Copyright © 1977 by Theosophical University Press. All rights reserved.
No one has ever succeeded in bridging the gaps separating the great groups or phyla of animal stocks, and therefore no one has been able to find that alleged continuous stairway up which man is supposed to have climbed to his present evolutionary status. Doubtless there have been in the past intermediate beings, or rather intermediate stages of life between these great groups; but the geologic record, so imperfect, has not yet revealed them. Should they ever be discovered, they would no doubt be acclaimed by transformists as the long sought for and always missing links. It is probable that these particular scientists would ignore the more likely possibility that they are simply specimens of specialization of one or more of the great stocks below man; for we already know that all these great stocks have exhibited examples of aberrant evolution or rather of evolutionary specializations.
Thus these findings would in no sense be de facto missing links, but offshoots from one or more of these great stocks, which offshoots have followed certain minor lines of progressive variation. In fact, each one of the great phyla or groups or stocks, as we now see each one of such today, is but the point of evolutionary variation which they have reached at the present time, and by no means precluding still greater specializations in variability in the future. To put the matter in a nutshell, each of these great groups or phyla is simply a large evolutionary development, a specialization, from the elementary zoologic roots.
Evolution and specialization are, in one sense, almost synonymous. If evolution means the unwrapping of that which is dormant or latent or sleeping, so does specialization mean the same thing. One great group, as is well known in zoology, or in botany for that matter, may take on the specialized forms or variations which are typical or type forms of another great group, frequently lower. A mammal, for instance, may take on variations of a bird type or of a fish type, and yet remain a mammal in both cases.
Consider the wide divergent evolution of the whale. The whale is a mammal, and at one time must have been a land animal which for some unknown reason went down to the sea; and yet it looks like a fish and passes its life in the water of the ocean. If you have ever seen a picture of a whale or of a dolphin, which is also a sea mammal, side by side with the picture of a shark, and if you were to place above these a picture of the extinct species ichthyosaurus, they at first glance appear so much alike in general characteristics of shape and form, that you would say, if unacquainted with the anatomical features of these creatures, that all three are different kinds of fish. Yet the shark is a fish, and the ichthyosaurus of the Mesozoic or Secondary era of geology was a reptile, while the whale or the dolphin is a mammal. Fish, reptile, and mammal: three widely different stocks which have approached each other in general shape and habit through the influence of environment. That influence has been so strong, though reacting against the inner urge or inner vital drive of the evolving entity in each of these three forms, that it has been prepotent in producing the fishlike body and habit. Though radically different anatomically and derivatively, they yet have the superficial likenesses of the marine fish stock. But strip away the flesh and examine the skeleton of each of these three animals, and the three different stocks to which they respectively belong become immediately discernible.
We might also instance the bat. The bat is likewise a mammal, and yet it has all the appearance and many of the habits of a bird; in fact, it is more of a true flier than any bird is, because virtually its sole mode of easy locomotion is flight. Its flight is so swift and silent and so direct that it very probably may be called the most wonderful flier we know.
All birds have legs and in some cases strong and powerful ones, and can stand and walk with ease and in some cases can run; but the bat, as you must have noticed yourself if you have ever watched one, is almost helpless unless it is in flight. Its movements on the ground or on the floor are extremely awkward. What induced the bat to leave the ground and take to the air? What was the cause of this wide divergence of form and habit from the ancestral mammalian stem? Who can say?
Please remember in this connection that "evolved" or "specialized" does not necessarily mean higher or superior, if we use the technical term of scientific books. It merely means the bringing out of that which is seeking expression, a larger degree of "specialization." Such multitudes of forms, diverging ever more from the primitive or root stock, are always instances of type-specializations. Specialization is in all cases a mark of a greater distance from the origin of any such stock.
Let me illustrate what I mean by the elephant, a quadruped. Look at the development that the nose of the elephant has taken, called its trunk. Look at its immense fanlike ears. These are specific characters belonging to it, and they are found early even in the embryological record of that beast, therefore showing that these specific characters go far back in time in the history of that strain.
