t for Darwin and his eminent follower
Haeckel, I cannot agree with their final conclusions, especially with
the conclusions of the latter," continued Sham Rao. "This hasty and
bilious German is perfectly accurate in copying the embryology of Manu
and all the metamorphoses of our ancestors, but he forgets the evolution
of the human soul, which, as it is stated by Manu, goes hand in hand
with the evolution of matter. The son of Swayambhuva, the Self Becoming,
speaks as follows: 'Everything created in a new cycle, in addition to
the qualities of its preceding transmigrations, acquires new qualities,
and the nearer it approaches to man, the highest type of the earth, the
brighter becomes its divine spark; but, once it has become a Brahma, it
will enter the cycle of conscious transmigrations.' Do you realize what
that means? It means that from this moment, its transformations depend
no longer on the blind laws of gradual evolution, but on the least of a
man's actions, which brings either a reward or a punishment. Now you
see that it depends on the man's will whether, on the one hand, he will
start on the way to Moksha, the eternal bliss, passing from one Loka to
another till he reaches Brahmaloka, or, on the other, owing to his sins,
will be thrown back. You know that the average soul, once freed from
earthly reincarnations, has to ascend from one Loka to another, always
in the human shape, though this shape will grow and perfect itself with
every Loka. Some of our sects understood these Lokas to mean certain
stars. These spirits, freed from earthly matter, are what we mean by
Pitris and Devas, whom we worship. And did not your Kabalists of the
middle ages designate these Pitris under the expression Planetary
Spirits? But, in the case of a very sinful man, he will have to
begin once more with the animal forms which he had already traversed
unconsciously. Both Darwin and Haeckel lose sight of this, so to speak,
second volume of their incomplete theory, but still neither of them
advances any argument to prove it false. Is it not so?"

"Neither of them does anything of the sort, most assuredly."

"Why, in this case," exclaimed he, suddenly changing his colloquial tone
for an aggressive one, "why am I, I who have studied the most modern
ideas of Western science, I who believe in its representatives--why am I
suspected, pray, by Miss X---- of belonging to the tribe of the
ignorant and superstitious Hindus? Why does she think that