Material Science fails to explain the fact that the functions which it labels "instinct" appear in the very young animal, whereas the human infant is born mentally a helpless creature that must await the slow unfolding of mind, that gift supposedly God-bequeathed only to the human species.

The notion that mind is the possession of man alone, originated in the dogma that the gift of immortality, or even the possibility of attaining it, is the peculiar birthright of the one genus endowed with mind. It is repugnant to the idea of Divine Justice, that any being capable of thought, however circumscribed, should be doomed to utter extinction through death of the physical; so, in lieu of mind, mere "instinct" - whatever that may be - was allowed to the brute kingdom.

Our philosophy teaches that Mind, as one aspect of that all-pervading Trinity, - Will, Desire, Thought, sleeps in the mineral, wakes in the plant, becomes more or less active in the animal, and fully alert in man, the crown and culmination of Nature's efforts. During the long and slow ascent from the lower kingdoms to civilized beings, indwelling mind is ever striving to individualize itself, and take the shape of the physical body. In the humbler species the result is a most rudimentary mind body; one dissipated at death, or soon after; but as for the higher animals, especially the domesticated horse, cow, elephant, dog, and certain others; these, through association with man, and because of their efforts to understand his wishes and commands, have developed mind bodies which, in certain instances, will persist, and even re-incarnate in a way analo gous to the mind bodies of their higher brethren of the human race.

The wide adaptability of mind to its environment is not conceded by those who, naming a certain aspect of it "instinct," marvel that, for instance, the young whale from the moment of birth can both swim, and feed from the teat of the mother; whereas the human infant would die were not its mouth guided to the nipple. In the human infant, hunger urges the principle of desire to immediate expression, but because the mind of the mother takes upon itself the duties proper to that of the infant, Nature has for ages accommodated itself to this fact. No doubt many more ages would be necessary to bring the infant mind to that precocity which, from necessity, is usual in the lower species.

To those of circumscribed vision, the fact that Nature is red in tooth and claw, seems an indictment of that Love which supposedly is sovereign over all our world. Throughout the animal kingdom, Nature is striving to the end that an individualized and permanent mind body may be the property of its every entity. The sluggish minds of the lower orders must be roused by means necessarily harsh. Love of life, the fear of all that threatens it, the desire for food, and the consequent matching of cunning against cunning, are the only possible means by which the lower orders can be stimulated to think in the narrow circles to which they have thus far attained. So the cost of immortality is tremendous; but the result will be priceless.

Long ago man passed through his fiery struggle for immortality, but more or less of the evil tendencies then engendered yet cling to him. Because of these evils, exoteric religions condemn certain of the human race to everlasting punishment; but these religions fail to see that the higher virtues are chiefly the evolution of their once necessary opposites. Thus, cunning like that of the fox becomes the craft of the savage, which in turn becomes the intelligence of the average civilized man, and finally this widens into the wisdom of the sage. Again, ferocity like that of the tigress defending her young, evolves to the love of the human mother for her child; and such love eventuates in that compassion for the entire human race which distinguished both Buddha and the Galilean Master.

H. P. B.