Theos-Talk Archives (March 1997 Message tt00000)

There is a paragraph in the S.D. which gives one pause (indeed,
gives one chills!):

> ...For, when we are told that "organic matters are produced in
> the laboratory by what we may literally call *artificial
> evolution*", we answer the distinguished English philosopher,
> that Alchemists and great adepts have done as much, and, indeed,
> far more, before the chemists ever attempted to "build out of
> dissociated elements complex combinations." The *Homunculi* of
> Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one in
> Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelly's Frankenstein will
> have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no chemist, or Alchemist
> either, will ever endow such a "Frankenstein's Monster" with more
> than animal instinct, unless indeed he does that which the
> "Progenitors" are credited with, namely, if he leaves his own
> physical body, and incarnates in the "empty form." But even this
> would be an *artificial*, not a natural man, for our
> "Progenitors" had, in the course of eternal evolution, to become
> *gods* before they became men. (SD II, 349)

We can and probably will produce human clones, but they will be
soulless. The potential for harm seems overwhelming.