When the dews have fallen from the bloom of night
On the glooms where the bluebells gleam.
International Theosophical Headquarters
Point Loma, California
THE SOUL AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION:
by Henry Travers
THE majority of people are not very original and independent in their thinking, and consequently prefer to await the sanction of some recognized authority before accepting a doctrine. For this reason it is scarcely just to lay all the blame on the institutions, ecclesiastical and otherwise, which supply this demand. For this reason, too, it will be a matter of considerable moment that a professor at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science should have brought forward arguments which, according to the report of his address, "help the belief that man has a soul."
The arguments brought forward are as old as man himself, it is true; but doctrines are judged largely according to their immediate source. Thus a new color, an additional weight, is given to the idea that the eye has been made by "some external agency cognizant of all the properties of light," and to the idea that the brain is an instrument played upon by some power that is not material. We have heard this from the pulpit, perhaps; now we hear it from the lecture table; so we can believe it a little more strongly than we did before.
The lecturer's cautious remarks, as gathered from a brief report, seem to indicate a belief on his part that there may be a soul after all. The report is headed, "Eye and Brain Show a Soul Possibly Independent of Life." His view is said to be regarded by physiologists as offering a great stimulus to research, and "it provides for the general public a new exposition of the theory of belief in a divinity." The eye and the brain are such wonderful instruments that they surely must have been made by some intelligent power. That is the argument, and it surely must have occurred to many people before. "The brain's workings and the will-power suggested," he said, "that the brain was mysteriously affected by invisible and untraceable harmonies." The following is of interest to Darwinists:
It was natural to suppose, he declared, the existence of some external agent over and above natural selection, which [latter] would have done no more than assist in the process.