpose of Theosophy_:

"Every individual is making Karma either good or bad in every action

and thought of his daily round, and is at the same time working out in

this life the Karma brought about by the acts and desires of the last.

When we see people afflicted by congenital ailments, it may be safely

assumed that these ailments are the inevitable results of causes

started by the same in a previous birth. It may be argued that, as

these afflictions are hereditary, they can have nothing to do with a

past incarnation; but it must be remembered that the ego, the real

man, the individuality, has no spiritual origin in the parentage by

which it is re-embodied, but is drawn by the affinities which its

previous mode of life attracted round it into the current that carries

it, when the time comes for re-birth, to the home best fitted for the

development of those tendencies....

"This doctrine of Karma, when properly understood, is well calculated

to guide and assist those who realise its truth to a higher and better

mode of life; for it must not be forgotten that not only our actions,

but our thoughts also, are most assuredly followed by a crowd of

circumstances that will influence for good or for evil our own future;

and, what is still more important, the future of many of our

fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and commission could in any case

be only self-regarding, the effect on the sinner's Karma would be a

matter of minor consequence. The fact that every thought and act

through life carries with it, for good or evil, a corresponding

influence on the members of the human family renders a strict sense of

justice, morality, and unselfishness so necessary to future happiness

and progress. A crime once committed, an evil thought sent out from

the mind, are past recall--no amount of repentance can wipe out their

results on the future....

"Repentance, if sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors; it

cannot save him or others from the effects of those already produced,

which will most unerringly overtake him either in this life or in the

next rebirth."

We will also quote a few lines from E. D. Walker in _Reincarnation_:

"Briefly, the doctrine of Karma is that we have made ourselves what we

are by former actions, and are building our future eternity by present

actions. There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is

no salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about....

Because it offers no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a

sterling manliness, it is less welcome to weak natures than the easy

religious tenets of vicarious atonement, intercessions, forgiveness,

and death-bed conversions....

"In the domain of eternal justice, the offence and the punishment are

inseparably connected as the same event, because there is no real

distinction between the action and its outcome.

"It is Karma, or our old acts, that bring us back into earthly life.

The spirit's abode changes according to its Karma, and this Karma

forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is always

changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish

motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in

physical rebirths. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the

gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is the

goal of mankind."

The danger of a too brief explanation of the law of Causality consists

in the possibility of being imperfectly understood, and consequently

of favouring the doctrine of fatalism.

"Why act at all, the objection will be urged, if everything is

foreseen by the Law? Why stretch out a hand to the man who falls into

the water before our very eyes? Is not the Law strong enough to save

him, if he is not to die; and if he is, have we any right to

interfere?...

"Such reasoning arises from ignorance and egoism.

"Yes, the law is powerful enough to prevent the man from drowning, and

also to prevent the possibility of his being saved by some passer-by,

who has been moved to pity by the sight; to doubt this were to doubt

the power of God. In the work of evolution, however, God does more

than supply man with means of developing his intelligence; in order to

enrich his heart, he offers him opportunities of sacrificing himself.

Again, the innumerable problems set by duty are far from being solved

for us; with difficulty can we distinguish a crime from a noble

action; very often we do wrong, thinking we are doing right, and it

not unfrequently happens that good results from our evil deeds; this

is why God sends us experiences which are to teach us our duty.

"The soul learns not only during its incarnations, but even more after

leaving the body,[32] for life after death is largely spent in

examining the consequences of deeds performed during life on earth.

"Whenever, then, an opportunity for action offers itself, let us

follow the impulse of the heart, the cry of duty, and not the sophisms

of the lower nature, the selfish "ego," the cold brain, which knows

neither compassion nor devotion. Do your duty, whatever happens, says

the Law, _i.e._, do not allege, as your excuse for being selfish, that

God, if He thinks it best, will help your brother in his trouble; why

do you not fling yourself into the fire, with the thought that, if

your hour has not yet come, God will prevent the flames from burning

you? Does not the man, who commits suicide, himself push forward the

hand on the dial of life, setting it at the fatal hour?

"The threads of karmic action are so wonderfully interwoven, and God,

in order to hasten evolution, makes such marvellous use of human

forces, both good and bad, that the first few glances cast at the

_mêlée_ of events are calculated to trouble the mind rather than

reveal to it the marvels of adjustment effected by divine Wisdom, but

no sooner does one succeed in unravelling some of the entanglements of

the karmic forces, and catching a glimpse of the harmony resulting

from their surprising co-operation, than the mind is lost in amaze.

Then, one understands how the murderer is only an instrument whose

passions are used by God in carrying out the karmic decree which

condemned the victim long before the crime was committed; then, too,

one knows that capital punishment is a legal crime of which divine

Justice makes use--yes, a crime, for none but God can judge; every

being has a right to live, and does live, until God condemns him.

"But man, by making himself, even ignorantly, the instrument of Karma,

acts against the universal law, and is preparing for himself that

future suffering which results from every attack made on the harmony

of the whole."[33]

On the other hand, Destiny is not an immutable mass of forces; will

can destroy what it has created, that is a question of time or energy;

and when these are unable, within a given period, to bring about the

total destruction of a barrier belonging to the past, none the less

does this barrier lessen day by day, for the "resultant" of this

system of opposing forces changes its direction every moment, and the

final shock, when it cannot be avoided, is always diminished to a

greater or less degree.

In the case of those who have attained to a perfect reading of the

past, their knowledge of the hostile forces is complete, and the

neutralisation of these forces immensely facilitated. They can seek

out, in this world or in the next, those they wronged in the past, and

thus repair the harm done; they can see the source of those thoughts

of hatred that are sent against them, and destroy them by the

intervention of love;[34] they can find out the weak points of their

personal armour and strengthen them: it is this that in theosophical

language is called the burning of Karma in the fire of "Wisdom."

None the less, there are two points in the law of Causality, which

appear to favour the idea of fatalism, though in reality, they are

merely corollaries of Karma. According to the first, every force is

fatal, in the sense that, if left to itself, it is indestructible.

This is not fatality, for the force can be modified by meeting with

forces differing in character, and if no such encounter takes place,

it finally unites with the cosmic Law, or else is broken to pieces

upon it, according as it moves with evolution or against it.[35] Only

in one sense, then, is it fatal; it cannot be destroyed save by an

opposing force of the same momentum. For instance, in order to

annihilate an obstructive force, created in the past, the soul must

expend an amount of energy that is equal and opposite to that force;

it meanwhile cannot devote itself to any other work, thus causing, in

one sense, a useless production of energy; in other words, evolution

will suffer delay,[36] but, we must repeat, that is not fatality.

Now to the second point.

Thought, by repetition, gains ever-increasing energy, and when the

forces which thoughts accumulate have become as powerful as those of

the will of the Ego which created them, a final addition of

energy--another thought--alone is needed for the will to be overcome

and the heavier scale of the balance to incline; then the thought is

fatally realised in the action. But so long as dynamic equilibrium has

not been reached, the will remains master, although its power is ever

diminishing, in proportion as the difference in the forces becomes

smaller. When equilibrium is reached, the will is neutralised; it

becomes powerless, and feels that a fall is only a question of

moments, and, with a fresh call of energy, the thought is fatally

realised on the physical plane; the hour of freedom has gone and the

fatal moment arrived. Like some solution that has reached saturation

point, obedient to the last impulse, this thought crystallises into an

act.

Many a criminal thus meets, in a single moment, the fatality he has

created in the course of several incarnations; he no longer sees

anything, his reason disappears; in a condition of mental darkness

his arm is raised, and, impelled by a blind force, he strikes

automatically. "What have I done?" he immediately exclaims in horror.

"What demon is this that has taken possession of me?"

Then only is the crime perpetrated, without there being time for the

will to be consulted, without the "voice of conscience" having been

invited to speak. The whole fatality of automatism is in the deed,

which has been carried through without the man suspecting or being

conscious of it; his physical machine has been the blind instrument of

the force of evil he has himself slowly accumulated throughout the

ages. But let there be no mistake; every time a man, who is tempted,

has time to think, even in fleeting fashion, of the moral value of the

impulse which is driving him onward, he has power to resist; and if he

yields to this impulse, the entire responsibility of this final lapse

is added on to that incurred by past thoughts.

Among the victims of these actions that have become fatal are often to

be found those who are near the stage of initiation, for before being

exposed to the dangers of the bewildering "Path," which bridges the

abyss--the abyss which separates the worlds of unity from the illusory

and transitory regions of the Universe--they are submitted to the most

careful tests.

There may even be found souls that tread this path,[37] bearing within

themselves[38] some old surviving residue which has not yet been

finally thrown into the physical plane, and must consequently appear

for the last time before falling away and disappearing for ever.[39]

Mankind, incapable of seeing the man--the divine fragment gloriously

blossoming forth in these beings--often halts before these dark spots

in the vesture of the great soul, these _excreta_ flung off from the

"centre," belonging to the refuse of the vehicle, not to the soul, and

in its blindness pretends to see, in its folly to judge, loftily

condemning the sins of a brother more evolved than itself!

The future will bring men greater wisdom, and teach them the greatness

of their error.[40]

At the conclusion of this important chapter, let us repeat that

Karma--divine Will in action--is Love as well as justice, Wisdom as

well as Power, and no one ought to dread it. If at times it uses us

roughly and always brings us back to the strait way when folly leads

us astray, it is only measuring its strength against our weakness, its

delicate scales balance the load according to our strength, and when,

in times of great anguish or terrible crisis, man is on the point of

giving way, it suddenly lifts the weight, leaves the soul a moment's

respite, and only when it has recovered breath is the burden replaced.

The righteous Will of God is always upon us, filling our hearts with

its might; His Love is ever about us, enabling us to grow and expand,

even through the suffering he sends, for it is ourselves who have

created this suffering.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: Fortunately, this is a fact only in the imagination of

those who are blinded by faith.]

[Footnote 11: Before men had sinned individually on earth.]

