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The doctrine of Evolution is signally incomplete unless we realise it as a sequence of progressive developments, direct and without intermission, from the simplest forms of Elemental Matter to the highest, living orders of Creation—Mineral, Vegetable, Brute and Human being progressive stages in the evolution of Life and of Consciousness; graded by links so subtly and infinitesimally constituted as to belong equally to the kingdom below and to that above them.
The subject appears full of interest and suggestion, showing all the planes of Nature, from mineral to man, linked in an unbroken line by way of this half-vegetable body of flesh, with its roots in earth and its branches in Consciousness. No more than this briefest of mentions can be given here, however.
XI
Mysterious "Internal Secretions"
Biologists tell of Dual planes of operation in the processes of every organ of the body. Because some of these function on the external plane, in visible secretions or in other ways calculable by scientific methods, and they function, too, upon an Inner and occulted, plane; in the form of mysterious "Internal Secretions," the mode and nature whereof have long baffled and eluded the most intricate scientific appliances and intellections.
What is indicated if not an Inner, and Potential, plane of Life and vital processes—a plane of Involution, or Recession (centripetal)—whereon factors of environment, air, food, water and so forth are transformed by vital involutionary processes, into potentials of living form and function? Which potentials remain latent, or Recessive, in the cells and glands secreting them, and available for transformation by evolutionary processes, into actualities of physical form and function on the Outer (centrifugal) plane of Life—the plane of Evolution.
And Life and health, together with normality of faculty and function, depend upon the perfect balance and co-ordination of these two contrary orders of factors and processes, which, I assume, are engendered, respectively, in the Male and the Female departments of living organisms of both sexes.
All the vital functions—Respiration, Circulation, Digestion, Reproduction—may be classed as Recessive functions, because they are characterised by a Recession, or withdrawal, from the Without to the Within. This is a phenomenon of the Involution of Environment, for transformation thereof into potential Life, and potential Evolutionary output.