Let us instance also the foot of the horse. Do you know what a horse's hoof is? It is the highly evolved and specifically developed toenail of the third digit of each of its four feet. That animal walks literally on the highly developed toenail of the elongated third toe of each foot.
Now there is no such specific characteristic as regards man's hands and feet in the evolutionary history of man, as is shown in the development of the human embryo. In fact, the horse's hoof is a far and wide evolution, a highly evoluted development from the primitive progenitor of the equine stock. It is a specific character belonging to the equine race.
Here is a case in point of what we mean when we speak of the far-flung specific evolutionary development of any one of the various stocks, and of the impossibility of the human strain's passing through it on its upward journey.
It is true also that other animals walk or move more or less in this manner. The ape, for example, when it goes on all fours as it usually does, does not walk along plantigrade, or flatfoot fashion; it walks on its fingers, on the nails or on the knuckles of its hands. Somewhat similarly did the ancestors of the horse. All these are instances of specialization.
Specialization is always a side issue. It is the following of a path which does not lead in the main evolutionary direction. It indicates at least a temporary arresting of inner evolutionary development, a running off into unessential bypaths -- unessential, that is, from the standpoint of spiritual evolution. Thus, in a sense, all developments of the beast stocks away from the primitive human strain may be said to be specializations, as they diverged more and more widely from the main trunk, each following its own genealogical branching. Their opportunity, indeed their capacity, to forge ahead along psychological lines was limited, though there were infinite possibilities in the way of physiological variations for them to pursue.
Meanwhile the human race, most primitive of all, retained its comparative simplicity of bodily structure and function, because it was not solely concerned with mere experimentation and adaptation along physical lines. Once it had built for itself a suitable vehicle, it abandoned that line of evolution as a distinct line of evolution for its own sake, in order to bring into outer expression the far more important inner psychological, intellectual, and indeed spiritual factors locked within it.
This same principle works out in the sphere of human life itself. Wherever you see a too great specialization in any branch of science, for instance, you may know that there forward progress is likely to be in abeyance; because running off exclusively into bypaths of specialized study cuts one off from the main course of human thinking, that broad stream which has been fed through the ages by all profound thinkers adding their contribution to the forward evolution of human thought.
Remember that evolution proceeds in all cases by means of two agencies: the inner drive or urge in the evolving entity, acting upon surrounding circumstances or environment, which react against the creature expressing such inner drive or urge. The resultant of these two forces or conditions is the animal, or the human being, or any other entity, at any moment of its developmental course. Thus we mean by evolution the unfolding or rolling out of potentialities or potencies or latent capacities inwrapt in the creature itself. And when the environment permits an outflowing or unwrapping of these latent powers, they immediately flow forth into manifestation, or assert themselves, the resultant in the case of the beast kingdom being a change in some one or more respects in the physical vehicle or body; and in the case of the human kingdom in its present stage, a fuller expression of the inner psychological entity.
Now I have stated that there was no uniserial or end-on evolution of the human stock through and across the great classes of animate entities beneath the human; and that it is the various gaps or lacunae between the stocks that have formed the main stumbling blocks for the transformists in their attempt to prove their hypotheses. Every attempt to bridge these gaps by an appeal to nature's record has broken down of necessity. But fixed ideas die hard; there has been much work, much of it good and brilliant work, in an endeavor to evolve some new hypothesis, to offer some further explanation, by which the accepted transformist theories of evolution could be proved.
Consequently there has arisen a more modern evolutionary school, which we may call the "Saltatory" school, based on the idea that evolution frequently pursues a "leaping" or jumping course, if we may so express the idea. But no satisfactory explanation has been given of the fact that such sudden and large variations do occur, nor why these leaps or saltatory variations take place. Prominent among the proponents of this particular so-called mutationist school are the Netherlander Hugo de Vries, and William Bateson, a British scientist.