[Footnote 12: _De corruptione et gratia_, chap. 7, No. 19; _Cont. Jul.

Pelag._, Book 4, chap. 3, No. 16, et _De Peccat. merit. et remiss._,

Book 3, chap. 4, No. 7.]

[Footnote 13: "Omnes illae unus homo fuerunt." _De Peccat. merit. et

remiss._, Book 1, chap. 10, No. 11.

Theologians pass over St. Augustine's adoption of this theory, giving

one to understand that he abandoned his error shortly before his

death. (_Dictionnaire de Théol._, by Abbé Berger; volume viii.,

article x., "_Traduciens._")]

[Footnote 14: See also, on this subject, his letter to Sixtus, before

the latter became Pope. Chap. vii., No. 31, and chap. vi., No. 27.]

[Footnote 15: The movements of "creation" and "absorption," which are

called in Hindu symbolism the outbreathing and the inbreathing of

Brahmâ.]

[Footnote 16: Creation.]

[Footnote 17: After violet and red there stretches quite another

spectrum, invisible to the human eye; it is because violet is at the

beginning of our known spectrum, that one might think it was not the

neutral point thereof.]

[Footnote 18: The soul believes itself distinct from the All, because

it is subjected to the illusion engendered by its body.]

[Footnote 19: Without the aid of the eyes, walking is impossible to

those suffering from plantar anæsthesia.]

[Footnote 20: Pleasure, like every other form of sensation, produces

the same results, though perhaps with less force.]

[Footnote 21: A magnetic effect or an emotion. All travellers who have

escaped from the attacks of wild beasts mention this effect of

inhibition, manifested by the absence of fear and pain at the moment

of attack.]

[Footnote 22: Primordial matter which has not yet entered into any

combination and is not differentiated.]

[Footnote 23: A soul.]

[Footnote 24: In these cases, the soul.]

[Footnote 25: The personalities or new bodies created by the soul, on

each return to earth.]

[Footnote 26: That is to say, the seventh incarnation.]

[Footnote 27: Waking consciousness.]

[Footnote 28: See _Karma_, by A. Besant.]

[Footnote 29: Those who have studied thought know that it is capable

of being incorporated in diverse states of astral and mental matter.]

[Footnote 30: If the divine law allows it.]

[Footnote 31: If the divine law has not allowed the action to take

place.]

[Footnote 32: Man, after death, loses in succession his astral and

mental bodies.]

[Footnote 33: _La Théosophie en quelques chapitres_, by the author,

pages 31 to 34.]

[Footnote 34: "Hatred is destroyed only by love," said the Buddha.

"Return good for evil," said Jesus.]

[Footnote 35: It is this that causes the universal force of

opposition--_the Enemy_ or _demon_--to become evil only when ignorance

or the human will make use of it to oppose evolution: apart from such

cases, it is only the second pillar necessary for the support of the

Temple, the stepping-stone of the good.]

[Footnote 36: Perhaps this is only an apparent delay, for, on every

plane, force is correlative, and knowledge is the fruit of many

different kinds of energy. The only real cases in which there is delay

of individual evolution are probably those in which _evil is done in

return for evil_. Of course, we are speaking in relative terms and

from a relative standpoint.]

[Footnote 37: When human evolution is completed, man passes the

"strait gate" leading to superhuman evolution, to the spiritual life,

which develops the next higher principle, _Buddhi_; this is _the

Path_. Human evolution develops the mental principle, _Manas_;

Super-human evolution develops the spiritual body, _Buddhi._]

[Footnote 38: Here we are dealing with faults of a more or less venial

nature.]

[Footnote 39: For ever, in this case, for the soul is above these

residues, and, so to speak, has given them no vitality for ages past.]

[Footnote 40: In completion of this chapter on the Law of Causality,

we refer the reader to A. Besant's book: _Karma._]

CHAPTER III.

REINCARNATION AND SCIENCE.

The secret of the Universe lies in observation; it is for man to

develop his senses and patiently to search into the hidden things of

Nature.

All science proceeds thus, and the reason that savants have not

unearthed the precious object for which they seek with such wonderful

perseverance is that the physical senses, even when aided by the most

delicate instruments, are able to cognise only a portion of the

physical Universe--the denser portion. This is proved by the fact that

when man has succeeded in directing into a channel some subtle force,

he remains as ignorant of its essence as he was before chaining it

down, so to speak; he has not the slightest knowledge of it. He can

utilise but he cannot dominate it, for he has not discovered its

source. This source is not in the physical world, but on the finer

planes of being, which will remain unknown to us, so long as our

senses are incapable of responding to their vibrations.

Because physical observation reveals only the bark, the outer crust of

the Cosmos, man sees nothing but the surface of the world, and remains

in ignorance of the heart and vital plexus that give it life;

consequently, he calls the disintegration following upon

disincarnation by the senseless name of "death."

He who has lifted the veil of Isis sees divine Life everywhere, the

Life that animates forms, builds them up, uses them, and finally

breaks them to pieces when they have ceased to be of use; and this

Life--God--thus spread about in numberless forms, by means of its many

rays, develops in itself centres--souls--which gradually grow and

awaken their infinite potentialities[41] in the course of these

successive incarnations.

Still, though the eye of the god-man alone can penetrate this

wonderful mechanism and study it in all its astonishing details, the

savant whose mind is unprejudiced can judge of the concealed mechanism

by examining its outer manifestations, and it is on this ground we now

place ourselves with the object of setting forth another series of

proofs of reincarnation.

THE EVOLUTIONARY SERIES.

If we look attentively at the totality of beings we perceive a

progressive series of forms expressing a parallel series of qualities

and states of consciousness. The portion of this scale we are able to

compass extends from the amorphous state[42]--which represents the

minimum of consciousness--up to those organic complexities which have

allowed of a terrestrial expression being given to the soul of the

Saviours of the world. In this glorious hierarchy each step forms so

delicate a transition between the one preceding and the one following

that on the borders of the different kingdoms it becomes impossible to

trace a line of demarcation between different beings; thus one does

not know whether such or such a family should be classed among

minerals, or vegetables or animals. It is this that science has called

the evolutionary series.[43]

THE CYCLIC PROCESS OF EVOLUTION.

Another fact strikes the observer: the cyclic march of evolution.

After action comes reaction; after activity, rest; after winter,

summer; after day, night; after inspiration--the breath of life during

which universal Movement works in a molecular aggregate and there

condenses in the form of vitality--expiration--the breath of death,

which causes the individualised life to flow back into the ocean of

cosmic energy; after the systole, which drives the blood into every

part of the body, comes the diastole, which breathes back the vital

liquid into the central reservoir; after the waking state comes sleep;

life here and life hereafter; the leaves sprout and fall away

periodically, with the rising and descending of the sap; annual plants

die at the end of the season, persisting in germinal state within a

bulb, a rhizome, or a root before coming again to the light; in

"metamorphoses," we find that the germ (_the egg_) becomes a larva (_a

worm_), and then dies as a chrysalis, to be reborn as a butterfly.

Ideas also have their successive cycles of glory and decadence; is not

the present theosophical movement the renaissance of the Neoplatonic

movement which brought the light to Greece and Egypt fifteen hundred

years ago? In 1875 H. P. Blavatsky restored it to life, whilst its

previous birth look place in the time of Ammonius Saccas, the

theosophist, in the Schools of Alexandria. Those who have acquired the

power to read the cosmic records[44] will easily recognise amongst the

present pioneers of theosophy many a champion who in a former age

struggled and fought in the same sublime cause.

Races are born and grow up, die and are born again; pass through a

state of childhood, of youth, of maturity, and of old age. They

flourish in all their splendour when the vital movement which animates

them is at its height; when it leaves them and passes to other

portions of the globe, they gradually fall into old age; then the more

developed Egos--those incarnated in these races during their

maturity--come down into the advanced nations, living on the

continents animated by the "life-wave," whilst the less evolved go to

form the so-called degenerate races vegetating in obscure parts of the

world. Look now at the adolescence of Russia, the youth of America,

the old age of France, and the decrepitude of Turkey. Look backwards

at the glorious Egypt of bygone ages; nothing remains but deserts of

sand on which imperishable structures still testify to the greatness

of her past; the race that witnessed the majesty of the Hierophants

and the divine Dynasties is now inhabiting other lands.

Continents submit to the same law; history and science show how they

pass through a series of immersions and emersions; after Lemuria,

which bore the third race, came Atlantis, the mother of the fourth;

Europe and America now hold the various branches of the fifth; and

later on, when this old land of ours is again sunk beneath the waters,

new lands will have emerged from the ocean depths to bear the future

race, the sixth.

The very planets, too, come under this law; issuing as nebulæ from the

great womb of the Universe at the beginning of the evolution of a

solar system they are absorbed back again when the hour of their

dissolution strikes. Finally, the very Universes go forth from the

breast of Brahmâ when he out-breathes, and return to him when he

in-breathes again.

Everything, then, in appearance is born and dies. In reality, each

thing springs from its germ, makes an effort--the effort of the divine

Will incarnated in this germ--develops its potentialities up to a

certain step in the ladder of evolution, then garners the acquired

qualities and again returns to activity in continuous cycles of life

until its full development is reached.

PROGRESS.

The observer of Nature makes a third discovery. Every fresh cycle of

life is characterised by an advance on the preceding cycle; every

stage brings the end nearer. This represents progress, and it is seen

everywhere; when it does not appear, it is because our limited vision

cannot pierce its veil. Minerals slowly develop in the bowels of the

earth, and miners well know when the ore is more or less "ripe,"[45]

and that certain portions, now in a transition stage, will in a

certain number of centuries have become pure gold; experiments[46]

have proved that metals are liable to "fatigue" from excessive

tension; and that, after a rest, they acquire greater power of

resistance than before; magnets "are fed," _i.e._, they increase their

power of attraction, by exercise; cultivation improves and sometimes

altogether transforms certain species of vegetables; the rapid mental

development of domestic animals by contact with man is a striking

instance of the heights to which progress may attain when it is aided,

whilst the influence of teaching and education on the development of

individuals as well as of races is even more striking.[47]

THE GOAL OF EVOLUTION.

