The Gaelic Manuscripts
by Betty White
with Stewart Edward White

Chapter 10
Heredity

1. The questions defined

All that has been given in the preceding pages was, of course, intensely interesting to us. It was, furthermore, of the greatest value in orienting us comfortably in the cosmos.

But, in the last analysis, it had not come to close grips with the most intimate of the problems that face our poor humanity, most of which can be summed up in the phrase – the pursuit of happiness.

Why are we happy or unhappy? Why are we limited – and how much – by heredity and environment? Why is this, apparently, a world of conflict, in which seemingly we must bear a part? How can we do so with full justice to all? To what extent should we sacrifice ourselves to others? Obviously we have a job. How go at it, get on with it? How work on it most easily and effectively?

These are warm and human questions. They touch us close.

2. Racial intelligence

In his dissertations on the matter of the Group, Gaelic had flirted with some aspects of heredity. While what he said had been illuminating, it had also aroused our curiosities as to certain aspects. Gaelic evidently considered it worth while to elaborate.

"To treat of the subject of heredity", said he, "it is necessary to go back to a consideration of the mechanism by which quality manifests itself in individuals. I have said that it was because of the gathering together of the proper conditions in proper proportion, for the acting, of that law, and that these conditions are gathered by Intelligence.

"What Intelligence? The Intelligence of the quality which produces its own offspring, and the type of quality-intelligence is that which is built up by the quality experience and the quality -memory contributed by its innumerable offspring of the past. Each has brought to its quality the gift of its experience. One, for example, has learned that cold freezes him, and fire burns him, and water drowns him, and therefore his quality gains from him the intelligence that in water, in fire, in ice, is no fit condition for the production (ie. manifestation) of itself. To that extent it is intelligent about its own business, which is the moment the reproduction of itself through physical manifestation.

"That is a crude illustration only. But by that illustration you can readily see that sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, any given quality acquires a very complex and wide reaching wisdom as to conditions favorable, not only to its manifestation as a whole, but also to the manifestation of any of its components, in the proportion it happens to be needing at that juncture.

"That is the broad general principle that governs physical production from quality of anything and it is that type of intelligence that collects the conditions for that production".

3. The determination of one's environment

"The quality-intelligence attains a tremendously flexible and many-sided intelligence of this sort. It is itself a complex intelligence. It experiences a great variety of developmental needs which vary in their delicate balance, almost from moment to moment. It is manifesting itself in millions, and constantly; and the inception of each separate manifestation alters the balance of the whole structure. So that compensating adjustments become a necessity. The superintendence, the planning, and the arrangement of these adjustments; the estimate and satisfaction of each and every developmental need require a flexible – almost omniscient – quality-intelligence.

"You must not forget that with the human being one is dealing with entities within the quality, instead of manifestations from pure quality, as in the lower forms. Each of these souls is of incomplete attribute. Just as the individual, before attaining personality, sometimes carries over into its quality a very few attributes, and from the reservoir of its quality attracts to himself the complementary attributes necessary to form another individual; so analogously the human soul is constantly tending to attract to itself the attributes in which it is deficient from the store house of human quality, – and this for the purpose of being born, as you call it, a complete being, potentially if not actually.

"Now these missing attributes are supplied through the human quality. But I have not said that they are necessarily all supplied from the discarnate human quality. One of the, determining factors as to whether a given human soul shall enter the body in one household, in one station of life, in one race of men; rather than in another household, another station in life, another race, is that in that household, station or race, either by physiological inception or by personal development, the conditions exist, or are easily assembled, for the action of law, which will there precipitate those attributes from the quality-reservoir, so to speak, which are needed to fill out the completeness of that soul".

4. Apparently unfavorable environment

It would seem, puzzled someone, that always unfavorable material conditions are demoralizing: that one develops much better in favoring circumstances.

"How do you know?" demanded Gaelic. "It is not the circumstances. It is the condition existing in the parent or parents, which makes possible the manifestation of missing attributes of the soul. The surrounding, the life which the soul must lead, may be very unfavorable, and that soul might do much better in other surroundings – granted. But that soul could not exist in this body, unless it could find conditions for the completion of itself. And it may happen that in the rest unfavorable surroundings alone could that particular combination of conditions exist.

"It is not the unfavorable surroundings, or the favorable – it is the birth that is important.

"Suppose we simplify: suppose a soul is made up, for physical manifestation of attributes A, B, C, D, and E. This soul is lacking of E. It cannot be born unless it attracts to itself from its quality attribute E. Now E exists only on your physical plane. If the soul is to possess E, it must find a place on your physical plane where it is possible to gather the conditions for the action of the law which produces E, and E in its due and proper proportions to the other attributes.

