Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/176

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Immortalization.
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others have not, the power of reproducing their kind; instances of which arc altogether too numerous to need special mention—as, for instance, the various acarii, produced from powdered flint which had first been calcined to white heat; and the familiar phenomenon of lizardesque beings originating from salted cabbage in dark, moist cellars; and still further, the occasional production of the low-type baboon, by the arrestation of gestation in pregnant negresscs,—an instance of which occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, but a few years ago. So it is not always strictly, albeit generally true, that things reproduce their types and species.

In the case of man, his origin by the methods and processes "universally believed in a few years ago, is now almost as universally discredited, for the Science of To-day rejects all that cannot be demonstrated accordant with Law; and the human being is proved to have been a gradual, and by no means a sudden or miraculous creation. [See the Volume "Pre-Adamite MAN," Published by this House.]

It is difficult to determine the precise point at which the purely animal left off, and the purely human began. Every recession from the highly human type is an approach toward the Simian, or ape-type, and ape-like forms, shapes, hands, facial angles, faces, noses, mouths, and features meet us among all races, colors, and classes of mankind at every turn; while embryology clearly demonstrates that the human being in utero passes through every stage of the world's animal growth and products, from the jelly-point to tadpole, fish, monkey, up to man; and the farther each gestative stage is pushed, the more perfect the resultant child. The lower types and forms of the Simiana are not, cannot be, immortal, by reason of paucity of cerebrum, or fore, top, brain, and redundance of back, low, brain, or cerebellum.

If a man is, as science proves he is, a growth, then his immortality is a growth also, and not a miracle or gift, or the result of any sudden force applied either physically or metaphysically; and he must have ascended from a non-immortal ancestry. We need a new exegesis of early scripture, for in the light of the daily resurrections of the remains of dead nations and obsolete civilizations; of