An answer is found to our question in a volume just published by Mr. Samuel Laing—the best lay exponent of Modern Science.[1568] In Chapter viii of his latest work, A Modern Zoroastrian, the author begins by twitting “all ancient religions and philosophies” for “assuming a male and female principle for their gods.” At first sight, he says:
This distinction of sex appears as fundamental as that of plant and animal.... The Spirit of God brooding over Chaos and producing the world is only a later edition, revised according to monotheistic ideas, of the far older Chaldean legend which describes the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos by the coöperation of great gods, male and female.... Thus, in the orthodox Christian creed we are taught to repeat “begotten, not made,” a phrase which is absolute nonsense, or [pg 695] non-sense—that is, an instance of using words like counterfeit notes, which have no solid value of an idea behind them. For “begotten” is a very definite term, which implies the conjunction of two opposite sexes to produce a new individual.[1569]
However we may agree with the learned author as to the inadvisability of using wrong words, and the terrible anthropomorphic and phallic element in the old Scriptures—especially in the orthodox Christian Bible—nevertheless, there may be two extenuating circumstances in the case. Firstly, all these “ancient philosophies” and “modern religions” are—as has been sufficiently shown in these two Volumes—an exoteric veil thrown over the face of Esoteric Truth; and—as the direct result of this—they are allegorical, i.e., mythological in form; but still they are immensely more philosophical in essence than any of the new scientific theories, so-called. Secondly, from the Orphic Theogony down to Ezra's last remodelling of the Pentateuch, every old Scripture, having in its origin borrowed its facts from the East, has been subjected to constant alterations by friend and foe, until of the original version there has remained but the name, a dead shell from which the spirit had been gradually eliminated.
This alone ought to show that no religious work now extant can be understood without the help of the Archaic Wisdom, the primitive foundation on which they were all built.
But to return to the direct answer expected from Science to our direct question. It is given by the same author, when, following his train of thought on the unscientific euhemerization of the powers of Nature in ancient creeds, he pronounces a condemnatory verdict upon them in the following terms:
Science, however, makes sad havoc with this impression of sexual generation being the original and only mode of reproduction, and the microscope and dissecting knife of the naturalist introduce us to new and altogether unsuspected [?] worlds of life.
So little “unsuspected,” indeed, that the original a-sexual “modes of reproduction” must have been known to the ancient Hindûs, at any rate—Mr. Laing's assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. In view of the statement in the Vishnu Purâna, quoted by us elsewhere, that Daksha “established sexual intercourse as the means of multiplication,” only after a series of other “modes,” which are all enumerated therein,[1570] it becomes difficult to deny the fact. This assertion, moreover, is found, note well, in an exoteric work. Next, Mr. Laing goes on to tell us that:
By far the larger proportion of living forms, in number at any rate if not in size, have come into existence, without the aid of sexual propagation.
He then instances Hæckel's Moneron, “multiplying by self-division.” The next stage the author shows in the nucleated cell, “which does exactly the same thing.” The following stage is that in
Which the organism does not divide into two equal parts, but a small portion of it swells out ... and finally parts company and starts on a separate existence, which grows to the size of the parent by its inherent faculty of manufacturing fresh protoplasm from surrounding inorganic materials.[1571]