But specializing the cell we note not only that all the body is composed of cells or the deposit of cells, but that one type of cells develops from another type, and ultimately all cells result from one single cell “into which,” in the words of Darwin, “life was breathed by the Creator”—of course always understanding that we have not specified the nature of the Creator.
If this is so, and no one in these times will dare to dispute it, it begins to dawn upon us that this curious complex body of man is, as it were, a tremendous society of entities, the separate individualities of which, whilst retaining their place as such in the great body, are swamped in the individuality of that one. Not only so, but as it will be our endeavor to show later on, the healthy existence of each part greatly depends on its maintaining its loyalty and subservience to the supreme Chief, from which it gets its daily source of energy and inspiration.
What is true of the part is true of the whole and vice versa. For in its turn the body of man must be subservient to that of which it is a part, and answer to the call of that which represents the corporate body of bodies, and to the divine light within, “that lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” which is one with the Father, the Divine over soul, of which we are all dim reflections. So also of the part, the tiny microcosm of man, the cell, it is in its turn a universe, a universe so grand that the many revelations that scientific investigation has unveiled makes that science stand aghast; but these, we may venture to prophesy, are nothing to the occult secrets that still lie waiting for revelation.
All that the magnificent symbolism of the Gnostics has taught us concerning The Man Iesous and his relation to Ichthys the fish, the ark and the ship, can be well applied to the cell, which is a veritable Ark with its Holy of holies in which sit and meditate the holy ones, the prajapati of the Hindus and the Christos of the Gnostics. Veritably it is par excellence the Astral Vehicle, the ship floating on the watery ocean, veritably it is the Dagon, the fish-man, the new teacher coming from the unknown regions of the Silence, the boat of Vishnu carrying the God-Man into the world of Manifestation. We may well exclaim: O God, how manifest are thy works! how sublime are thy powers! And when we contemplate the tiny vehicle of life under the microscope we may well close-to the doors of the senses, take off the sandals and worship, for are we not at the very altar of the Temple—the temple of the Almighty; are we not face to face with the Creators? He that hath eyes to see let him see!
Amongst the great contributors to the Science of the Cell perhaps none has approached nearer the Holy of Holies—none so nearly tore aside the Veil of Isis, as H. P. B. has practically told us, than Professor Weissmann in his contribution on the Germ Plasm and the New Problem of Heredity as handled by him. Under the guiding hand of this savant we see the cell in a new light, we begin to see kingdom within kingdom; and had he but recognized the other side, had he but explored the dark side of the Moon, much more might have been written, many more mouths might have gaped and many more sceptics have smiled. Professor Weissmann however has found a mare’s nest. He has raised the devil, but forgotten to give him something to do, and as of old we cannot help exclaiming, what next! The cell of Weissmann like the cell of most other students, is a tiny ball of protoplasm with a central nucleus (the Holy of Holies, Fish Man, etc.) but unlike that of other writers, instead of containing more differentiated protoplasm, taking the forms of meaningless and accidental rods, our revered professor has discovered a Nest of Creators. He tells us that the greater portion of the cell does not in any way participate in the process of hereditary transmission. Nay, further still, not only does he regard the nucleus as the all important particle but to quote his own words: “The law that only a certain part of the nuclear matter is to be regarded as the hereditary substance appears to me to receive fresh support from all the more recent observations.”
Now the parts referred to are a series of minute rod-like structures called chromatin rods that are very active and manifest all kinds of changes according to necessity, especially at that critical period in the history of a cell called cell-division, when it is about to propagate its species by making itself into two by equal distributions of its substance between its two selves. For you must know that when a cell divides (and this does not refer to human cells alone, but all vegetable and animal cells from the simplest to the most complex) the products are two so-called “daughter cells,” but they are daughters without a mother. It is one of the most mystical processes in existence and contains much secret knowledge for it contains the mystery of the birth of two from one. In this process, called in scientific parlance Karyokinesis, these little rods play a most important part, nay, the all-important part, for the whole process commences with them and proceeds from the centre outward. There is at the commencement of the process a disturbance, a series of vibrations throughout the nucleus. These little rods immediately form into a kind of reticulum or network; then this network arranges itself into an indefinite spiral, at which instant two mysterious bodies issue from the mass at opposite poles, and take up a position in the cell, at some distance from the coil of rods; then the spiral breaks up into two opposing sets of loops.
Ultimately these two sets of rods settle down in the neighborhood of the two little bodies (centrosomes) shot out, or, I should perhaps say, are attracted separately to the two poles of the cell by the centrosomes. Then a cell wall forms between; the one cell becomes two.
There are some very occult forces at work behind all this, and they generally are referred to, to cover our ignorance, as the law of polarity, albeit that this law, whatever it is, involves the most occult of the creative forces, in fact of all manifestation.
To go back, Dr. Weissmann does not consider these rods which he calls idants as the essential units, but states that in their turn these are themselves composed of more minute bodies he calls ids.
In this respect, however, he considers protoplasm as a whole as composed, not of so many chemical compounds, having an indefinite and uncontrollable action on one another, but of collections of “molecules united into a single group.” These molecules he calls biophors. The biophors, as bearers of vitality, possess the power of growth and of multiplication by fission. But the biophors which go to make up the rods, have a more specific character of their own, and are the carriers of those minuter bodies still which this savant speaks of as the real creative units, or what he calls “determinants.” These ultimate determinants, smaller than microscopic, hold within their tiny hearts the ideal shape of the part which they are destined to control, carried and distributed in the process of evolution of the creature by the process of cell division.