7rcTIX1xP

The Second Lesson: Omnipresent Life.727
the inorganic forms. “Creation,” so-called (although the word is an absurdity
from the Yogi point of view), is constantly being performed.
Dr. Charlton Bastian, of London, Eng., has long been a prominent advocate
of this theory of continuous spontaneous generation. Laughed down and
considered defeated by the leading scientific minds of a generation ago,
he still pluckily kept at work, and his recent books were like bombshells in
the orthodox scientific camp. He has taken more than five thousand photomicrographs,
all showing most startling facts in connection with the origin
of living forms from the inorganic. He claims that the microscope reveals
the development in a previously clear liquid of very minute black spots,
which gradually enlarge and transform into bacteria—living forms of a very
low order. Prof. Burke, of Cambridge, Eng., has demonstrated that he may
produce in sterilized boullion, subjected to the action of sterilized radium
chloride, minute living bodies which manifest growth and subdivision.
Science is being gradually forced to the conclusion that living forms are still
arising in the world by natural processes, which is not at all remarkable when
one remembers that natural law is uniform and continuous. These recent
discoveries go to swell the already large list of modern scientific ideas
which correspond with the centuries-old Yogi teachings. When the Occult
explanation that there is Life in everything, inorganic as well as organic, and
that evolution is constant, is heard, then may we see that these experiments
simply prove that the forms of life may be changed and developed—not
that Life may be “created.”
The chemical and mineral world furnish us with many instances of the
growth and development of forms closely resembling the forms of the
vegetable world. What is known as “metallic vegetation,” as shown in the “lead
tree,” gives us an interesting example of this phenomenon. The experiment
is performed by placing in a wide-necked bottle a clear acidulated solution
of acetate of lead. The bottle is corked, a piece of copper wire being
fastened to the cork, from which wire is suspended a piece of zinc, the
latter hanging as nearly as possible in the center of the lead solution. When