Kosmic Mind
Edison's conception of matter was quoted in our March editorial article. The great American electrician is reported by Mr. G. Parsons Lathrop in Harper's Magazine as giving out his personal belief about the atoms being "possessed by a certain amount of intelligence," and shown indulging in other reveries of this kind. For this flight of fancy the February Review of Reviews takes the inventor of the phonograph to task and critically remarks that "Edison is much given to dreaming," his "scientific imagination" being constantly at work. Would to goodness the men of science exercised their "scientific imagination" a little more and their dogmatic and cold negations a little less. Dreams differ. In that strange state of being which, as Byron has it, puts us in a position "with seal'd eyes to see," one often perceives more real facts than when awake. Imagination is, again, one of the strongest elements in human nature, or in the words of Dugald Stewart it "is the great spring of human activity, and the principal source of human improvement. . . . Destroy the faculty, and the condition of men will become as stationary as that of brutes." It is the best guide of our blind senses, without which the latter could never lead us beyond matter and its illusions. The greatest discoveries of modern science are due to the imaginative faculty of the discoverers. But when has anything new been postulated, when a theory clashing with and contradicting a comfortably settled predecessor put forth, without orthodox science first sitting on it, and trying to crush it out of existence? Harvey was also regarded at first as a "dreamer and a madman to boot. Finally, the whole of modem science is formed of "working hypotheses," the fruits of "scientific imagination" as Mr. Tyndall felicitously called it. Is it then, because consciousness in every universal atom and the possibility of a complete control over the cells and atoms of his body by man, have not been honored so far with the imprimatur of the Popes of exact science, that the idea is to be dismissed as a dream? Occultism gives the same teaching. Occultism tells us that every atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is a little universe in itself; and that every organ and cell in the human body is endowed with a brain of its own, with memory, therefore, experience and discriminative powers. The idea of Universal Life composed of individual atomic lives is one of the oldest teachings of esoteric philosophy, and the very modern hypothesis of modern science, that of crystalline life, is the first ray from the ancient luminary of knowledge that has reached our scholars. If plants can be shown to have nerves and sensations and instinct (but another word for consciousness), why not allow the same in the cells of the human body? Science divides matter into organic and inorganic bodies, only because it rejects the idea of absolute life and a life-principle as an entity: otherwise it would be the first to see that absolute life cannot produce even a geometrical point, or an atom inorganic in its essence. But Occultism, you see, "teaches mysteries" they say; and mystery is the negation of common sense, just as again metaphysics is but a kind of poetry, according to Mr. Tyndall. There is no such thing for science as mystery; and therefore, as a Life Principle is, and must remain for the intellects of our civilized races for ever a mystery on physical lines – they who deal in this question have to be of necessity either fools or knaves. Dixit. Nevertheless, we may repeat with a French preacher: "mystery is the fatality of science." Official science is surrounded on every side and hedged in by unapproachable, for ever impenetrable mysteries. And why? Simply because physical science is self-doomed to a squirrel-like progress around a wheel of matter limited by our five senses. And though it is as confessedly ignorant of the formation of matter, as of the generation of a simple cell; though it is as powerless to explain what is this, that, or the other, it will yet dogmatize and insist on what life, matter and the rest are not. It comes to this: the words of Father Felix addressed fifty years ago to the French academicians have nearly become immortal as a truism. "Gentlemen," he said, "you throw into our teeth the reproach that we teach mysteries. But imagine whatever science you will; follow the magnificent sweep of its deductions. . . . and when you arrive at its parent source you come face to face with the unknown!" Now to lay at rest once for all in the minds of Theosophists this
vexed question, we intend to prove that modern science,
owing to physiology, is itself on the eve of discovering
that consciousness is universal – thus justifying Edison's "dreams."
But before we do this, we mean also to show that though
many a man of science is soaked through and through with such
belief, very few are brave enough to openly admit it,
as the late Dr. Pirogoff of St. Petersburg has done
in his posthumous Memoirs. Indeed that great surgeon
and pathologist raised by their publication quite a howl of indignation
among his colleagues. How then? the public asked: He,
Dr. Pirogoff, whom we regarded as almost the embodiment
of European learning, believing in the superstitions of
crazy alchemists? He, who in the words of a contemporary: –
was the very incarnation of exact science and methods of thought;
who had dissected hundreds and thousands of human organs,
making himself as acquainted with all the mysteries of surgery
and anatomy as we are with our familiar furniture; the
savant for whom physiology had no secrets and who, above
all men was one to whom Voltaire might have ironically asked whether
he had not found immortal soul between the bladder and the blind
gut, – that same Pirogoff is found after his death devoting
whole chapters in his literary Will to the scientific demonstration.