_The Formation of Centres of Consciousness that become "Egos."_

Through innumerable wanderings this general progress traces a clear,

unwavering line. Those capable of following evolution on the planes of

finer matter at once perceive, as it were, wide-spreading centres

forming in the sea of divine Essence, which is projected by the Logos

into the Universe. As the ages pass, these centres are sub-divided

into more restricted centres, into clearer and clearer "blocks" in

which consciousness, that is, the faculty of receiving vibrations from

without, is gradually developed, and when this consciousness within

them reaches its limit, they begin to differentiate from their

surroundings, to feel the idea of the "I" spring up within them. From

that time, there is added to the power of receiving vibrations

consciously, that of generating them voluntarily; no longer are they

passive centres, but rather beings that have become capable of

receiving and giving freely, individualities recognising and affirming

themselves more day by day; "I's," who henceforth regard themselves as

separated from the rest of the Universe; this stage is that of the

Heresy of Separateness. Regarding this heresy, however, one may well

say: _Felix culpa._

Fortunate error, indeed, for it is the condition, _sine quâ non_ of

future divinity, of salvation. It is self-consciousness; man is born;

man, the centre of evolution, set midway between the divine fragment

which is beginning and that which is ending its unfoldment, at the

turning point of the arc which leads the most elementary of the

various kingdoms of Nature to the most divine of Hierarchies. This

stage is a terrible one, because it is that which represents egoism,

_i.e._ combat, the cause of every evil that afflicts the world, but it

is a necessary evil, for there can be no _individual_ wisdom, power,

and immortality without the formation of an "I." This ego is nothing

but the first shoot, or bud, of the individual soul; it is only one of

its first faculties; the finest show themselves subsequently. This bud

is to blossom into a sweet-smelling flower; love and compassion,

devotion, and self-sacrifice will come into manifestation, and the

"centre of consciousness," after passing through the primitive

stages--often called the elemental kingdoms--after being sheathed in

mineral, vegetable, and animal forms, after having thought, reasoned,

and willed in human forms and looked upon itself as separated from its

fellow-creatures, comes finally to understand that it is only a breath

of the spirit, momentarily clad in a frail garment of matter,

recognises its oneness with all and everything, passes into the

angelic state, is born as Christ and so ends as a finished, perfected

soul--a World-Saviour.

Such is the Goal of life, the wherefore of the Universes, the

explanation of these startling evolutions of souls in the various

worlds, the solution of the problem regarding the diversity in the

development of beings, the justification of Providence before the

blasphemy of the inequality of conditions.

A FEW DEDUCTIONS.

_The Germ._

From the facts established in the course of this comprehensive view of

the Universe, we are enabled to draw important deductions.

For instance, as the basis of every "cycle of life" is found the egg

or germ, that strange microcosm which appears to contain within itself

the entire organism from which it proceeds and which seems capable of

manifesting it in its entirety. The first embryologic discovery we

make as the result of this study--a discovery of the utmost

importance--is that germs are one in essence, and are all endowed with

the same possibilities and potentialities. The only difference that

can be found in them is that the more evolved have acquired the power

of developing, in the same cycle, a greater number of links, so to

speak, in the chain of forms that proceeds from the atom to the

sheath, or envelope, of the Gods-Men. Thus, the highest germ which the

microscope enables us to follow--the human ovule--is first a kind of

mineral represented by the nucleus (the point, unity) of its germinal

cell; then it takes the vegetable form--a radicle, crowned by two

cotyledons (duality); afterwards it becomes a fish (multiplicity),

which is successively transformed into a batrachian, then a bird,

afterwards assuming more and more complex animal forms, until, about

the third month of foetal life, it appears in the human form.

The process of transformation is more rapid when Nature has repeated

it a certain number of times; it then represents a more extensive

portion of the ladder of evolution, but, be it noted, the process is

the same for all, and for all the ladder is composed of the same

number of steps; beings start from the same point, follow the same

path and halt at the same stages; nothing but their age causes their

inequalities. They are more than brothers, they are all

representatives of the One, that which is at the root of the Universe,

Divinity, supreme Being.

We also see that progress, the result of the conservation of

qualities, offers us repeated instances of these stages in the

reappearance, at each step of the ladder, of the forms preceding it in

the natural series. In the course of its evolution, the germ of an

animal passes through the mineral and vegetable forms; if the animal

is a bird, its final embryological form will be preceded by the animal

forms, which, in the evolutionary series, make their appearance before

the avian type; if we are dealing with a mammifer, the animal will be

the summit of all the lower types; when it is the human germ that we

are following in its development, we see that it also has contained

within itself and is successively reproducing the potentialities of

the whole preceding series. The microscope is able to show only

clearly marked stages and the most characteristic types, for evolution

runs through its initial stages with a rapidity defying the closest

physical observation. If only Nature would slacken her pace in order

to humour our incapacity, we should see in an even more striking

fashion that she preserves everything she has attained and develops

the power of reconstruction with ever-increasing rapidity and

perfection.

True, each cycle of incarnation realises only an infinitesimal

fraction of the total progress made, each being advances only one step

at a time along this interminable series; but then, are not these

minor "cycles" in the course of which brings grow and advance towards

the final Goal, the visible, material expression, the tangible and

indisputable proof of the strict, the inexorable Law of Rebirths?

_What the Germ contains._

Now let us examine a little more carefully this process of physical

germination and attempt to discover an important secret from it; let

us see whether the material germ contains the whole being, or whether,

as the ancient wisdom teaches, the vehicles of the divine Spark in

evolution are as numerous as the germs which respectively effect their

development and preservation.

Although here, too, the doctrine of the Christian churches is

inadequate, we cannot altogether pass it by in silence. We will,

therefore, state it, recommending the reader to compare it with the

theory of science and the teachings of theosophy.

The Churches deny evolution. They say: one single body, one single

state of development for each human being. For the lower kingdoms a

state of nothingness before birth and after death, whatever may have

been the fate of these beings during the short life imposed upon them;

for man a single body for which God creates a single soul and to which

He gives a single incarnation on a single planet,[48] the Earth.

It is our ardent wish that the signs of the growing acceptance of the

idea of evolution now manifesting themselves in Christian teaching may

increase, and that the Church, whatever be the influence that induces

her to take the step, will in the end loyally hold out her hand to

Science. Instead of remaining hostile, the two will then help each

other to mount the ladder of Truth; and divine Life, the light of all

sciences, philosophies, and religions, will illumine the dark path

they are treading, and guide their steps towards that One Truth which

is both without and within them.

Scientific materialism says:

Yes, everything is born again from its germ--thus is progress made,

but that is the limit of my concessions. Everything is matter; the

soul has no existence. There is evolution of matter, for matter, and

by matter. When a form is destroyed, its qualities, like its power of

rebirth, are stored away in a latent condition, within the germs it

has produced during its period of activity. Along with the

disappearance of matter, everything disappears--qualities, thoughts,

"ego"--and passes into a latent slate within the germ; along with the

return of the form, qualities and attributes gradually reappear

without any hypothetical soul whatever having any concern in the

matter. So long as the form is in its germ stage, the being is nothing

more than a mass of potentialities; when fully developed its faculties

reappear, but they remain strictly attached to the form, and if the

latter changes, the faculties echo the change, so to speak, with the

utmost fidelity. Matter is the parent of intelligence, the brain

manufactures thought, and the heart distills love, just as the liver

secretes bile; such is the language of present-day science.

This theory accepts the idea of universal injustice in its entirety;

we shall shortly prove that, notwithstanding its apparent logic, it

explains only one side of evolution, and that if matter is the

condition _sine quâ non_ of the manifestation of spirit, it is at

least curious that the latter acts so powerfully upon it, and is,

beyond the possibility of a doubt, its real master.[49]

Modern Theosophy, as well as the Wisdom of old, says in its turn:

Spirit is the All, the one Being, the only Being that exists.

Force-matter[50] is nothing but the product of the spirit's activity;

in it we find many and divers properties--density, weight,

temperature, volume, elasticity, cohesion, &c., because we judge it

from our sense perceptions; but in reality, we know it so little, that

the greatest thinkers have called it "a state of consciousness,"

_i.e._, an impression produced by it within ourselves.[51] It is the

result of the will of the supreme Spirit, which creates "differences"

(forms) in unfathomable homogeneous Unity, which is incarnated in them

and produces the modifications necessary for the development of its

powers, in other words, for the accomplishment of their evolution. As

this evolution takes place in the finite--for the Infinite can effect

its "sacrifice," _i.e._ its incarnation,[52] only by limiting

itself--it is progressive, proceeding from the simple to the complex.

Each incarnate, divine "fragment"[53] at first develops the simpler

qualities and acquires the higher ones only by degrees; these

qualities can appear only by means of a vehicle of matter, just as the

colour-producing properties of a ray of light only become manifest

with the aid of a prism. Form plays the part of the revealer of the

qualities latent in the divine germ (the soul); the more complex this

form becomes, the more atomic divisions it has in a state of activity;

the greater the number of senses it has awake, the greater the number

of qualities it expresses.

In this process, we see at work, three main factors; _Spirit_,[54]

awakening within itself _vibrations_,[55] which assume _divers

appearances_.[56] These three factors are one; force-matter and form

cannot exist without the all-powerful, divine Will (Spirit), for this

is the supreme Being, who, by his Will, creates force matter, by his

Intelligence gives it a form, and animates it with his Love.

Force-matter is the blind giant, who, in the Sankhya philosophy,

carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see--a giant, for it is

activity itself; and blind, because this activity is directed only by

the intelligent Will of the Spirit. The latter is lame, because when

it has not at its disposal an instrument of form-matter, it cannot

act, it cannot appear, it is no longer manifested, having disappeared

with the great periodical dissolution of things which the poetical

East calls the inbreathing of Brahmâ.

