Chapter III · —Genesis of the Brain

Beginning of the brain—Its correspondence to the animal kingdom and the law of evolution—Inadequacy of physical causes in evolution—The Divine influence and its human analogy—Probability of influx—Possible experimental proof—Potentiality of the microscopic germinal element and its invisible life—Is it a complete microcosm?—The cosmic teaching of Sarcognomy—The fish form of the brain—The triple form of the brain—Decline of the middle brain—Brains of the codfish, flounder, and roach—Embryo of twelve weeks—Lowest type of the brain—Measurement of the embryo brain—Structure of the convolutions—Unfolding of the brain—Forms of twenty-one weeks and seven months—Anatomy shows the central region—Its importance—Neglect of prior authors—Errors of the phrenological school explained—Misled by Mr. Combe into a false system of measurement—How I was led to detect the error—Form of the animal head and form of the noble character—Line of the ventricles—Coronal and basilar development—Its illustration in two heads and in the entire animal kingdom—-Dulness of human observers—Anatomy shows the central region—Circular character of cerebral development—Accuracy of a true cerebral science, and errors of the Gallian system.

The brain begins in a human being in embryonic life, as it begins in the animal kingdom, void of the convolutions which are seen in its maturity,—beginning as a small outgrowth from the medulla oblongata, which after the second month extends into three small sacs of nervous membrane inclosing cavities, making a triple brain, such as exists in fishes, which are the lowest type of vertebrated animals,—animals that have a spinal column or backbone.

From this condition, the fishy condition of the nervous system of the embryo human being at the end of the second month, there is a regular growth which develops in the embryo the forms characteristic of higher orders of animals in regular succession,—fishes, reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds or mammalia, monkeys, and man.

This is the same order of succession which geologists assign to the development of the animal kingdom, the higher species coming in after the lower; and if every human being, instead of developing at once, according to the human type, is compelled to pass through this regular gradation of development, is it not apparent that the lower forms are absolutely necessary as a basis for the higher, and that the higher forms cannot arrive except by building up and giving additional development to the lower? In other words, the present status of humanity above the animal kingdom was attained not by a sudden burst of creative power, making a distinct and isolated being, but by the gradual and consecutive influx, which evolved new faculties and organs,—a process called evolution. How slow or how rapid this process may have been, science has not yet determined; but it would require incalculable millions of years if nothing but the common exciting effects of environment and necessity have been operative in evolution; and science has utterly failed to discover any power which could carry on development so effectively as to produce an entire transformation of species, and overcome the vast differences between the oyster and the bird, the fish and the elephant.

But as such transmutations of the nervous system do virtually occur in man before birth, we cannot say that they are impossible, for that which occurs in the womb under the influence of parental love may also occur in the womb of nature under the influence of Divine love; for love is the creative power, and as the maternal influx may determine the noble development of humanity or the ignoble development of monsters and animalized beings, it is obvious that the formative stage of all beings is a plasmic condition in which the most subtle or spiritual influences may totally change their destiny and development.

That such an influx may come to exalt or to modify the animal type is by no means unreasonable, for human beings in vast numbers are liable to such influences from the unseen, which exert a controlling influence, and many animals are as accessible to invisible influences as man, while their embryos are vastly more so than the parents. If then we recognize the spiritual being in man, and the same spiritual being disembodied as a potential existence,—if, moreover, we recognize the illimitable and incomprehensible psychical power behind the universe, of which man is one expression, we cannot fail to see that the embryonic development of animals from a lower to a higher form is entirely possible and probable; and in the absence of any other practicable method of evolution to higher types we are compelled to adopt this as the most rational.

What is difficult or utterly impossible when we rely on physical causes alone, becomes facile enough when we introduce the spiritual, and argue from what we see in the spiritual genesis of every human being to the analogous processes of nature on the largest scale.

If a false and brutal superstition did not stand in the way, clothed in pharisaical assumption and political power, experiments might be made on human beings and animals sufficient to settle most positively all doubt as to transmutation of species by the semi-creative power from the invisible world, combined with visible agencies.

Indeed, the entire difficulty vanishes from the mind of a philosopher when he refers to the fact that the potentiality of all being resides in a microscopic germinal element containing within itself an invisible spiritual energy, which determines for all time a continual succession of animals of certain forms and characteristics which human power has never been able to change.

Why is it that a simple speck of protoplasm void of visible organization—a mere jelly to hold the invisible life power—carries within itself in that invisible spiritual element the destiny of myriads of animal beings, and according to the nature of that invisible spiritual element it may develop into a Humboldt or an oyster, an elephant, a humming-bird, or a serpent?