. . . Novoye Vremya of 1887. – Of what? Why, of the existence in every organism of
a distinct "VITAL FORCE"
independent of any physical or chemical process. Like Liebig
he accepted the derided and tabooed homogeneity of nature – a Life
Principle – that persecuted and hapless teleology, or the
science of the final causes of things, which is as philosophical
as it is unscientific, ifwe have to believe
imperial and royal academies. His unpardonable sin in the
eyes of dogmatic modern science, however, was this:
The great anatomist and surgeon, had the "hardihood"
to declare in his Memoirs, that: – We have no
cause to reject the possibility of the existence of
organisms endowed with such properties that would make of them – the
direct embodiment of the universal mind – a perfection inaccessible
to our own (human) mind. . . . Because, we have
no right to maintain that man is the last expression of the divine
creative thought. Such are the chief features of the heresy of one, who ranked
high among the men of exact science of this age. His Memoirs
show plainly that not only he believed in Universal Deity,
divine Ideation, or the Hermetic "Thought divine,"
and a Vital Principle, but taught all this, and
tried to demonstrate it scientifically. Thus he argues
that Universal Mind needs no physico-chemical, or mechanical
brain as an organ of transmission. He even goes so far
as to admit it in these suggestive words: – Our reason
must accept in all necessity an infinite and
eternal Mind which rules and governs the ocean of life. . .
. Thought and creative ideation, in full agreement
with the laws of unity and causation, manifest themselves
plainly enough in universal life without the participation of
brain-slush. . . . Directing the forces and
elements toward the formation of organisms, this organizing
life-principle becomes self-sentient, self-conscious,
racial or individual. Substance, ruled
and directed by the life-principle, is organised
according to a general defined plan into certain types.
. . . He explains this
belief by confessing that never, during
his long life so full of study, observation, and
experiments, could he – acquire the conviction, that our brain could be the only
organ of thought in the whole universe, that everything
in this world, save that organ, should be
unconditioned and senseless, and that human thought alone
should impart to the universe a meaning and a reasonable harmony
in its integrity. And he adds à propos
of Moleschott's materialism: – Howsoever
much fish and peas I may eat, never shall I consent
to give away my Ego into durance vile of a product casually
extracted by modern alchemy from the urine. If,
in our conceptions of the Universe it be our fate to fall into
illusions, then my "illusion" has, at
least, the advantage of being very consoling. For,
it shows to me an intelligent Universe and the activity of Forces
working in it harmoniously and intelligently; and that
my "I" is not the product of chemical and histological
elements but an embodiment of a common universal Mind. The
latter, I sense and represent to myself as acting in free
will and consciousness in accordance with the same laws which
are traced for the guidance of my own mind, but only exempt
from that restraint which trammels our human conscious
individuality. For, as remarks elsewhere this
great and philosophic man of Science: – The
limitless and the eternal, is not only a postulate
of our mind and reason, but also a gigantic fact,
in itself. What would become of our ethical or moral
principle were not the everlasting and integral truth to serve
it as a foundation! The above selections translated verbatim from the confessions
of one who was during his long life a star of the first magnitude
in the fields of pathology and surgery, show him imbued
and soaked through with the philosophy of a reasoned and scientific
mysticism. In reading the Memoirs of that man of
scientific fame, we feel proud of finding him accepting,
almost wholesale, the fundamental doctrines and beliefs
of Theosophy. With such an exceptionally scientific mind
in the ranks of mystics, the idiotic grins, the
cheap satires and flings at our great Philosophy by some European
and American "Freethinkers," become almost a
compliment. More than ever do they appear to us like the
frightened discordant cry of the night-owl hurrying to hide in
its dark ruins before the light of the morning Sun. The progress of physiology itself, as we have just said,
is a sure warrant that the dawn of that day when a full recognition
of a universally diffused mind will be an accomplished fact,
is not far off. It is only a question of time. For, notwithstanding the boast of physiology, that
the aim of its researches is only the summing up of every vital
function in order to bring them into a definite order by showing
their mutual relations to, and connection with,
the laws of physics and chemistry, hence, in their
final form with mechanical laws – we fear there is a good deal
of contradiction between the confessed object and the speculations
of some of the best of our modern physiologists. While
few of them would dare to return as openly as did Dr. Pirogoff
to the "exploded superstition" of vitalism and
the severely exiled life principle, the principium vitæ
of Paracelsus – yet physiology stands sorely perplexed in the
face of its ablest representatives before certain facts. Unfortunately
for us, this age of ours is not conducive to the development
of moral courage. The time for most to act on the noble
idea of" principia non homines," has not
yet come. And yet there are exceptions to the general rule,
and physiology – whose destiny it is to become the hand-maiden
of Occult truths – has not let the latter remain without their
witnesses. There are those who are already stoutly protesting
against certain hitherto favorite propositions. For instance,
some physiologists are already denying that it is the forces and
substances of so-called "inanimate" nature, which
are acting exclusively in living beings. For, as
they well argue: –
The fact that we reject the interference of other forces in living
things, depends entirely on the limitations of our senses.
