The brilliant discoveries of Dr. Jacques Loeb and of M. Yves Delage have demolished absolutely the old idea that each organ and each tissue contained in embryo in the normal egg-germ must develop in a particular and co-ordinate way into a normal organism and after the parental type: it is possible to make a head grow where there ought to be feet; and at Zürich, Standfuss, solely through changing the temperature of his laboratory, was able to obtain from the same species of butterfly forms which were tropical and forms which were arctic.[611] All this helps to establish the hypothesis, which amounts to certainty, that the conformation of a physical body, or even the kind of species to be born, is directly determined by physical environment and not by heredity, and that the chief factor to consider in organisms is the life animating the body. Physical environment affects only the physical organism; it does not affect the invisible and unknown life-principle resident within the physical organism.
The process of fertilization is a physical process. As such it is simply initiatory to embryonic evolution which also is physical. Once the proper physical conditions are set up by the parents, life pursues its marvellous progress in the womb of the human mother, from the amoeba-like initial embryo to man. That is to say, parents set in motion the laws governing the reproduction of physical bodies. They create such conditions as enable the invisible life-force to begin its physical manifestation.[612] In the two fused germs from the parents resides the physical inheritance of the offspring, to be outwardly shaped by environment; but the physical inheritance is a thing distinct from the psychical part of the living being, just as much as the dead human body is a thing apart from the life which has left it. Though the old heredity theory is overthrown by late discoveries, the question as to what life is in human bodies under all possible environmental conditions remains unsolved; and so do the questions why there should be sports in nature, which among man are called geniuses, and why every human being has a distinct and highly developed individual character, essentially unlike that of his immediate ancestors.
Embryology proves conclusively that the human embryo retraces in its growth the evolution of lower life-forms. At first consisting of two single cells fused into one, it is like the amoeba. By cell-division it grows and progresses step by step through each lower realm of being until it comes to be a water-creature with gills; and science teaches that all organic life on this planet once dwelt in the seas. It grows progressively out of the water-world stage of organic life into the world of air-breathing creatures. Nature at last achieves her highest product, and a human being is born out of the Womb of Time. The initial microscopic bit of germ-plasm is endowed with power of motion, thought, and human consciousness, with dominion over all the lower kingdoms through which by right of ancient conquests it passed in the brief period of nine months. On every side the problem of life is full of poetry and wonder; it is the greatest mystery.
Not only can we thus study the age-long evolution of the physical man, but we have recently acquired sufficient scientific data to lay foundations for a study of the evolution of the psychical man. Thus, for example, instincts seem to be nothing more than habits which through unknown periods of time have become so ingrained in the constitution of man, and of all animals, that now they have become second nature and usually are exercised without the need of reasoning processes. The influence from innate sensuous experiences rises into consciousness as the life of every normal child and youth unfolds itself; and these experiences in their full expansion, when the age of maturity has been reached, constitute in their unity what we call character, which, in one sense, may be defined as the sum total of instincts of every kind. From such a point of view, the psychical or invisible power in man is merely a bundle of acquired habits which make use of the bodily organism in order to express themselves—in the same way, as we have pointed out, that electrical forces manifest their presence through a conductor. If these habits be good, we call their possessor a good man; if evil, we call him an evil man.
The theory of Charles Darwin suggests that all evolutionary progress is directed to the acquirement of newer and ever higher instincts. And if this process be the true one, that is to say, if all instincts, which in their finer distinctions mark off species from species in all animal kingdoms, be as Darwin thought—and as is to-day more clearly evident—the result of a long and gradual evolution through experience in a sensuous realm of existence, then it would seem to follow that there must be some kind of a monad (probably a non-sensuous one) to which such acquired instincts can attach themselves. Such a monad, too, must have been a percipient and hence a recorder of such ever-accumulating experiences throughout an inconceivably long chain of lives, and it of itself must, while so perceiving and recording, not be subject to the transitoriness of the sensuous realm wherein it gathers together these instincts, which in their unified expression form its personality or human character.
