FATALISTIC THEORIES OF THEOSOPHY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11093, 2 June 1914, Page 5

FATALISTIC THEORIES OF THEOSOPHY.

TO THE IDITOB. j Sir,.-Would yon kindly excuse mo for butting in? Your corrospendont, ! Miss Christie, so obviously, however, bases her letter on theory and superstition that I would b'Ko to attempt to answer her. In her letter appearing in your issue to-day Mks Christie admits that physical qualities may be inherited, but states that mental and moral qualities are not transmitted. Now T contend that tho mental and moral qualities of a person are aimply the olfect of the cause—tho physical qualities. One is the cause and the other effect, and it is impossible, in my belief, to have the effect without the cause. All human experience goes to prove this, and any ideas to tho contrary are only so much theory ami superstition. The thought, tho mind, the ego, or whatever you ] like to call it, is simply nothing more ; nor loss than tho effect of the workings of the brain, and when the brain stops working our experience goes to prove that these other tilings stop also. When the brain becomes weakened or injured our experience proves that the mind, or whatever Miss Christie likes to call it, becomes weakened or injured. By operations on the brain, criminals have been turned into ordinary beings. It is oniy common-sense also to suppofe that if a human being, by some chance, suddenly lest his own brain and found the brain of an ape, bo would have the mind and morals of an ripe. All these tilings simply prove indisputably that the state of our mind and morals depends upon ' tho quality and shape of our brain. Tho quality and shape of our brain are given us by our parents and ancestors, and are largely affected and influenced bv our environment and by their environment. Heredity we may simply term transmitted environment. Tn the long run it all boils down to environment.

I would advise Miss Christie, instead nf attempting to spread the beautiful.' "(though rather fatalistic theories, of Tliecsophy, to simply go on spreading its practical t/'nehings, aud to take up <omo work whifh ins for its aim the improvement of tlio environment of mankind generally—such as, pay. the much misunderstood theory of Socialism—l am, etc., JAMES R. D. New Brighton, Jml p. 1.