We use, indeed, the same organs for our
observations of both animate and inanimate nature; and
these organs can receive manifestations of only a limited realm
of motion. Vibrations passed along the fibres of our optic
nerves to the brain reach our perceptions through our consciousness
as sensations of light and color; vibrations affecting
our consciousness through our auditory organs strike us as sounds;
all our feelings, through whichever of our senses,
are due to nothing but motions. Such are the teachings of physical Science, and such were
in their roughest outlines those of Occultism, æons
and millenniums back. The difference, however,
and most vital distinction between the two teachings, is
this: official science sees in motion simply a blind,
unreasoning force or law; Occultism, tracing motion
to its origin, identifies it with the Universal Deity,
and calls this eternal ceaseless motion – the "Great Breath."1 Nevertheless, however limited the conception of Modern
Science about the said Force, still it is suggestive enough
to have forced the following remark from a great Scientist,
the present professor of physiology at the University of Basle,2 who speaks like an Occultist. It would be
folly in us to expect to be ever able to discover,
with the assistance only of our external senses, in animate
nature that something which we are unable to find in the inanimate. And forthwith the lecturer adds that man being endowed "in
addition to his physical senses with an inner sense,"
a perception which gives him the possibility of observing the
states and phenomena of his own consciousness, "he
has to use that indealing with animate nature" – a
profession of faith verging suspiciously on the borders of Occultism.
He denies, moreover, the assumption,
that the states and phenomena of consciousness represent in substance
the same manifestations of motion as in the external world,
and bases his denial by the reminder that not all of such states
and manifestations have necessarily a spatial extension. According
to him that only is connected with our conception of space which
has reached our consciousness through sight, touch,
and the muscular sense, while all the other senses,
all the effects, tendencies, as all
the interminable series of representations, have no extension
in space but only in time. Thus he asks: – Where then
is there room in this for a mechanical theory? Objectors
might argue that this is so only in appearance, while in
reality all these have a spatial extension. But such an
argument would be entirely erroneous. Our sole reason for
believing that objects perceived by the senses have such extension
in the external world, rests on the idea that they seem
to do so, as far as they can be watched and observed through
the senses of sight and touch. With regard, however,
to the realm of our inner senses even that supposed foundation
loses its force and there is no ground for admitting it. The winding up argument of the lecturer is most interesting to
Theosophists. Says this physiologist of the modern school
of Materialism – Thus,
a deeper and more direct acquaintance with our
inner nature unveils to us a world entirely unlike the
world represented to us by our external senses, and
reveals the most heterogeneous faculties, shows objects
having nought to do with spatial extension, and phenomena
absolutely disconnected with those that fall under mechanical
laws. Hitherto the opponents of vitalism and "life-principle,"
as well as the followers of the mechanical theory of life,
based their views on the supposed fact, that, as
physiology was progressing forward, its students succeeded
more and more in connecting its functions with the laws of
blind matter. All those manifestations that used to
be attributed to a "mystical life-force," they
said, may be brought now under physical and chemical laws.