Form--all form--creates a germ which reproduces it. The germ is an

aggregate containing, in a very high state of vitalisation, all the

atomic types that will enter into the tissues of the form it has to

build up. These types serve as centres of attraction for the atoms

which are to collect round them when, under the influence of the

"vital fire,"[57] creative activity has been roused in the germ. Each

atomic type now attracts from the immediate surroundings the atoms

that resemble it, the process of segmentation which constitutes

germination begins, and the particular tissues represented by the

different atomic types are formed; in this way the fibrous, osseous,

muscular, nervous, epithelial, and other tissues are reproduced.

The creative activity that builds up tissues, if left to itself, could

create nothing but formless masses; it must have the help of the

intelligence to organise the atoms into molecules, the molecules into

tissues, and these again into organs capable of a corporate life as a

single organism, supplied with centres of sensation and action. This

intelligence cannot proceed from the mind bodies of the various

beings, for the latter manifest their qualities only when they possess

a fully-developed form--which is not the case with the germs;

moreover, the lower kingdoms show nothing but instinct, and even the

superior animals possess only a rudimentary form of mentality. The

most skilful human anatomist knows nothing more than the eye can teach

him regarding the forms he dissects, though even if he were acquainted

with their whole structure, he would none the less be quite incapable

of creating the simplest sense organ. The Form is the expression of

cosmic intelligence, of God incarnated in the Universe, the Soul of

the world, which, after creating matter, aggregates it into divers

types, to which it assigns a certain duration. The type of the form

varies with the stage of development of the being (_the soul_)

incarnated therein, for the instrument must be adapted to the artist's

capacity; the latter could not use an instrument either too imperfect

or too perfect for his degree of skill. What could the rudimentary

musician of a savage tribe do if seated before the complex organ of

one of our cathedrals; whilst, on the other hand, what kind of

harmony could a Wagner produce from a shepherd's pipe? The Cosmic

intelligence would appear to have created a single, radical form-type,

which gradually develops and at each step produces an apparently new

form, until its series has reached the finished type of evolution. It

stops the evolutionary process of each germ at the requisite point in

the scale; in the case of the most rudimentary souls it allows a

single step to be taken, thus supplying an instrument that possesses

the requisite simplicity; the process is continued longer for the more

advanced souls, but stops just when the form has become a suitable

instrument. When it does not furnish the fecundated germ with the

"model" which is to serve as a ground-plan for atomic deposits,

segmentation takes place in a formless mass, and in this the tissues

are shown without organisation; it is then a môle, a false conception.

It is the same cosmic Intelligence that derides the period during

which the form shall remain in a state of activity in the world. Until

a soul has learnt the lesson that incarnation in a form must teach it,

this form is necessary, and is given to it again and again until the

soul has assimilated the experience that form had to supply; when it

has nothing more to learn from the form, on returning to incarnation

it passes into one that is more complex. The soul learns only by

degrees, beginning with the letters of the alphabet of Wisdom, and

gradually passing to more complex matter; thus the stages of evolution

are innumerable and the transition from one to the other

imperceptible; modern science states this fact, though without

explaining it, when she says that "Nature makes no leaps."

The building up of forms is effected by numerous Beings, forming an

uninterrupted chain that descends from the mighty Architect, God, to

the humblest, tiniest, least conscious of the "builders."[58] God, the

universal Spirit, directs evolution, and could accomplish every detail

of it directly; but it is necessary, for their own development, that

the souls, whatever stage they have reached, should work in the whole

of creation, and therein play the part, whether consciously or

unconsciously, that they are fitted to play. Consequently they are

employed at every stage; and, in order to avoid mistakes, their

activity is guided by more advanced souls, themselves the agents of

higher cosmic Entities, right on up to God, the sovereign controller

of the hierarchies. Consequently there are no mistakes--if, indeed,

there are any real ones at all--in Nature, except those that are

compatible with evolution and of which the results are necessary for

the instruction of souls; but the Law is continually correcting them

in order to restore the balance. Such, in general outline, is the

reason for the intervention of beings in the evolutionary process.

So far as man is concerned, the highest of these Beings supply the

ideal type of the form which is to give the soul, when reincarnated,

the best means of expression; others take charge of these models and

entrust them to entities whose sole mission is to keep them before

their mental eyes and guide the thousands of "builders" who build

round them the atoms which are to form the tabernacle of flesh in its

minutest details; these Liliputian builders may be seen at work by the

inner eye; they are as real as the workmen who construct material

edifices in accordance with an architect's plans.

That everything may be faithfully reproduced in form the entity that

controls the building must not lose sight of the model for a single

moment. Nor does it do so, generally speaking, for one may say that

this being is, as it were, the soul of the model, being one with it

and conscious only of the work it has to perform. In many cases,

however, it receives certain impressions before birth from the

mother's thoughts: an influence capable either of forwarding or

hindering its work. The ancient Greeks were well acquainted with this

fact when they assisted Nature to create beautiful forms by placing in

the mother's room statues of rare plastic perfection, and removing

from her sight every suggestion of ugliness. More than this; certain

intense emotions of the pregnant woman are capable of momentarily

effacing the image of the model which the builder has to reproduce,

and replacing certain of its details with images arising from the

mother's imagination. If these images are sufficiently vivid, the

being follows them; and if they endure for a certain length of time

they are definitely incorporated in the building of the body. In this

fashion, many birth marks (_naevi materni_) are produced; strawberries

or other fruit, eagerly desired at times when they cannot be procured,

have appeared on the child's skin; divers objects that have left a

vivid impression on the imagination may have the same effect. The

clearness and perfection of the impression depend on the intensity and

continuance of the mental image; the part where it is to appear

depends on the sense impressions of the mother coinciding with the

desire which forms the image--for instance, a spot on the body touched

rather sharply at the moment. This has given rise to the idea that

the "longing" is impressed on that part of the body which the mother

is touching during her desire. When the image is particularly strong

and persistent considerable modifications of the body have been

obtained; in such cases, children are born with animal-like heads, and

treatises on teratology relate the case of a foetus born with the

head detached from the trunk, because the mother, after witnessing an

execution, had been horribly impressed by the sight of the separated

heads of the victims. Malebranche, in his _Recherche de la Vérité_,

tells of a child that was born with broken limbs because his mother

had seen the torture of the wheel. In this case, the image must have

been of enormous vibratory power and of considerable persistence.[59]

A general or even a local arrest of development is almost always due

to the phenomenon of mental inhibition experienced by the same being;

it definitely ceases to see the plan, evolution stops, and the

embryo, expelled before the time takes on the form of the evolutionary

stage it had reached at that moment; if it ceases to deal with a

single detail only that detail remains in _statu quo_, and is often

embedded in portions of the organism quite away from the point where

it would have been found had it continued to evolve; certain cysts

belong to this class.

The third factor, the Spirit, the Soul--or, to be more exact, the

incarnated divine ray--follows a line of evolution parallel to that of

the matter which constitutes its form, its instrument; this

parallelism is so complete that it has deceived observers

insufficiently acquainted with the wonders of evolution. It is thus

that scientific materialism has taken root. We will endeavour to set

forth the mistake that has been made, and call to mind the correctness

of the Vedantin symbol, which represents the soul as lame, incapable

of acting without the giant, force-matter; though the latter, without

the guidance of the former, could not advance along the path of

evolution.

This soul is a "no-thing," which, in reality, is everything; a ray of

the spiritual sun (_God_), a divine spark incarnated in the vibration

(_matter_) produced by the supreme Being, it is a "centre," capable

of all its Father's potentialities. These potentialities, which may be

grouped together under three general heads--power, love, and

wisdom--we may sum up in the one word: consciousness. It is, indeed, a

"centre of consciousness" in the germinal state, that is about to

blossom forth, realising all its possibilities and becoming a being

fully aware of its unity with the Being from which it comes and which

it will then have become.

In this development the vibrations of outer matter play the part of

the steel, which, on striking flint, causes the life latent within the

latter to dart forth. Each vibration which strikes the soul arouses

therein a dormant faculty, and when all the vibrations of the universe

have touched it, this soul will have developed as many faculties as

that universe admits of, until, in the course of successive worlds, it

becomes increasingly divine in the one Divine Being. In order that all

the vibrations of which a universe is capable may reach the soul the

latter must surround itself with all the different types of atoms that

exist in the world, for every vibration is an atomic movement, and the

nature of the vibration depends on the quality of the atoms in motion.

Now, the first part of evolution consists in condensing round vital

centres[60] (_souls_) atoms aggregated in combinations of a

progressively increasing density, on to those that make up the

physical plane; when the soul has thus clothed itself with the

elements of all the planes, the resulting form is called a

"microcosm"--a small Cosmos--for it contains, in reality, all the

elements contained in the Universe. During this progressive

development, the soul, which thus effects its "fall" into matter,

receives from all the planes through which it passes and from all the

forms in which it incarnates, varied vibrations which awake within it

correspondingly responsive powers and develop a non-centred, diffused,

non-individualised consciousness.

In the second phase of evolution, the forms are limited, the

vibrations they receive are transmitted by specialised sensorial

groups, and the soul, hitherto endowed with a diffused consciousness,

begins to feel varieties of vibrations that grow ever more numerous,

to be distinguished from the surrounding world, to separate itself, so

to speak, from everything around; in a word, to develop

self-consciousness. This separation first takes place on the physical

plane; it is made easier by hard, violent contacts, and the forms, in

their turn, become more complex, varied, and specialised in proportion

as the soul is the more perfectly individualised. When it has

developed all the self-conscious responsive powers in the physical

body, it begins to develop those faculties which have as their organs

of transmission the finer bodies, and as planes of vibration the

invisible worlds.

In our planetary system the number of the invisible planes is

seven.[61] Each of them in turn supplies the soul with a form; thus,

when evolution--which in its second phase successively dematerialises

matter, _i.e._, disassociates the atoms from their combinations,

beginning with the denser ones--has dissolved the physical plane, the

human soul will utilise, as its normal body, a finer one which it is

at present using as a link between the mental and the physical

bodies. Before this dissolution is effected, however, human beings

will have developed, to some extent, several finer bodies, already

existing, though hitherto not completely organised.

