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THE HOLY TRINITY.
667
But it seems to us that both Plato and Schopenhauer fall foul of concrete nature when they endeavour to posit pure mental abstractions as actual and eternal beings in existence. For it is not in the nature of a type or archetype to enjoy an existence independently of the living beings and things whose comparison with one another gives rise to its notion. These ‘Ideas' or archetypes can, then, only mean moulds or types of rhythm, i.e., energy, the constructive force, which is responsible for the making of an organism. Each of these types, whatever may be the number of individuals belonging to it, very naturally, can be only one.
As regards the potency of rhythm as a builder of organisms, it was demonstrated some time ago, * by means of experiment, that particles of sand spread over a rotating disc attached to a vibrating instrument arranged themselves in certain charcteristic ways under the influence of different tunes to which they were subjected.
It was inferred from this that each tune had a characteristic rhythm of its own, which was responsible for the arrangement and groupings of the particles of sand. The making of an organism, it is conceived, must, similarly, be due to the operation of the forces residing in the fertilised ovum ; and it is the resultant of the sum-total of these forces which determines the class and type of the body, and which might, for that reason, be called its rhythm.
Now, in the teaching of the Upanishad, Prajapati
* See • The Building of the Cosmos,' by Annie Besant, pp. 18, 19, 22 and 23.
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