And they were, and still are loudly clamoring for the
recognition of the fact that it is only a question of time when
it will be triumphantly demonstrated that the whole vital process,
in its grand totality, represents nothing more mysterious
than a very complicated phenomenon of motion, exclusively
governed by the forces of inanimate nature. But here we have a professor of physiology who asserts that the
history of physiology proves, unfortunately for them,
quite the contrary; and he pronounces these ominous words: – I maintain
that the more our experiments and observations are
exact and many-sided, the deeper we penetrate into facts,
the more we try to fathom and speculate on the phenomena of life,
the more we acquire the conviction, that even those phenomena
that we had hoped to be already able to explain by physical and
chemical laws, are in reality unfathomable. They
are vastly more complicated, in fact; and as we
stand at present, they will not yield to any mechanical
explanation. This is a terrible blow at the puffed-up bladder known as Materialism,
which is as empty as it is dilated. A Judas in the camp
of the apostles of negation – the "animalists"! But the
Basle professor is no solitary exception, as we have just
shown; and there are several physiologists who are of his
way of thinking; indeed some of them going so far as to
almost accept free-will and consciousness, in
the simplest monadic protoplasms! One discovery after the other tends in this direction. The
works of some German physiologists are especially interesting
with regard to cases of consciousness and positive discrimination – one
is almost inclined to say thought – in the Amœbas.
Now the Amœbas or animalculæ are,
as all know, microscopical protoplasms – as the Vampyrella
Sirogyra for instance, a most simple elementary cell,
a protoplasmic drop, formless and almost structureless.
And yet it shows in its behavior something for which zoologists,
if they do not call it mind and power of reasoning, will
have to find some other qualification, and coin a new term.
For see what Cienkowsky3 says of it. Speaking
of this microscopical, bare, reddish cell he describes
the way in which it hunts for and finds among a number of other
aquatic plants one called Spirogyra, rejecting every
other food. Examining its peregrinations under a powerful
microscope, he found it when moved by hunger, first
projecting its pseudopodiæ (false feet) by the help
of which it crawls. Then it commences moving about until
among a great variety of plants it comes across a Spirogyra,
after which it proceeds toward the cellulated portion of one
of the cells of the latter, and placing itself on it,
it bursts the tissue, sucks the contents of one cell and
then passes on to another, repeating the same process.
This naturalist never saw it take any other food, and
it never touched any of the numerous plants placed by Cienkowsky
in its way. Mentioning another Amœba – the Colpadella
Pugnax – he says that he found it showing the same predilection
for the Chlamydomonas on which it feeds exclusively;
"having made a puncture in the body of the Chlamydomonas
it sucks its chlorophyl and then goes away," he writes,
adding these significant words: "The way of
acting of these monads during their search for and reception of
food, is so amazing that one is almost inclined to see
in them consciously acting beings!" Not less suggestive are the observations of Th. W. Engelman
(Beitraege zur Physiologie des Protoplasm), on the
Arcella, another unicellular organism only a trifle
more complex than the Vampyrella. He shows them
in a drop of water under a microscope on a piece of glass,
lying so to speak, on their backs, i.e.,
on their convex side, so that the pseudopodiæ,
projected from the edge of the shell, find no hold
in space and leave the Amœba helpless. Under these
circumstances the following curious fact is observed. Under
the very edge of one of the sides of the protoplasm gas-bubbles
begin immediately to form, which, making that side
lighter, allow it to be raised, bringing at the
same time the opposite side of the creature into contact with
the glass, thus furnishing its pseudo or false feet
means to get hold of the surface and thereby turning over its
body to raise itself on all its pseudopodiæ. After
this, the Amœba proceeds to suck back into itself
the gas-bubbles and begins to move. If a like drop of water
is placed on the lower extremity of the glass, then,
following the law of gravity the Amœbæ will find themselves
at first at the lower end of the drop of water. Failing
to find there a point of support, they proceed to generate
large bubbles of gas, when, becoming lighter than
the water, they are raised up to the surface of the drop. In the words of Engelman: – If having
reached the surface of the glass they find no more support
for their feet than before, forthwith one sees the gas-globules
diminishing on one side and increasing in size and number on the
other, or both, until the creatures touch with the
edge of their shell the surface of the glass, and are enabled
to turn over. No sooner is this done than the gas-globules
disappear and the Arcellae begin crawling. Detach
them carefully by means of a fine needle from the surface of the
glass and thus bring them down once more to the lower surface
of the drop of water; and forthwith they will repeat the
