Episode 32 - Ancestral Influence

Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960s. 

Eugene discusses the biology of human reproduction and what it means for the transmission of information from generation to generation.

"...all multiplication of biological elements is by division. The cell divides in order to multiply. Now this same thing that you can observe under the microscope in a monocelled animal occurs in the multiplication of human beings; only, the mode of doing it is rather less obvious. You get under the microscope a monocell and watch it long enough, you will actually see the thing goes through a process of division. It has inside it a little nuclear spot, the intelligence. This is observed to behave in a peculiar way and then to divide itself into two centres and then various processes take place between the two centres and it builds a wall up. And then it pinches where the wall is and gradually brings itself into a state where it can sever itself into two beings. And that’s the basic method of multiplication by division." 

"The implications of this in religion and philosophy are tremendous, because it means that none of us actually start life with the blank tablet that some thinkers assume. The tabula rasa, the blank tablet of certain philosophical schools is just a pure abstraction ... it just never did exist." 

A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.