"Now we have two families – call them G and H, G is a family whose surroundings whose education, whose intelligence are everything to be desired. H lives in the slums. But with G, for one reason or another, it is impossible to gather together all the conditions for the production of E. It is, however, possible that at H those conditions may be -gathered. You cannot grow a tree in some places, and you can in others. The soul has, so to say, to choose. It cannot be born without E. If it is to be born with E, it must be born in the family H.

"But the necessity of its nature impels it to manifest itself in physical birth. Is it clear now?"

5. The values of pressure

"One thin spot in the argument", admitted Gaelic, "is the definition or understanding of what I call quality-intelligence. You gained an idea of an intelligence analogous to that exercised by a person – with some tinge of the arbitrary. Have you not noted that I used the word ‘intelligence’, not ‘intellect’? Intelligence in this case means more a sensitiveness of response through action to needs and situations, combined with an ability to form or gather or take advantage of conditions that answer its needs. It is from one point of view almost like an outpushing force which, by the very fact of its expanding strength, discovers outlets or weak spots. In the other aspect, that of gathering its conditions according to its needs, it is almost like what you call the action of natural law.

"You must not forget that when I say it gathers conditions I do not mean that it goes out, as you go out, at the moment of its need or your needs to pick up wood and split kindling, and bring them in and supply paper; it gathers its conditions through a long course of time. If the tree quality would grow a tree, the conditions of that growth are gathered through many, many years. The foreknowledge of what is necessary at any one juncture, and the modifications of necessity through intervening and diverting free will, are so complicated an interplay of adjustment that we will no more than indicate. It does not affect the principle.

"Nor must you get the image in your mind of independent action of any one quality. You forget the very beautiful cooperation that must exist in the harmony of the whole Pattern. The tree quality assembles its required conditions only by the interplay of cooperation with many other qualities. As the qualities of stones and the qualities of soil, and the qualities of birds, perhaps carrying seeds – or what not; we will not pursue in detail. You can see that that again is part of the marvelous and beautiful combined harmony and intricacy of the Pattern.

"Another point; one of you said something in natural reaction against injustice, that it seemed to you that any human soul anticipating birth might find in some Hottentot village its missing attributes in better circumstances or surroundings than in the slum it happened to be born in. I would challenge you to find anywhere, in a tremendously multiple universe, any two things, or any two combinations of things exactly alike. I simply state that they do not exist, whether it is the print from one thumb of any one of the billions and billions of human beings who have ever occupied earth life, or ever will, or the infinitely greater multitude of common ants. And since this is so, the discovery of exactly the combination for any particular deficiency or attribute can be made at one spot only. And I would almost say, at one point of time only. That statement is not, however, quite accurate. I said ‘almost’. For physical manifestation depends, not upon a completely rounded wholeness of attribute, but of a complete assembly of all attribute in one form or proportion or another.

"Furthermore, one cannot skip a step. Few souls that have passed through the birth of the individual in quality, and finally reached the birth, here or elsewhere, of the person from quality, but possess sufficient development within themselves, of that urge of progress which would prevent even hesitation in a choice between stopping short or going on – even through an earth experience in untoward circumstances. The choice is at that point almost no choice at all. One is impelled as by an irresistible instinct.

"That the untoward circumstances exist, and that they are crippling circumstances, deterrent, warping circumstances, is indubitably true. That fact, as a fact, is a grief to us, as well as to yourselves. That it exists at all is due entirely to the exercise, the existence and exercise of free will.

"Why inscrutable Wisdom so offers resistance by which free will becomes so thoroughly self-aware is beyond our comprehension; except that we can say that, just as any awareness-mechanism requires an object for its functioning, so this awareness-mechanism of free will requires the alternative of harmony or disharmony for the object of its development of self-awareness.

"That any one soul requires attributes which cause it to be born in a slum, or that any slum parents possess the potentialities of conditions for production of what that soul requires, is a question that is too complicated to trace back. It is always the product of some exercise of free will; some exercise of free will in the direction of disharmony, and by someone.

"The one who suffers the present consequence – either the new-born soul or its parents – may or may not be what you call ‘at fault – what you call at fault; but this broad principle you can record:

"That person who innocently, and because of the condition of things, suffers through lack or deterrence, is privileged by that fact to demand from his quality compensation that will fill out that lack. And he who, however indirectly, or through however complicated a sequence or interplay of motive or event, is responsible for the conditions that cause that lack or that deterrence, must sooner or later, above his own normal gift of development, contribute an effort corresponding to the compensation accorded to the other".