same process, varying its details according to necessity
and devising new means to reach their desired aim. Try
as much as you will to place them in uncomfortable positions,
and they find means to extricate themselves from them,
each time, by one device or the other; and no sooner
have they succeeded than the gas-bubbles disappear! It is impossible
not to admit that such facts as these point to the presence
of some PSYCHIC process in the protoplasm.4 Among hundreds of accusations against Asiatic nations of degrading
superstitions, based on "crass ignorance,"
there exists no more serious denunciation than that which accuses
and convicts them of personifying and even deifying the
chief organs of,and in, the
human body. Indeed, do not we hear these "benighted
fools" of Hindus speaking of the small-pox as a goddess – thus
personifying the microbes of the variolic virus? Do we not read
about Tantrikas, a sect of mystics, giving
proper names to nerves, cells and arteries, connecting
and identifying various parts of the body with deities,
endowing functions and physiological processes with intelligence,
and what not? The vertebræ, fibers, ganglia,
the cord, etc., of the spinal column; the
heart, its four chambers, auricle and ventricle,
valves and the rest; stomach, liver, lungs
and spleen, everything has its special deific name,
is believed to act consciously and to act under the potent
will of the Yogi, whose head and heart are the seats of
Brahmâ and the various parts of whose body are all the pleasure
grounds of this or another deity! This is indeed ignorance. Especially when we think
that the said organs, and the whole body of man are composed
of cells, and these cells are now being recognised as individual
organisms and – quien sabe – will come perhaps to be recognized
some day as an independent race of thinkers inhabiting
the globe, called man! It really looks like it. For
was it not hitherto believed that all the phenomena of assimilation
and sucking in of food by the intestinal canal, could be
explained by the laws of diffusion and endosmosis? And now,
alas, physiologists have come to learn that the action
of the intestinal canal during the act of absorbing, is
not identical with the action of the non-living membrane in the
dialyser. It is now well demonstrated that – this wall is covered with epithelium cells, each of which
is an organism per se, a living being, and
with very complex functions. We know further, that
such a cell assimilates food – by means of active contractions
of its protoplasmic body – in a manner as mysterious as that which
we notice in the independent Amœba and animalcules. We
can observe on the intestinal epithelium of the cold-blooded animals
how these cells project shoots – pseudopodiæ – out
of their contractive, bare, protoplasmic bodies – which
pseudopodiæ, or false feet, fish out
of the food drops of fat, suck them into their protoplasm
and send it further, toward the lymph-duct. . . . The
lymphatic cells issuing from the nests of the adipose tissue,
and squeezing themselves through the epithelium cells up to the
surface of the intestines, absorb therein the drops of
fat and loaded with their prey, travel homeward to the
lymphatic canals. So long as this active work of the cells
remained unknown to us, the fact that while the globules
of fat penetrated through the walls of the intestines into lymphatic
channels, the smallest of pigmental grains introduced into
the intestines did not do so, – remained unexplained.
But to-day we know, that this faculty of selecting
their special food – of assimilating the useful and rejecting the
useless and the harmful – is common to all the unicellular organisms.5 And the lecturer queries, why, if this discrimination
inthe selection of food exists in the simplest and most
elementary of the cells, in the formless and structureless
protoplasmic drops – why it should not exist also in the
epithelium cells of our intestinal canal. Indeed,
if the Vampyrella recognises its much beloved Spirogyra,
among hundreds of other plants as shown above, why
should not the epithelium cell, sense, choose
and select its favorite drop of fat from a pigmental
grain? But we will be told that "sensing, choosing,
and selecting" pertain only to reasoning beings, at
least to the instinct of more structural animals than is
the protoplasmic cell outside or inside man. Agreed;
but as we translate from the lecture of a learned physiologist
and the works of other learned naturalists, we can only
say, that these learned gentlemen must know what they are
talking about; though they are probably ignorant of the
fact that their scientific prose is but one degree removed
from the ignorant, superstitious, but rather
poetical "twaddle" of the Hindu Yogis and Tantrikas. Anyhow, our professor of physiology falls foul of the materialistic
theories of diffusion and endosmosis. Armed with the facts
of the evident discrimination and a mind in the cells,
he demonstrates by numerous instances the fallacy of trying to
explain certain physiological processes by mechanical theories;
such for instance as the passing of sugar from the liver (where
it is transformed into glucose) into the blood. Physiologists
find great difficulty in explaining this process, and regard
it as an impossibility to bring it under the endosmosic laws.