In harmony with the vitalistic view of evolution, which implies a pre-existent psychical power continually striving to express itself completely through matter, yet normally able to exist independently of a physical means of expression, we should regard such high mental processes as judgement, reasoning, analysis and synthesis, and spatial perception, along with memory, as resultants of very great experience in a sensuous world, on which in our present psycho-physical constitution such processes appear to have direct bearing. In other words, for man to be able to exercise such high mental processes there is need to postulate incalculable ages of specialization in the nervous apparatus, and in psycho-physical adjustment, of a kind which has thus enabled the psychical power to express itself to such a supreme degree in the realm of mind and matter. The same vitalistic argument is applicable to the lower mental processes and to the instinctual powers in man, because we cannot at any time, in viewing the complete evolution of man as a twofold being composed of a physical and a psychical part, force aside Fechner’s conviction that the problem is a psycho-physical one. A study of sexual instincts in children seems to confirm this.[613]
Such a psychical and vitalistic hypothesis is, as we have seen, strongly supported by embryology; and embryology proves conclusively the need of long ages of physical evolution for the development of each tissue and highly specialized organ in the human body. Certain French and German and other scientists of the vitalistic school have demonstrated physiologically the need of a pre-existent power as the unifying principle which attracts and compels material atoms to group themselves into the pattern of the human body[614]—or, as we may add, of any organic body. Psychical researchers at the outset of their science seem apparently to have demonstrated psychologically the post-existence of the personal consciousness-unity; and it is very likely when further progress has been made in psychics that there will arise a logical need to postulate, in addition to the personal consciousness-unity, a hypothetical pre-existent soul-monad as the unifying principle which attracts and compels psychical atoms of experience (if such an expression may be used) to group themselves into the personal consciousness-unity which appears to survive the death of the gross physical body—for a long or short time, as future research may show.[615] Such a soul-monad, to follow the view held by Celtic mystics, led by acquired instincts which were transmitted to it through the personality (held by the Celtic esoteric doctrine to be a temporary combination), apparently weaves out of matter the body-unit adapted to its further evolution, in a way analogous to that in which a silkworm is led by acquired instincts to weave a cocoon. This body-unit is twofold: (1) the visible body derived from the visible elements of matter; and (2) the invisible or ghost-body derived from the invisible or ethereal elements of matter.
Strictly speaking, for the Celtic mystic this soul-monad is something upon which the personal consciousness depends for its psychical unity in precisely the same way as the physical body depends upon the personal consciousness for its physical unity. The Celtic mystic holds that just as the body-unity falls back again into its primal elements of matter, so the personal consciousness-unity (apparently able to survive in the ghost-body for a long period after its separation from the grosser physical envelope or human body) also in due time is discarded by the soul-monad or individuality, and then falls back into its primal psychical constituents. In other words, the Celtic Esoteric Doctrine of Re-birth correctly interpreted does not conceive personal immortality, but it conceives a greater kind of immortality—the immortality of the unknown principle which gives unity to each temporary personality it makes use of, and which we prefer to designate as the individuality, the impersonator. And this individuality is the bearer of all evolutionary gains made in each temporary personality through which it reflects itself: it is the permanent evolving principle.
Perhaps an analogy drawn from nature will make the Celtic position clearer: we may say that the personality occupies a position between the human body and the soul-monad, just as the moon occupies a position between the earth and the sun. Personal consciousness is to the human body what the moonlight is to the earth, merely a pale reflection from a third thing, the soul-monad or individuality, which is the ultimate source of both sets of unities, the material or body-unity in its twofold aspect and the psychical or personal consciousness-unity. Each personality is temporary, while the individuality, like the sun in relation to the earth and moon, is capable of at least a relative immortality: the sun’s light, as science holds, existed before there was any moon to reflect it on to the earth, and may continue to exist when both the moon and earth are disintegrated. The essential nature of the sun’s energy or life remains unknown to science; so does the essential nature of the energy or life manifesting itself as the individuality. Though all such analogies are more or less weak, this one adequately fits in with the theories concerning the Celtic Esoteric Doctrine of Re-birth which the most learned of contemporary Celts, chiefly mystics, have favoured us with; and it is our rare privilege to put these theories on record for whatever they may be worth. The best hypothesis is always the one which best explains all available data, and, to our mind, when very minutely examined, in a way which (chiefly for reasons of space) cannot be attempted here, this Celtic hypothesis concerning the nature and destiny of man is the best hitherto adduced.[616]
Objectors to the Re-birth Doctrine as held by the Celts and other peoples anciently and now, naturally ask why, if we have lived before here on earth in physical bodies, we do not remember it. But the shallowness and unscientific nature of this question is at once apparent to psychologists who know that there exists in man a subconscious mind which in the great mass of people is almost totally dormant. ‘The subconscious self,’ wrote William James, ‘is nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity.... Apart from all religious considerations, there is actually and literally more life in our total soul than we are at any time aware of.’ And he added:—‘It thus is “scientific” to interpret all otherwise unaccountable invasive alternations of consciousness as results of the tension of subliminal memories reaching a bursting point.’[617] Intuition, which all men have experienced, would seem to be the result of a momentary contact by the physical brain with its psychical counterpart—the subconscious self, the individuality as distinguished from the personality.