With the development of mind in man it is not necessary for a changing form of the physical body. Admit, as do De Quatrefages and other anthropologists, that the form of man has not changed since the post-tertiary period and all animal forms have changed; then we should reason that the human form had reached its limit of differentiation.
We are evolving on the mind plane in nature, or humanity is now in the stage of the evolution of mind. The difficulty modern science meets with, is in the doctrine of biogenesis, life from life. Pasteur has shown that spontaneous generation is not a fact in nature.
Evolution is regarded as the law of life — the regulative law of all life. If life is an advantage and evolution is its process, why is it that so many infants do not have a chance to come under its sway? If life is not an advantage why is it that so many are compelled to live to old age?
Assuming, as all thinkers must, that the Universe is under law, then the many problems raised by the foregoing questions are cleared up by the application of the law of reincarnation.
The universe and the whole of creation is eternal. The matter in the universe is neither more nor less than at the beginning — hence it has been used over and over again for these bodies of ours, and as well for other purposes. If force can express itself through matter in the form of humanity once, it can do it again. Matter displays itself on different planes, as on solid, liquid and gaseous, give it the proper conditions and the manifestation follows. The human plane is a plane for the manifestation of matter under a different rate of vibration of force as compared with the planes just mentioned. When we fully appreciate the universality of intelligence or consciousness, as well as the universality of matter and force, we are enabled to understand both man and nature, in the sense that our scope has been extended, and the view assumes grander proportions.
Just as the earth had a beginning in space as a vapor, separated from all other bodies and yet held to all other bodies, so had man a beginning. The vapor from which has differentiated our earth came from space — that is the potency for its formation was inherent in space. This vapor was ages in condensing and out of that gradually condensing vapor, by a process of differentiation, came all that belongs to the earth.
As man is evolved in and from nature, hence potentially man must have existed in the vapory condition of the earth. Else, where came the first germ? It is just as reasonable to consider man as involved and evolved in nature and as passing through the same stages as did our earth in early time, as it is to wait until after the earth has been formed and then attempt to account for the first germ of life. Hence a vaporous earth and a filmy man, etc. Thus it is that science is hunting for missing links that will never be found, because plastic life had no skeletons to leave in the mud of prehistoric times. And now that mind is the study of the hour they sadly lack a proper basis, a philosophy that will aid in solving the problems of psychic phenomena.
Assume that the earth and all its accompaniments existed in the plastic state and what we see is the unfoldment of inherent capabilities, and then extend the same reasoning to man and his attributes, and work out the problem of evolution along that line for a while. It will not take long to show that the missing links are gradually filled in, for all our missing links are in our knowledge of nature and not in nature itself.