The first of these bodies, the astral--a very inappropriate name,

though here used because it is so well known--is a copy, more or less,

of the physical form in its general aspect; the resemblance and

clearness of the features are pronounced in proportion to the

intellectual development of the person, for thought-vibration has

great influence over the building up of the centres of force and of

sensation in this body.[62]

The second is an even finer aggregate, composed of mental substance

and assuming, during incarnation, the form of a smaller or larger

ovoid--the causal body--surrounding the physical form.[63] At its

centre, and plunged in the astral body during incarnation, is another

kind of ovoid not so large and composed of denser substance--the

mental body.[64]

Above these states of matter, at the present stage there appears no

form to the consciousness of human beings, though perfect seers can

perceive, within the causal body, still higher grades of matter, which

will only subsequently become centres of self-consciousness.

During incarnation, the soul, in the majority of men, is clearly

conscious of itself and of its surroundings only when it is

functioning through the nervous system (the brain); when it leaves the

denser body, during sleep, its consciousness is in the astral body,

and there it thinks,[65] but without being conscious of what is taking

place around it. After disincarnation, it generally becomes highly

conscious in its astral body, where it passes its purgatorial life;

and this latter endures until the soul leaves the astral body. As soon

as the latter is thrown off, consciousness centres in the mental body;

this is the period of _Devachan_ or Heaven. When the mental body is

put off, paradise is at an end, and the soul, sheathed only in the

causal body, finds itself on a very lofty plane, but here,

consciousness is vague, when we are dealing with a man of average

development. Instead of laying aside this garment, as so far it has

done with the rest, it recommences, after the lapse of a certain

time, another descent into the matter of the lower planes and a new

incarnation begins.

To the centre of the causal body are drawn atoms from the inner mental

plane; these represent a new mental body.[66] When this latter has

been formed, there are attracted to it atoms of the astral plane, and

these form a new astral body; the soul, clothed in these two sheaths,

if one may so express it, is brought into conscious or unconscious

relation, according to its degree of development, with the two

corresponding planes, lives there generally for a short time, and is

directed to a mother's womb, in which is created the visible body of

flesh within the centre of its astral body.

This force of atomic attraction has its centre in the causal body, a

kind of sensitive plate on which are registered all those vibrations

which disturb or affect human vehicles during incarnation. This body is,

in effect, the present abode of the soul, it represents the terminal

point of human consciousness,[67] the real centre of man.[68] It

receives all the impressions of the plane on which it finds itself, as

well as those which come to it from the lower planes, and responds to

them the more readily as it has now attained a fuller development. It

possesses the power to attract and to repel; a microcosm, it has its

outbreathing and inbreathing, as has the Macrocosm; like Brahmâ, it

creates its bodies and destroys them, although in the vast majority of

mankind it exercises this power more or less unconsciously and under the

irresistible impulsion of the force of evolution--the divine Will. When

it attracts, it causes to recur within itself the vibrations it has

received and registered--like a phonographic roll--during the past

incarnations; these vibrations reverberate in the outer world, and

certain of them attract from this world[69]--in this case the mental

world--the atoms capable of responding to them. When they have created

the mental body, other vibrations can be transmitted through this body

to the astral world and attract atoms which will form the body bearing

the same name--the astral--and finally other vibrations, making use of

these two bodies as a means of transmission, will affect the physical

plane and attract atoms which will assist in the building up of the

denser body.

Everywhere the formative power of vibration is guided by cosmic

intelligence, but it is effected far more easily in the reconstruction

of the higher bodies, that precedes incarnation properly so-called,

than in the creation of the now physical body. Indeed, in the astral

and mental bodies, nothing is produced but an atomic mass, the many

elements of which will be aggregated into complete organisms only

during incarnation properly so-called, whilst the construction of the

visible body admits of a mass of extremely delicate and important

details. It is for this reason that we have seen this work of

construction entrusted to special Beings who prepare, control and

watch over it unceasingly.

It is because the causal body registers every vibration the

personality[70] has generated or received in the course of its series

of incarnations, that the vices and virtues are preserved, as is the

case with the faults or the good qualities of the physical body. The

man who has created for himself a coarse astral body by feeding the

passions and thoughts which specially vivify the coarser matter of

this body will on returning to earth find a new astral body composed

of the same elements, though then in a dormant state. He who, by the

cultivation of a lofty intellect, has built up a refined mental body,

will return to incarnation with a like mental body, whilst the one

who, by meditation and the practice of devotion which bring into being

the noblest qualities of the heart, has set vibrating the purest

portions of the causal body and of the divine essence (Âtmâ-Buddhi, as

it is named in Sanskrit), with which it is filled, will return to

birth endowed with those qualities which make apostles and saints, the

Saviours of the world.

In other words:

Matter has more remote boundaries than science recognises; the

numberless grades of atoms of which it consists, their powers of

aggregation, the multiplicity and duration of the bodies they form,

are not even suspected by materialism.

Materialism sees nothing but the part played by matter; it denies that

intelligence plays any part, and will by no means admit--in spite of

evolution and progress--that above man there exists an almost endless

chain of higher and higher Beings, whilst below him are kingdoms of an

increasingly restricted range of consciousness. By refusing to believe

in the multiplicity of the vehicles which the human soul uses, it is

unable to understand individual survival or to solve the problem of

heredity. Indeed, evolution is only partially explained by the

physical germ; the latter, in order to act alone and of itself in the

development of the human embryo should possess a degree of

intelligence considerably superior to that of man. This is the

opposite of what we find, however, and we are brought face to face

with the absurd fact of a cause vastly inferior to its effect. Indeed,

the intelligence shown by the germ is not its own; it is that of the

cosmic Mind reflected by mighty Beings, its willing servants. Besides,

this germ contains only the qualities that belong to physical matter,

and, as we shall show, the moral, mental, and spiritual qualities are

preserved by the finer--the causal--body, which represents the real

man at the present time.

THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN HEREDITY.

If materialism were the whole truth, it ought to explain the whole of

heredity; instead of that it clashes with almost all the problems of

life. Physical substance offers for analysis none but physical

phenomena: attraction, repulsion, heat, electricity, magnetism, vital

movement; the anatomical constitution of the highest--the

nerve--tissue, presents only the slightest differences in the animal

series, if these differences are compared with the enormous

distinctions in the qualities it expresses. Differences of form,

visible to the microscope, are at times important, we shall be told,

and those that affect the atomic activity and groupings[71] are

perhaps even more important. That is true, especially in whatever

concerns man.

Intelligence cannot always be explained by the complexity of the

brain--though this complexity is the condition of faculty, as a

rule--insects such as ants, bees, and spiders, whose brains are

nothing but simple nerve ganglia, display prodigies of foresight,

architectural ability and social qualities; whilst along with these

dwarfs of the animal kingdom, we see giants that manifest only a

rudimentary mind, in spite of their large, convoluted brains. Among

the higher animals, there is not one that could imitate the

beaver--which, all the same, is far from being at the head of the

animal series--in building for itself a house in a river and storing

provisions therein.

There is a vast gulf, in the zoological series, before and after these

insects, as there is before and after the beaver; whilst an even wider

gulf separates the highest specimens of the animal world from man

himself.

Nor do the weight and volume of the brain afford any better

explanation of the difference in intellect than does its structural

complexity.

The weight relations between the brain and the body of different

animals have been estimated as follows by Debierre (_La Moëlle et l'

Encéphale_):--

Rabbit 1 of brain for 140 of body.

Cat 1 " 156 "

Fox 1 " 205 "

Dog 1 " 351 "

Horse 1 " 800 "

If matter were the only condition _sine quâ non_ of intelligence, we

should have to admit that the rabbit was more intelligent than the

cat, the fox, the dog, and even than the horse.

In the same work the following figures express the average size of the

brain in different races of men.

Pariahs of India 1332 cubic centimetres.

Australians 1338 "

Polynesians 1500 "

Ancient Egyptians 1500 "

Merovingians 1537 "

Modern Parisians 1559 "

This would prove that the people who built Karnac and the Pyramids,

who raised to an elevation of about 500 feet blocks of granite, one of

which would require fifteen horses to drag it along a level road, who

placed these enormous stones side by side without mortar or cement of

any kind and with almost invisible joints, who possessed the secret of

malleable glass and of painting in colours that have not faded even

after the lapse of centuries ... that such a race of men were inferior

to the rude, uncultured Merovingians, and scarcely the equals of the

Polynesians!

Science also tells us that in a child five years of age the human

brain weighs, on an average, 1250 grammes--this, too, would bear no

relation whatever with the intellectual and moral development of a

child of that age and that of an adult man.

Though Cuvier's brain weighed 1830 grammes, and Cromwell's 2230, that

of Tiedemann, the great anatomist, when placed on the scales, weighed

no more than 1254, and that of Gambetta only 1246.

The physical body of itself can give no reason for a host of

psychological phenomena on which, however, a flood of light is shed if

one recognises the existence of other vehicles of consciousness

possessing more far-reaching vibrations, and consequently capable of

expressing higher faculties. During sleep, for instance, which is

characterised by the Ego having left his physical body, reason is

absent, and what we call dreams are generally nothing but a tissue of

nonsense, at which the dreamer feels astonishment only when returning

to his body on awaking. On the other hand, as we have seen in Chapter

I., when the Ego succeeds in imprinting on the brain the vibrations of

the higher consciousness, it is able to regain the memory of facts

long forgotten and to solve problems that could not be solved during

the waking state. There are madmen who have ceased to be mad during

somnambulism; persons of rudimentary intelligence have proved

themselves to be profound thinkers during the mesmeric trance; when

under somnambulism vision is possible to those born blind and certain

people can see things that are happening a great distance away, and

their reports have been proved correct; certain phenomena of

double-consciousness cannot be explained without the plurality--the

duality, at all events--of the vehicles of consciousness.