In all probability the lymphatic cells play just as active
a part during the absorption of alimentary substances dissolved
in water, as the peptics do, a process well demonstrated
by F. Hofmeister.6 Generally speaking,
poor convenient endosmose is dethroned and exiled from among the
active functionaries of the human body as a useless sinecurist.
It has lost its voice in the matter of glands and other agents
of secretion, in the action of which the same epithelium
cells have replaced it. The mysterious faculties of selection,
of extracting from the blood one kind of substance and rejecting
another, of transforming the former by means of decomposition
and synthesis, of directing some of the products into passages
which will throw them out of the body and redirecting others into
lymphatic and blood vessels – such is the work of the cells.
"It is evident that in all this there is not the slightest
hint at diffusion or endosmose," says the Basle
physiologist. "It becomes entirely useless to try
and explain these phenomena by chemical laws." But perhaps physiology is luckier in some other department? Failing
in the laws of alimentation, it may have found some consolation
for its mechanical theories in the question of the activity of
muscles and nerves, which it sought to explain by electric
laws? Alas, save in a few fishes – in no other living organisms,
least of all in the human body, could it find any possibility
of pointing out electric currents as the chief ruling agency.
Electrobiology on the lines of pure dynamic electricity has
egregiously failed. Ignorant of "Fohat" no electrical
currents suffice to explain to it either muscular or nervous activity! But there is such a thing as the physiology of external sensations.
Here we are no longer on terra incognita, and
all such phenomena have already found purely physical explanations.
No doubt, there is the phenomenon of sight,
the eye with its optical apparatus, its camera obscura.
But the fact of the sameness of the reproduction of things
in the eye, according to the same laws of refraction as
on the plate of a photographic machine, is no vital
phenomenon. The same may be reproduced on a dead
eye. The phenomenon of life consists in the evolution
and development of the eye itself. How is this marvellous
and complicated work produced? To this physiology replies,
"We do not know"; for, toward the solution
of this great problem –
Physiology has not yet made one single step. True,
we can follow the sequence of the stages of the development and
formation of the eye, but why it is so and what
isthe causal connection, we have absolutely no
idea. The second vital phenomenon of the eye is its accommodating
activity. And here we are again face to face with the functions
of nerves and muscles – our old insoluble riddles. The same
may be said of all the organs of sense. The same also relates
to other departments of physiology. We had hoped to explain
the phenomena of the circulation of the blood by the laws of hydrostatics
or hydrodynamics. Of course the blood moves in accordance
with the hydrodynamical laws: but its relation to them
remains utterly passive. As to the active functions
of the heart and the muscles of its vessels, no
one, so far, has ever been able to explain them
by physical laws. The underlined words in the concluding portion of the able Professor's
lecture are worthy of an Occultist. Indeed, he seems
to be repeating an aphorism from the "Elementary Instructions"
of the esoteric physiology of practical Occultism: – The riddle
of life is found in the active functions of a living
organism,7 the real perception of which activity
we can get only through self-observation, and not owing
to our external senses; by observations on our will,
so far as it penetrates our consciousness, thus revealing
itself to our inner sense. Therefore, when the same
phenomenon acts only on our external senses, we recognize
it no longer. We see everything that takes place around
and near the phenomenon of motion, but the essence of that
phenomenon we do not see at all, because we lack for it
a special organ of receptivity. We can accept that esse
in a mere hypothetical way, and do so, in fact,
when we speak of "active functions." Thus does
every physiologist, for he cannot go on without such hypothesis;
and this is a first experiment of a psychological explanation
of all vital phenomena. . . . And if it is demonstrated
to us that we are unable with the help only of physics and chemistry
to explain the phenomena of life, what may we expect from
other adjuncts of physiology, from the sciences of morphology,
anatomy, and histology? I maintain that these can never
help us to unriddle the problem of any of the mysterious phenomena
of life. For, after we have succeeded with the help
of scalpel and microscope in dividing the organisms into their
most elementary compounds, and reached the simplest of
cells, it is just here that we find ourselves face to face
with the greatest problem of all. The simplest monad,
a microscopical point of protoplasm, form less and structureless,
exhibits yet all the essential vital functions, alimentation,
growth, breeding, motion, feeling and sensuous
perception, and even such functions which replace "consciousness" – the
soul of the higher animals! The problem – for Materialism – is a terrible one, indeed!
