“This mystery of first creation, which was ever the despair of science, is unfathomable, unless we accept the doctrine of the Hermetists. Though matter is coeternal with spirit, that matter is certainly not our visible, tangible, and divisible matter, but its extreme sublimation. Pure spirit is but one remove higher. Unless we allow man to have been evolved out of this primordial spirit-matter, how can we ever come to any reasonable hypothesis as to the genesis of animate beings?
Darwin begins is evolution of species at the lowest point and traces upward. His only mistake may be that he applies his system at the wrong end. Could he remove his quest from the visible universe into the invisible, he might find himself on the right path. But then, he would be following in the footsteps of the Hermetists.
That our philosophers – positivists – even the most learned among them, never understood the spirit of the mystic doctrines taught by the old philosophers – Platonists – is evident from the most eminent modern work, Conflict between Religion and Science.
Professor Draper begins his fifth chapter by saying that “the Pagan Greeks and Romans believed that the spirit of man resembles his bodily form, varying its appearance with his variations, and growing with his growth.” What the ignorant masses thought is a matter of little consequence, though even they could never have indulged in such speculations taken a la lettre.
As to Greek and Roman philosophers of the Platonic school, they believed no such thing of the spirit of man, but applied the above doctrine to his soul, or physical nature, which, as we have previously shown, is not the divine spirit.”
H. P. Blavatsky
