[CHAPTER VIII]
THE EMBRYOLOGY OF THE SOUL
Importance of Ontogeny to Psychology—Development of the Child-Soul—Commencement of Existence of the Individual Soul—The Storing of the Soul—Mythology of the Origin of the Soul—Physiology of the Origin of the Soul—Elementary Processes in Conception—Coalescence of the Ovum and the Spermatozoon—Cell-Love—Heredity of the Soul from Parents and Ancestors—Its Physiological Nature as the Mechanics of the Protoplasm—Blending of Souls (Psychic Amphigony)—Reversion, Psychological Atavism—The Biogenetic Law in Psychology—Palingenetic Repetition and Cenogenetic Modification—Embryonic and Post-Embryonic Psychogeny
The human soul—whatever we may hold as to its nature—undergoes a continual development throughout the life of the individual. This ontogenetic fact is of fundamental importance in our monistic psychology, though the “professional” psychologists pay little or no attention to it. Since the embryology of the individual is, on Baer’s principle—and in accordance with the universal belief of modern biologists—the “true torch-bearer for all research into the organic body,” it will afford us a reliable light on the momentous problems of its psychic activity.
Although, however, this “embryology of the soul” is so important and interesting, it has hitherto met with the consideration it deserves only within a very narrow circle. Until recently teachers were almost the only ones to occupy themselves with a part of the problem; since their avocation compelled them to assist and supervise the formation of the psychic activity in the child, they were bound to take a theoretical interest, also, in the psychogenetic facts that came under their notice. However, these teachers, for the most part, both in recent and in earlier times, were dominated by the current dualistic psychology—in so far as they reflected at all; and they were totally ignorant of the important facts of comparative psychology, and unacquainted with the structure and function of the brain. Moreover, their observations only extended to children in their school-days, or in the years immediately preceding. The remarkable phenomena which the individual psychogeny of the child offers in its earliest years, and which are the joy and admiration of all thoughtful parents, were scarcely ever made the subject of serious scientific research. Wilhelm Preyer was the pioneer of this study in his interesting work on The Mind of the Child (1881). To obtain a perfectly clear knowledge of the matter, however, we must go further back still; we must commence at the first appearance of the soul in the impregnated ovum.
The origin of the human individual—body and soul—was still wrapped in complete mystery at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Caspar Friedrich Wolff had, it is true, discovered the true character of embryonic development in 1759, in his theoria generationis, and proved with the confidence of a critical observer that there is a true epigenesis—i.e., a series of very remarkable formative processes—in the evolution of the fœtus from the simple ovum. But the physiologists of the time, with the famous Albert Haller at their head, flatly refused to entertain these empirical truths, which may be directly proved by microscopic observation, and clung to the old dogma of “preformation.” This theory assumed that in the human ovum—and in the egg of all other animals—the organism was already present, or “preformed,” in all its parts; the “evolution” of the embryo consisted literally in an “unfolding” (evolutio) of the folded organs. One curious consequence of this error was the theory of scatulation, which we have mentioned on [p. 55]; since the ovary had to be admitted to be present in the embryo of the woman, it was also necessary to suppose that the germs of the next generation were already formed in it, and so on in infinitum. Opposed to this dogma of the “Ovulists” was the equally erroneous notion of the “Animalculists”; the latter held that the germ was not really in the female ovum, but in the paternal element, and that the store of succeeding generations was to be sought in the spermatozoa.
Leibnitz consistently applied this theory of scatulation to the human soul; he denied that either soul or body had a real development (epigenesis), and said in his Theodicy: “Thus I consider that the souls which are destined one day to become human exist in the seed, like those of other species; that they have existed in our ancestors as far back as Adam—that is, since the beginning of the world—in the forms of organized bodies.” Similar notions prevailed in biology and philosophy until the third decade of the present century, when the reform of embryology by Baer gave them their death blow. In the province of psychology, however, they still find many adherents; they form one group of the many curious mystical ideas which give us a living illustration of the ontogeny of the soul.
The more accurate knowledge which we have recently obtained, through comparative ethnology, of the various forms of myths of ancient and modern uncivilized races, is also of great interest in psychogeny. Still, it would take us too far from our purpose if we were to enter into it with any fulness here; we must refer the reader to Adalbert Svoboda’s excellent work on Forms of Faith (1897). In respect of their scientific and poetical contents, we may arrange all pertinent psychogenetic myths in the following five groups:
I. The myth of transmigration.—The soul lived formerly in the body of another animal, and passed from this into a human body. The Egyptian priests, for instance, taught that the human soul wandered through all the species of animals after the death of the body, returning to a human frame after three thousand years of transmigration.
II. The myth of the in-planting of the soul.—The soul existed independently in another place—a psychogenetic store, as it were (in a kind of embryonic slumber or latent life); it was taken out by a bird (sometimes represented as an eagle, generally as a white stork), and implanted in the human body.
III. The myth of the creation of the soul.—God creates the souls, and keeps them stored—sometimes in a pond (living in the form of plankton), according to other myths in a tree (where they are conceived as the fruit of a phanerogam); the Creator takes them from the pond or tree, and inserts them in the human germ during the act of conception.