Shall our cells, and infinitesimal monads in nature,
do for us that which the arguments of the greatest Pantheistic
philosophers have hitherto failed to do? Let us hope so. And
if they do, then the "superstitious and ignorant"
Eastern Yogis, and even their exoteric followers,
will find themselves vindicated. For we hear from the same
physiologist that – A large
number of poisons are prevented by the epithelium cells
from penetrating into lymphatic spaces, though we know
that they are easily decomposed in the abdominal and intestinal
juices. More than this. Physiology is aware that
by injecting these poisons directly into the blood, they
will separate from, and reappear through the intestinal
walls, and that in this process the lymphatic cells
take a most active part. If the reader turns to Webster's Dictionary he will find
therein a curious explanation at the words "lymphatic"
and "Lymph." Etymologists think that the Latin
word lympha is derived from the Greek nymphe,
"a nymph or inferior Goddess," they
say. "The Muses were sometimes called nymphs by
the poets. Hence (according to Webster) all persons in
a state of rapture, as seers, poets, madmen,
etc., were said to be caught by the nymphs." The Goddess of Moisture (the Greek and Latin nymph or lymph,
then) is fabled in India as being born from the pores of
one of the Gods, whether the Ocean God, Varuna,
or a minor "River God" is left to the particular sect
and fancy of the believers. But the main question is,
that the ancient Greeks and Latins are thus admittedly known to
have shared in the same "superstitions" as the Hindus.
This superstition is shown in their maintaining to this day
that every atom of matter in the four (or five) Elements is an
emanation from an inferior God or Goddess, himself or herself
an earlier emanation from a superior deity; and,
moreover, that each of these atoms – being Brahmâ,
one of whose names is Anu, or atom – no sooner is
it emanated than it becomes endowed with consciousness,
each of its kind, and free-will, acting within
the limits of law. Now, he who knows that the kosmic
trimurti (trinity) composed of Brahmâ, the Creator;
Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer,
is a most magnificent and scientific symbol of the material
Universe and its gradual evolution; and who finds a
proof of this, in the etymology of the names of these deities,8
plus the doctrines of Gupta Vidya, or esoteric
knowledge – knows also how to correctly understand this "superstition."
The five fundamental titles of Vishnu – added to that of Anu
(atom) common to all the trimurtic personages – which are,
Bhutâtman, one with the created or emanated
materials of the world; Pradhanâtman, "one
with the senses;" Paramâtman, "Supreme
Soul"; and Atman, Kosmic Soul,
or the Universal Mind – show sufficiently what the ancient Hindus
meant by endowing with mind and consciousness every atom and giving
it a distinct name of a God or a Goddess. Place their Pantheon,
composed of 30 crores (or 300 millions) of deities within the
macrocosm (the Universe), or inside the microcosm (man),
and the number will not be found overrated, since they
relate to the atoms, cells, and molecules of everything
that is. This, no doubt, is too poetical and abstruse for
our generation, but it seems decidedly as scientific,
if not more so, than the teachings derived from the latest
discoveries of Physiology and Natural History.
2 From a paper read by him some time ago at a public
lecture.
3 L. Cienkowsky. See his work Beitraege
zur Kentniss der Monaden, Archiv f. mikroskop,
Anatomie.
4 Loc. Cit, Pfluger's Archiv. Bd.
II, S. 387.
5 From the paper read by the Professor of physiology
at the University of Basle, previously quoted.
6 Untersuchungen ueber Resorption u. Assimilation
der Naehrstoffe (Archiv. f. Experimentalle
Pathologie und Pharmakologie, Bd. XIX,
1885).
7 Life and activity are but two different
names for the same idea, or, what is still more
correct, they are two words with which the men of science
connect no definite idea whatever. Nevertheless,
and perhaps just for that, they are obliged to use them,
for they contain the point of contact between the most difficult
problems over which, in fact, the greatest thinkers
of the materialistic school have ever tripped.
8 Brahmâ comes from the root brih,
"to expand," to "scatter";
Vishnu from the root vis or vish (phonetically)
"to enter into," "to pervade" the universe,
of matter. As to Siva – the patron of the Yogis,
the etymology of his name would remain incomprehensible to
the casual reader.
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