THE differentiation of sex, as seen in the Vegetable, Animal, and Human kingdoms, at a first glance might seem to be only a method adopted by Nature to ensure the perpetuation of form and the preservation of species. Traced from the apparently asexual cell up through all the slight variations of form and function with which it is associated, it culminates in the human race in two distinctly marked types of character, in which the merely physiological question of procreation has become of secondary importance. We are therefore compelled to look more deeply into the problem, and in doing so it is quickly seen that sex is but an example of that mysterious Duality in Unity which is at the basis of all differentiation, and hence of all manifestation in the universe.

This Duality in Unity which makes philosophically conceivable the necessary postulate that everything in the universe is resolvable into an ultimate, absolute Unity - of which Unity the infinite manifestations of Nature are but infinite aspects - may, perhaps, be best studied on this plane by a study of its purest type - electricity. Here we have one fluid exhibiting two opposite states, both necessary to the existence of the fluid - or, at least, to its manifestation - apparently ever seeking equilibrium, yet never attaining it; causing bodies dissimilarly "electrified" to madly rush together, only to be as violently repelled when the object of the union has been apparently accomplished; exhibiting in these ceaseless attractions and repulsions a giant energy which, when chained by man, makes all other forces yield obeisance to it, and when chained by Nature holds stars and worlds in harmonious motion. For it is the attraction and repulsion of that mysterious energy, whose action on earth we see manifested as electricity, which are the centrifugal and centripetal forces holding the planets in their orbits, and of which the "gravitation" of modern science expresses but one mode of its dual action.

If gravity were a single force, causing material bodies to "attract all other portions of matter with a force directly proportional to the product of the mass, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them," which is the statement of Newton's law - and which also expresses the law of magnetic or electrical attraction - then would those bodies known as comets surely fall into the sun upon their startlingly near approaches to the latter, in describing the perihelion of their orbits. Their mass is almost infinitely lighter than that of the sun, and if Newton's law of mass and distance governing the "pull" of gravitation were true, no amount of accelerated motion due to momentum could prevent this result. This fact is startlingly apparent when they pass perihelion and recede from the enormous attraction of the sun - an attraction which, at the comparatively immense distance of the earth, represents a force acting upon this planet which would snap in twain a steel rod 162 miles in diameter as easily as a cobweb.

In the fact of their being so nearly on the same plane of substance as the sun that their close approach permits an actual equilibrium of electrical conditions, thus causing them to become similarly electrified, and bringing the repulsive energy of the electric fluid to bear, is to be found the reason for this otherwise inexplicable phenomenon of their escape upon these near approaches.

* A paper read by the author at the Theosophical Congress of the World's Parliament of Religions, at Chicago, Sep. 15. 1893.

Applying this electrical law that similarly electrified bodies attract one another, while those dissimilarly electrified are repelled, gives us a clue not only to the infinitely small question of the manifestation of sex, but also to the infinitely greater one of the eternal manifestation of worlds or universes - a reason, scientific and logical, for the alternate periods of objective and subjective life, which Eastern Philosophy has recognized, and describes under the beautiful metaphor of the "Days and Nights of Brahm." For this endless Motion or Breath, which is at the origin of all life, and which by the very law of its own existence can never cease its eternal action, stands revealed as to its mode of motion, however incomprehensible its origin may be to us. We can perceive that this law of electrical attraction and repulsion, thus forever striving to restore equilibrium, only to utterly destroy this when attained, is one which, even if it acted blindly and mechanically, would forever forbid inaction, death, or rest taking place in all the unthinkable cycles of eternity.

Physical science declares, and apparently with justice, that all physical forces tend towards final equilibrium, a condition which Flammarion terms Absolute Death, and when all the suns and worlds shall have died, this scientist speculates upon a possible new origin of force and consequent evolution of life by the collision of two dead, wandering suns! Yet the law of attraction and repulsion shows us that when electrical equilibrium shall have been established the terrific repulsion of bodies all similarly electrified will rend every molecule asunder, and that there cannot remain one single molecular combination of matter within the universe. By such steps, requiring almost eternal periods of time for their enactment, will all the matter of the universe seek more and more ethereal, or - to us - subjective conditions, and when some equally incomprehensible limit of motion is reached in this direction, in the course of still other immeasurable eternities, a universe of matter as it now is, will reappear.

In the descending sweep of this mighty Motion of the Great Breath, as each plane of substance approaches a state of equilibrium, there will be formed connecting points between this and the plane towards which the electric vibrations are driving matter - Laya centers, the Secret Doctrine calls them, points which are dissimilar in their electrical condition to all the matter driven to a lower plane, and which points, therefore, attract the matter of this lower plane under the law of the attraction of dissimilars, and around which are thus built slowly and after many "wars in heaven," suns and worlds. Such Laya Centers, positive to all molecular matter, and in the state of suns, pour, in the descending arc of evolution, mighty streams of life and energy which are thence reflected upon and give life and energy to their planets as well as all matter upon such lower planes. Yet this stream, pouring light, heat, and life upon our planetary system through our sun, carries with it the certainty of the sometime destruction of that to which it now gives life, when the state of equiliriubm which physical science prophesies shall have been approximately attained.