"You can get away with nothing!" cried one of us. "Lord, what a system of bookkeeping!"

"There is no bookkeeping", Gaelic denied this, "It is the action and interplay of Law, and is inevitable.

"It is simply that the responsible man at some time, now or hereafter finds within himself a defect he must fill out before he can go on. Again, I do not attempt to tell you detail of method, only process.

"For a small example; your slum parent. Why is he a slum parent? Because when he was born, the same thing happened as when his own child is born. And right there, in his everyday life, he has an opportunity of which he can, or need not, avail himself, to ameliorate beyond his own experience that of his child. If he succeeds thus in partially compensating to his child for the circumstances of his birth, naturally the child has received part of the compensation of which we spoke. And the father also has received part of the compensation which is coming to him. Do you see that? And that one effort has gone further to right the original wrong condition or disharmony, than some spectacular and intrinsically, or apparently, larger expansion by one more fortunately placed. So that in spite of your first judgment that this man of the slums has been hardly treated by a harsh fate in being so placed, as a matter of cold fact he has been more fortunate – in that he has gained more for himself and for his human quality than has your man in ‘lucky’ circumstances. His opportunity is less, from one point of view; but it is greater from another, because it bears a closer ratio to his capacity.

"He is not", Gaelic distinguished, "born in the slums to get a harder lesson. The same attribute might be elsewhere. The circumstances of birth have nothing to do with the matter. It is a frequent mistake – that a person is put in harmonious or disharmonious circumstances for the sake of development. Anyone develops better in harmonious circumstances – anyone. Disharmonious circumstance is inevitable in development. It is unpleasant to be born in disharmonious circumstance, but it is compensated.

"Note ye this", he added", it is efficient in development according to the pressure.

"The mere fact of even moderate cheerfulness, for example, in squalid circumstances is a force of development, sometimes, that is exceedingly strong; whereas cheerfulness in thoroughly pleasant and congenial surroundings has no developing power whatever. Why? Because it is working against no pressure.

"So do not mistake; for every circumstance there is compensation. Your slum influence on the young and innocent child, for example. You see him little by little yielding to the evil about him until you say ‘He is a lost soul’. Perhaps so. But if that is literally a fact, he would be a lost soul anywhere.

"If, however, step by step, even though forced back to the very wall, he has put forth the free will of resistance, the repercussion of that force exerted has had its due effect, and though materially and apparently spiritually he may end as a criminal, until the power of circumstance has been weighed against the power of resistance, and the ratio evaluated, you cannot judge.

"If", said Gaelic, "you should take a thousand people of wealth, and one thousand people from your slums, and you would weigh accurately the happiness or unhappiness of each, considered solely in relation to themselves, not in relation to their surroundings, you would not find much difference. Eliminate from the examination the thought on one side, ‘I would not like to live like that’, and on the other, 'I wish I had all those things’ – there is not much to choose".

6. A warning

Before continuing the subject of heredity, Gaelic expressed a doubt or warning.

"There has been some doubt concerning the advisability of pursuing such subjects as this one you desire, for two reasons. One is that the complication is such that it is practically impossible to present a rounded discussion from which all shafts of interrogation would glance. Within practical limits one can give only one or another of the many aspects. The danger is real of considering an aspect as representing a whole. That, however, we will risk. The other reason will amount to little if it is called vigorously to your attention. In presenting these teachings watch carefully for one thing; the structure you build should contain only those elements which can trace their pedigree direct through logic to your symbols of the known.

Wherever information has been given you of an ex-cathedra character, and you cannot yourselves connect it logically and inevitably with the main thesis, it is better perhaps to consider it as intended personally. For if at any point a reader is able to ask, ‘By what right or authority do you make this statement?’ and you can not reply, ‘By right and authority of self-evident truth in final analysis', it seems to me that you have made a mistake of tactics. Some of this heredity subject comes under this category, I think."

7. Specialization

"The human soul comes to earth for the purposes of one stage of its development. It comes with the potentialities of all its attributes, else it would not come at all. Some of those potentialities are considerably developed; others have attained only partial development; others are hardly started toward development; and still others are more or less suppressed or inhibited by the especial need of the moment, or the purpose of special general development of earth life.

