All these are records of the primeval divine Hermaphrodite.
Stanza VI. The Evolution Of The "Sweat-Born."
22. The evolution of the three Races continued. 23. The Second Race creates the Third and perishes.
22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE EGG-BORN, THE THIRD.(305) THE SWEAT GREW, ITS DROPS GREW, AND THE DROPS BECAME HARD AND ROUND. THE SUN WARMED IT; THE MOON COOLED AND SHAPED IT; THE WIND FED IT UNTIL ITS RIPENESS. THE WHITE SWAN FROM THE STARRY VAULT(306) OVERSHADOWED THE BIG DROP. THE EGG OF THE FUTURE RACE, THE MAN-SWAN(307) OF THE LATER THIRD (_A_). FIRST MALE-FEMALE, THEN MAN AND WOMAN (_B_).
(_a_) The text of the Stanza clearly implies that the human embryo was nourished _ab extra_ by Cosmic Forces, and that the "Father-Mother" furnished apparently the germ that ripened; in all probability a "sweat- born egg," to be hatched out, in some mysterious way, disconnected from the "double" parent. It is comparatively easy to conceive of an oviparous humanity, since even now man is, in one sense, "egg-born." Magendie, moreover, in his _Precis Élémentaire de Physiologie_, citing
A case where the umbilical cord was ruptured and perfectly cicatrized,
yet the infant was born alive, pertinently asks:
How was the circulation carried on in this organ?
Nothing is at present known respecting the use of digestion in the foetus.
And respecting its nutrition, he propounds this query:
What, then, can we say of the nutrition of the foetus? Physiological works contain only _vague conjectures_ on this point.
"Ah, but," the sceptic may urge, "Magendie's book belongs to the last generation, and Science has since made such strides that his stigma of ignorance can no longer be fixed upon the profession." Indeed; then let us turn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir Michael Foster, and, to the disadvantage of Modern Science, we shall find him saying:
Concerning the rise and development of the functional activities of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We know scarcely anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental qualities of the protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into the complex phenomena which we have attempted in this book to explain.(308)
The students of Trin. Coll. Cantab, will now kindly draw a veil before the statue of Hygieia and bandage the eyes of the busts of Galen and Hippocrates, lest they look reproachfully at their degenerate descendants. One further fact we must note. Sir Michael Foster is discreetly silent about the case of the ruptured umbilical cord cited by his great French _confrère_.