These gentlemen have found that certain plants and animals do show in their biological history wide steps from one stage or variation to another stage or variation, and that these stages in variation are so large and the resultant entity is so specifically different from the step preceding it, that they have called such wide steps mutations. Mutation of course means change, in the sense of variation from the preceding condition. Such mutations do in fact exist.
These are caused by the fact that the evolving entity had accumulated -- if we may use such an imperfect expression -- a habit or set of habits which remain latent for periods more or less indefinite. Such habits or groups of habits we may call recessive or sleeping or latent; but there they are, and when the environmental circumstances are appropriate for their manifestation, as in all other cases of suddenly appearing variations, out they come, and to all appearances a new species has started its evolutionary course.
Obviously then, the law of evolution by slow and graduating stages, one into the other, has not been in any sense violated, for these habits or groups of habits or variations were accumulated and built into the biologic architecture and history of the cell or cellular organism which produced them. Environment provides the path for their manifestation when the barriers hindering their appearance vanish, or are broken down, or for some other reason no longer oppose the outflowing of the inner forces or force hitherto asleep or latent or recessive.
The explanation of this fact of wide and sudden variations lies in the nature of the cellular structure in the body of each such evolving entity. I do not see how evolution can ever be understood if we limit our study of it solely to the variable and changing body; because it should be obvious to any reflective mind that the body can express only that which an inner and spiritual power has ordained in its endeavors at self-expression through the body, when an appropriate environment allows it to show itself.
We have already pointed out that the inner evolution of man, that is to say, the evolution of the inner powers of his being, is by far more important and interesting, because causal, than is the evolution or change in specialization of his physical frame. But we are limiting our present thesis more or less to the evolution of the vehicle or body through which man, or through which the entities below him, respectively evolve and work or express each its own inner drive.
An interesting scientific discovery of recent years has taken the form of what is now called Mendelism. Gregor Mendel was an Austrian peasant boy with a love of nature, which he studied. He was later a monk, and at his death was abbot of Brunn. Outside of his ecclesiastical occupations he evidently had much time, as a lover of nature, to study the things which interested him. And so in the garden of his monastery, this monkish investigator of some of the mysteries of nature experimented with the common garden pea. He made many experiments, extending over a number of years. He collated the results of his studies, and he found several very interesting things; for instance, that heredity expresses itself along mathematical lines, in quantitative relations, which is likewise how the theosophist regards this question of heredity.
Collecting the results of his studies, he printed them in 1865; and they were promptly forgotten, if indeed they ever received any attention at the time. The world then was ringing with quarrels over Darwinism and the natural selection and survival of the fittest theories. And the studies and explanations of this obscure Austrian investigator were completely lost sight of.
But in the year 1900, eighteen years after the death of Mendel, the results of the studies which he had incorporated in formal shape and had printed in 1865 were rediscovered more or less independently by three great botanists, Hugo de Vries, E. Correns, and G. Tschermak. These botanists found that Mendel's work, as set forth in his printed thesis, aided them greatly in explaining their own mutationist hypothesis, that is, the hypothesis of saltatory evolution or evolution by leaps or jumps.
What then is Mendelism? Mendelism is the theory that there exist in the reproductive or germ plasm of plants and of animals certain powers seeking expression, and that they manifest in mathematical or quantitative relationships.
For instance, we shall take the illustration that Mendel himself chose. In his experiments with peas he crossed a dwarf pea with a tall pea, and in the succeeding generation he found that they were all talls. He therefore said that the tall is "dominant," and that the dwarf strain is "recessive" -- sleeping or dormant, or latent, the theosophist would say. He allowed this second generation, all talls, to fertilize itself in the natural course, and their offspring were found to segregate themselves or to sift themselves out as follows: one quarter were dwarfs, three quarters were talls.
He found that the quarter of dwarfs invariably produced dwarfs if they were not crossed, thus showing that it was a pure strain or stock. But of the three quarters consisting of talls, one quarter invariably produced talls, thus showing that that quarter of talls was likewise a pure stock; while the other half of the talls brought forth offspring precisely as their parents had done, that is to say, they produced in the next generation one quarter true-strain dwarfs, one quarter true-strain talls, and two fourths of mixed dwarf and tall strain.
