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10
EOSICRUCIAN PHILOSOPHY
ing no place for any original new building. Those who
study life usually speak only of involution and evolution;
those who study the form, namely, the modern scientists,
are concerned with evolution only, but the most advanced
among them are now beginning to find another factor,
which they have called epigenesis. Already, In 1757, Cas-
par Wolff issued his Theorea Generationis, wherein he
showed that in the development of the ovum, there are
a series of new buildings not at all foreshown by what
has gone before, and Haeckel, indorsing this work, says
that nowadays we are no longer justified in calling epigenesis
a theory. For it is a fact which we may demon-
strate, in the case of the lower forms where the changes
are rapid, under a microscope. Since the mind was given
to man, it is this original creative impulse, epigenesis,
which has been the cause of all our development. Truly do
we build upon that which has been already created, but
there is also something new due to the activity of the
spirit, and thus it is that we become creators, for if we only
imitated that which had already been laid out for us by
God or Angel, it wouM never be possible for us to become
creative intelligences; we would simply be imitators. And
even though we make mistakes, it may be said that we
often learn much more by our mistakes than by our
successes. The sin and the suffering which the inquirer
speaks about are merely 'the result of the mistakes we
make, and their impression upon our consciousness causes
us to be active along other lines which are found to be
with nature. Thus this
good -that is to say, 'in^harmony
world is a training school and not a vale of tears wherein
we have been placed by a capricious God. (See Ques-
tion Xo. 9.)