To return to the _rôle_ played by the germ in the question of

heredity, we repeat that the physical germ, of itself alone, explains

only a portion of man; it throws light on the physical side of

heredity, but leaves in as great darkness as ever the problem of

intellectual and moral faculty. If it represented the whole man, one

would expect to find in any individual the qualities manifested in his

progenitors or parents--never any other; these qualities could not

exceed the amount possessed by the parents, whereas we find criminals

from birth in the most respectable families and saints born to parents

who are the very scum of society. You may come across twins, _i.e._,

beings born from the same germs, under the same conditions of time

and environment, one of whom is an angel and the other a demon,

though their physical forms closely resemble each other.

Child prodigies are sufficiently numerous to frequently trouble the

thinker with the problem of heredity. Whence came that irresistible

impulse towards poetry in Ovid which showed itself from his earliest

youth and in the end overcame the vigorous opposition of his parents?

Pascal in his youth met with keen opposition from his parents, who

forbade him to think of mathematics and geometry. He besought his

father to tell him, at all events, "what was that science of which he

was forbidden to think, and what it treated of." The answer was given

to him that "it is the method of making correct figures and finding

out the proportions they bear to each other." With nothing more than

this information and the aid of reflection, he discovered for himself

the first thirty-two propositions of Euclid by means of "circles and

lines" traced in secret.

Mozart, at the age of three, learnt the clavecin by watching his

sister play; a year afterwards he composed admirably, at the age of

seven he played the violin at first sight without having had any

teacher, and proved himself a composer of genius before he reached his

twelfth birthday.

Pepito Ariola, the little Spaniard, was only three years of age when,

about ten years ago, he filled with astonishment the Court of Madrid

by his wonderful playing on the piano.

In the lineage of these prodigies has there been found a single

ancestor capable of explaining these faculties, as astonishing as they

are premature? If to the absence of a cause in their progenitors is

added the fact that genius is not hereditary, that Mozarts,

Beethovens, and Dantes have left no children stamped from birth as

prodigies of genius, we shall be forced to the conclusion that, within

the limits it has taken up, materialism is unable to explain heredity.

A few more words must be said on physical heredity to explain why

moral qualities in men of average development are often on a par with

the same in their parents.

In reality, the physical germs only multiply the organic elements of

the ovule, and as this latter contains the cell-types of all the

tissues, it follows that these cell-types will possess the qualities

of the tissues that exist in the parents. For instance, germs of

sufferers from arterio-sclerosis will supply a vascular apparatus

predisposed to arterio-sclerosis; tuberculous subjects will supply

germs in which the vital vibrations and cellular solidity will be

below the normal, and bring about those degenerate tendencies which

characterise the tuberculous subject; those of sanguine constitution

will transmit a faculty for vital assimilation and considerable

corpuscular production, and so on.[72]

In this transmission there are two main factors: the male and the

female germs. The former represents force, it imprints on the ovule

the initial vital vibration which is to be that of each of the cells

of the organism in course of construction. The function of this germ

may be studied more easily in animals, because their heredity is not

complicated by the individual differences due to the mental vehicle.

The stallion supplies the vital qualities--the blood, _i.e._, the

vivacity, _brio_, pace; physical resistance comes from the mare. To

sum up, the modalities of matter are supplied by the feminine germ.

Peculiarities of form proceed from several causes. Phrenology and

physiognomy are sciences, though the studies hitherto known by these

names are almost valueless because they have not been carried on with

the necessary scientific precision. Doubtless Gall and Lavater

possessed the gift of penetrating both mind and heart, as was also the

case with Mlle. Lenormand Desbarolles and the genuine graphologists;

but this gift was not the result of mathematical deduction, but

rather a psychometric or prophetic faculty; for this reason neither

they nor their books have produced pupils worthy of the name. The main

features and lines only of the human form have a known meaning--and

not always a very precise one--for every physical, passional, mental,

or spiritual force possesses an organ of expression in the visible

body, and the varieties of form of this organ enable one to judge of

the degrees of force they express on the earth plane. On this basis,

peculiarities of form mainly stand; and the intensity of certain

defects or qualities is at times expressed so strongly that it

completely modifies the tendencies it would seem that heredity ought

to pass on. The similarity of form between parent and child is not

exact, because it proceeds from the peculiarities of the individual in

incarnation far more than from the collective tendencies of the

embryonic cells in process of proliferation.

The being charged with building the body can, in turn, considerably

modify its form, copying specially striking features found in the

mother's thought; certain characteristic family traits, the Bourbon

nose, for instance; those belonging to strangers in continual

relationship with the mother, and those that a babe, fed and brought

up away from home, takes from his nurse or from the surroundings amid

which he lives; all these probably leave their impress in the same

way. In this case, indeed, the "builder"--who, it must be added,

ceases the work of construction only when it is on its way to

completion, which happens about the age of seven--is influenced by the

forms of the new surroundings, and at times copies them, more or less,

and we may ask ourselves if the unexplained fact of negro children

being born to a white woman--the widow of a negro--remarried to a

white man is in no way connected with the reproduction of a mental

image of the coloured children of a former marriage.

Another fact: observers have noticed that almost all great men have

had as their mother a woman of lofty character. This preponderance of

the maternal influence will be understood if we remember that the

cellular mass that composes the child's body belongs to the mother,

not only because this mass originates from the proliferation of the

ovule, and, consequently, is only the multiplication of the maternal

substance, but also because the materials that have formed it and have

been transmuted into flesh have been supplied by her; indeed,

everything comes from this cellular mass, the elements drawn from the

amniotic fluid and the blood, the milk, which, after birth, continues

for long months to build up the child's body and the magnetic fluid,

the "atoms of life," which are continually escaping from it and which

the babe absorbs whilst receiving incessant attention from his mother.

This exchange of atoms is of the utmost importance, for these

ultra-microscopic particles are charged with our mental and moral

tendencies as well as with the physical qualities; personally, I have

had many direct proofs of this, but the most striking came at a

critical period of my life. One day, when nervous exhaustion, steadily

increased by overwork, had reached an extreme stage, a great

Being--not a Mahatma, but a Soul at a very lofty stage of

evolution--sent to me by destiny at the time, poured into my shattered

body a portion of his physical life. Shortly afterwards a real

transformation took place, far more of a moral than of a physical

nature, and for a few hours I felt myself the "copy" or counterpart of

that great Soul, and the divine influence lasted twenty-four hours

before it gradually died away.

I then understood, better than by any other demonstration, the

influence of the physical upon the moral nature and the method of the

subtle contagion often effected by mesmerism. _A man is known by the

friends he keeps_ is an old proverb.

If atoms of life can have so marked an influence upon a man nearly

forty years of age, _i.e._, at a period when he is in full possession

of himself, how much more powerful is this influence when exercised

upon the child--a delicate, sensitive body, almost entirely lacking

the control of the soul? This is the reason hired nurses often

transmit to the child their own physical features and countless moral

tendencies which last some time after weaning; orphans, too, morally,

often resemble the strangers who have brought them up. Like physical

tendencies these moral propensities disappear only by degrees,

according to change of environment, and especially to the degree in

which the body is controlled by the reincarnated soul.[73]

The most important, however, of the moral influences at work on the

being again brought into touch with earth-life is connected with the

emotions, the passions and thoughts of those around. The child--and

under this name must be included the embryo and the foetus--possesses

bodies the subtle elements of which are in a dormant state; his mental

and sense organisms are scarcely more than masses of substance that have

not yet been vitalised--a sort of collection of germs of good or of

evil, which will yield fruit when they awake. The passional and mental

vibrations of the parents play on the matter capable of responding to

them in the invisible bodies of the child; they vivify it, attract atoms

of the same nature taken from the finer atmosphere around, and awake in

it passional and mental centres which, but for them, might have remained

latent, or, at all events, would only have developed at a later stage,

when the Ego, master of its vehicles, would be in a position to struggle

against the outer evil influences and not permit them to have effect

save within the limits imposed by will. In this way, it is possible to

bring to birth evil instincts in a child, and intensify them to a

considerable extent, before a single virtue has succeeded in expressing

itself on the new instrument in course of development. This mental

action is so strong that it colours vividly, if not altogether, the

morality of the little ones living beneath its influence, and even older

children are still so sensitive to it that whole classes are seen to

reflect the moral character of the teacher who has charge of them. This

influence, too, does not cease with childhood, it weighs--though far

less heavily--on the man during the whole of his life; and families,

nations, nay, even races, each see through the prism of their own

special atmosphere. Mighty and subtle is this illusion which man, in the

course of his pilgrimage towards divine Unity, must succeed in piercing

and finally entirely dissipating.

Our responsibility towards children is all the more serious in that,

to the deep impression which thought makes on the subtle, plastic, and

defenceless mental bodies of the little ones, is added the fact that,

could one prevent the development of the germs of evil in the course

of one incarnation, these germs, not having fructified, would transmit

nothing to the _causal body_ after death, and would disappear[74] with

the disintegration of the matter of which they were composed.

Consequently, with regard to children especially, we should cultivate

none but noble emotions and lofty thoughts, so as to create centres of

pure and worthy activity within their vehicles in course of

reconstruction, and to turn their early impulses in the direction of

good, their first actions towards duty and their first aspirations

towards the lofty and luminous heights of spirituality.