How do these quantitative relations come about? What is it that produces these mathematical relationships in the reproductive or germ plasm? Environment of course has something to do with it, because environment provides the stimulus, as it were, enabling the inner urge or potency to express itself; in other words, environment is the field within which and upon which these natural forces, inherent in the stock, work. But we must look into the inner nature of the individual itself under investigation if we wish to trace these secrets of nature to their origin and to explain them. The solution of this problem lies in the cell, that is to say, in the inherent, or indwelling, or innate, or inclosed powers of the cell itself.
All matter -- both the living and the so-called inanimate -- is ultimately built up from atoms, each one of which possesses vast and incomputable capacities for change, which is evolution towards growth or retrogression, as the case may be; but always evolution, that is, the bringing out of that which is lying in it seeking expression.
In many instances this evolving, this bringing out, of the inner tendency, potency, or capacity, is inhibited by various circumstances; and in such event, the atom or the cell -- for the cell copies the general scheme of the atoms of which it is composed -- falls under what in theosophy is called the law of retardation, and must bide its time until its own cycle for growth comes. But if its cycle be one under the action of the law of acceleration, it begins to grow in progressive development, always bringing out that which is within itself, lying latent within it, as potency or tendency. (1)
Evolution therefore actually is self-expression. It does not proceed in a haphazard manner, but according to the inner urge or drive of the more or less conscious invisible entity or soul, which is the factor seeking to manifest itself through its vehicle or vehicles. Its doing this is what we call evolution. It is in the very small that we should seek for the unriddling of this riddle of evolution, for the solving of the problem of what it is that causes growth, and particularly expansive or forward or progressive growth.
Man being a child of the universe, being a part of that universe itself, he has in him everything -- every force, every potency, every capacity -- that the macrocosm or great universe has. He, as an entity, in his turn is a macrocosm to the cells which compose his body, for they are a part of him and therefore have everything in them which he has in him, albeit latent or dormant, and not yet kinetic.
The powers are there, and when the environment be fit and appropriate, when the barriers have been worn down through evolution, or rather cleared away by the working of the inner drive, then these potencies, these capacities, manifest this inner urge for self-expression; and behold! something new is produced -- a new variety, a new species; it may be destined indeed to develop a new stock.
It all depends upon two factors in the biologic equation: an inner urge expressing the inherent potency or capacity with a free path and uninhibited by barriers; and, second, an environment fit and appropriate as a field for their expression.
This is what I have meant when I have said that man is the repertory of all the animate entities on earth. Moreover, he has everything in him that he himself can ever in future be; and these potencies await the time and the place for their coming forth into manifestation. The process is "evolution" or self-expression. I meant further when saying that man gave birth to all the animate creatures below him, that in the beginning the roots or seeds of all the animate creatures below him existed in him as latent or dormant or sleeping things.
Please remember that we now are speaking of man's physical body. We do not mean that these animate creatures below him formerly existed in his soul or in his spiritual nature; but that they were sleeping elemental entities in his nature and derived from him as their parent. They took the manifold and many forms and shapes they had and have, because these most fitly manifest the particular kind of energy expressing itself in each and every case.
FOOTNOTE:
1. An interesting and indeed fascinating observation may be ventured here to the effect that these mathematical relationships so prominent in biological story and so effective in the working of the evolutionary scheme, are more or less automatic as concerns the kingdoms of nature below man. But beginning with man and appertaining to the kingdoms above him, as, for example, to the three kingdoms of the dhyani-chohans, these mathematical relationships, while just as strict in their action upon evolving entities, nevertheless are then expanding into fields of evolving consciousness, or rather consciousnesses, and this brings about in the long courses of evolutionary history constant increments of individuality as appertaining to units or individuals. Individuality thus always tends to modify the details of a general law; but this does not mean that the general law is not operative. (return to text)