This he develops in his mirific lecture on the “Perigenesis of Plastidule, or the Wave-motions of Living Particles.” It is an improvement on Darwin's theory of “Pangenesis,” and a further approach, a cautious move, towards “Magic.” The former is a conjecture that:
Some of the actual identical atoms which formed part of ancestral bodies are thus transmitted through their descendants for generation after generation, so that we are literally “flesh of the flesh” of the primeval creature who has developed into man
—explains the author of A Modern Zoroastrian.[1602] The latter, Occultism, teaches that—(a) the life-atoms of our (Prâna) Life-Principle, are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the atoms best impregnated with the Life-Principle, an independent, eternal, conscious factor, are partially transmitted from father to son by heredity, and are partially drawn once more together and become the animating principle of the new body in every new incarnation of the Monads. Because (b), as the Individual Soul is ever the same, so are the atoms of the lower principles (the body, its astral, or life-double, etc.), drawn as they are by affinity and Karmic law always to the same individuality in a series of various bodies.[1603]
To be just and, to say the least, logical, our modern Hæckelians ought to pass a resolution that henceforth the “Perigenesis of the Plastidule,” and other similar lectures, should be bound up with those on “Esoteric Buddhism” and “The Seven Principles in Man.” Thus the public will have a chance, at any rate, of comparing the two teachings and then of judging which is the more or the less absurd, even from the standpoint of materialistic and exact Science.
Now the Occultists, who trace every atom in the Universe, whether an aggregate or single, to One Unity, the Universal Life; who do not recognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic; who know of no [pg 710] such thing as dead Matter—the Occultists are consistent with their doctrine of Spirit and Soul when speaking of memory in every atom, of will and sensation. But what can a Materialist mean by the qualification? The law of biogenesis, in the sense applied to it by the Hæckelians, is the result of the ignorance on the part of the man of Science of Occult Physics. We know and speak of “life-atoms,” and of “sleeping-atoms,” because we regard these two forms of energy—the kinetic and the potential—as produced by one and the same force, or the One Life, and regard the latter as the source and mover of all. But what is it that furnished with energy, and especially with memory, the “plastidular souls” of Hæckel? The “wave motion of living particles” becomes comprehensible on the theory of a Spiritual One Life, of a universal Vital Principle independent of our Matter, and manifesting as atomic energy only on our plane of consciousness. It is that which, individualized in the human cycle, is transmitted from father to son.
Now Hæckel, modifying Darwin's theory, suggests “more plausibly,” as the author of A Modern Zoroastrian thinks:
That not the identical atoms, but their peculiar motions and mode of aggregation have been thus transmitted [by heredity].[1604]
If Hæckel, or any other Scientist, knew more than any of them does know of the nature of the atom, he would not have improved the occasion in this way. For he only states, in more metaphysical language than Darwin, one and the same thing. The Life-Principle, or Life Energy, which is omnipresent, eternal, indestructible, is a Force and a Principle as noumenon, while it is Atoms, as phenomenon. It is one and the same thing, and cannot be considered as separate except in Materialism.[1605]
Further, Hæckel enunciates concerning the Atom-Souls that which, at first sight, appears as occult as the Monad of Leibnitz:
The recent contest as to the nature of atoms, which we must regard as in some form or other the ultimate factors in all physical and chemical processes, seems to be capable of easiest settlement by the conception that these very minute masses possess, as centres of force, a persistent soul, that every atom has sensation and the power of movement.[1606]