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<font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Evolution or Special Creation </font></b>
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<font face="Times New Roman">THE point is still being debated and, it seems, is still debatable
whether evolution is truly the fact behind the origin of species.
or is it special creation. The latter, we know, was the old-
world pre-Copernican theory advocated by theologians and
religious minds. It was thoroughly discredited and demolished
by the new illumination that Science brought in with the
nineteenth century. Till lately it was considered as a pure
superstition and to be its advocate would be nothing but
blind bigotry. But evidently things in Nature are not so simple; what at one time is brushed aside as a meaningless futility
comes back later with a meaning and suggestiveness and
truth of reality. We were once laughing at the corpuscular
theory of light advocated by the great Newton and putting on a patronising air at the frailty of an otherwise mighty intelligence.&nbsp; But the tables are now turned and we accept it as an undoubted fact when Planck says today that a light ray
consists also of particles <i>{quanta)</i> of light. Similarly if in some
scientific quarter a doubt has arisen as to the absolute and
exclusive truth of the principle of evolution and if the old conception of 
special creation is exhumed for fresh consideration,&nbsp; well, one should not be astonished at the turn over. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">The most serious lacuna in the concept of evolution, at
least in the Darwinian form of it, is, as is well known, the
missing link. The transition stage between one form of life
and another, between one species and its higher evolute is
always absent, has left no trace of any kind and it is a matter
of any man's guess. So the theory of mutation, <i>saltum,</i> sudden
change, has been advanced. But that only restates the fact,
clinches the matter, but does not explain it. If a sudden and
thorough change is possible, if one object can be transformed </font>
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<font size="2" face="Times New Roman">Page - 356</font><hr align="justify">

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<font face="Times New Roman">into something quite different and unpredictable, one can 
as well call it special creation. That would, some might say, be facing the fact squarely. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">According to the Yogic or occult view of things, however,
the two conceptions that human mind sets against each other
need not be and are not contradictory. Indeed both are true
and both are factors working out the progress of life. Evolution
is a movement upward, the urge of consciousness to grow and
expand and rise to a higher and greater articulation: the
change follows a scale of degrees. But there comes a point in
the progressive march when a change of degree means a
change of kind and the phenomenon presents itself as a sudden,
unforeseen mutation. This is due to the fact that there happens
at the moment, in answer to a last call as it were from below,
a descent of consciousness from the higher into the lower.
All the grades of being or consciousness are always there in
the cosmic infinity, only it is a matter of gradual manifestation in the 
physical world. The higher scales are kept in the background,&nbsp; the march of life starts from the lowest, the material 
rung. One by one they manifest or descend, formulate themselves&nbsp; in the lower as these grow and rise and get ready to
receive the descent. The gap or missing link means the irruption&nbsp; of a new principle or mode of consciousness, the bursting
of the cocoon, as it were, at the end of the period of gestation
in the previous mode. Thus we can say that in the beginning
there was only Matter and Matter was being churned until
a point of tension or saturation was reached when Life precipitated&nbsp; and became embodied and evident in Matter. In the 
same way, out of a concentrated incubation that Life underwent,&nbsp; it brought down Mind from the hidden mind-plane
and the vegetable kingdom gave birth to the animal. Latterly
when Intelligence and self-consciousness descended, it was
Man that appeared on earth. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">Looked at from below, as the lower marches forward and
upward, the scene presents itself as Evolution, growth, Nature's
gradual unfolding of herself: looked at from above, as the
higher seems poised and descends when the time and occasion
are ready, creation appears as a series of special intervention.
Both movements are facts of Nature and implement each
other. </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman" size="2">Page - 357</font><hr>
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