"I will make this clearer. It may be that a soul possesses one attribute so nearly developed toward completion that if that attribute were given full and adequate mechanism in the earth life, it would overbalance and draw to itself quality, admirable in itself, but not admirable in its disproportion to other qualities. It is for the purpose of developing the other qualities that the individual we speak of is in the earth life. In order not to starve those qualities of opportunity by over balance by the developed quality, the latter is sometimes more or less inhibited or suppressed. This is done, I must remind you, by that semi-automatic intelligence of Quality which is sensitive to need; not by an arbitrary intelligence of whatever kind.

"Thus lack of certain things in an individual may be due either to a lack of development, or to development beyond proportion".

8. The persistence of heredity traits

"Now the parent", he then continued, "as we have said, in a manner we have not attempted to describe, furnishes favorable conditions for the manifestation of a quality (or qualities) needed by the soul that comes to him (as offspring). Those conditions exercise a reflex influence upon the parent himself. They possess a power of manifestation which shows itself to him – either by the production of some physical characteristics, or some pure trait in character. If that manifestation is direct, that is in the normal direction of that law, the manifestation is that which is to be expected from that law. That is to say, he has in himself the same or closely similar physical characteristics, or inner traits, differing from the same things in his offspring only by the pull and counterpull of his many other traits in which his personality differs (from that of his offspring).

"If, however, the same conditions work at what we might call the negative end of the law’s action, instead of at the positive, or vice versa, the set of conditions favorable to the pure manifestation of the desired (i.e. lacking) quality in the offspring will be so modified by the pulls and counterpulls of the parent's individuality that you will get apparently the same physical manifestation or inner traits but in actuality a manifestation of quite different conditions. A long nose in the father, for instance, will mean firmness of character because it is the outward physical precipitation of certain inner conditions. The same long nose appears in the son. It indicates in him no firmness of character at all; it came to the son because the condition through which the long nose was manifested in the father was also the condition that produced the same thing in the son. But of the father's firmness of character the long nose was only one of very many, though not so prominent manifestations; and of all these manifestations, only that part which remained to produce the long nose in the father, happened also to be one of many condition – ingredients such as produced, let us say, pictorial insight – any trait – in the son.

"The thing that passes in heredity, in other words, is a common ingredient of multiplex conditions that in their aggregate produce perhaps totally different things. They are not passed down from father to son, they are inevitable consequences in each of the intersection of their circles, the results of partially similar aggregation of conditions for the action of the laws each according to its need.

"Those traits persist because when the son in his turn becomes a parent and supplies conditions for deficiencies (in the souls of his offspring), once again the strongly predominating conditions are apt to be similar, and therefore contain a greater or smaller number of common ingredients.

"The persistence of hereditary traits that indicate apparently totally antithetical natures – which is one of the puzzles of heredity – is due again to the consideration which I adduced at the first: a parent with characteristic B strongly manifested, may from the predominance of B in his constitution be able to permit the birth of an entity in whom it is desirable that B, though fully developed, should be for the moment inhibited or suppressed.

"For the purposes of birth as a complete being, the father in a way lends the quality so that it can be inhibited for a purpose, in the son. Therefore though apparently the father and the son may have nought in common, in reality they may have more in common than many others who seem more similar. For you must not lose sight, in this close examination of mere mechanics, of the fact of kinship. That is a danger always in close examinations: that one may lose sight of greater things in contemplation of the lesser.

"Traits of heredity dilute and pass away, simply by the continued pull and counter-pull of the thousands of other traits which are not held in common: so that in regard to those traits the circles, as it were, are drawn further toward their circumference, and when at last they part those traits of heredity have disappeared.

"I despair that I have conveyed any clear idea – the subject is so complicated. It is a foolishness on my part to try."

9. The specialist

"Why have you specialists?" Gaelic nevertheless continued. "You must notice that the specialist is made up of inhibitions. The more he is blind in general directions, the further he goes in his own direction. Mind you, these are inhibitions, not lacks. These qualities may be possessed but inhibited. If he lacked, how could he go up? He has not filled his level.

"When you find your able man narrowed in his view, it may be through inhibition only. It is easier to release an inhibition than to build from a foundation of great lacks. Measure your man by the highest point of him you can see, knowing fully that within him are all other points reaching to that highest level; perhaps darkened for the moment, but in their turn either to be released or given their opportunity for growth.

"A little man has no highest points; and if you know a man thoroughly, and your discernment is good, you see in him no elevation or altitude in any characteristic whatever, then only can you guess he is a small man. And reflect still more; it may be that the highest point you see is a part that for the moment is illuminated for growth – because it might be the backward part of that man. So that when in the course of time you see your narrow-visioned man as he is, you might be surprised.

"Do not misunderstand me to be saying that every narrow-visioned man is a spiritual giant – far, far, far from it!"