One may see from this rapid sketch how numerous and important are the

influences added to and blended with those of physical heredity. This

group of influences, some maleficent, some beneficent, is chosen by

the Beings who control destiny and give to each Ego, on reincarnation,

the body and environment it has merited, or rather that are needed,

for the harmonious development of its faculties. A young soul[75]

still at the mercy of the animal impulses--necessary impulses at the

outset of human development--of its kâmic, _i.e._, desire, vehicle, is

sent to parents who will be able to supply its body with material

elements of a particular density without which these impulses could

not manifest themselves. An Ego that is approaching maturity will be

drawn to a family that is physically and morally pure, in which it

will receive both the finer physical vehicle it needs and that lofty

environment which, when it enters upon earth life, will develop the

centres of expression for its nobler faculties. Those who are named in

the mystic phraseology of the East, the "Lords of Karma," in their

choice of the race, the family, and the environment in which the

reincarnated soul is to appear, seek to give this latter the most

favourable conditions for its evolution. An Ego whose artistic side

needs to be developed will often be born in a family which will supply

it with a nervous system accustomed to the kind of vibrations

required, and an environment favourable to the early development of

the physical centres of these faculties; to assist a being whose

scientific, mystical, or metaphysical side needs to be developed,

other environment and parentage will be chosen, and it is this

relative parallelism existing between the moral qualities of the

parents and those of the children which has deceived observers

insufficiently instructed in the mystery of heredity, and made them

believe in the influence of the physical germ alone.

It is an easy matter to supply an Ego of average development with a

vehicle; an ordinary body is all that is needed. There may be extreme

difficulty, however, when a new instrument has to be found for a lofty

soul, and when we think that, in pressing instances when the fortune

of humanity is at stake and the hour of destiny has struck, certain

great Souls accept very imperfect bodies for want of better ones, we

shall no longer be astonished at finding that any particular

Messenger, in his compassion for the humanity he has to enlighten and

to direct to the ancient, eternal Source of Truth, has clothed himself

with a body of flesh the ancestry of which was far from being adapted

to the expression of his lofty faculties; courageous Souls are well

able to put on the robe of pain and to submit to slander and calumny

when the world's salvation can only be achieved at such a cost. We

know scarcely anything of the conditions that control the return to

earth of the Avataras, the "Sons of God," except that sometimes great

Initiates, after purifying their bodies, voluntarily hand them over to

the "gods," who come down to earth--a sublime sacrifice which, like

that of the Saviours who consent to come amongst us, shows forth that

supreme characteristic of divinity; the gift of oneself.

Nor is heredity always realised; many a physical characteristic is not

reproduced; in families tainted with dangerous physiological defects,

many children escape the evil, and the diseased tendencies of the

tissues remain latent in them, although they often afflict their

descendants. On the other hand, as already stated, extremely divergent

mental types are often met with in the same family, and many a

virtuous parent is torn with grief on seeing the vicious tendencies of

his child. Here, as elsewhere, the hand of Providence, as Christianity

calls it--the Intelligence that brings about evolution, the Justice

that controls and the Love that animates it--the hand of God or of

those who, having become divine, collaborate in the divine plan, comes

to make up for the imperfection of the vehicles, and they permit only

what is necessary to come to each one--only what he has deserved, as

is generally said: this hand can create a physical or a psychic malady

even where heredity and environment could not supply it, just as it

can preserve a pure soul from the moral infection of the surroundings

into which it is thrown.[76] This is the reason we find that heredity

and environment either fail to fulfil their promise or else give what

was not their's to give.

OBJECTION.

Reincarnation is not necessary, it has been alleged; the soul's

evolution is continued after death in the invisible worlds in finer

bodies; consequently it is needless to return to the denser bodies of

earth.

In our opinion, the trials of life, so exhausting to the will, must

have given rise to this theory, for not only have those who advance it

never given the slightest proof of its truth, but it is utterly

opposed to the law of evolution.

In a world which prefers the flights of imagination to logical

reasoning we are too accustomed to regard man as a being apart in

Nature; we are only too prone to make exceptions on his behalf. The

patient scientific researches of all ages have laid down this

universally accepted axiom: _Nature does not proceed by leaps_. It has

not so far entered anyone's mind--we think not at all events--to teach

that the development of the mineral, the vegetable, and even of the

animal kingdom, comes to a sudden halt on this planet, once the forms

in these kingdoms are dispersed, to be completed in finer worlds; but

regarding man other thoughts have prevailed, as though his

intelligence and his heart had learnt all the lessons this earth is

capable of teaching! From the most undeveloped of savages up to those

glorious Spirits that have been the Manu, the Buddha, and the Christ,

we find every step occupied on the long ladder of humanity. In the

lower kingdoms all the stages exist also and are utilised, each link

receiving something from its neighbours and giving them something in

return, thus expressing on the visible plane that gracious unity which

is divine Love: love that is instinctive and imperative in beings of a

low degree of evolution; obeyed by those who, without loving it,

understand its good services, and actually lived by such souls as have

entered upon the path of sacrifice--souls that comprehend the Unity of

beings. If this earth has been capable of teaching the Saviours of the

world, why should divine Wisdom send thereon only for one short life

this mass of imperfect men, to hurl them afterwards on to other

worlds, like careless butterflies flitting from flower to flower?

Can the evolutionary effort be so easy and simple; is divine energy of

such slight value that it can thus be squandered to no purpose; is the

process of creation the sport of an infant God; is the Logos,

sacrificing himself in order to give life to the Universe, a prodigal,

working without rhyme or reason, sending forth His intelligence and

might in aimless sport and leaving evolution at the mercy of His

caprice; did not Brahmâ, by means of meditation, which, as the

Oriental scriptures tell us, preceded creation, practise the gentlest,

the most rapid, and the easiest method of guiding beings to the Goal?

Is it not sheer blasphemy to attribute such folly to the Soul of the

world? Does not the study of Nature, at each step, belie this

insensate waste, of which no human being would be guilty? Everywhere

with the minimum of force, Nature produces the maximum of effect;

everywhere energy is consolidated with one end in view; and yet, amid

the general order around, is the evolution of man to form a solitary,

an incomprehensible exception?

No, we cannot believe it for a moment. American spiritists,[77]

however--for it is they who have given out this hypothesis--are not in

agreement with the school of Allan Kardec on this fundamental point,

and this fact is by no means calculated to strengthen, the authority

for this doctrine. Did we not know that disincarnate beings are as

ignorant in the life beyond as they were on earth; that they tend to

group themselves, as they did here below, with those who think as they

do, whilst remaining aloof from such as profess hostile opinions; that

the Hindu remains a Hindu, the Christian a Christian, and the

Mussulman a Mussulman; that sceptics are still sceptics; and atheists,

atheists; we should think that spirit "communications" with their

incessant contradictions were unparalleled nonsense, since the

"spirits" are by no means agreed on the very things regarding which

they pretend to pronounce a judgment from which there is no appeal.

Fortunately, there is a reason for these divergences. Death neither

lifts the veil of Isis nor brings the soul into the presence of

omniscient Light; man remains what he was, with all his former

beliefs, opinions, passions, qualities, sympathies, and antipathies.

True, he knows a little more than he did upon earth; no more has he

doubts as to the after-life, he regains a precise memory of the whole

of his life here, and the recollection of many a forgotten fact comes

back to him; he understands better, for his intelligence is being

served by a much finer body--but that is all. Therefore "spirits"

reflect both the morality and the mentality of the nation to which

they belonged on earth, and in the other life are to be found friends

and enemies, believers and unbelievers, reincarnationists and

non-reincarnationists.

Rebirths can be established only by personal proof, by memory; now,

the soul that has entered the life beyond, after disincarnation, has

not reached the end of its pilgrimage; it is learning that it must, by

self-purification, pass from world to world until it attains to a

state of supreme and final rest; but when this latter has been

reached, it has lost its lower sheaths and the memory they gave it,

and when the Law brings it back to earth, it puts on new bodies,

which, having had no participation in preceding events, are ignorant

of the past.

Remembrance, we shall see later on, is preserved in the cosmic Memory,

but until the soul has readied a sufficient development, it cannot

summon it forth, and even could it do so, it would succeed in leaving

its impress on the brain only when the physical, the astral, and the

mental bodies have submitted to a process of purification which

harmonises[78] them and binds them closely together. Then only does

man know that Reincarnation is true, and takes place on earth until

this latter passes into a slate of obscuration,[79] or, at all events,

until the development of the soul enables it to utilise for its

evolution some environment on the planet, other than the physical

one.[80]

We shall be told that we are now proving what we before denied. No, we

are simply stating an exception which happens in very few cases and

only then to the pioneers of the race--an exception which is nothing

but an apparent one and finds its place in the progressive order which

unifies all the beings in the planetary chain to which we belong.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 41: Each part possesses in a potential state the properties

of the whole.]

[Footnote 42: The kingdoms that are invisible to physical sight are as

interesting as those we see, but we have no occasion to speak of them

here. Logic compels us to acknowledge them until the time comes when

human development enables them to be discovered and affords direct

proof of their existence.]

[Footnote 43: We do not mean to affirm that evolutionists have not

committed serious errors in their theory of development. But the law

they have set prominently forth is one of the fundamental expressions

of the working of God in the Universe.]

[Footnote 44: The vibratory impressions that constitute the memory of

the Universe. See in Chapter 4, the final _Objection._]

[Footnote 45: See _L'or et la Transmutation des métaux_, by

Tiffereau.]

[Footnote 46: Such as the one with the magnet which, if too great a

weight is suspended to its armature, loses strength, and this it only

regains by degrees when "fed" with successively stronger charges. A

steel spring that has borne too great a weight loses strength, and may

break if subjected anew to the same weight that "fatigued" it. Pieces

of iron break after being "fatigued" by a weight they easily carried

before. Professor Kennedy made very useful experiments regarding the

"fatigue" of metals at the time when metallic bridges were continually

breaking, thus causing great perplexity in the engineering world.]

[Footnote 47: There has been much discussion as to the causes of

Evolution.

In his _Progress and Poverty_, Henry George endeavours to show that

Evolution is in no way brought about by individual or collective

heredity. He says that the factors of Progress are: First, the mind,

which causes the advance of civilisation when not exercised solely in

the "struggle for life," or in frequent conflicts between nation and

nation; second, association or combination, which ensures all the

benefits to be derived from division of work; third, justice, which

harmonises the units of the social body, and without which

civilisation decays and dies.

