At the end of the 19th century, hereditary characteristics were still considered
a mystery, and although since then the study of genetics has provided us with
much information, William Judge explained that we cannot have a deeper
understanding of this correlation until karma and reincarnation are accepted.
IS HEREDITY A PUZZLE?
A well known writer in Harper's Magazine
said lately "Heredity is a Puzzle." He then proceeded,
« The race is linked together in a curious tangle, so that it is almost
impossible to fix the responsibility. … We try to study this problem in our
asylums and prisons, and we get a great many interesting facts, but they are
too conflicting to guide legislation. The difficulty is to relieve a person of
responsibility for the sins of his ancestors, without relieving him of responsibility
for his own sins. »
This is the general view. Heredity is a
puzzle, and will always remain one so long as the laws of Karma and
Reincarnation are not admitted and taken into account in all these
investigations. Nearly all of these writers admit —excepting those who say they
do not know— the theological view that each human being is a new creation, a
new soul projected into life on this earth.
This is quite logical, inasmuch as they
assert that we are only mortal and are not spirits. The religious investigators
admit we are spirits, but go no further, except to assume the same special
creation. Hence, when they come to the question of "Heredity," it is
a very serious matter. It becomes a puzzle, especially to those who investigate
heredity and who are trying to decide on whom responsibility ought to rest,
while they know nothing of Karma or Reincarnation. And it is hinted at that
there is necessity for legislation on the subject. That is to say, if we have a
case of a murderer to consider, and we find that he has come of a race or
family of murderers, the result of which is to make him a being who cannot
prevent himself from committing murder, we have to conclude that, if this is
due to "heredity," he cannot in any sane sense be responsible.
Take the case of the tribes, or family, or
sect of Thugs in India, whose aim in life was to put people out of the world.
Their children would of necessity inherit this tendency. It is something like a
cat and a bird. It is the nature of the cat to eat the bird, and you cannot
blame it. Thus we should be driven to pass a law making an exception in the
case of such unfortunate persons. Then we should be met by the possibility of
false testimony being adduced upon the trial of the criminal, going to show
that he came under the law.
This possibility is so great that it is not
likely such a law will ever be passed. So that, even if the legal and
scientific world were able to come to any conclusion establishing the great
force of heredity, it would be barren of results unless the truth of Karma and
Reincarnation were admitted. For in the absence of these, no law, and hence no
remedy for the supposed injustice to be done to irresponsible criminals, could
be applied. I am stating, not what I think ought to be done, but what will be
the inevitable end of investigation into heredity without the aid of the other
two great laws.
If these two doctrines should be accepted
by the supposed legislators, it would follow that no such law as I have adverted
to would ever be put on the books; for the reason that, once Karma and
Reincarnation are admitted, the responsibility of each individual is made
greater than before. Not only is he responsible even under his hereditary
tendency, but in a wider sense he is also responsible for the great injury he
does the State through the future effect of his life, — that effect acting on
those who are born as his descendants.
There is no very great puzzle in
"Heredity" as a law, from the standpoint of Karma and Reincarnation,
although of course the details of the working of it will be complicated and
numerous.
I know that some theosophists have declared
that it puzzles them, but that is because it is a new idea, very different from
those instilled into us during our education as youths and our association with
our fellows as adults.
None of the observed and admitted facts in
respect to heredity should be ignored, nor need they be left out of sight by a
Theosophist. We are bound to admit that leanings and peculiarities are
transmitted from father to son, and to all along down the line of descent. In
one case we may find a mental trait, in another a physical peculiarity; and in
a great-grandson we shall see often the bodily habits of his remote ancestor
reproduced.
The question is then asked:
How am I to be held responsible for such
strange inclinations when I never knew this man from whom I inherit them?
As theories go at this day, it would be
impossible to answer this question. For if I have come from the bosom of God as
a new soul; or if what is called soul or intelligence is the product of this
body I inhabit and which I had no hand in producing; or if I have come from far
distant spheres unconnected with this earth, to take up this body with whose
generation I was not concerned; it would be the grossest injustice for me to be
held responsible for what it may do. It seems to me that from the premises laid
down there can be no escape from this conclusion, and unless our sociologists
and political economists and legislators admit the doctrines of Karma and
Reincarnation, they will have to pass laws to which I have referred. We shall
then have a code which may be called "Of limitations of responsibility of
criminals in cases of murder and other crimes."
But the whole difficulty arises from the inherited
transmitted habit in the Western mind of looking at effects and mistaking
them for causes, and of considering the instruments or means, through and by
means of which laws of nature work, as causes. Heredity has been looked at, or
is beginning to be, as the cause of crime and of virtue. It is not a cause, but
only the means or instrument for the production of the effect, the cause being
hidden deeper. It seems just as erroneous to call heredity a cause of either
good or bad acts as it is to call the merely mortal brain or body the cause of
mind or soul.
Ages ago the Hindu sages admitted that the
body did not produce the mind, but that there was what they called "the
mind of the mind," or, as we might put it, "the intelligence
operating above and behind the mere brain matter." And they enforced their
argument by numerous illustrations; as, for instance, that the eye could not
see even when in itself a perfect instrument, unless the mind behind it was
acting. We can easily prove this from cases of sleep walkers. They walk with
their eyes wide open, so that the retina must, as usual, receive the impinging
images, yet although you stand before their eyes they do not see you. It is
because the intelligence is disjoined from the otherwise perfect optical
instrument. Hence we admit that the body is not the cause of mind; the eyes are
not the cause of sight; but that the body and the eye are instruments by means
of which the cause operates.
Karma and Reincarnation include the premise
that the man is a spiritual entity who is using the body for some
purpose.
From remote times the sages state that he
(this spiritual being) is using the body which he has acquired by Karma. Hence
the responsibility cannot be placed upon the body, nor primarily upon those who
brought forth the body, but upon the man himself. This works perfect
justice, for, while the man in any one body is suffering his just deserts, the
other men (or souls) who produced such bodies are also compelled to make
compensation in other bodies.
As the compensation is not made at any
human and imperfect tribunal, but to nature itself, which includes every part
of it, it consists in the restoration of the harmony or equilibrium which has
been disturbed.
The necessity for recognizing the law from
the standpoint of ethics arises from the fact that, until we are aware that
such is the law, we will never begin to perform such acts and think such
thoughts as will tend to bring about the required alterations in the astral
light needed to start a new order of thoughts and influences. These new
influences will not, of course, come to have full effect and sway on those who
initiate them, but will operate on their descendants, and will also prepare a
new future age in which those very persons who set up the new current shall
participate. Hence it is not in any sense a barren, unrewarded thing, for we
ourselves come back again in some other age to reap the fruit of the seed we
had sown. The impulse must be set up, and we must be willing to wait for the
result. The potter's wheel continues to revolve when the potter has withdrawn
his foot, and so the present revolving wheel will turn for a while until the
impulse is spent.
(Path, November
1888, p.256-9; Echoes I, p.93-96)
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