H. George saw only these elements in evolution; consequently, he could

neither solve the problem of progress nor explain the rise and fall of

empires. Indeed, egoism and war are in no way, as he says they are,

the sole causes of the fall of races: the soil cannot feed a great

nation for an indefinite period even if the country is prevented by

emigration from becoming over-populated; the very nature itself of the

civilisation of the time prevents it from continuing for ever. Modern

western races, for instance, have for centuries past been developing

energy and intelligence; a limit must be fixed to that particular line

of progress, under penalty of destroying equilibrium both in the

individual and the race.

If, indeed, man is to learn strength and intelligence, he must also

develop love, or he will fail. The Elder Brothers behind Evolution

control the advance of the races in accordance with the plan of God,

whose servants they are.

The real cause of evolution does not lie in environment, as H. George

and his school would have it: it is in the divine Will, incarnate in

the Universe. It is God who creates the world, God who fills it with

life, guides it and permits its development. All the laws of Nature

are the expression of the supreme Intelligence; all progress is

nothing but the realisation of the possibilities of the divine Will.

The evolutionary edifice is based on solidarity, and here environment

is undoubtedly an indispensable factor in development; still, it only

acts as the field or soil, and soil without seed remains barren.

The mind is also a powerful lever in evolution, but it affects only

one side of the matter. Association or co-operation facilitates only

the growth of certain faculties whilst checking the development of

others. Justice calls forth only certain individual and social forces,

and leaves many of them in a state of stagnation.

In a word, H. George forgets that there is no useless force in the

whole of Nature; that they all collaborate in the general task, and

finally that there would be no progress, were it not for the existence

of opposing forces. If, _e.g._, egoism were non-existent, those still

incapable of working without the hope of personal gain would lack a

powerful incentive to action. True is the saying that evil is the

stepping-stone to good.

Were the Law of Rebirths known, it would prove to be an explanation of

the problems of evolution.]

[Footnote 48: A few theologians have feebly affirmed the possibility

of human life on other planets than the Earth, but their voices have

either been stifled or have met with no echo.

At the Congress of Fribourg, in Switzerland, August, 1897, evolution

was adopted by an assembly of 700 eminent Catholics--laymen and

clergy. Dr. Zahn said that _although creation is possible a priori, it

is a posteriori so very improbable that it ought to be rejected; that

those who believe in this creation rely upon the literal

interpretation of Genesis, whilst the contemporary students of the

Bible affirm that the book is allegorical, that God, in the beginning

created the elements and gave them power to evolve in all the forms

that characterise the organic and inorganic worlds_. One voice alone

was raised in protest, but it was drowned beneath the refutations of

the rest. The question, however, might be asked: How is the transition

made from one kingdom to another? What is the missing link? Who is to

interpret the Bible if it is an allegorical book? Is it the Church

which has always imposed _the letter_ of the Bible and condemned all

who have attempted to set forth _its spirit_?]

[Footnote 49: In hypnosis, indeed, the thought suggested is strong

enough to modify organic life and bring about hematic extravasion

(stigmata), burnings, vomiting, etc.... In certain ecstatic cases,

fixity of thought produces analogous effects. No one who has studied

these questions can have the slightest doubt that mind dominates

matter.]

[Footnote 50: We say force-matter, for there is no force without

matter, they are the two poles of the same thing. Moreover, what is

considered force in relation to dense matter plays the _rôle_ of

matter to subtler forces; electricity, _e.g._, is force-matter,

probably capable of serving as a vehicle for subtler force-matter,

just as it plays the _rôle_ of force in relation to its conductors.

Force is born and dies with matter and _vice versâ_; both alike arise

from the activity of God.]

[Footnote 51: The sensations it calls forth vary with the forms. That

which burns us, gives life to other beings; water, which suffocates

us, enables fishes to live; whilst air suffocates creatures that live

in the water, etc.]

[Footnote 52: All this must be taken figuratively. God does not

incarnate Himself. He is the All. To our limited conceptions, He seems

to limit Himself, in order to be the Life of a Universe.]

[Footnote 53: Here, too, we are speaking relatively; in reality, there

are no fragments of the Absolute. We describe the process as it seems

to us in the world of illusion.]

[Footnote 54: Being: Divinity.]

[Footnote 55: Force-matter.]

[Footnote 56: Forms.]

[Footnote 57: The movement given to the germ by the union of its

positive and negative forces.]

[Footnote 58: The "builders" are inferior beings utilised by Nature in

every process of germination and development. To certain readers, this

will perhaps appear to be an aberration of the theosophic imagination,

in which case we recommend them to supply us with a better theory and

to believe in that, until the time comes when the functioning of the

"inner senses" takes place in them, and enables them to perceive these

beings in action.]

[Footnote 59: Teratological phenomena attributable to the imagination

of the mother are so numerous that they cannot be refuted. The case

mentioned here is taken from Van Helmont's _De Injectis Materialibus_.

The woman in question had been present at the decapitation of thirteen

soldiers, condemned to death by the Duc d'Alva. In the same work are

two other instances which occurred under similar circumstances: in the

first, the foetus at birth was lacking a hand; and in the second, it

was the whole arm that was missing; whilst, what is perhaps even

stranger than this, neither arm, nor hand, nor head were found, they

had been absorbed by the body of the mother.]

[Footnote 60: To be strictly logical, one should say round the only

centre, the one Being, but looked upon from the side of manifestation,

evolution appears as stated.]

[Footnote 61: Hellenbach, in his book, _Magie der Zahlen_, says

regarding the number seven.

"_The law governing the phenomena on which our knowledge is based

decrees that the vibrations of sound and light regularly increase in

number, that they are grouped in seven columns, and that the vibratory

elements of each column have so close a relation to one another that

not only can it be expressed in figures, but it is even confirmed by

practice in music and chemistry._

"_The fact that this variation and periodicity are governed by the

number seven cannot be disputed; it is not a matter of chance: there

is a cause and we ought to discover it._"

In his table of the elements grouped according to atomic weight,

Mendelejef also acknowledges that the number seven controls what he

calls the _Law of periodical function_. He reaches conclusions similar

to those of Hellenbach.

Dr. Laycock, in his Articles on the _Periodicity of Vital Phenomena_

(_Lancet_) 1842, sums up as follows:--

"_It is, I think, impossible to come to any less general conclusion

than this, that, in animals, changes occur every 3-1/2, 7, 14, 21 or

28 days, or at some definite period of weeks._"]

[Footnote 62: See _Man and his Bodies_, by A. Besant.]

[Footnote 63: The size of the causal body varies according to its

development. It has been named _causal_, because it contains within

itself the causes or germs of all the other bodies, with the exception

of the denser part of the physical. We say denser because the physical

body is double: its etheric part belongs to the causal body, its

visible part comes from the parents.]

[Footnote 64: The mental body, which is, as it were, an ephemeral

flower of the causal, is born and developed in each incarnation,

disintegrating after the _devachanic_ (heavenly) life.]

[Footnote 65: It moves more or less freely on the astral plane,

according to the development of the astral body. In men of low

development, this body cannot be separated from the physical, under

penalty of a nightmare which brings about a waking condition.]

[Footnote 66: The atoms interpenetrate in consequence of their

differences of tenuity.]

[Footnote 67: Later on, the centre of consciousness passes from the

human to the superhuman state and ascends unceasingly until it reaches

the centre of the Divinity incarnate in the world.]

[Footnote 68: When this centre is fixed in one of the higher bodies,

the buddhic for instance, the man has passed into the superhuman

stage.]

[Footnote 69: As sand, placed on a plate in a state of vibration,

assumes varying forms.]

[Footnote 70: The soul acting in the mental, the astral, and more

especially--in the average man--the physical body. The Individuality

is the soul acting in the causal body.]

[Footnote 71: See the diagram in the chapter on the Atom in _The

Ancient Wisdom_, by A. Besant.]

[Footnote 72: We have seen that the organs formed by these tissues are

the special work of a particular being controlled by lofty

Intelligences.]

[Footnote 73: As the building of the body is reaching completion, the

Ego (the Soul) begins to make use of the new instrument. It is at

about the age of seven years that the development of the nerve centres

becomes sufficiently advanced to allow of the brain receiving the

vibrations of the soul; up to this point, the real man has scarcely

had any influence upon the body, although the mental projection (the

mental body) which he has formed can express itself to a certain

extent much earlier, from the seventh month of foetal life; up to

this time, the instinctive energies of the astral body alone affect

the embryo.]

[Footnote 74: In Kâmaloka (Purgatory). The desires, in purgatory,

cannot be satisfied, because there is no physical body to express

them, and this causes a state of suffering which has been compared to

a burning fire. This fire burns up the passions and leaves behind only

the "germs," which the causal body takes up and bequeaths to the

future astral body. But for this providential burning away, the

passions would exist from early childhood in the future incarnation,

_i.e._, at a time when the Ego has no hold whatever upon the new

personality, and when the latter would be terribly affected by this

influx of the forces of evil.]

[Footnote 75: Souls are of different ages: the savage is not so old as

the civilised man, while the latter is the younger brother of those

strong and wise Souls who compose the vanguard of humanity.]

[Footnote 76: It is impossible for heredity and environment to supply

_all_ the conditions that a soul's evolution calls for, and _nothing

but these conditions_; that is the reason Providence intervenes in the

interests of justice.]

[Footnote 77: It is in this great body, with which we are in sympathy,

though we claim the right to dispute their theories when we regard

them as erroneous, that this hypothesis is met with more especially.

True, certain schools of lower occultism teach it also, but they form

a minority, and are of no importance.]

[Footnote 78: Harmony is established when there is vibratory

synchronism of all the states of matter of the different bodies

_i.e._, when each slate of matter in a body vibrates in unison with

the analogous states of matter of all the other bodies.]

[Footnote 79: When the "life wave" has ended its cycle on this earth,

it passes in succession over the other planets of our chain and leaves

the earth in a state of slumber. This slumber ceases with the return

of the "life wave"; it becomes death when the evolution of the chain

is accomplished. See A. P. Sinnett's _Esoteric Buddhism._]

[Footnote 80: At a certain stage on the _Path_, return to earth is no

longer obligatory.]